Critical race theory has been problematised and demonised over the years but it has great potential for societal change.
In this episode, Richard Kemp speaks with Rodney D. Coates, author of Critical Race Theory and the Search for Truth, about what critical race theory is and why it has found itself in the crosshairs of white nationalists.
They discuss the truths we often don’t hear about the transatlantic slave trade, the discrepancy that was created between the Dominican Republic and Haiti, and why we need new dreamers to affect systemic change.
Listen to the podcast here, or on your favourite podcast platform:
Scroll down for shownotes and transcript.
Rodney D. Coates is Professor of Critical Race and Ethnic Studies at Miami University. He is a public sociologist engaged in critical race, social justice, social movements, social policy, and practice.
Critical Race Theory and the Search for Truth is available on the Bristol University Press website. Order here for £27.99.
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Image credit: Matt Watson/Stocksy
SHOWNOTES
Timestamps:
1:04 – What is critical race theory, and why has it ended up in the crosshairs of white nationalists?
6:45 – How did European nations explain away the transatlantic slave trade and was there a last effect?
13:25 – Were European nations doing slavery differently than we’d seen before?
24:04 – What happened to cause the discrepancy between Haiti and the Dominican Republic?
30:20 – What racist systems of injustice met people who were part of the Great Migration in the US?
34:53 – What’s behind the attack on education with regards to critical race theory and what are their goals?
39:43 – Who benefits from stopping education on critical race theory?
44:57 – How dangerous is the angry black woman trope in society?
51:08 – How can new dreams, and new dreamers, translate to systemic change?
53:26 – Where can we find you online?
Transcript:
(Please note this transcript is autogenerated and may have minor inaccuracies.)
Richard Kemp: You’re listening to the Transforming Society podcast. I’m Richard Kemp, and on today’s episode I’m joined by Rodney D. Coates, professor of critical race and ethnic studies at Miami University. Rodney’s new book, ‘Critical Race Theory and the Search for Truth’, published by Bristol University Press, is a historical deep dive into the origins of critical race theory, showing the ways that it has been problematized, demonized and its potential for societal change.
In his book, Rodney takes us on a journey through multiple examples of sweeping systemic racism from the transatlantic slave trade to Haiti and bringing us right up to the modern day. Through his considered analysis, Rodney shows that the roots of racism are long, delivered through imperialism and capitalism, and tangled with so many other social injustices. He offers critiques for both left and right sides of the political debate, debunking a wealth of misinformation and showing how such rhetoric can be harmful and even fatal.
Rodney D. Coates, welcome to the Transforming Society podcast.
Rodney D. Coates: Thank you sir.
RK: Thanks so much for coming on today. I really loved reading your book. I’m excited to to dig into it. One of the, I’ve noticed on the reviewer page, one of the reviews of your book called Critical Race Theory an Important Intellectual tool. And they said that critical race theory’s success has placed it in the crosshairs of white nationalists and their political operatives.
What is critical race theory, and why has it ended up in the crosshairs of white nationalists?
RDC: Critical race theory is an attempt to understand how race has become embedded within our society, particularly the United States and the Western world. In so doing, it recognizes that we have normalized race in most of our institutions, to the extent that we ignore the fact that it’s actually there. It’s much like the paper cut. The many times you don’t realize that you cut yourself with the paper until you look down and you see the cut.
Well, similarly with our, structure of race, we tend to ignore it. We tend to assume that is normal. And we tend to to become blasé about it almost to, to the point of being dismissive. Having said that, it recognizes that how we look at the world in many cases reflects our own positionality. As a consequence, if we look at the world from the eyes of a child, we see something different than if we look at it to their parents. Look at it differently if we look at it from the side of an English or French or German or an American or an American black, a French Asian or an Italian Greek or whatever. Recognizing that how you see the world reflects your positions.
