Episode 120 - Is All History White History?

[transcript automatically generated - cleanup in progress]

i'm excited to announce to you a very special project we've been working on it's called black history is american history so here's what it's going to look like every single day for the month of february you'll get an episode featuring myself nikki black propaganda andre henry talking about black history we're going to celebrate some of the greatest heroes icons and titans from american history if you want to know more about black history head over to the liturgist.com backslash black history to learn more liturgist.com backslash black history and join the liturgists as we have a conversation about black history our world is built with stories [Music] sometimes these stories cause suffering by pulling us apart from ourselves and each other the liturgist podcast helps people love more and suffer less by pulling apart the stories that pull us apart today's story all history is white history [Music] i do believe that all history is white history and that the institutions that are deemed most respectable are controlled by white people [Music] white scholarship has more control and has more of a say of what it means to be credible of what it means to be objective growing up in australia i learned a lot about australian history in school but the things i learnt were almost exclusively australia's white history the indigenous history of australia which goes back 40 000 years was basically just glossed over during my schooling i'm the daughter of chinese american immigrants i was educated here so i learned history from a white perspective and i didn't begin to understand the degree to which the white male perspective permeates so much of what i understand about the world until pretty recently and when i did i felt a little bit like neo in the matrix when he realizes there's a matrix because he has to begin to question everything that he took at face value it just made me think about who is telling the story and whose stories are being emphasized and brought to the forefront i'm william matthews hey i'm propaganda i'm nikki black and i'm andre henry okay so i have a question why is europe centered in all of our understanding of history because the conquerors get to write the history and the people that are defeated they have theirs erased so what does that mean okay so i watched this youtube video of like a year ago somebody sent it to me it was like 17 minutes like a brief history of all the civilizations of the world and there was almost no mention of african civilizations and they were like isn't this great doesn't this just give you such a great hit and i'm like where are the black people not at all they do not exist in the history or or in the future apparently yeah sure unless you're looking at black futurism right that means we still had to make our own genre to exist in the future exactly yeah i think it's crazy like i sometimes even imagine even in the visual aspect of history like even if you look at a map like you know the type of map that's like laid flat you know i'm saying if it's not a globe you're just looking at laid flat like europe's still in the dead center you know what i'm saying you're still in the dead center yeah and then even calling the middle east the middle east is as it relates to europe yeah like yeah they're the one that named it that you know what i'm saying yeah it's like you know the short answer of like is all of history white history i mean like the short answer is like no i'm saying of course not right yeah but there's what things are and then there's the world that we live in you know what i'm saying like the universe we actually live in it's like well yeah i mean if history is whoever gets to write it you know what i'm saying so so i guess the history of colonialism and imperialism right i guess is like you said the conquerors have written history and they've decided who's important who you know we celebrate who we talk about how do how do black and brown people like globally talk about their history or or can we talk about here is is our history relevant has a lot of it been erased a lot of it has been erased but it's still there i think that first of all it's hard for me to talk about the diaspora or black and brown people all over the world as a black person in the united states like i cannot you know i'm always going to be speaking from the perspective of a black person in the united states we were cut off from our history so we i don't think we have the conversations about history that black people in kenya and ghana and dagon ethiopia has never been conquered yeah never you know so like that that's so amazing and that's such a a source of pride for them yeah so i'm sure that's a conversation that they have but i am not a part of those conversations um i think that the internet has done amazing things for us we have access to so much information so i think that there are more conversations happening and we're discovering more of our history now and so over time the conversations about history in the future will progress yeah the more time you spend in sort of non-western spaces even non-western spaces in the west like i spent a lot of time on like native american reservations you know what i'm saying white people are just a character in the story they're not not there they're just like they're just not the main character you know what i'm saying so you know like as she brought up like in ethiopia they're not asking this question i was just recently thinking about this i was on this like apache reservation and i asked about like their creation myths like help me understand that because i know like that a lot of times those stories shape identity you know so like the homie i was with was like yeah we think like out in those like caves out there there's like some writings on the wall of our ancient like stories and stuff like that he goes that's written history and that's not as reliable as oral history so so we kind of don't trust that much right i had the same response i was like i'm sorry what i'm saying like this is not the way i think about things you know what i'm saying yes and then even just the understanding of what do we mean when we say history depending on what part of the planet you're standing on you know i'm saying like i'm gonna say something dude like like i said this native american child like they have no concern about what your like college history 101 class says like interesting care at all that's not i don't care i don't even trust it i'm saying i trust oral history right you bring up an interesting point about epistemology which i know every time i say that word somebody goes what so you know the way that