Native Lanmdpod is a production of iHeartRadio in partnership with Reason Choice Media.

Welcome, Welcome, Welcome, Welcome, Welcome, Welcome, Hello everyone, and welcome home.

This is another edition of Native lamppod.

I am your host, Angela Rai and know my co hosts aren't here because this is a solo pod.

Y'all.

We have to have a conversation.

It's a very important one.

It's about white on white crime.

And the reason why we need to have the conversation about white on white crime is because often there is something about gang violence that is talked about.

And when you hear gang violence, too many of us see the faces of black and brown people in our minds.

We don't always ascribe gang violence to white vigilantes, to people who are white supremacists or engage in white toxic toxicity.

And that ideology that follows what we know right now is that there is a growing set of individuals who have almost like gang like affiliations and these individuals are very, very dangerous to this country's present and certainly its future.

But we can look back at history to see that there is nothing new under the sun, as the Bible says, and unfortunately, for us, we have not learned from the history that they continue to try to snatch out of museums.

So joining me today is a legend.

He is my brother, he is my friend, really become we became cousins first, and that's because the first PC ever wrote referencing me, he called me cousin Angela.

Like so many of people say, I'm your cousin in your head, and it is my highest honor.

There's nothing more that I love more than to be your cousin in your head.

But Michael Harriet is now my brother in real life.

He is my chosen family.

He is a New York Times best selling author of Black af history.

And we cannot look at where we are right now without looking back on history and how this same toxic ideology has reared its ugly head throughout this country's treacherous past.

In order for us to stop it, we have to call attention to it.

So let's bring Michael Harriet to the stage.

Hello, Hey me, it is.

My highest honor.

So I'm gonna tell y'all all the business before we get into the history of this.

Michael, I just want to say thank you.

You always find a way to bring pros to our pain.

You always find a way to ground us in the reality that exists outside of these folks gaslighting us, and I just thank you for that.

I also want to acknowledge y'all, when I was doing specials on BT New Specials on BT, the first person I thought of, I was like, I have to get Michael Harriet on this writing team.

Michael Harriet was the writing room y'all.

Talk about Tyler Perry, this one can also crack them out, Okay.

So I just want to thank you Michael for being someone who could bring better words to my thoughts and always just helping us to really ground ourselves on paper.

So thank you for all you do.

Brother, Yeah, and thank you for all you do.

I remember, as a matter of fact, you know, that was like seven eight years ago today, and I just remember because I thought it was kind of a crazy idea.

First of all, you hired me and to the idea that you had, like, hey, we're going to make a special and the theme of this special is going to be that what if the government just forgives of all our student loans?

And I thought it was a crazy idea that I was like, I'll write it, but you know that'll never happen.

And look at where we are now.

I mean, I love that, Michael.

That is so true.

I forgot about that when what we did other ones too.

We did one the first election.

That was the other one.

But y'all like again, Michael, I cannot think of a time where I don't read something you wrot And I'm like, yes, that is exactly how I feel.

And true to the part, I wish I would have been smart enough to bring my book out.

It's sitting right there.

I might go, where's your book?

If you don't have your book, I'm going to get my book.

I'm going to get in this right here.

Hold on, it's right here.

You're gonna be mad, y'all keep talking to him, Mike, hold on, Okay, I'm back, Okay.

So I wanted to get this one because humble bragg As I told you all, this is chosen family.

So Michael Harriet is still on the New York Times Bestsellers Live.

How long has it been, Michael?

Two years?

This week?

How about that for didn't earn and he earned every single position.

He's hell, my voice already gone, is about to get worse.

So I wanted to just bring this out because you wrote a great piece last week about what happened in Utah.

Our leftist coming for you.

Here's what the data says about political violence.

I want to get to that, but before we do, Michael, here's my thing.

We know in our nation's history, when something happens, it's like blame the Negroes, right, Like, whatever happens, it don't matter if it's in South Dakota, North Coda, Montana.

I had a whole Utah whatever it is our fault because we were born and somehow ended up in the belly of a slave ship.

They don't know how or several because we're here, because we exist, because our DNA is gates like Henrietta Alex it's our fault.

So I just wanted to deepen into that for a moment, because you know, after this killing last week, I'm gonna try really hard not to say names.

After this killing last week, it was almost immediate that like there was a brown or black leftist that was responsible for this brutal killing.

And so I wanted to think back in history on times where they have also accused us of wrongdoing.

And in response to that accusation, there's been an outsized consequence for our people.

I know you talk about this in the book over and over again, and so I just wanted to start there because I think, especially if they're going to take our history out of museums and off the alpha books they go, if they haven't been this yet, it's close, at least in some school districts.