We look at this history of, in this country in particular, but also in England, how we define and our history typically comes from the vantage point of the European. So we see the Native American through their eyes. We see the African through their eyes. We we see the Asian or the Hispanic or whatever, through the eyes of the European.
As a consequence, those people are always viewed as reacting to the system, reacting to racism, reacting to colonialism, reacting to whatever, whatever, whatever. But what happens if we flip the script and look at it not from a reactionary perspective, or looking at people like me as as an object defined by someone else’s, but as a subject with agency.
And so rather than talking about how the slave responded to being a slave, how did America, for example, respond to the enslaved who rejected being called a slave, who rejected being the slave? And so therefore do slave rebellions and insurrections and work stoppages and so forth and so on actually served to transform this country. And they were not mere objects and, and, reacting, but they took control of the situation and fought for their own freedom and their own identity.
RK: Well, it’s, flipping the script is such a huge it’s such a, yeah, such a huge kind of pivot point to, to focus on as well. Like the, the focusing of the script of. Yeah, of object turning to subject taking, taking power of the narrative or creating one’s own narrative, deciding to do so. So that sounds like, to, to me, you know, that’s that sounds, that sounds like a more equal way of or, you know, closing in on a more equal progressive way of running the world of, of being in the world.
Is it as, as simple as, like, white supremacists are seeing it in a certain way and, you know, the way the world has always been, at least in their eyes, that these things are changing and that’s why that’s why they’re exploding?
RDC: Our world is becoming more and more compact as they join the internet and travel and so forth and so on. We are becoming more diverse. We are becoming more and more aware of these different narratives that are out there. And this challenges a a way of thinking that has, for the last 400 years, control that narrative. Now, here we are in a situation where we’re realizing that the majority of the world is not white.
The majority of the world are people of color that are asserting their right not only to be, but to define their realities themselves, their identities, and to take part in the construction of their histories. And that challenges the, the, the, the old way of thinking. What white supremacy means is that we control the narrative. So what happens when you challenge that control?
Oh, by the way, one of the first things you do when you want to take control of a people is to take control of their history. In fact, you want to wipe that history off the slate and then define them totally based upon who you are and what you are and how you see them. Okay. And when you challenge that way of seeing, you challenge the very core of white supremacy.
RK: During the transatlantic slave trade, European nations stole people from African nations, committed genocide on Native American peoples. Sexual abuse and violence were at unfathomable levels. Britain has often said that they had no slaves in their country, but they were actively trading in slavery across the world. How did European nations explain away this behavior? And, I was also wondering, does that have a lasting effect, you know, into today?
RDC: What is interesting is that if you look at the Declaration of Independence written by the founding persons of this country, one of the complaints that they raise is that because this King, England, has forced upon the Americas this cruel abuse of humans, slavery, now, by the way, during this period of time, slavery had been outlawed in England. That’s important.
Okay. Yet it allowed it to come into being in its English colonies. Okay. All right. So it actually fostered that. Now, what’s interesting is, is that the Americans took that out, of the Declaration of Independence because it had obvious repercussions for themselves. But that’s another, another issue. So England was able to avoid the conversation because it’s saying it’s not on English soil.
Okay. It’s over here. Okay. That’s one thing. The other thing is, is that they actually phrased it in terms of well, first of all, you had the papal bull of 1493 where the, the, the Pope of the Catholic Church, this before the English got involved, said, look, first of all, the Native Americans were savages. They were heathens as defined by the papal bull.
It also declared all of the lands in the Americas available, free, no one occupied. Okay. And then it said that they could be claimed in the name of God and country. Okay. So, so so the church has defined these people as non people. Stripped them of their sovereignty and of their humanity. All right. The same thing occurred when it comes to the Africans.
