“Woke is just the opposite of white supremacy.” Michael Harriot dives into the educational disparities in the country’s public school system and focuses on Alabama, where white students are the minority, yet, 90% of the history students are taught is white history. Michael explains that parents working to indoctrinate white history into the curriculum display white supremacy.
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] Hey, guess what, Yo? I figured it out. No, no, no. I’m not playing, for real. I figured out everything. That’s why I want to welcome you to theGrio Daily, the only podcast that will tell you what woke really means. I know, like for months, maybe even years, everybody has been, you know, going crazy over the phrase woke or wokeness or the anti-woke movement. Started by people like Ron DeSantis and just regular degular white women named Karen. But, you know, this is an anti-woke movement and they can’t define what the woke part is like, the thing that movement is based on. Right. So I’ve been wondering what that was about until I read this article in the Birmingham News. And this article was about Alabama’s fight to basically get new textbooks. And so they have to go through this approval process where parents get, you know, to give their input. And so a lot of this anti CRT anti-woke movement stuff is under the guise of parental control of education. So they say they just want to put parents back in charge. Right. So even though none of these parents are usually educators, they usually are not experienced or have no relevant education in the field of teaching, they want to be in charge of not just their kid’s education because essentially, right, like every parent is in charge of their kid’s education. You could just tell your child not to learn it, like get a F right, Don’t learn that right.
Michael Harriot [00:01:46] So essentially, you don’t have to go to school to be in charge of your kid’s education. You can just tell your child not to learn this stuff that’s harmful, right? Like, I don’t know, like, don’t learn about, you know, that sexual stuff that’s against Christianity. Like, I don’t know, unmarried sex. Like, we’d never talk about that part, right? Like, we never talk about the unmarried sex part. I would wonder what would happen if we stopped teachers from teaching in school, like the anti-gay movement will try to out or try to get rid of teachers who are in open gay relationships. But what about people who work unmarried and in a heterosexual relationship? That’s because that’s just as un-Christian. That’s just against, you know, evangelical Christianity as, you know, homosexuality or I don’t even know what the trans thing is about, cause that ain’t in the Bible. But anyway, we’re getting off the point, right? Because I go on rants sometimes. Ya’ll know me. So I was reading this article, right? There was a quote halfway through the article from a woman named Kathy Odom, and she didn’t really even, you know, go on this big rant. When she was asked what she thought of the curriculum that was being proposed in the textbooks, she said, personally, I thought there was too much Black history. That’s crazy, right? Because that phrase is so beautiful to me. It sums up the whole anti-woke, anti-CRT movement, in like what? Ten words, and I personally thought there was too much Black history. So let’s examine what that mean. Like, what is too much Black history?
Michael Harriot [00:03:23] Well, Alabama is 26% Black, you know, because that’s one of the Blacker states in the country. Right. But then you have to also realize that one of the things that we don’t realize is that when you talk about the percentage of children in this country or the racial demographics of the country, a lot of white people are not in the public school system. So the public school system is actually about only 47% white. White people are the minority at public school. Right. And that’s nationwide. So in Alabama, white people are a minority in public schools, even a bigger minority at public schools. And it’s the thing everywhere. Right. So you’re talking about a minority of people fighting to control education or to indoctrinate whiteness into the majority. Now, here’s a thing. So in 2017, the National Museum of African American History and Culture did this like nationwide survey where they basically just asked all of the teachers in the country to give them their lesson plan. And then they took those lesson plans, Right. Divided them in two days to see how much of the history curriculum is devoted to Black history. Now, in Alabama, I’ve done it myself, right? So Alabama has like a history curriculum that has 164 bullet points, like 164 things that you have to teach from K through 12. So if you spend 12 years in Alabama’s social studies curriculum, you got to learn 164 things that they mandate. 17 of those things, a little bit more than 10% are related to Black history. Now, when I say related to Black history, I considered Reconstruction to be Black history. Like you could skip Black people in talking about reconstruction, but not really.