we know things right and um there's a really good book called amusing ourselves to death that talks about how every media is its own epistemology right and that we have certain biases around those epistemologies right so like what you just said oral history is a type of epistemology and the written word is a type of epistemology and so what i'm thinking as you said that is and this is exactly the issue we have when we're talking to white people about theology philosophy history is that there is a certain bias that we have in certain communities social groups about how we understand things are true and how we decide that we know things white people just though because they've had so much power get to say that our frame and our epistemology is better than yours right and so this is more objective right exactly this counts as knowledge concept of objectivity okay exactly objectivity we're going there the concept of objectivity yeah there's no such thing there's no such thing in order to be objective you would literally have to not have a body yeah you cannot be objective and and the concept of objectivity is cis heteropatriarchal white supremacists and it delegitimizes indigenous and african people exactly okay break that down though real quick though like you just said the concept of objectivity is cis hetero like break that down just for a second uh cisgender meaning same gender so you identify with the sex organs that you were born with you know because we we know that gender is above the neck and sex is below yeah um and so that just means that you agree cisgender and then heterosexual meaning that you are attracted to the opposite sex and patriarchal which our society is patriarchal and many societies are and it's really about who holds power it's about hegemony which is about it's about having power and the stratification how we stratify people and relegate them to certain parts of society essentially is kind of what it means in maintaining that power which is also neoliberalism which is a system that is designed to maintain the current imbalance of power and then white supremacists so a ideology that asserts that whiteness is supreme that it is the best and this is the story that has been the lens that we viewed history well that's the frame is like if you have the power to say that these are the boundaries and these are the lines and everyone has to agree on this story or live within it yeah right then that is what becomes that's what we refer to that's what white people refer to as objectivity even though they don't know that they don't always know that they're doing it you know and i think that's a part of the question about history is that you know at one point you had like philosophers like hegel saying africa has no history until white colonizers got there you know which is ridiculous of in australia where that what is she whatever she was the environmental woman that said that australia had only been inhabited for a couple hundred years and all the indigenous people were like excuse me for the longest well done existing human civilization but the way that yeah it didn't it wasn't a thing until white people were there and then we start counting from there exactly you made this what do you guys think is the harm that has been impacted from these stories particularly about history and white history it's it's the centering part nikki was speaking on in the sense that we have in turn adopted and then have to fight off not the existence of white people because it's not that would be irresponsible also right like my my life of course is affected by all the characters in it you know what i'm saying can't ignore europe like this right you know i'm saying but they're not the center they're not the point but i what i think where it becomes damaging is accepting that they are and then i have to now interpret myself through your lens find out that that's not the only way to look about it go through that deconstruction that pain that suffering that hurt figure out how to build myself back up again understand that and then a lot of times there's a pendulum swing i know it was in my life where it's like okay well then i start centering all blackness you know what i'm saying and then understanding that that's not fair you know i'm saying and like all these things have vantage points you see from where you are i am going to understand the world from my lens and then evolve as an earthling and learn to understand things from your lens too yeah right and know that like again we're all just looking at the same thing and i am better when i say okay i am going to attempt in as much as i can from my place my locale to try to understand what you are saying but that means that i have to for those five minutes whatever that is center your perspective yeah right and then be mature enough to come out of that and say well that's and they'll center yours okay then mature and come out of that okay and so center your ascension and also but i have to know me yeah you know what i'm saying and also know me maybe know know your family know your culture know your history in terms of like what has been my family's history what's my family's story how do we get here to this place you know on this land and and that story can help me own my story as well as see where your story fits in that matrix or that tandem it's normal at so many different points in our life to feel like something is getting in the way of being present or happy something stopping us from achieving the goals that we have for ourselves or feeling connected to the people that we love better help will assess your needs and match you with your own licensed professional therapist to help you work on all those things you can connect with someone in a safe and private online environment for that reason it's so convenient you don't even have to leave the house and you can start working with someone in under 24 hours when working with someone through betterhelp you can send a message to your counselor at any time and get a timely and thoughtful response plus you can schedule weekly video and phone sessions betterhelp has licensed professional counselors who are specialized in treating things like depression anxiety navigating family conflicts and so much more they're committed to facilitating great therapeutic matches so they make it easy and free to change counselors if needed anything you share with your counselor is confidential so many people have been using betterhelp that they're recruiting additional counselors in all 50 states start living a happier life today as a listener you get 10 off your first month by visiting betterhelp.com liturgists join over 1 million people taking care of their mental health again it's betterhelp