They were stripped of their humanity by the church and state. Okay. These are not humans. In fact, there are those who have argued that we’re saving them from their heathens and brutish exist, and we’re doing them a favor. Okay. In fact, there was a, a a wife of a president of the United States who, I think was Mrs. Bush, who said, you know what we took, we took them out of the jungle. We gave them, we gave them civilization. Not less than two years ago, the governor of Florida, DeSantis, said, because of us, the Africans have all of these skills, so forth and so on. We civilized them. We saved them. Well, there is a mis understanding of the reality. Think about something, you would not traverse the continents going halfway around the world to go get a group of dumb, stupid and lazy human beings?
No. You would go there looking for specific, specific skill sets. So the Africans that came, you would want one the best humans that in terms of physiques and stamina that you could find. I mean, given how many died in the, in the passage. Right. Those that survived had to have been the cream of the crop, literally.
But what did they bring here? They brought individuals that were carpenters. They brought individuals that were builders. They brought individuals that knew about crops and I mean rice, rice planting, harvesting, so forth and so on. Okay. They brought individuals that had skill sets, right, that could help and enlarge their capacity to make money. All right. So what you have here is if you ignore that reality, then you can argue, you know what we saved them.
These brutes and these heathens. To tell the truth means that, oh, these were not brutes and heathens. They were highly intelligent, sophisticated individuals who brought a skill set to this country and to the other countries where we brought them. Okay, that did what? That made it possible for us to make tons of money because of what they brought to the table.
RK: Yeah. Incredible. The, there’s one one fact, there’s a million facts in your book that were blowing my mind. And one of them being that, the slaves built the White House. Like one, that’s amazing. Two, why didn’t I know that? Why is that not something that, like, I looked online, I went on to the White House website and it’s there. But why is that not something that we all just know?
RDC: And by the way, at least 14 other major buildings just in the DC area that we’re aware of, but also up until the end, up until the end of slavery, all of the construction, all of the role work, all much of the agriculture work and and cooking and all of that were being done by the Africans.
I mean, they were they were skilled craftsmen. Okay. All right. But, again, so that means that, that we’re looking at, individuals that came here with skills and only enhanced those skills as they, as they kept on. By the way, we won’t talk about cooking. Okay. We won’t talk about seamstresses. We won’t talk about, oh, even, even what we know about Covid, but also inoculations came out of Africans coming to this country with these medical skills.
Okay. We can talk about women that came with, with, the knowledge of birthing. Okay. Midwives. Okay. That half of the births in the South and in this country at one time was being delivered by these black women.
RK: Incredible. The, one other thing I want to ask about slavery as well, in your, in your book, you talk about how slavery was not, like it wasn’t like a new thing that that these European nations are created, that other nations were also doing that. And it was, it was, you know, practically worldwide. It’s what kind of seemed like from what I was reading and I suppose, like, I was just wondering when I, when I think of slavery, I think of it as a European, like a shame on the European nations as what I was, what it, what I always think of.
That’s how it connects it. And I’m just wondering, like if it was already something that was going on before, why why is that the connection that I and so many other people have as well to, to that like did were were the European nations, were they doing slavery differently than we’d seen before?
RDC: Well, first of all, let’s go back before the Industrial Revolution, when throughout the world we have as, as as different human groups came into contact with each other, they would war over land, resources, so forth and so on. Okay, what’s interesting is that in a war, you’ve got a choice. Am I going to kill all the enemy that I conquered, or will I give them a choice to become my servant?
Okay, you can die. You can become my servant. By the way, that’s universal, that’s in Africa. That’s in Asia, Japan, China, throughout Europe, so forth and so on. Okay. The Jews, you see it in the Old Testament, you see the New Testament, you see among Muslims, Hindu, you can’t find a civilization that did not have some aspect of this because of, as a consequence of war.
Okay. What’s interesting is, is that up until the European era of slavery, slavery was not a, permanent condition. That means that your children were not slaves because you were slaves. It was not generational. Okay. All right. They provided for and in fact, in many civilization, Greek and Roman civilization, slaves had higher social status than most other people.
