- 1 week ago
From the attacks on the 1619 Project, Critical Race Theory, and Black Studies, to the targeting of the Black women-owned Fearless Fund and other Black women in the current witch hunt against Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, it is evident that Black women have been highly visible targets in the so-called war against woke. By labeling Black ideas as divisive and Black leadership as incompetent, we can see that the “war on wokeness” is a race-based tactic operating under the guise of colorblindness. During this 60th Anniversary of Freedom Summer, our democracy is under attack. In this conversation with Kimberlé Crenshaw facilitated by the 19th’s editor at large Errinn Haines, they will discuss strategies to save our civil rights, freedom to learn, and democracy.
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00:00And, and the 19th editor-in-large, Erin Haynes.
00:15Thank you so much. Kimberly, welcome. It is great to be with you, and we could not have picked a more urgent and timely time to be having this conversation, so.
00:23Absolutely.
00:24Let's get right into it.
00:25You know, this is really a continuation of a conversation that you and I have been having.
00:30We started earlier this year.
00:32We were at Columbia University together for the dedication of a statue to Ida B. Wells, and it really seems like we're quite a long way from, from that moment.
00:41But, you know, everything that we talked about in that conversation has become even more true, and so the sense of urgency that you, I know that you feel, and that we feel at the 19th to continue to talk about these issues feels just, just so, so important.
00:55And so I'm glad we get to do that now.
00:57I want to talk about, you know, we talk about certainly the attacks on black women in this country.
01:03Certainly nothing new in our democracy, and yet there is something that feels unique and new about this moment.
01:10Can you talk about what that looks like from your vantage point?
01:15What feels new about the attacks against black women right now, and how is that related to the threat to our democracy?
01:23Yeah.
01:23Well, what seems so urgent about this moment is that we're looking at in-game scenarios with respect to our democracy.
01:31So we're in a moment where the ability to vote is up for grabs.
01:38We're in a moment where the ability to even advocate for ourselves is up for grabs.
01:44For black women in particular, our ability to help each other has now been rendered unconstitutional or potentially unconstitutional by the court.
01:54So this image here is of the Fearless Fund.
01:59This is an example of black women engaging in self-help, providing a competition for black women who are interested in business to actually get support from other black women in business.
02:10This was challenged by white plaintiffs who basically said, you all trying to help each other get into business is discrimination against us.
02:21Even though we know just how few black women are even benefiting from programs.
02:25And this is all about venture capital.
02:27So black women get less than 1% of all venture capital, less than 1%, which means that non-black people get 99% of it.
02:36Yet this particular kind of fund is framed as reverse discrimination against people who have everything else.
02:44So this is one of many of examples about how black women are being targeted.
02:50Black women are being removed from their positions.
02:53Claudine Gay.
02:54Yeah, we started the year with Claudine Gay.
02:56It took almost three centuries for a black woman to become the president of Harvard.
03:02Yeah.
03:03And it took less than six months to remove her.
03:06So if we look across the political and social, you know, spectrum, we see black women everywhere being targeted, being misframed, and being removed from their positions.
03:19What's important about this is that it's not just about black women.
03:23Yeah.
03:23It is about the effort to dismantle the entire, like, 60 years, the entire infrastructure of anti-racism.
03:32So black women are at risk, black people are at risk, and more importantly, our entire democracy is at risk.
03:41So the bottom line at this moment is we're not going to be able to save our democracy without saving anti-racism.
03:48And we can't save anti-racism without saving black women.
03:52All of these are part of the same agenda.
03:55The problem is that the other side has recognized that black women are soft targets.
04:01Yeah.
04:01I want to get into that, but I just want to put a pin on what you just said.
04:04The idea that attacks on black women, that anti-racism, those are anti-democratic efforts that are happening in our country.
04:14And so it's not enough for black women to be the only people that care about this issue.
04:18This is an issue that is literally a threat to the future of our democracy, or at least the democracy that we say that we are supposed to be working towards the progress that has historically been the direction that we have been moving in as a country, but does not feel like the direction that we are moving in right now.
04:33So, I mean, I want to talk more, though, about that parallel between democracy really being unable to survive unless anti-racism is called out.