h-e-l-p-com slash liturgists i grew up in texas and was taught by my dad and all of the education that i received that the civil war was about states rights that it wasn't about slavery that slavery was very much a secondary issue we should be able to fly the confederate flag and things like that and i didn't realize that how hateful and hurtful that was my assigned reading from my american history textbook said that native people in the united states were better off now that their land had been stolen and they were forced to live on reservations i wasn't really made aware until late high school that it wasn't called the war of northern aggression but it was actually called the civil war i was taught that billy graham and martin luther king led the civil rights movement together hand in hand singing we shall overcome our civil rights education never went beyond the assassination of dr king in 1968. as you can imagine before on the apartheid there was a very specific narrative to children that legitimized the way things were being run that changed though i didn't realize this because i thought history is just history right it's just a bunch of facts and dates that i had to learn for tests how can history now be different just because different people are in government it's been a big part of my life to realize that the collective stories we tell can be used in different ways to justify the oppression of people or to help give a voice to those that have been silenced [Music] i say all the time i've said this to my daughter she's six i told her i can predict the future and she said how i said because i pay attention to what's already happened so you can predict or determine or create a future with an understanding of history and for black people in america for a really long time we didn't have any connection to our history and and the connection that we had to a history was one that centered whiteness and right now what i've been thinking about and what i've been talking about is the the luxury of the privilege of identity and determining who you are for yourself because when we consider you know during the time of chattel slavery when you work from can't see seed can't see and you were cut off from your family at every opportunity and you were just so tethered to enslaved literally enslaved to constant work not to go off on a tangent but like even the tools that slaves use they made no one bought anything so anything that was used was always made and it was made by slaves the way that the land was cleared the way that buildings were built like that was all slavery when do i get time to to have an identity i don't have an identity i just get to be this person that works until my muscles separate from my bones that actually happened that was a thing that people died from and then when when slaves became too elderly to work they were set out on the road there was no retirement yeah a plan for slaves so okay i'm birthing children i'm working i'm working i'm working even if i am a daughter i'm not a daughter anymore because my mom gets sold away or my father gets old i don't have any connection to family so i don't get to be a daughter i don't get to be a sister i don't get to be a mom because my children are probably sold away from me i don't get to be anything and then all of the things that i could have been a brilliant seamstress or designer or some brilliant craftsman or whatever i don't get to be that either i don't get to realize myself i don't get to be an actualized human being and so i think about that when i think about history and and the the harm that that has caused is that disconnection that uh we we know for sure about the tumultuous relationship that black people have had with beauty concepts because they are you know so european and so i don't if i don't think i'm beautiful if i don't understand my my power my intellect i don't understand what i can accomplish and then after slavery and after reconstruction in which you know once again white supremacy does everything that it can to just destroy everything that you know black people could potentially have um now i have this legacy of just brokenness and and not understanding why i don't know why i can't get myself together yeah i don't know why i'm strung out on crack i don't know why my children are not graduating from high school i don't even know why because i don't have that connection yeah and let me jump in here and the only answer you're getting is from white culture right that says it's a personal failure it's just something that you did you're inferior you're biologically inferior and also you won't pull yourself up by your boob straps you got the same opportunities we got right right yeah you know so if so that's what you're looking at because you're like we're not succeeding nobody around me is succeeding y'all are right what are we doing wrong that's because you haven't given your your heart to white jesus properly that's what it was but once there's a concept of agency right then i'm to look at that same moment and go wait a minute we were inventors farmers were streams seamstress we were this you know what i'm saying and there's an indelible like power and fortitude because like damn that didn't wipe us off didn't wipe us out how we still exist you know what i'm saying and then you start asking those kind of questions i didn't realize how unique it was me being like the child like my father was a black panther as as a child i didn't know that was unique i thought everybody i thought everybody everybody everybody bringing out names bringing out like you know names of like i'm telling you about stops on the timbuktu road like i'm telling you where to and it's like y'all all don't know that you know i'm saying um we haven't had the space to even piece together our history black people collectively yeah we haven't had like the identity thing you're talking about to self-realize but then also to connect my self-realization to your self-realization told our collective story and it got us like i mean all of us like we're kind of around the same age it had us like a whole a good chunk of our lives like making fun of africans yeah exactly because exactly we didn't understand like we knew we were different but we knew we came from there but we was like oh that's primitive us right you know what i'm saying and because again you didn't have that moment we let someone else right yeah tell us who we are and living in the white person's frame yeah it's like we we adopted that frame for ourselves you know but doesn't that happen between even africans and black americans yeah that's right yeah they feel that way about us too oh y'all just this and all that like there's there's animosity yeah there is