Okay. These were doctors and lawyers and, and skilled craftsmen and so forth and so on. Highly esteemed in their particularly in, in, in the, countries where they’re at and by the way, they were called slaves, but they were servants, okay, with and highly respected, cared for, had rights and privileges and all of that. Okay. What happens with the Europeans different from any other form of slavery, and particularly here in the United States, is that they made servitude for life.
By the way, no where in the U.S. Constitution will you see the word slave. You see the word servant because it was against international law at the time. All right, we were aware of that. And so they were called servants. Okay.
RK: So that was, an example of a historical loophole.
RDC: Yeah, yeah, yeah. You’re a servant. Okay. By the way, the first group of forced laborers, servants in this country were that the English brought were the Irish. Okay. All right. The Irish were targeted because, this goes all the way back to to King Henry the Eighth, who wanted his eighth or ninth divorce.
And the Pope said it’s not going to happen. All right. and, and, and the king said, I tell you what, to to the Archbishop of Canterbury, either I’m going to get a divorce or I’m going to start chopping off the heads of priests until I get me my divorce. Okay. By the way, that’s how the Church of England came into being.
But that’s the side story. But the Irish were targeted because that was the first colony that the English got before they came to Americas. They started with the Irish, okay. They had this whole vindictiveness targeting them because they were Catholic. All right. And they occupied the country because of this. This goes all the way back. So the first group of forced laborers that the English imposed in the Americas were the Irish.
Now, before the English, there were the French and the Dutch and the Portuguese and the Spanish, who had slaves who had brought Africans into this country. Okay. Why did it change? Why did the English colonies change this? It had to do with the shortage of labor and the availability of the African as servants. Now, what’s interesting is that the French colonies and the Spanish colonies got to the point where either they got rid of the colonies, or they got rid of slavery.
Okay. All right. Why did they get rid of slavery? The French and their colonies quite easily, because the Africans rebelled in Haiti. You might ask yourself, why did they rebel? Who, who are these Africans? They happened to have been trained Military personnel, both men and women, that the French had brought to the Americas. Why would they bring trained military personnel?
We hire mercenaries all the time. They were hired to control the Africans. And they wind up saying, oh, we’re not free. And so they rebel. You had a rebellion. But anyway, so, so, so what’s happening. And that’s how, that’s how France got out of, the Americas. They sold off all of their properties. We wound up getting the largest tract of land, the Louisiana Purchase, as a consequence of that. Within this country, they passed the law that made servitude for life. They were servants for life. Not only were they servants for life, but their children would follow the womb, is what it said. Okay. Yes. Follow the womb. So if your mother is a slave, you’re going to be a slave.
By the way, they did this purposefully one, because it’s kind of hard even today to, to, guarantee, paternity but we do know maternity. Okay. We don’t do we do know who the mother is. Okay. but it was something even more insidious than that. The slave owners realized that, oh, I can increase my property by forcing sex upon these women.
Not only with other slaves, but I myself will rape these women and produce children, and consequently, you’ve got George Washington and several other, political leaders who had slave children from their slaves. Okay. All right. But what this also did was this means that, oh, now this institution becomes generational. Never existed before. Okay? It also becomes racial. Okay.
Anybody that that that you conquered or in combat, so forth and so on could come into and become a servant. Okay. Only the Africans were the ones that we put into this. And by the way, why the Catholic Church had no, no, no, presence on the African continent, nor did they have any, any access to any of the other major political or religious entities.
All right. And Africa was then and now fragmented. Wasn’t like China was not like any of the other large, large national groups? Okay. All right. And they were far enough removed from Europe that they could not invade or retaliate. But there’s a bigger thing than that. The Africans, the Europeans did not go into Africa and force slaves upon them.
They went there and purchased slaves just like anybody was on the market system. Okay. All right. These were combat properties that had been won in combat. What the Europeans might have done is what we do today is give weapons to one group and encourage them to fight against this other group, and then to conquer them and then we will give them other weapons in trade of their slaves.