I'm certain it already is.

But I think that we should talk about why this feels so familiar, especially epigenetically for black people.

Something about where we are in this moment feels familiar, and it's because we carry the DNA of our ancestors.

Yeah, I mean, when you look at history, it's clear you know who is you know, when you even that most of the racial MAXs because in history, right, they were using us as scapegoats for you know, a beef between white people, right, Like the Confederates were mad because they succeeded and the Union Army whipped their butts, and we were caught in between that, right, But we have nothing to do with them succeeding.

We didn't have nothing to do with you know, the Union Army didn't even want us involved in the first place.

It was the luddiest war in the history of this continent was really just white or white violence when you look at many of even during slavery, after slavery, during reconstruction, you know, the Polk War in North Carolina, that was just white or white crime, and then they killed a lot of black people.

The same thing in South Carolina.

The reason for the eighteen seventy six election that caused Jim directly led to Jim Crow was like a white violent dude, Wadehampton third in South Carolina, had an army called the Red Shirts that was going around killing black people.

And then he, you know, overturned the results of the election, which caused South Carolina to withhold its electoral votes.

And it's the only time in the history of this country that an election wasn't chosen by the popular vote or the electoral college.

They just got fifteen men in the room and saying, hey, if you let us treat let the South treat black people how we want, we'll let the Republican Garfield be governor.

And that's how we got Jim Crow.

And so you know, we are always taking the brunt of this white or white violence.

And it's the same today.

You know, a black person didn't try to assassinate Donald Trump.

Right, A black person didn't walk into that synagogue.

A black person didn't put pipe bombs in by the US Capitol, we didn't storm the capitol.

We know who did it.

The FBI reports, all the data shows who did it.

Yet we're the ones whose cities are being occupied by soldiers.

We're the ones who are blamed for all of the violence in America because there's that very narrow definition of violence that they created and used for their own ends.

Yeah, and I guess I wonder like, why is that the default?

Is it an unwillingness to take accountability to you know, want to look in the mirror?

Is it because you know, we hear that white folks say they are talking about how they preserve their race.

Right now, you know, there's a town that was recently established all white town.

There's white vigilantes marching down the street in Huntington Beach right now.

Like, what is the thing that is driving this narrative?

And I think we could probably argue that that is historically, what, you know, the same thing that it drove the narrative in the past.

Yeah, I think it's a combination of things.

Right, So one is a phrase that I call the privilege of individuality.

So when a white person does something, they see it as that person did a thing, and it doesn't have any bearing on me.

It's not what white people do, it's what that person did.

Right.

So when we look at the data, we see that white people are responsible for most takee.

Crimes, white people are responsible for most political violence, but they see that as individual acts of different people, and they see crime in Chicago as a whole different thing than crime.

And you know, the most uh, the city in America with the most crime is all white town in Florida.

And they don't send soldiers there, right, It's it's literally has eight black people in the whole town, right, But they don't send black people there.

I can't remember the name of Evergreen, Florida, but yeah, they don't send people there.

They send people to the black cities because that's who they think is committing the crime.

Wow, I'm looking you know, I'm looking this up right now because I want to get it right.

We're gonna make sure y'all have the facts.

Yeah, no, I'm I'm I'm I'll find it in one second.

It because I started actually writing about it, which is how I got this data about political violence.

So it's called Bellevue.

So it's Bellevue, Florida and Marion County, Florida.

It is eighty three percent white, fourteen percent Hispanic.

It's got eight black people.

Kamala Harris lost it by forty one point, so it's very maga and it has twice the violent crime rate and as Chicago or any other city.

And you know, people are always surprised when like Chicago ranks like one hundred and twenty first among cities and six hundred and twenty first among all municipalities for violent crime.

It's just a thing that white people made up and have us believe.

Right, And I think that to this point, and this is what I want to get back to around language.

We know in this country, at least right now, we have First Amendment protections first speech for free speech.

And one of the things that people don't always realize is that what is not protected by the First Amendment is speech that incites violence.

At least it's not supposed to be.

However, Michael Harriet, I don't know if you've already done the research on this, because you are very data driven journalists, but I'm curious to know why white folks are carved out of that incitement of violence bubble.

You know, even with the killing last week, the man who had lost his life regularly incited violence.

And I also think that it's interesting the president, the current sitting president, has utilized the bully pulpit to incite violence, including the insurrection on January sixth, twenty twenty one.

Why do you think they're given a pass or they are the speech that they use that would incite violence or cause individuals to be targeted is not seen that way when literally some of the same rhetoric they use is what resulted in, you know, the lynching of an innocent black or black woman, you know, back in the day.

