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The other CRTs

Episode 106
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“The history of racism is what they don’t want you to know.” The push to keep accurate Black history from being taught is nothing new and Michael Harriot highlights several times throughout history that anti-CRT has been the norm. 

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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. We’re back again. And I know you’ve probably heard about all these stop woke anti-CRT laws. The last we counted, it’s 44 states have passed laws to ban critical race theory or what they call critical race theory. And people are mad, man. But, you know, this is not the first time we’ve seen these kinds of laws. So I want to welcome you to theGrio Daily, the only podcast that’ll tell you about The Other CRTs. Yeah, I know everybody, you know, mostly tweaks to this law. And Ron DeSantis, the presidential candidate who passed the Stop Woke Act and anti diversity equity and inclusion laws. 

Ron DeSantis [00:01:02] Since we will never ever surrender to the woke mob. Florida is where woke goes to die. 

Michael Harriot [00:01:11] All of this is premised on this idea of critical race theory. Now, we’re not even going to go into what critical race theory is, because, you know, we’ve talked about that before on his podcast. And if you want to know, just go look at the other big case. But I want you to understand that this is not the first time we’ve seen CRT laws passed around the country. In fact, you know, we know that no school, especially kindergarten students or first graders or elementary school or even high school students are learning CRT because, you know, if I was a teacher and I was able to get my students to understand graduate level social theory and the history of theoretical education, I would be bragging about it. But for some reason we never see any CRT teachers on camera. And you know, it’s posited or was framed as this like Black movement. But. Across the country, like 80% of teachers are white. So how are all these white teachers teaching this supposedly pro-Black, anti white subject that they have named CRT? But to understand this, you have to understand that, again, these are not the first to critical race theory law. They just would name them every now and then. 

Michael Harriot [00:02:39] So let’s go through some of them. So perhaps the first anti CRT law was the Negro Act of 1740. That was in South Carolina after enslaved men named Jimmie gathered up all of his fellow enslaved people and went on this killing spree. The white people figured out that they had to do something, so they created the South Carolina General Assembly, passed the Negro Act. And because it happened the year after the revolt, the 1739 Revolt called The Stono Rebellion. We know it as the Negro Act of 1740 of the South Carolina Negro Act of 1740. But it was just really called the Negro Act, and the goal was to control the disobedient. This is a quote now the disobedient and evil minded Negroes and other slaves. Now, that act had a lot of provisions. I mean, it was really law. And you can really find the whole thing in its entirety, although it is proudly displayed in the South Carolina State House. But one of the provisions besides like determining what clothes they can wear, like banning Black people from playing drums, playing loud instruments, singing together, leaving the plantation in groups of more than two. One of the things it did is banned enslaved people from writing. 

Michael Harriot [00:04:15] Now, I know you probably heard like they were banned from reading and writing, but that’s not actually true. Initially, they were just banned from writing. And that law became the template for almost every state’s slave codes. The Negro Act of 1740, because they wanted to, and this is a quoted you find all in every person and persons whatsoever who hear it after teach or cause any slave of slaves to be taught to write. But again, it didn’t work. It’s estimated that, what white people know, that 10% of enslaved people still learn how to read and write, risking their life to read and write. And so in 1822, another literate, enslaved man formerly enslaved, a man named Denmark Vesey. He freed himself by winning a lottery like they used to have a lottery. So did Denmark Vesey was teaching. And the founder of this church called Emanuel AME African Methodist Episcopal Church. Now we know it as Mother Emanuel. If you remember, in 2015, a white supremacist killed nine people at Mother Emanuel. But Mother Emanuel has a long Black history, a long history. And in the 1820s, they would teach enslaved people and Black people in general how to read and write. And so when Denmark Vesey supposedly planned this slave conspiracy, this revolt, and the white people found out, first of all, they burned Mother Emanuel to the ground. They again banned people from now reading and writing, banned any literate Black person from even entering the state. Right. Without a white person to vouch for them anti-CRT laws because they thought that slaves who were able to read or Black people who were able to read were planning and anti-white conspiracy. 

Michael Harriot [00:06:37] So that act was passed in 1822. And then after emancipation, you probably heard of the Black Codes. So states all over pass these codes that prevented slaves from basically incarcerated slate formerly enslaved people or freed men, and for doing stuff like, you know, rich learning, reading. And they did it under the guise of what they call vagrancy laws. So if you weren’t working, then they could lock you up. If you even were learning a trade without the permission of a white person, they would lock you up. Like in Virginia. The vagrancy laws forbid Black people from learning how to be an artisan, learning a trade, for even walking around without having something that they would do doing the pair. It was an anti CRT law because that law was basically formed to keep Black people from learning things. Because they thought that it would foment and another kind of rebellion. And then in 1868, South Carolina’s legislature, which was majority Black, created the first public schools in America, and states all across the country created more anti-CRT laws, namely Jim Crow laws. Right. And these Jim Crow laws didn’t just segregate schools. Right. It determined what they could and couldn’t learn because these schools were governed by a state board of education, because that is what the Black people in South Carolina created. 