All right. And so you get this reciprocal process. But again, they had no clue what was happening on this side of the equator. So slavery becomes racialized. It also becomes generational. But why the African? This is an interesting point. Europeans found that one, they could not supply enough labor, but also much of the labor that, that indentured servants or forced servants that they brought here, particularly in the South, were dying off.
They were dying because of this virus going around, okay? Because of malaria. They discovered that the African was immune to malaria. Many of them, they had something called sickle cell, sickle cell anaemia. Which is a biological adaptation of these people coming from this hot, humid, mosquito infested, terrain? They developed an immunity to it. So that meant that one.
They’re used to the climate, two they had skills that were necessary to produce a crop and harvest. And three, they weren’t dying. And all of this meant that, oh, wow, they made the perfect slave from that vantage point. Okay. And they had no allies that, that that that could challenge the European. That’s already north. They had the knowledge of what was happening.
All of these things took place. And that’s how we get this difference. And that’s how slavery became racialized. And race became embedded along with the, papal decree of 1493 at this. Now, we’ve encoded race within our very at the beginning of our country.
RK: Well, thank you, thank you, Rodney, with that, with the answers reminding me as well how kind of historically long your book is as well. Like there’s just so there’s so much history in it. it’s. Yeah, it’s, I was learning so much, history wise from that book, and. Yeah, written, written so, so brilliantly. Of course, I want to ask about Haiti as well.
You touched on it a bit, and I want to ask some more about it. Before 1960, you say that, Haiti and the Dominican Republic, two nations, they they’re on the same island. they were very similar in GDP. Nowadays the Dominican Republic’s GDP is 800% higher than that of Haiti, which is, you know, sounds insane.
You say that Haiti went from being considered a prized jewel of the Americas to becoming one of the poorest countries in the world. And can you, can you go into a bit more of what, to explain what happened there, please?
RDC: Yeah. well, well, one, you’ve got the Haitian rebellion, all right. And the U.S. backed France after that and forced Haiti to pay reparations, okay, to France to the tune of several billion francs. Okay. Three, the US actually occupied Haiti on three, if not four separate occasions and instituted puppet regimes. Everything from were afraid of, communism, the spread of communism to corruption and so forth and so on.
Okay. At the same time, oh, Haiti was on one side island, then you got Dominican Republic on the other. You got one that was controlled by the French and the other one controlled by the Spanish. Okay. One who are racialized as black, and the other one who is racialized as white. Dominican Republicans consider themselves white. Okay, we declared and gave most favorite nation status to the Dominican Republic.
If you look at the world bank, the world bank has made major investment and business loans to the Dominican Republic. The best thing we’ve done to Haiti is, is, is provide aid, okay, aid. No country has ever gotten out of poverty, just like no person has ever gotten out of poverty as a consequence with aid, they do get out of poverty through economic development, economic intervention, where you become a market economy. Okay. We facilitated Dominican Republicans becoming a market economy. And we accelerated tourism, and we accelerated their access to the United States as citizens, so forth and so on. At the same time, we blocked all three of those access to the Haitians. Okay. All right.
RK: And, sorry, Rodney, this is so the Haitian Revolution is when the people living in Haiti, the Haitians, they come in, they’re taken in, sorry, as slaves for France. They eventually rebel against France. They take over their own nation, the one they happen to be living in and working in and having their lives in and stuff.
And, and then you’re saying that the reparations to France, Haiti has taken away. What? Taken away. Taken away people that they took there in the like.
RDC: Oh, no reparations is where the Haitians were forced to pay France for the loss of their resources in Haiti. They lost their slaves. They lost their plantations. They lost their colony. Okay. And so France demanded that the Haitians paid them for a successful rebellion. And we back France in terms of that.