animosity but also there is for some the feeling of loss yeah because people were taken yeah and so there is actually a a big a hole there yeah that many feel and there's been conversations about that and and the the grieving that has happened over on that tie too so while you know there is you know i guess some jealousy some would say and some conflict and some like you know animosity i guess because maybe we've have felt or or have uh conveyed that we feel that we are superior yeah and and for many reasons like you said the frame that you know africa was given to us with this framework of poverty yes and lack and primitiveness and so we felt that we were elevated above that because we are in the united states so you know a lot of ignorance there but while that has been the case i think that there is an opportunity for us to understand that it didn't just happen to us yeah like it happened to them too that's good yeah i do want to speak to that question because as everyone was talking i had so many thoughts i had to actually start writing them down like about how do these narratives cause harm and i think a lot of people don't realize i didn't realize this too recently that every system of oppression has a narrative dimension to it mm-hmm like there's a story they're telling you because yeah you know like it's it's the difference between soft part south power and hard power right like we're talking about the power to be able to enforce the frame okay you are toby yeah right okay there's a way to do that with a whip or a gun or you know a punch in the face or something like that but that's actually not how a lot of systems of oppression are upheld for sure they're upheld by the narratives you know and so you know a man who says it's god's will that like i rule my household right there's there is a utility to that story right and the woman who believes that too keeps her in line and keeps her from you know living outside of that story from challenging it right and so we already see how the story affects people in the sense that like frederick douglass talks about how there was a time when he believed that if he ran away from his master that the wrath of god would follow him that's the harm that the story does when we internalize it and we say no that actually is my place that's how i'm supposed to live that's where i'm supposed to be yeah it causes harm in the sense that du bois talks about the double consciousness of only seeing yourself through the lens of the oppressor you know but it also does harm to the oppressor in the sense that like one scholar says that racism is really racism is meant to control the behavior of whites yeah and that really that really has struck me in the sense that like a lot of white people are also oppressed in the sense that they've internalized that story of superiority yeah and so like they can't even like sit down and listen to you as another human being and understand what you're saying because they don't even understand how deeply that's ingrained and the thing is that these stories get attached to your biology yeah right so like i love how james baldwin and ta-nehisi coates are talking about people who think they are white right because there's no white biology right right there's no such thing as a white biology but you think you are so i can't even talk about white supremacy without you having a bodily reaction to it yes you rej like you you have a flight or fight or fight response like you can't tell the difference between me saying white white supremacy is an evil system that puts people down and a bear chasing you through the woods yeah because of the story and they will fight like hell they will pick up their guns yeah because you talking about having plastic paper straws or something like that right like that's that's the depth of that's the depth of the harm that the stories do to us and even the harm yeah that's good like the idea of like of how it's eroding themselves yeah that they're not even seeing that they're drinking their own arsenic in the sense of like like if you talk even about just like at least a consistent racist if there's such thing would be like yeah america was made for the flourishing of white people mm-hmm which is exactly what we did this isn't a melting no we came here for us like yeah true right but you didn't but you didn't but even just your concept like you're saying going back to your concept of whiteness like no you didn't come for all y'all right you ain't even let virus come right right that's the same island right you're on the northern part of the same island so it's like you don't even others know what you mean right that doesn't work yeah you know what i'm saying so like you don't even understand your own identity right of like because because your founding fathers didn't mean white no they didn't mean that no you understand so your work you ain't let italians here you ain't that it was like you're right you don't even know what you mean when you say that right so you like you said embracing this narrative that one is made up and like two is killing you yeah just as much as killing [Music] hey everybody michael gunger here just wanted to remind you that this sunday we have an online zoom meeting where we're going to discuss this question this story of all history being white history and what the effects and the impact of this story has been in our lives and how we relate to each other and to ourselves we'd love it if you would join us we did our first official gathering last week online it was super fun great conversations amazing people and we'd love to have you if you're interested just go to the liturgists.com and click join us you brought up diversity of voice and thought you know well first of all like nature itself says that that's necessary like that's what that's what that's what gene pools are saying like you can't have homogeny like you have to have this before we die off you know what i'm saying yeah so like that part's like which is all the that's why i always giggle about the idea of like the pure white race where i'm just like you're gonna kill yourself off dude like that's nature's saying the opposite or even pure blackness like nature's saying the opposite bro you have to have the diversity when the diversity of thought comes in obviously the our immune systems are better like in using this as a metaphor for like the culture you know i'm saying our immune systems are better like the the strength of our bodies are better so the strength of our ideas are better the health of the culture is better when you have all these voices and what i found in welcoming that other perspective even a perspective that i'm like i don't understand that you know what i'm saying but i know i