Michael Harriot [00:08:38] And a few years later, a family of white supremacists, one of them, the main one name Rutherford, she came up with this theory called the Lost Cause Movement. Wanted to force schools to teach that. Like the slave, the Confederacy was about state’s rights, that slave masters were good, and a lot of the things she did is she used that same mechanism that Black legislators had created, those school Board Board of Educations, to get them to say, We are going to create a template for a curriculum. Now that curriculum and that template also determined which books they could use. And all of the books had to be approved by Rutherford’s group, The United Daughters of the Confederacy. In fact, in North Carolina, this is a quote North Carolina Division Governor Robert B Glenn assured his constituents that he would only appoint a Lost Cause the loyalists to the textbook commission by 1916. The division itself was reviewing history books and sending their written reviews, approvals and rejections directly to the State Textbook Commission. It was an anti-CRT law. 

Michael Harriot [00:10:07] And then in 1954, the Supreme Court ruled that segregation was unconstitutional. And again, the anti-CRT movement sprang up again, but this time they were called, it depends on what state you’re in. In Virginia, for instance, they called it a massive resistance. They wanted to resist equality, I guess. And Mississippi was called the Mississippi Sovereignty Committee Commission, which said that white people were sovereign or a synonym supreme, and they passed the same laws. Not only did these textbooks decide what Black students could learn, they mandated that these white schools learned a kind, benevolent history of segregation. It was an anti CRT law. They stopped Black children from fomenting these ideas that white people were racists or that racism existed. And then. Few years later. In the 1970s, schools begin to pass the standardized curriculums that encompassed all of the subjects, and they use that template created by the United Daughters of the Confederacy. That textbook approval template. And they formed official committees and they paid white people. From reading books that not just the textbooks. Right. But like, if you’re a teacher assigned to a book, it had to be approved by the statewide commission. It was an anti CRT law. And so that advanced into various states passing book bans. They passed how teachers could teach. 

Michael Harriot [00:12:08] There’s always been an organized effort to stop Black people or people in general from learning the true history of America. And it was called the Lost Cause. It was called Evil Negroes. It was called Black Codes. It was called just Negro Acts. But it was always about the same thing to prevent Black people from knowing their history and from knowing white history. And that is the important part. White history is the thing that anti CRT laws I named it that history of white supremacy, that history of racism is what they don’t want you to know, whether it was about the founding fathers of racism or the Black people’s resistance to institutionalized white supremacists and terrorism. If there’s one thing that we know is that they can’t stop history and they can’t stop the truth. And that’s why you need to tell a friend about this podcast. That’s why you need to subscribe. That’s why you need to download that Grio streaming service, that app on your TV, on your phone or your iPad or wherever you watch stuff. I don’t think it’s on our radio. Maybe it’s coming soon. And it’s also why we leave you with a saying from Black America and today’s saying is, “History is critical, history is always about race, but real history is never a theory.” We’ll see you next time on theGrio Daily. 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 podcast at theGrio dot com. 

Panama Jackson [00:14:18] Coming this February. TheGrio Black Podcast Network presents Dear Culture: Tru’is Black Stories. 

Dr, Christina Greer [00:14:27] When you think of sheer artistry, sheer creativity, the ability for someone to bring Black people together in the most fundamental ways. It’s, you know, I would say of my four, Randy Watson’s my number one. 

Michael Harriot [00:14:41] When the news about Ricky first broke, what I heard about it is the thing you hear about, you know, every time somebody Black dies that it was gang related. That means the police don’t know what happened. So they just said probably the gang’s probably, you know, the other Black dudes. 

Damon Young [00:14:58] But I think of Akeelah, you know, I just think about how impressionable white people can be. I think about how, you know, if you watch that movie again, you know, he should have lost like three times. 

Panama Jackson [00:15:10] Where were you when you heard the story about them suckers getting served by Wade’s dance crew? 

Sharmia Ibrahim [00:15:17] You know, it’s crazy that you mention this. So as a New Yorker, right, Everyone knows where they were on 9/11, right? You know, couple of years later, Right. It’s 2003. Everyone hears about this crazy moment in a boxing ring because that’s where dancers duke it out, right? In boxing rings. 

Panama Jackson [00:15:34] If you could say something to Ricky right now, what would you say to him? 

Monique Jusge [00:15:38] Ricky, you should’ve never got that girl pregnant. You knew I had a crush on you. You should have got with me instead. 

Panama Jackson [00:15:42] Moments in Black culture examined like never before. Join us each week as we dive into the Black moments that changed us. That changed the world. Make sure to subscribe to Dear Culture so you never miss an episode.