“They are fighting against telling the truth. They are fighting to teach kids lies.” In the conclusion of this three-part series, Michael Harriot calls out the lawmakers and racist Americans who are pushing the false CRT narrative that is not rooted in historical fact.
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[00:00:00] You are now listening to theGrio’s Black Podcast Network. Black Culture Amplified.
Michael Harriot [00:00:05] Hello and welcome back. You know, if you watch the last episode or listen to the last episode or absorb it from osmosis, I don’t know how you do that, but I’m sure there’s some kind of technology that will allow you to do that. Then you know that we’ve been talking about the two kinds of CRT. There’s the critical race theory, the scholarship that was the work of Black scholars and taught in schools across the country, and then there’s this thing that white people made up called CRT. And we’re trying to kind of separate the differences between the two. So I want to welcome you to theGrio Daily, the only podcast that will tell you about the two CRTs.
Michael Harriot [00:00:50] Now that you understand kind of what critical race theory is and what CRT is, you need to know what those differences are in real life and why are they making white people mad. So critical race theory. Says, for instance, this country was founded through the lens of whiteness. The Constitution supported slavery. Right. White people tend to discount that. But it is a real thing. It is true, right? This country’s bloodiest and largest war, the civil war was fought to create a white supremacist nation called the Confederate States of America. That is true. It’s absolutely true. There is nothing that you can argue about that. This country’s biggest social and economic plan that ever existed. The New Deal was given to white people while Black people were excluded. That is a fact. This country’s main source of law enforcement, policing, was created as a way to control human property. What you call slaves, what white people call slaves, what they called human chattel, a system of human trafficking. That is historically accurate. There are no ways about that. Slavery, the New Deal, the war for white supremacy that we call the Civil War, creating a country that is based on slavery, the Confederate States of America, shooting Black people in the face disproportionately, using municipal funds to control enslaved people, redlining. All of those things are unquestionably racist, right? They may be in the past, but we can all agree that those things are racist, right? Those things built the middle class. They built the foundation on which this country lies, and those things are racist. If you say that America’s. Wealth, the middle class, that economic foundation, the foundation politically, the foundation, economically, the foundation socially, because of Jim Crow and all of those. The way we live, how cities are constructed with Black neighborhoods. All of those things are based through laws, principles and actual political efforts that were unquestionably racist.
Michael Harriot [00:03:51] When we look at America through the lens of race, you would have to say that the foundation of this country is partly or wholly embedded in racism. That’s not a controversial statement, right? It’s not controversial to call racist things racist. If we’re going to teach children about the foundation of America, for instance, about history or about slavery or about how this country was founded, about the founding fathers. And in all of those disparate lessons, how neighborhoods were constructed, if we exclude the racial aspect from all of those lists intentionally, not only are you misinforming people, right? You are engaged in a concerted effort to undermine or to whitewash the history of this country, which is racism. To erase racism, to erase the past out of which I was born, which people who were descendants of enslaved people, which everybody in this country benefited from in one way or the other. Whether you’re white and your parents who are slave holders or whether you didn’t have to compete in the 1960s against Black students who wanted to get into the colleges that excluded them.
1963 News Report [00:05:18] The University of Alabama campus at Tuscaloosa is under a tight security guard of state police. As Governor George Wallace appeals for calm and prepares to confront a deputy U.S. Attorney. That federal officers are armed with a proclamation from President Kennedy urging the governor to end his efforts to prevent two negro students from registering at the university. The governor is adamant. He made a campaign promise to stand in the doorway himself to prevent the integration of the last all white state university.
Michael Harriot [00:05:47] Whether your parents came to this country as immigrants and they had an easier time to get in because the immigration policy excluded Brown people, all of that is part of this country’s history. And if you exclude that, you’re not just taking away the parts that make white people feel uncomfortable. You’re erasing the history of Black people. You erasing the history of nonwhite immigrants. You’re erasing some of the important aspects of this country to make white children feel comfortable. And if you are sacrificing the history and the culture of one people for the needs of or the comfort of another, the only way to describe that is racist. So the anti-CRT effort doesn’t fight against looking at America through a racial lens. CRT does. Critical race theory does that. Derrick Bell’s scholarship does that. The white people CRT doesn’t do that. The white people CRT doesn’t fight against people understanding that racism is normal. It doesn’t fight against white children learning about redlining. It fights against teaching the truth. And it does so for the comfort of white children. So they ssy. And so what they are fighting against is not critical race theory. It’s not the thing that Derrick Bell taught. It’s not a graduate school philosophy. It’s not a way of viewing anything through the lens of race. They are fighting against telling the truth. They are fighting to teach kids lies like the Civil War was about states rights and taxation. They are fighting to teach kids that part of the reason that poverty is so widespread in Black neighborhoods is because of government policy, like the New Deal, like redlining and they say it makes white kids uncomfortable. But what it really does is make white children believe that this country was founded on hard work. And work ethic and achievement, which is a lie that not fighting against critical race theory. Because critical race theory can look at redlining through a racial lens. Critical race theory can look at the economics of the New Deal.