Michael Harriot [00:05:13] So I also considered stuff like the civil rights movement, that’s kind of Black history, but I also considered like the history of slavery. But in all, like being at the most generous, 17 things in Alabama’s curriculum. And Kathy says, personally, that is too much Black history. And I can understand why Kathy says that, right? Because if you grew up in a state where 9% at best was Black history, then, you know, even 12%, nah, they ain’t even talking about 27%, a quarter of the lessons are Black history. Nah, this is like 13%, 15%. That’s too well Black history for Kathy because she’s used to being in a system that prefers or focuses on white history. Well, this kind of a word for that. It’s white supremacy. Right. And Kathy is used to being in a white supremacist education system. And now I know we’ve talked about this a million times, but we like to think that the word white supremacy is like racism on steroids, but in actuality, it is not. So if you are in an education system where the history of white people is at best it is preferred, it is promoted over the history of the people who are the majority white. White people are not the majority in the education system. So the only way that they would teach 90% white history is white supremacy. There is no other answer. Right.
Michael Harriot [00:06:52] And to fight that, to fight to maintain that status quo, to keep that system is an act of white supremacy. Because you believe that your history, your culture should be preserved, it should be perpetuated over or at the expense of the education of other students. Not mean it’s not some kind of act of like burning a cross on somebody’s lawn, but that is an act of white supremacy. Which brings me to the ultimate point. I finally figured out what woke is. Woke is just the opposite of white supremacy. When they say that these textbooks are woke, they mean it’s just not white supremacists anymore. When they got mad at Bud Light for sponsoring a trans person like we know trans people exist. So Bud Light recognizing that trans people will want to drink their beer to even know it tastes like, I don’t know, trigonometry and white tears. I don’t understand the backlash against Bud Light, except if you look at it through the lens of, Oh man, they ain’t being anti-trans no more because, you know, like they made 2477 million commercials that showed a world where no trans people exist. Every group of white people had one Black friend, and that’s it. Like no women exist that didn’t wear bathing suits. And so any effort to differentiate or defer or go away from that stereotype is resisted because it’s not the white supremacist world that white people are used to.
Michael Harriot [00:08:25] When you teach diversity, equity and inclusion, when you want to include or have a more diverse workforce or college or education system. Right. They are resisting that. They’re saying it’s woke because it’s the opposite of white supremacy. So that’s all woke is just the opposite of white supremacy, right? When they say this woke ideology and The Little Mermaid. Well, like first of all, I don’t understand why we think mermaids would be Caucasian, like mermaids or a whole different race of animals. Are fish animals? I think fish are just fish and animals are animals. Well, regardless, like mermaids aren’t white or Black. But if there can be white mermaids then there must be Black mermaids too, right? And the only reason anyone would be mad at that or call that woke is if they were used to all of the cartoons and all the TV shows and all of the movies being white. And now that Disney wants to be more representative, let’s be honest, right, they’re not doing it because they’re good people. There are studies that show that the more representation you have in a movie or a TV show, the more people will watch it. So they’re doing it for profit. But that realization, that diversity of their product is a rejection of the tradition of everything being white, all the princesses. Everything that is beautiful is white, that’s white supremacy.
Michael Harriot [00:09:56] So if they’re going away from white supremacy and they are now woke, then woke must be the opposite of white supremacy. See, I just did the math. Woke is the opposite of white supremacy, right? Like is adjusting admissions efforts to account for the fact that majority Black schools are underfunded, that most Black children attend majority Black schools. That the education system traditionally favors white students. So adjusting college admissions to reflect that fact is in WOLK it’s trying to adjust for the symptoms or the result of white supremacy. So by calling it woke, you’re saying that woke is just the opposite of white supremacy. Look, you could do all kinds of proof, but it all checks out. I’ve done the permutations. I’ve done the math. Woke is the opposite of white supremacy. And the only other thing that you should know is that you have to download that Grio app. You got to tell a friend about this podcast. You got to subscribe on whatever platform you listen to. And of course, you got to remember that we always leave you with a Black saying. And today’s Black saying is, “Stay woke or stay white.” We’ll see you next time for 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 for to podcast at the dot com.
Panama Jackson [00:11:28] You are now listening to theGrio’s Black Podcast Network. Black Culture Amplified.
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