Okay. By the way, we took from that a page in the United States as well. Guess who got reparations from the Civil War? The former Confederates, no slaves. Okay. For the loss of their property, such as slaves and loss of income, so forth and so on. Okay. All right.
RK: And that’s, sorry to but that’s just that’s another you were saying earlier about, like, dehumanizing people, othering, like, that’s a that’s a way of doing that, right? It’s like, hey, you people.
RDC: We’re going to repair the damage. We’re going to force you. How crazy is that? It’s like I rape somebody. And then I forced them to pay me for the pain and suffering that I went through in the process of raping them. That’s what we force. We join with the French and enforce that upon the Haitians.
Okay. All right. Several trillions of dollars in reparation. Okay. Along with disinvestment in Haiti, okay. While at the same time investing in encouraging tourism, which is a major source of, resources for the Dominican Republic, while at the same time discouraging the same and look at immigration, okay, we have an open door to Dominican Republic, and we require the Haitians to slip in the back door if they’re lucky.
Okay. All right. Again, we’ve racialized this. And by the way, why would someone come here? Look at remittances. Okay, look at the billions of dollars that leave this country to go back to. Yes, Haiti gets a lot, but Dominican Republic gets a heck of a lot more. Okay. All right. And then you look at look at the world bank intervention in Dominican Republic and the lack thereof in terms of Haiti.
And so what we see is the jewel, literally the jewel of the Caribbean become the pit. Okay. Where this other country is elevated up on several levels, up 800% increase of the GDP in the last, few years.
RK: You talk about the Great Migration in the US as well, in your book, black people moving from inhospitable southern US states where there’s violence, sexual abuse and lynchings were, were common and they’re migrating to the northern states. However, it wasn’t so perfect up north either, with different systems of racism causing new injustices. Your own grandfather, you say, moved from rural Mississippi to East Saint Louis. What new racist systems of injustice met people like your grandfather?
RDC: What’s interesting, my grandfather again, lynching did not start in the South until after the Civil War, which is quite interesting. Okay. And who was targeted for lynching? Poor? No. Stupid? No. Lazy? No. Criminal? No. Black? No. Successful, entrepreneurial. Okay, individuals, this was intended to intimidate. Okay. This was intended to intimidate whole black towns were burned black blacks at the end the Civil War took money that they had gotten okay from working, and, reconstruction and bought the soldiers.
Okay. And built all black towns. Tulsa, Oklahoma. Rosewood in Florida, for example. Okay. in Cincinnati here. Okay. several race riots got totally destroyed. My father, my grandfather left Mississippi because of lynching. Okay. He comes up to a a industrially very rich area right outside of, Saint Louis in a place called East Saint Louis, Illinois at the time when there is a strike taking place in one of the major meat packing, corporations in the area.
In fact, this area was the center of meat packing in the country at that time. Okay, well, guess what? The predominantly white labor force, it was in the midst of unionizing turn the century. They went on strike. Okay. And, Armour packing company, which is the company that that one of the ones that that went on strike.
I don’t think they’re in existence now. They sent trains to the south to encourage blacks. They brought up train loads of workers, black men to take these jobs. Imagine, if you will, these whites on strike, and they see a group of blacks getting off the trains, getting ready to go in and go to work to take their jobs.
How did they respond? They responded with violence. How did the blacks respond to this violence? With violence. And you get what is known as the East Saint Louis race riots. Okay. Now after that, an uneasy truce developed between the whites and the blacks. So whites lived on one side of town, literally a line drawn down the middle of the city.
And blacks lived on the other side of town as long as blacks stayed on their side of the town in their exclusive black schools, exclusive black stores, exclusive black whatever. They were okay, but if they stepped across the line then they could be they would be targeted by police or other kinds of, of, of hostilities. Okay. All right.
I, I never came into contact with a white teacher until I went to college. Okay. All right. All of my teachers were black and which meant that this I grew up in the 60s. At least I came of age in the 60s. and I had black teachers who with masters and PhDs teaching in high school and middle school and even grade school because they can’t teach at the college level.