Why is their speech, their violent speech, not deemed as such?

Well, because those protections, those constitutional protections haven't just been traditionally historically afforded to them.

Right.

They all what frame our definition of incitement or a riot?

Right?

So for instance, I mean we all know, well I hope your listeners know.

You know, the only person who was imprisoned during the Civil Rights era for the most violent event of the Civil Rights era was Cleveland Sellers Becari Sellers father, and he was not imprisoned for any act.

He was imprisoned for talking to nonviolent protesters and charged with inciting a riot.

But those people, they didn't burn anything, They didn't you know, kill anybody.

The police killed black people, and he was charged with in inciting the riot that made the police open fire on black college students.

And it's because that was a riot to them, right.

But January sixth is again, according to the privilege of individuality, a bunch of people who was just doing a bunch of different things white people, even though there were ninety six percent white.

They were individual acts.

So when they are incited to do stuff, right, it wasn't Trump's fault.

It wasn't the person who said the thing.

It wasn't the person who told them, Hey, come here and stand on this capital quotunda with all of these other people and walk up here and come in there and stop this vote.

It wasn't his fault, right, Like literally the name of the thing was stopped to steal.

But it wasn't his fault, right.

And so we know that the law can be kind of jerry rig to fit whatever narrative you want, because you know, one of the questions we ask ourselves.

I ask often is what is violence?

Right?

Is it violent too?

It's violent to stab somebody on the train, right, But it's not violent to withhold mental health care from somebody for their entire life and then not offer them the services that we know could help him.

Is that violence?

Right?

Is it violent to withhold health care from people because of because they are poor?

But not you know, but give all the white people in rural America AK forty seven's or AR fifteens?

Right?

Which one of those things is violent?

Well?

Violent?

You know, more people die from guns and lack of health care than you know, being in gangs or from gang violence.

But we classify one as violence and the other is not.

That is fascinating.

That is so fascinating, Like, how do we reimagine what violence really is, particularly in a country where the gap between the haves and the have nots is increasing and it's by design?

So intent is there?

Intent is normally a factor for some of the most severe crimes.

So how is that not violence?

I think it's such a fascinating proposition.

So when you go into you know, what history says about riots or uprisings, what history says about lynchings, excuse me, and the reasons for that my voice is not the best.

When you think about all of that and you fast forward to right now, there is a growing divide in this country between halves and the have nots.

But Michael, there also seems to be a growing divide between like white supremacist ideology and like this other pocket where they are also racists too.

Definitely have from some racist underpinning, some racial racist beliefs.

You know, the man who was killed last week had a lot to say about our dear sister and friend joy Read and her intellect, right, which I feel like is also violent because it's an attack on someone's personhood, their humanity, and their ability to earn what they deserve in this country.

So when you think about all of those things, what is the right response to this moment?

How do we how do we show up one to protect ourselves?

Because I don't know that we're out of the woods from last week.

I don't know that just because they found that the killer is one of them, I don't know that that means that we are now Okay.

I think that there was a reprieve.

I want to hear what you think.

Yeah, I think I think that is correct, But I also think that we have to remember that, like, you know, Charlie Kirk on his best days had about like five hundred thousand listeners to his podcast.

It is, you know, consuming his stuff.

And so all these people that we see defending Charlie Kirk were not Charlie Kirk fans.

They didn't listen to him.

It is impossible for five hundred thousand people like to make that much noise and to issue that much threat over the entire government.

What we're seeing though, is that these people believed what Charlie Kirk believed, and now they have an avatar.

So I don't even know if it's correct to say that there's a rise in this white supremacist ideology.

Maybe they've believed it all the time and just hit it because it was not, you know, acceptable to do so, and now it is, and it is because of people like Charlie Kirk and his other followers, or that guy and his other followers.

They have made it acceptable to say, well, you know, the black women, they must have gotten DEI, a college dropout is saying that about somebody who attended the institution.

That white people found it right, that white people said it is the best institution, right, not us.

Right.

They made the rules, they constructed the whole admissions policy, and they accepted a black person, and then the white people say, well, you know that's anti white, right, that's the narrative that we're living under.

And the other thing about this kind of rhetoric, though, is that it is not just freeing for people who had this ideology all the time, right, But you have to look at it in combination with what else is going on.

So the thing a lot of the things that prevent people from accepting or adopting this ideology, it's knowing history and knowing the facts that we just talked about.

Well, if they are erasing the facts, and if they're erasing the history, right, what is that cause?

Right?

Like, if you don't know about redlining, you might believe, like all the black people just want to live in their own neighborhood so they can commit violence against each other.

