“White people have made great strides in being racist.” The attack on CRT and the word “woke” came out of nowhere, so Michael Harriot wants you to be more prepared for the next wave of backlash that is brewing. Michael predicts the educational practices that he believes will soon be under a microscope by conservatives.
Full transcript below.
Panama Jackson [00:00:00] You are now listening to theGrio’s Black Podcast Network. Black Culture Amplified.
Michael Harriot [00:00:05] Look, I know I point my fingers at white people a lot. You know, say they do some bad things, but honestly, you got to give them credit. White people have made great strides in being racist. Right. Like, they are always on the cutting edge of racism technology. And that’s why I want to welcome you to theGrio Daily, the only podcast that’ll tell you what’s in the future of white supremacy. You know, one thing is we’re always talking about the stuff that is going on, but we rarely look to the future. We are always taken by surprise when white people start doing stuff right. Who would’ve guessed five years ago that they would have taken the word woke and turned it into something bad? Right. Who would have thought that, right? Like, you know, we would make it hit records. Erykah Badu would tell ya to stay woke.
Erykah Badu [00:01:00] I stay woke.
Michael Harriot [00:01:02] Childish Gambino was.
Childish Gambino [00:01:04] Now, stay woke.
Michael Harriot [00:01:06] We weren’t thinking about, like, when white people hear about this. You know, I was the co-host of a podcast like five years ago called The Stay Woke Show. But, you know, we were thinking about the future. We weren’t looking toward the future. Like, you know, critical race theory thing came out of nowhere. You got to be honest. We know why people weren’t taking a critical race theory class, even white lawyers in law school. Right. Because critical race theory is not like a mandatory class for even graduate-level law students. Right. So it’s just something white people made up. But we never saw it coming like they got us with that one. That was a good one, right? So today, what we need to do is let’s see what’s on the horizon. Like, what’s next? What is the thing that white people are going to demonize or misconstrue or turn into a villain next?
Michael Harriot [00:01:54] Well, I’ve been, you know, talking with my research team, and, you know, we’ve been doing some calculations. We’ve been doing some investigative journalism, going into the labs with white people, make up whiteness and do their white recipes. So we’ve discovered a few things. The first one is something that I’ve written about. You are going to start hearing this, right? So there’s two kinds of connected phrases. Culturally relevant teaching and social-emotional learning, right? So culturally relevant teaching is; basically it’s a pedagogy that teachers or educators use to essentially be more efficient educators. So, for instance, if you were a Black kid in an all-Black class, ain’t nobody in your class named Dick and Sally. So you might call culturally responsive teacher might say, Hey, we got to just change the names in the story that I’m going to teach to, you know, Jamal and Keisha. Or they might do something like instead of teaching about history through the lens of whiteness; you might teach a little bit more Black history, not to negate any of the stuff that you taught in the past, but to make education more relevant to the culture of the people that you’re teaching. That’s culturally relevant teaching. Well, that’s got to be next, right? Because first of all, you got to admit it got the same initials as a CRT. Oh my God, I don’t know how long we got for culturally relevant teaching. And it’s important because it’s not just important for Black kids or nonwhite kids. It’s important for white kids who are in the class with nonwhite kids to be educated sometimes for things that are not just from a white perspective. Right. They need to appreciate in value other cultures. But I don’t know how much time culturally relevant teaching has because, you know, I’ve covered stories in South Carolina and Richland County. In Berkeley County, South Carolina, the president of the Moms for Liberty chapter of Berkeley County, you know, she went before the South Carolina state legislature, and she said literally critical race theory, sometimes known as culturally relevant. Teaching is not a pedagogy, it’s not an educational tool; she said it’s a worldview. So, you know, I don’t remember how much time that has left.
Michael Harriot [00:04:24] And this same thing with social-emotional learning, right? Like you kids just learn facts. You have to learn how to relate to people. I’ve heard this mother the protesters, white woman protesters in Alabama, who’s lumping that in with diversity, equity and inclusion and critical race theory, and social-emotional learning. All that is under the same umbrella now. And that’s one of the things that you got to start hearing about. What else is on a future for white? Oh, we’ve already heard about diversity, equity, and inclusion. What is the next critical race theory like? What else will they come out and say? Well, you have to also look out for this catchphrase that you’re going to be hearing a lot in the coming days called classical education. We’ve done a podcast. Just go back and look at it. What classical education is, is the opposite basically of culturally responsive teaching. It is like we want to teach you how white people learn, and that’s going to be pushed a lot, right? Because it sounds like classic, like classic coke, classical music, classical rock. Classic stuff. People love classic. Who doesn’t like classics? In this case, you know, classical rock, classical music, it always means white. Some of the other stuff that is on the table for white people in the future is the word white people. So you’re going to start hearing people push back against the use of the phrase white. White people do not like to be called white people. And it’s going to become a thing in the coming days and months, especially around election time. And then the phrase white supremacy, if you want to put that one in there, too, because we’ve already seen them pushing back on the definition of white supremacists because they want to make it into this intentional big exploded kind of racism instead of a system that ensures that white people have control over the economic, social and political environment. Now, that’s white supremacy, but they want to make it into like, you know, supersize racism. It’s racism with more racism.
Michael Harriot [00:06:22] And the same is true with just white people, right? They are going to be pushing back against the use of the word white people when they talk about the Black vote. They’ll talk about the Black church. They’ll talk about, you know, Black-on-Black crime and Black cities and Black neighborhoods. But, you know, you can’t say white people anymore. The same is true with white nationalists. Now, white nationalists they’re doing something different with white nationalists than they’re doing with white supremacy and white people. What they’re saying is, well, why wouldn’t someone want to love their nation? So they are embracing white nationalists who tried to do a loop. The loop with that would try to make it a good thing and that people who are white nationalists are just patriots. They love the troops. They love America. So look out for that in the future. And, you know, there are some laws that will see they won’t stop at voter ID laws. Right. Or gerrymandering. There are some new tricks that they have up their sleeves. So look for what they call financial-based gerrymandering because when you engineer a system that is where white people earn more money or have more wealth than any other race, right, then you can gerrymander not just according to race but according to income. And the other thing we know is that like uneducated white people tend to vote Republican. So we’re going to see those things pushed through the education system.
Michael Harriot [00:07:48] One of the things that’s won the future for white people is that being dumb is cool. Critical race theory. You shouldn’t be learning about Black history. You got to be dumb on that. You got to be dumb on the history of the gay movements. You got to be dumb on science, like climate change. You got to be dumb on stuff like English. You should only be learning Shakespeare. So being dumb is all in the future for white people. This is kind of like when the NFL looks at the season and kind of bets on who’s going to make the playoffs before the season begins. I’m just looking at the roster and making my projections. And so you have to remember that this is what we do on this podcast. We use the available data to explain how things are going to be in the future. Like for instance, in the future, I know that you’re going to subscribe to this podcast. I know that you’re going to download that Grio app. I know that you’re going to tell a friend about it. And I know that in the future, like 2 seconds from now, I’m going to give you a Black saying. And today’s Black saying is, “I believe that whiteness is the future. Teach them well and let them lead the way.” We’ll see you next time for theGrio Daily. If you like what you heard, please give us a five-star review. Download theGrio and 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.
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