Okay. What’s interesting is that after the civil rights movement, many of my former teachers got jobs teaching at colleges and universities throughout the country, much less the region. So I got the equivalency of, an honors, if not a college degree in high school. Okay. because of the commitment to teaching, but also the qualifications of those black scholars that were my teachers.
RK: I wanted to go back. You mentioned a bit earlier about, Florida, last year in 2023. I just want to ask a bit more about that. In your book, you give an example from Florida’s education system. As recent as 2023, fifth graders were being taught that Africans taken to the US during slavery, developed skills which in some cases could be applied for their benefits.
As you were saying earlier. it’s such shocking language. And it also ignores the fact that Africans brought skills with them and benefits enslave, enslave nations. And we were talking earlier about the the white House. My mind was kind of blowing a bit of just like this. This was happening last, like the it seems crazy. This was this was last year, this kind of stuff like what’s what’s behind the attack on education with regards to critical race theory and what, what are their goals here?
RDC: They’re quite simple. One if you control the narrative, you control the reality. Okay. The most radical revolutionary thing you can do is educate somebody, okay. The most radical revolutionary thing you can do is to empower somebody with knowledge of who they are and their contributions. The one way to keep someone down is to help them, make them think that you’ve never done anything.
Okay. You’re totally reliant upon me. I created you I, I, I control you, and I’ve always done that. If you talk to many young people, they’ll say, well, it’s always been that way. It’s always racism. It’s always sexism, homophobia. It’s always been that way. But if you can point to no, it has not always been that way. In fact, here’s the explicit point in historical time where this came into being.
And oh, by the way, the individuals were not slaves. They were enslaved. There’s a subtle difference between those two. A slave is one who has no subjective reality except, an enslaved person is one that you’re trying to make into a slave. An enslaved person rebels, rejects servitude and slavery. So if you help an individual to realize you know what, you were not a slave.
You were enslaved. Not only were you not a slave, but you effected change. You always had agency. Oh, you were not dumb and stupid and lazy, by the way, if you were dumb and stupid and lazy, that would suggest possibly a genetic link, deficiency on your part. But if you were among some of the strongest and brightest that that that literally the world had to offer, that you brought a set of skills that helped transform, this country, built this country.
All right, then, by the way, that means that. Oh, if that if that’s what I descend from, then what’s stopping me now from being top of the class? Oh, I’m not an object. I’m a subject. I’m not a reactor. I have agency, I make choices, okay? Really, if I want to hold you down, I convince you that you don’t have any choices.
And it’s always been that way. Okay? If I want you to empower you that I teach you, who you are and why you are many young people are confused today. They’re angry. They’re bitter because they don’t see the beauty of who they have been and who they could be. Okay. All right. You know what, you push somebody into a corner and you tell them that they’re just an animal or slightly above an animal, and you keep pushing and pushing them.
What is their response except for violence? But if I inform you that you know what you have, you come out genius, you come out of skills, you come out, really, and you can be like your ancestors. You can be like your mom and dad, okay. You have choice. So that’s what it’s all about. And if I can strip you of those choices, I tell you your choice don’t mean a damn thing, okay? You have no history, but the history that I am going to give you. Okay? You have no reality, but the reality that I am going to define for you, that produces the bitterness, that produces the anger that produces, produces the, the the, the black on black crime, for God’s sake. Okay. Why? Because individuals are being taught to hate themselves and not to love themselves.
RK: Well thanks, Rodney. I mean through hearing you talk today, but also through reading the book is just such a an essential tool that we have here. Critical race theory. It’s such a such a hugely important tool. Wow. To open people’s open people up to themselves. The, the stopping that from happening, the stopping from educating on critical race theory. Who is that benefiting?