Right, if you don't know about how white a generation of white people was giving access to the largest government program in America in world history, the New Deal, while white black people were excluded, you might think that black people are poor because they're lazy, like black schools are underfunded because black people don't care.

And so once you erase the actual truth and the history from public or make it create one more obstacle for them to find out the truth because they can't erase our history, and people who don't necessarily care about black people will just adopt the thing that they hear on the podcast from a dude who's on the internet, versus going to look in their library and read a book and find out the truth.

Let me ask you about So there are some people that have been categorizing this as right versus left, but I still think that your frame around white versus white is correct.

And the reason for that, Michael, is if you look at who responded to the death last week, it wasn't just people on the right.

There were white people on the alleged left, white moderates who felt a sense of empathy, who thought that flag should fly at half mass, who think that school districts should hear about him, that there should be moments of silence at professionals sports games at the NFL.

In NFL games, New Orleans Saints boot this by the way, But like you're seeing that, it isn't just a right wing response of regret and maybe they would say, well, this is what stability looks like, which I can appreciate, right, But I'm also curious to know if you think that this is this moment is a convergence of what white supremacy looks like.

It is a nonpartisan and a bipartisan ideology, and we've seen it in both parties historically.

Yeah, I think that's true, because you know, to believe that this is a thing that is right versus left, and you'd have to believe, like, you know, all the stuff that they say about black culture and how you should raise your kids, that white Republican family did that to the dude who killed another white Republican, Right, they all the stuff that they say about culture and guns don't kill people, crazy people kill people, and a white dude would guns killed another white dude who loves guns, right, and left versus right had nothing to do with it.

Politics had nothing to do with it.

Because when you think about this, what they're saying is that if you don't agree with one of the most racist Republicans, then you must be on the left.

Because I don't agree with most Democrats on a lot of issues, right y, and I ain't gonna kill them, but I'm still on the left right.

So like if I disagree with something Joe Biden did, I won't not only will I not kill them, but that doesn't exclude me from being on the left right while in their minds because they want to use it as pretext to silence us anyway, Right, so if the facts kind of don't matter, and debating the intimate details of these facts kind of you know, overlook or miss or ignore the reality of what they are trying to do, like something didn't care about Charlie Kirk.

He wanted to use this as pretext to crack down on his opposition anyway.

Do you think that I'm trying to be careful about how I phrase things?

Do you think that we are in at the beginning of you know, I don't even know if it's at the beginning micro I can't even ask this question right, Here's what I want to know.

How do you think that they will continue to use this tragedy to silence voices who have been courageous on many issues?

We are watching people get fired some of the things that folks have done.

I would also say that was tack it, that was out of pocket.

I don't know why you did that, right, But there are some other things where like Karen Atia was fired from the Washington Post, I feel like they've been just looking for a reason to get rid of Karen for using his own words, for using his own words.

So can we talk a little bit about that.

Well, I don't think they will continue to do it right, because they'll always find something else to further their aims.

Right, But we also have to remember, right when it comes to issues of race, when it comes to issues and movements of freedom and equality, the vast majority of white people have always, always, always, always always been wrong.

They were wrong about abolition, they were wrong about slavery, they were wrong about Jim Crow, they were wrong about Native American removal, they were wrong about the Black Power movement.

And they don't go back and apologize like all those parents who spent on those kids who were integrating schools.

They didn't just, like, you know what, go back and say, you know what, we apologize.

They just move on to whatever they did next.

So they'll always be something next, right, And so we don't have a month from now, we won't be worrying about the things that we said about Charlie Kirk, and they they won't be worried about the things we said about Charlie Kirk, Right, they won't care because they don't care now about Charlie Kirk again, five hundred thousand listeners on the whole planet, right, And so next month it'll be just like it was Woke or CRT or DEI or Black Lives Matter.

Next month it'll be something else, right, And so what we can't continue to do to do is to fall into their trap of defending the individual constructs that they came up with to demonize us, like no CRT, is this, no Woke, is this?

No Nah?

We can't continue to play that game.

What we have to do is continue marching forward towards our own liberation and understand that there will be something next and we don't have to capitulate whatever.

Like you know, one of the reasons one of the things I said about Charlie kurricular I didn't have to glote about Charlie because I wrote enough about him when he was alive.

Right, But you know, he affected people's lives and instilled fear and did tell you a story I've never told this story.

I want to hear it anywhere breaking news, y'all.

So a couple of years ago, when I was working at the Route, we every year we used to do this thing called the Root Institute.

Well, we'd invite scholars to teach about a class.