04:42And we understand that that is the thing to push back against.
04:48A healthy democracy really depends on protecting that black political power and black communities and black women.
04:54Talk about that.
04:55Absolutely.
04:55Well, let me throw two snapshots out at you.
04:59So, recall January 6th.
05:01It was basically an effort on the part of those who were using violence to try to take back their country.
05:09They were saying, we want our country back.
05:11But back from whom?
05:12Exactly.
05:13Back from whom?
05:14Who do you want your country back from?
05:16Back from the black women who voted in record numbers?
05:19Exactly.
05:19Back from the black women poll workers like Ruby Moss and Shea Freeman who were on the front lines of our democracy, right?
05:26Yes.
05:26Who do they want it back from?
05:27Yeah.
05:28So, that is the underbelly of what's actually happening.
05:32There's a resentment.
05:33There's a fear that the country is being lost, but it's being lost to those of us who have always been here and have a right to be here.
05:40So, if we are not able to talk about what the assault on democracy really is, the fact that it has a racial face, we're not able to really rise to the occasion.
05:51So, most of the conversation about January 6th doesn't focus on the racist dimension of it.
05:57It just focuses on, you know, the fact that the Capitol was invaded.
06:02Here's the second snapshot.
06:03So, we're celebrating the 70th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education.
06:08Yeah.
06:08You're going to see a lot of conversation about it, a lot of commemorative events.
06:14What you're not going to see is the fact that Brown has been gutted by the Supreme Court.
06:19What you're not going to see is that the whole rationale behind Brown was that you have to have integrated, equitable education for this democracy to really work.
06:30That's what Brown was all about.
06:32What this Supreme Court is now saying is that Brown was just about the fact that school attendance zones were race conscious.
06:39So, we have to eliminate all race consciousness, including affirmative action.
06:44That's not what Brown was about.
06:46Right.
06:46But they are able to retell the history.
06:50They're able to elevate a piece of the argument that was never made in order to suppress contemporary efforts like the Fearless Fund, like diversity, equity, and inclusion, like Title VII itself.
07:04All of these policies are meant to create equality, right?
07:09Not to take us back, but to push us forward.
07:11So, the way ideas are framed, the way histories are being erased, the way ideas like diversity, equity, and inclusion are now being framed as didn't earn it.
07:23Yeah.
07:23This is what is so effective and powerful about the faction of American society that never was about democracy, never was about inclusion, and now they have the high road right now.
07:36They have the ability to recreate that history in order to serve their purposes.
07:41We've got to know that in order to better fight that.
07:44Absolutely.
07:45And, I mean, obviously, you know, folks pushing for a freer and fairer and more equal society is how we got there, right?
07:53Power concedes nothing without demand.
07:55But, at the same time, you know, that has been the history of our country, that forward progress towards perfecting the union, even though we were the ones that largely had to be the ones helping them to do the perfecting, correct?
08:07But, also, what you're describing just seems so far away from where we were just four years ago when we were allegedly racial reckoning.
08:15Thought backlash.
08:17Sure.
08:17But, I mean, we know that there is no racial progress without racial backlash.
08:21And, you know, I just want you to talk, you and I were talking about the idea, you know, what happens when we just give lip service to an idea like racial reckoning or even listen to black women, which was like the rallying cry after 2020, right?
08:34What happens when people just give lip service to an idea without really having a framework for how to implement it?
08:39So, think about what happened after George Floyd and there were protests in every state.
08:48The Black Lives Matter movement at that moment and still is the most historically significant movement in terms of the numbers of people that came out, right?
08:59All over the country.
09:01So, people were talking about structural racism.
09:04They were talking about institutional exclusion.
09:07These were new frameworks that had become popularized.
09:12That, number one, created a backlash.
09:14But, number two, when folks took up that framework and were not able to explain it, they were not able to actually make it clear how structural racism was actually impacting people across the country.
09:29And what happens with that lack of clarity?
09:31What do you get?
09:31When the lack of clarity happens, basically people make it clear that those ideas are soft ideas.
09:39It makes it more vulnerable.