need it right so like uh you know i know this is like a a minefield here but like i don't know a lot of trans people like i don't know a lot of them you know what i'm saying i know maybe one or two yeah so and i honestly just i just i don't understand that that sort of bodily experience but i know i need you you never say i'm saying but i know like if you if you're not adding to this conversation i am suffering right do you understand i'm saying like in in that of course i grew into that but i think i grew into that because we've been not ever centered you know what i'm saying so it's like so so that meant so going back to like the idea of like retelling this story is me saying the reality of being disenfranchised is just that it is i'm not gonna ignore it it's not like it didn't happen you know what i'm saying it's like it didn't happen but i can retool this story to say that this is now a utility for me right in the way that you know was telling the story earlier about like native american fry bread like i i had no idea like fry bread was because the military gave the natives as they were marching them to these like uninhabitable areas and calling those reservations to be like here's your ration of flour in oil so y'all eat you know what i'm saying like that's how they so they created fried bread and you know you start eating nopales which is just like this is spanish for cactus you know what i'm saying so you just chop up a cactus and grill it you know make a taco with the flower oil and cactus because that's the only vegetable you got i thought it was a delicacy i thought that was like there was like some history to this it was like no systematic oppression genocide yeah genocide but that's why like this is retooled but it's retooled you see i'm saying so like and i again felt a media connection to them because i was like chitlins hog mall fat back catfish yeah i'm saying like all that now like hipsters drool over you feel me like it became a utility and sort of a uh now i see that i when i eat this stuff i'm like these aren't scraps like this is like this is my history proving that we survive you understand i'm saying i'm eating our survival and that's what makes us dope yeah you know what i'm saying but see so that's so again so now that's why i'm going i now see native americans and i see myself in them now because i was just like oh crap you did the same thing right and i'm like damn i missed this this whole time the whole time i missed this now that's in the gene pool now i know that that's in the gene pool so when i go out to vote right i'm like now okay let me consider let me consider their experience yeah what i'm saying let me consider the way that they're looking at this well that's what womanism and and i i don't identify as a feminist and if i do i say i'm intersectional but womanism is adjacent to feminism um because black women invented feminism and then we got kicked out of it and so now you told me this the other day about how feminism as a movement started in the black church well well the the suffrage movement specifically feminism was was a thing really for african women let's just be real like there are matriarchal societies and then when you consider you know what black women went through during chattel slavery there's this one account of a woman who um you know because we were bred we would be married off to people based on uh our physique and so she was married to a man that she did not want to be with and she didn't want to have any children with him and so um she would chew cotton root as a form of natural contraception and never had a child during her enslavement she just refused to reproduce and that is radical feminism that's radical womanism and and so that those are the roots of the part of wow feminism and womanism for me as a black woman in america and so when i when we look at womanism it asserts that we give the mic or pass the mic to the most oppressed person in the room and that can be anyone at any time that doesn't necessarily have to be a black woman doesn't necessarily have to be an indigenous woman in that moment it could be a child it could be an elderly person it could be a disabled person it could be a trans person it could be a gay person it could be a poor person and understanding that we all hold privilege class privilege you know just education privilege uh the privilege of having family um and so understanding that we all have different intersections of privilege and that when we are having conversations or that when we are going to the voting booth that we are voting for the best interest of the most oppressed person because womanism works from the roots to the top when you water your plants you do not water the leaves and then expect for your plant to grow you water the roots because if i am at the bottom but you take care of me if i'm homeless but you make sure i have housing that means that you have housing too yeah that automatically means that you have housing because if the homeless people are placed in housing then the people in the class above them have housing like it's it's a no-brainer and that's the reason why it's just important for us to incorporate this diversity of thought and of opinions and voices and also to look to the most oppressed people and in terms of like survival like you were saying about indigenous people i want to hear if you survived genocide i want to know how you did it yes right yes i need to know that yeah right yeah yeah how do you still speak your native language how how mm-hmm how how tell me how did y'all do that yeah yeah yeah and because a lot of them do right right and i'm like this sir that survived and the idea that that white society is not interested in that story like come on that history is not interesting or that history is not interested in that right like how we survive because right now as a as a species we are facing mass extinction so we should be having conversations with people that face extinction like like that's very real and relevant to us but that's not valuable somehow that's strange to me yeah [Music] thank you for listening to this episode of the liturgist podcast please remember to join us in the month of february and celebrating black history month as william andre nikki and prop give us a daily dose of black history that will not only inspire and educate us but also give us a clearer lens in which we can both see ourselves and our neighbors also don't forget to join us online for the sunday thing this sunday and every sunday at 11am pacific special thanks to all of you who sent in your stories and voicemails for this episode as well as the patrons for making the liturgist podcast possible thanks for listening everybody [Music] [Laughter] [Music]