Michael Harriot [00:08:46] But they’re not even fighting against that. What they are fighting is to preserve a lie. The lie that their granddaddy got here on merit. That’s how he got his money. And that’s not saying that he didn’t work hard. That’s not saying that he didn’t know what he was doing. That’s not saying that he wasn’t educated. But it’s also leaving out the important part of who they had to compete against, the laws that help them and the government policy that gave them their wealth and their advantage. If you don’t teach that part, you’re teaching a lie. What they’re fighting for is for lies. The fighting against truth, not critical race theory. So when you argue against what they are teaching, you don’t even have to include critical race theory, because that is just a name that they made up. Right. You don’t have to argue against, you know, the 1619 project because they’ve never read the 1619 project. You don’t have to argue against Derrick Bell because they never read nothing Derrick Bell wrote. They’re arguing for something that they made up. They’re arguing for a lie. And that’s the difference between critical race theory and this manufactured thing called CRT. To understand it, you’re going to have to continue to listen to this podcast. I want to tell your friends about it. Matter of fact, I suggest that you download that Grio app. And of course, I’m going to leave you with the famous Black saying and today’s Black saying is, “It’s just their imagination, running away with whiteness. Ohh it’s just their imagination.” We’ll see you next time. “Running away with them.” Sounds just like one of them Temptations don’t I?. We’ll see you. If you like what you heard, please give us a five star review. Download theGrio app. Subscribe to the show and to share it with everyone you know. Please email all questions, suggestions and compliments to podcasts at theGrio dot com.
Dr. Christina Greer [00:11:14] I’m political scientist, author and professor Dr. Christina Greer, and I’m host of The Blackest Questions on theGrio’s Black Podcast Network. This person invented ranch dressing around 1950. Who are they?
Marc Lamont Hill [00:11:27] I have no idea.
Dr. Christina Greer [00:11:28] This all began as an exclusive Black history trivia party at my home in Harlem with family and friends. And they got so popular it seemed only right to share the fun with our Grio listeners. Each week we invite a familiar face on the podcast to play. What was the name of the person who was an enslaved chief cook for George Washington and later ran away to freedom? In 1868, this university was the first in the country to open a medical school that welcomed medical students of all races, genders and social classes. What university was it?
Roy Wood Jr. [00:12:02] This is why I like doing stuff with you, because I leave educated. I was not taught this in Alabama Public Schools.
Dr. Christina Greer [00:12:08] Question three. You ready?
Eboni K. Williams [00:12:09] Yes. I want to redeem myself.
Amanda Seales [00:12:11] How do we go from Kwanzaa to like these obscure.
Dr. Christina Greer [00:12:17] Diaspora, darling.
Amanda Seales [00:12:17] It’s like the New York Times crossword from Monday to Saturday.
Dr. Christina Greer [00:12:22] Right or wrong. All we care about is the journey and having some fun while we do it.
Kalen Allen [00:12:26] I’m excited and also a little bit nervous.
Dr. Christina Greer [00:12:29] Oh, listen. No need to be nervous. And as I tell all of my guests, this is an opportunity for us to educate ourselves, because Black history is American history. So we’re just gonna have some fun. Listen, some people get zero out of five. Somebody can get five out of five. It doesn’t matter. We’re just going to be on a little intellectual journey together.
Eboni K. Williams [00:12:45] Latoya Cantrell.
Dr. Christina Greer [00:12:47] That’s right. Mayor Latoya Cantrell.
Michael Twitty [00:12:49] Hercules Posey.
Dr. Christina Greer [00:12:51] Hmm. Born in 1754, and he was a member of the Mount Vernon slave community. Widely admired for his culinary skills.
Kalen Allen [00:12:57] I’m going to guess AfroPunk.
Dr. Christina Greer [00:13:00] Close. It’s Afro Nation. So last year, according to my research, it’s Samuel Wilson a.k.a Falcon.
Michael Harriot [00:13:09] Wrong. Wrong. I am disputing this.
Latosha Brown [00:13:15] I’m Very, very 99.9999 percent sure that it is Representative John Lewis, who is also from the state of Alabama. And that let you know, Christina, we got some goodness come out of Alabama.
Dr. Christina Greer [00:13:26] There’s something in the water in Alabama. And you are absolutely correct.
Diallo Riddle [00:13:29] The harder they come.
Dr. Christina Greer [00:13:31] Close.
Diallo Riddle [00:13:32] Oh, wait, the harder they fall?
Dr. Christina Greer [00:13:34] That’s right. I’m one of those people that just changes one word.
Roy Wood Jr. [00:13:38] Well, I just don’t know nothing today. I’m going to pour myself a little water while you tell me the answer.
Dr. Christina Greer [00:13:43] The answer is Seneca Village, which began in 1825 with the purchase of land by a trustee, the A.M.E. Zion Church.
Roy Wood Jr. [00:13:50] You know why games like this make me nervous? I don’t know if I know enough Black. Do I know enough? How Black am I? Oh, my Lord. They, they, we going to find out in public.
Dr. Christina Greer [00:13:58] So give us a follow. Subscribe and join us on the Blackest Questions.
