Dr. Ibram X. Kendi, New York Times best-selling author, historian, and thought leader sits down with hosts Angela Rye, Tiffany Cross and Andrew Gillum during a special live broadcast of Native Land Pod from the Congressional Black Caucus Annual Legislative Conference. Dr. Kendi unpacks Trump’s persistent racism (and in particular his targeting of Haitian immigrants), placing it into a larger project of Trump’s — to criminalize Black people. “When you demean one Black group you demean every Black group,” he says.
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Native Land Pod is a production of iHeartRadio in partnership with Resent Choice Media. Welcome, Welcome, Welcome, Welcome.
Welcome, Welcome, Hey, everybody. This episode is a replay of one of our interviews from our live stream as a Congressional Black Caucus Foundations Annual Legislative Conference. If you want to listen to or watch the full stream, check out the links in the episode description. You can also find a full list of all the guests we interviewed. Welcome home, y'all. We have a few more guests coming and part of what's happening.
One of them are here is here? Oh, we have doctor.
Joining us, Doctor hebram Kindy, one of my favorite people. And also Andrew is gonna get next, to get to sit next. So this is the second rattler that we've had on the program already.
Nice to see doctor. Hello. This New York Times best selling offers intellectual iluminary. We are so pleased to have you a thought leader here tonight. We see Jamie Harrison up above, Chair of the Democratic National Conference. We love to see Jamie Harrison, Eric Alexander Alexander, and Congressman Kelly. We see you you all, remember Eric Alexander max Deen Shaw on living singles, some of you Officer because of her, she was also on the Cosby Show, So a beautiful night of luminaries. Indeed, back to you, doctor Kendy, thank you for taking the time to be here. I'll let the rattler kick the county.
Appreciate it. Appreciate it. Welcome Doc, to see you as always. I saw you.
You had a post trying to help all of us struggle with and and and comprehend the significance of Donald Trump's and the Republican parties repeated mythology.
I don't know what the hell to call it, but around the eating of of of pets.
I want you, if you wouldn't mind just help us sort of see that, I think in a much more grounded and concrete and really important way, because I think it's easy to make jokes and memes without assessing the impact that it may have on the greater greater community.
Well, well, I think it's it's part of a larger project to criminalize black people more broadly, but their specific target obviously we're ra Haitian immigrants yea. And in Springfield, Ohio, you have longtime black residents who are also being sort of demonized and racially profiled, you know, as a result of what they've said about those, you know, people presumably eating pets. And so I just tried to show that when you demean one black group, what ultimately happens is you demean every black group. And I think it's important for us to not think, say, if you are not a Haitian immigrant, but you're black, to think, no, that's just them. No, ultimately, it's gonna boomerang back to you.
That's real, that's real. We have that a lot in Florida, even I know you know that.
But because of the immigrant community, the expanding Caribbean, Afro Latino Haitian community, so on and so forth, you will hear at the higher education level folks saying I'm not you know, African American, I'm not Black, I'm Haitian, or I'm this, And I think black people do this, you know American more and black folks do do similarly. And I just thought your message was poignant because it started. I always felt that if they're going after Haitians, they don't know the difference largely between any one of us. It's not okay to go after Haitians period. But certainly when you consider that this is an attack on all of us, that we all have to say something and do something about it.
And it's interesting because it just harkens me back to this speech that Malcolm X actually gave I believe it was in nineteen sixty two after police sort of barged into the La Mosque and ended up killing some members of the nation, and he gave this sort of funeral speech. And during that funeral speech, that's when he's well known for saying the most disrespected person in America today is the black woman. But in that speech, he also speaks to black people and says, who taught you to hate yourself? And I'm referencing that because you know, you can ask African Americans, well, who taught you to hate Black immigrants? Who you can ask black immigrants who taught you to hate African Americans? And so what happens is you have different groups of black folks seeing other groups of black folks through the eyes of racist white people.
And know, yeah, I think that's such a legitimate point. How have you found because the last time you were in the news, we were all ready to come to your defense. How have you found navigating this space, because it does feel like it is such a visceral attack. You know, this kind of racial reckoning that mostly white run newsrooms introduced. What we've actually witnessed is more of a hostile backlash, a swift and hostile backlash to that. So in this age of how to be an anti racist and you, you know, contributing what you can to society and being I think all of us have been on the receiving end of such visceral attacks. How have you found navigating life personally, professionally, politically, all of it.
I mean, it's difficult, yeah, And I think for me it's most difficult when I see attacks that those who are obviously trying to conserve racism create and launch, and people that I love sort of repeat those ideas, sort of not knowing it my mind. I think that's when it's sort of most painful. What's ironic even about comparing this to the last question about what's going on with those Haitian immigrants, is you have this sort of viral series of sort of reports with no evidence, like there was no evidence, right, And I think for those of us who've been targeted in the media for doing something where there's no evidence, because apparently, like our skin color is evidence enough. I mean it becomes hard like can you, like, can you present some portion of evidence to substantiate this claim. That's sort of more or less delegitimizing our work, our work as a scholar, our work as an elected official, I work, you know, as you knows as a commentator, and for typically black people, you don't need evidence. And I think that's what's incredibly painful for black people who are in the public life.
Yeah, you know, Era.
First of all, I just want to tell you thank you, because no matter what, anytime that I've caught on you, you've been there. And I wanted to start there because I think that that is an essential component and essential ingred ingredient for community.
And I'd love to know in this era that we're.
In right now, given the quality of the work you do, the significance of the work you do, what our community can do to really come together to not only support you, to support each other in our collective advancement and liberation.
I really think we we have to. I think to support sort of my work or even others, I think we have to be more results oriented and I think we have to be more sort of evidence based, going back to what I was just you know, talking of, and I'm saying that to say, even in my book How to Be an Anti Racist, I ended up defining an activists as someone with a record of power and policy change. So so a person can't just say one day, I'm an activist. Yeah, right, you know, what is your record? What organizations have you have you built? What institutions uh, you know, have you have you created? What campaigns have you launched to you know, reduce levels of housing insecurity, you know, in your community. And I think we have to be more outcome oriented, more results oriented, because especially in a moment in which those who are trying to conserve racism are so intent focused. Yeah, we have to be outcome focused.
And I think there's a lot of symbolism, right and even when we when it comes to the presidency, we you know, have seen the election of President Barack Obama and looking at that through the lens of policy, you know, we can judge his presidency. I think at this point we are for a lot of younger people, President Obama was the floor, not the ceiling, and so now younger people have a lot more demands of our leaders. We're beyond the role of symbolism. So I think that's so true. What is your prediction for what may happen in November and what this landscape might look like in this country? You know, because when he was elected, it was like, oh, we're post racial now, which we all kind of laughed at that ridiculous notion of that. What might we see what might await us under a president Kamala Harris.
Well, it's interesting because many people have talked about the importance obviously of this election, and you know, as an historian, let me just say I can attest to that. I can't think of this election in twenty twenty four, particularly for black folks, without thinking of the election of eighteen sixty four. And this was an election between a candidate who more or less planned to end the Civil War and pretty much re enslaved black people, you know, in a candidate that presumed that he was going to continue the Civil War. I mean, it really is that stark, particularly when you look at the candidacy of Donald Trump and what he has planned, particularly for black folks, And so I don't I think it's important for us to understand those stakes, especially when you look at some of the candidates who are sort of allying with Trump internationally, when you look at what they've done when they've gotten a second term or when they've gotten a second presidency, this is a critical moment in the history of black life in this country and really in the history of the United States.
That's powerful.
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