09:41There's an opening.
09:41There's an opening and the right wing attacked it.
09:44So, they attacked it by labeling it all critical race theory.
09:48They were clear that this was an avenue to being able to eliminate black history in schools.
09:54It's an avenue to eliminate diversity, equity, and inclusion.
09:58It was an avenue to make it harder for people to vote.
10:00They were able to say everything that's about racial justice is critical race theory.
10:05And people didn't have the tools necessary to see that their interests were being impacted.
10:12Their children were being impacted.
10:14And so, therefore, they needed to show up and fight back.
10:17So, now we have this moment where there is a real possibility that the entire infrastructure of civil rights, of integration, of racial justice might collapse.
10:29Project 2025, if people haven't heard about it, you should go read about it right now.
10:35Project 2025 is all about eliminating the Department of Education.
10:39It's about eliminating or suppressing the power of the EEOC.
10:45It's about eliminating particular ways in which discrimination can be proved.
10:50It's all a huge power grab.
10:52It's a way of taking back the power that we created out of the civil rights movement.
10:57The power to demand accountability.
10:59The power to tell our story.
11:01The power to elect politicians.
11:04The power to dictate what our lives should look like.
11:08This is all a power grab.
11:10And it may be successful if Project 2025 becomes the policy project of the next administration.
11:18That's what we're looking at.
11:20That's why voting is important.
11:22That's why showing up is important.
11:24Because this might be the last real election where we can actually expect that our interests even have a chance of being articulated.
11:32Yeah, I mean, what you're describing, it does kind of show what is different about this moment, right?
11:41I mean, not only are we in a moment where, you know, we're a fact-free society, right?
11:46Where, you know, facts are subjective, you know, suddenly.
11:50But you also have an environment where, you know, if you don't have words that are made meaningful, if they don't mean something, if you're not defining them correctly, then they can be made meaningless.
12:05And let me be concrete about this.
12:07So one of the challenges was that after the George Floyd movement, there was finally a demand for African-American studies courses.
12:17And the College Board created the opportunity to actually have a course.
12:22Ron DeSantis and some of the other conservatives said, you might have a course, but you're not going to have a course with these concepts in it.
12:29We're not going to talk about structural racism.
12:31We're not going to talk about intersectionality.
12:34We're not going to talk about queer theory.
12:36We're going to take the critical content out of the course.
12:40Now, we know what the right wing wants to do.
12:42We know that they want to take away our ability to name things because if you can't name something, you can't change it.
12:49You cannot actually transform something you cannot see, and you can't see something that you don't have a name or a concept for.
12:58So intersectionality is one of those ideas.
13:00They took it out, and their argument for taking it out was the concepts have become so politicized that they don't do anything.
13:10Well, that's not true.
13:11Right.
13:11And what we're filling the void with is things like, you know, slavery as a jobs program.
13:15Slavery was, yeah.
13:16Teaching our children.
13:17Full employment.
13:18I want to come back to a point that you were starting to make earlier because I want you to expand on it, and that is the idea of black women as soft targets.
13:26Yeah.
13:26Can you talk about what you mean by that and why that is and why it's important for us all to pay attention?
13:33Yeah.
13:33Well, let's think about some of the ways that black women have been the vehicle through which this right-wing agenda has been made successful.
13:41I mentioned Claudine Gay.
13:43Six months, she's out.
13:45We all know about the vice president being under attack.
13:48We know about Katanji Brown Jackson being under attack.
13:52But let's also think about Nicole Hannah-Jones in the 1619 Project.
13:57Let's talk about Toni Morrison, the most decorated, you know, writer of the 20th century, and her books are being banned.
14:05Ruby Bridges, her book about telling the story of her integrating New Orleans public schools as a six-year-old is banned.
14:14It's banned because it's framed as a divisive concept because it hurts white children's feelings.
14:20So these are all ways in which this anti-woke, anti-black agenda has been brought to the center of American politics.
14:30And it's partly because of racism, but it's also partly because of sexism.
14:36These are black women projects, products, black women's professionalism.
14:42And they're seen as soft targets because if we get attacked, there's an assumption that there's not going to be a big response.