And this is when white people were going crazy about critical race theory.

So I had a professor come on and we talked about what critical race theory actually was.

It's a woman, professor.

I don't want to give her name, but she ended up on Charlie Kirk's professor watchlist.

And after the video came.

Out, she was at school, at the place where she taught, and a man with a gun was on campus looking for her, and she had to leave the school and assisily.

Go into hiding.

And you know, I don't know how many people she told about it.

I knew about it.

I think I might have written about it, but that was years ago, and I knew the power of the violence that he could incite, right like, it wasn't him talking to a mass movement of people.

It was him talking to crazy right wing ideologues who believed and accepted the ideology that he was trying to spread.

And that kind of violence predated what happened in Utah.

That kind of violence that he incited, the fear that he incited, actually affected people.

And you know, I don't know how I hadn't talked to you know, that person that educated since this happened.

But I can imagine that they won't speak out like a dude with a gun already showed up at their job for saying something that was not about Charlie kirk So I that is the chilling effect that they are trying to achieve.

It's not about Charlie Kirker, like keeping us quiet about this great debater.

It is just the chill, the overall chilling effect of them trying to silence our voices.

Yeah, well, I am so grateful for the way in which you use your voice.

Brother.

I'm so thankful that you were able to come on today and help us understand the historical context of the violence that were not just bearing witness to last week, but really since Martin Luther King Day of this year, and then all of the ways in which Project twenty twenty five is also violent.

I hope that this is an impetus for you to write a piece on redefining violence, because there's really good points that you raised and maybe that'll be in the new book.

Y'all know that Michael writes, and I hope that you will if you haven't already, cop this right here and know that he is one of the best writers of our time, our very own resident History and Irvin Great and so much more.

Michael Harriet, I love you.

I'm gonna close the show out after I leave you, but you know I will check in with you on text later.

Thank you so much.

Thank you for having me.

Absolutely well everyone.

I think that there's so much for us to unpack in this moment.

We are living in an era where it feels like we have gone backwards, and I just want to have no Normally, I don't get super spiritual on the show, but I do want to do this just for a moment.

I was talking with my sister friend Natasha Brown recently, and she always does such a great job of reminding us where we are spiritually, and she said, you know what we are warring against right now is spiritual.

This is a spiritual battle, y'all.

The reason why it is impacting us at a soul level so much is because there are things that are stirring up in us that we have not felt since our ancestors were alive.

I would remind you all, if you haven't, to please make sure you read Doctor Joyda Gruz post Traumatic Slave Syndrome.

Shout out to my cousin Mia, who told me about that book.

I've had an opportunity to speak to doctor de Group.

It is important for us to understand that we carry these markers, and so there's a tension that we're feeling.

There is an anxietiety that we feel about this moment because we know that whatever the violent action was that was taken, the response to black people will be outside.

We are living in an era right now where our heroes and their contributions to society are being questioned on every side.

But they want to bring back Robert E.

Lee and Stonewall Jackson and all of these other Confederates and celebrate them.

Where if we knew right now what they represented in American history, these are folks that represent traders.

When Nicolehannah Jones rolled out the sixteen to nineteen Project, later to have a subsequent book name the same, they began to wear hats that says seventeen seventy six because they don't want the accountability of what happened starting in sixteen nineteen, where the first documented named person in this country was Angela because they assumed that she came from the Angola region of the continent.

Right that history they don't want to be tied to because even though the country itself wasn't founded Intel seventeen seventy six, the racist and toxic ideology of the slave trade began in sixteen nineteen.

Document it probably before that, but documented in sixteen nineteen.

When you take that all the way up to make America great again, the first time with Ronald Reagan and then the second time with Donald Trump, what we know is that they ascribe the lack of America's greatness to us, even though we built this thing with our bare hands for centuries, without the proper recognition, and most often without the pay we deserve, even more often no pay at all.

And so even the conversation around reparations, when slaveholders themselves were given reparations by the local, the state, and the federal government, we have never seen what we rightfully deserve.

And so what I want us to consider is it is okay to cry in this moment.

It is okay to scream in this moment.

If I can be honest, the reason my voice is gone is because I had to yell out a real scream.

Y'all.

It's hard.

It's hard in this moment you feel gas on every side.

But I want you to know you're not alone.

And if something in you is saying this just isn't right, whether you black, white, or green, I really don't care.

Something in you is saying this just isn't right.

No, that you are not alone in that feeling.

And the most important thing we can do is utilize our voices, stand together and ensure that we are all clear that together we absolutely can overcome.

We just got to keep fighting and maybe midnight, but daybreak is just on the other side.

Welcome home, y'all.

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