14:50And let me just say, while I'm on it, one of our projects at AAPF is Say Her Name.
14:56And we elevate and lift up African-American women who have been killed by the police.
15:03What happens when we don't elevate them?
15:05What message are we saying?
15:07We're saying that our women are expendable.
15:10We're saying that you don't have to worry about a protest or a march or a demand if you kill a black woman.
15:16So that kind of message is a message across the board.
15:21And it's up to us to show up because those soft targets, they're about all of us.
15:28Our entire community rises and falls on how black women are being treated.
15:33Yeah, and choices about what we are seeing and naming and prioritizing are so important.
15:38Because, you know, one thing that I'm hearing about the point that you're making is that this is not just about our livelihoods and jobs.
15:44It's about our ideas.
15:46And it's about our power, right?
15:48It's not an accident that so many of the ideas that are deemed to be the most threatening by the right wing were developed and pioneered by black women thinkers, people like you.
15:55So, you know, whether we're talking about black women, black feminism, intersectionality, what really binds these kinds of ideas together were the ways in which they were used through engagement with history to really confront those persisting inequities of the present.
16:09And tying these things to present day is really the connection that they don't want us making, right?
16:14And then, of course, we know that this all comes back to black women's political power at the ballot box.
16:20We have been a consistent and dependable voting bloc in the past few elections.
16:23Sixty-seven percent of black women registered to vote.
16:26Over 90 percent of black women voters supported Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Joe Biden for their respective elections.
16:32And yet we still remain underrepresented in politics.
16:36And yet we continue to be on the front lines of this democracy, right?
16:39We continue to be truth-tellers in an environment that does not really want us telling the truth.
16:44So, you know, before we have to get out of here, there are a couple of things that I want to hear about from you in terms of the work that the African American Policy Forum is doing.
16:53What can you share with folks who are wanting to get more involved, who care about the issues that you're talking about today?
16:58What can they do to really get involved in this fight?
17:01Well, one of the things that we try to do is bring our history forward so people can use it as a prism to understanding the current moment.
17:09So there's a lot of commemoration going on.
17:11I mentioned Brown v. Board of Education.
17:13There's also the commemoration around the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
17:17We're all about that.
17:19But we're about looking back to gain the knowledge from the past in order to make it relevant to the future.
17:25We realize that if we don't stand up right now for our legacy, if we're not better stewards of our history,
17:33most of what we've accomplished, the things that allow us to be right here, right now, will be dismantled.
17:39So what we try to do is bring this information and provide opportunities for people to actually understand what it is that they're trying to take away
17:47so we're better motivated to fight for the future.
17:50One of the things we've done for the last five years is to have Critical Race Theory Summer School.
17:55We're not one of the groups that pivots away from something that the other folks tell us we can't talk about.
18:00If they're going to tell us we can't talk about it, we know it's important that we talk about it.
18:04So Critical Race Theory Summer School is going to happen this summer in Nashville,
18:09where the beginning of the student sit-in movement happened, where Diane Nash actually challenged segregation,
18:16where in this moment, Justin Jones is actually challenging Tennessee, which is the tip of the spear.
18:24They're the ones that are actually embracing all of these racist ideas and policies.
18:29So we want to gather everybody who is concerned about our democracy and concerned about our future
18:36to come together and strategize collectively how we live this history in the present
18:42so we have something to pass on to our children.
18:45We don't want to lose everything on our watch, so it is up to us to ensure that doesn't happen.
18:52So we're going to be in Nashville July 28th to August 3rd, and we have a booth with more information for people to visit.
19:02Well, thank you so much for telling us about Critical Race Theory Summer School.
19:06For those of you who want more information about that, you can go to aapf.org slash CRTSummer School
19:12to register for the AAPF's fifth annual CRT Summer School, Freedom Summers 2024, No U-Turn on Racial Justice,
19:20and you can go to AAPF's Books Unbanned booth here at the festival this weekend.
19:25That is booth number 2322 in Hall B.
19:29Kimberly Crenshaw, thank you so much for framing the stakes in this moment.
19:33Thank you so much.
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