RDC: Oh, here’s an interesting thing. It cost the United States $16 trillion a year to maintain racial structures, according to US Bank. Recent report just came out well, okay, so who benefits? It benefits a small group of individuals who want to preserve their power. By the way, I argue that white privilege does not exist. Okay.
RK: Can you can you explain that?
RDC: Yeah. White privilege, the idea that all whites share in racism and have privileges because they’re white. Okay. I argue that that is wrong. What exists and has existed is a small group of whites, white males with property. Okay. So you have an elite group of white males who are been who have been maintained their collective control over the system, the structure, so forth and so on.
Who benefit from racism at the expense of the majority of whites, blacks, Asians, Hispanics, so forth and so on. And when they are challenged, guess what they do? They convince poor whites that they have privilege. Okay, let me-
RK: You’re just like me kind of thing that that kind of the rich whites are saying.
RDC: Yeah and these colored people are taking your jobs away from you. Yes, they are challenging you. They are a threat to your future. We need to put them back in their place. Oh, the first time this argument was used was when the Irish that were servants rebelled with the Africans that were servants in Virginia, in what has been called become known as Bacon’s Rebellion.
Okay. Well, they shut down Virginia. How did the white planter elite deal with that rebellion? They convinced the Irish that they were white. They weren’t white before that. Okay. And then they elevated them just a little bit. They made them overseers, they made them the police officers, so forth and so on. Okay. Just a bit above the African. Here we are today in the midst of a political moment where there are those that are arguing that people of color, the brown people, immigrants, the flooding, the border and blacks and others are threatening this society, tainting the blood.
By the way, the last time we’ve used the word tainting the blood, was Hitler when he talked about the Jews and and others in Europe and in Germany tainting the blood. Okay. And we have to purify the blood. Okay. and by the way, this goes, in terms of what now, we argued white replacement theory, that that there’s a fear that that these people are going to replace whites.
Okay. It’s a myth. But again, what what’s happening is we’re beginning to discover that the world does not, does not revolve around America or the Europeans, that the world is a much broader expanse of people and the majority of those people are people of color. The problem is, is that the United States of America is becoming more and more diverse.
And in fact, in the next 20 to 30 years, we’re going to be a, for the first time in our history, majority persons of color. Okay, that’s going to be the majority in this country. That poses a threat to those that have manipulated race all these years. So how do I deal with that? I organize as many whites as I can and say, you’re under threat.
These colored people, these brown people coming in from Mexico and these black people that are killing each other and all this violence and everything, okay? They’re going to rape your women. They’re going to steal your children. They’re going to take your jobs. Okay and we need to get tough on crime. We need to get tough on the border.
We need to get tough to bring America back again. And that is this existential moment that we’re in now. How do we do that? One, we got to demonize these people coming across the border, and then we got strip subjective realities and, and agency away from those people that have been across these borders in this America called black people.
RK: I want to come to, towards the end of the book, you talk about a lot of contemporary examples as well. I love all the pop culture examples that you use to explain all this, all this, all this theory. It’s so it was so helpful for me. and, you, you tell us about the black women, unsung heroes, the bedrock of children’s futures.
You also talk about the fetishization of black women and the trope of the angry black woman. An example that jumped out at me was the way that, you say that Serena Williams was treated for acting out her anger, during tennis matches versus her white and male counterparts. Can you explain what happened in this example and, and also how dangerous is the angry black woman trope in society?
RDC: Well, well, first of all, here is Serena Williams. She gets chastised and punished by the referee because she hits her racket on the ground. The same thing happened about 3 or 4 weeks later by a white male player, and no one said anything.
Okay, here’s the thing. Oh, just recently, just this past weekend. Got a, black football player late for work. Okay. In Florida. Police stopped him. Next thing you know, he’s on the ground. He’s been punched a couple of times. Okay, this is a NFL football player, okay? They subsequently letting go. He wound up getting there. by the way, they won. Winning the game.
He won, scoring a touchdown, so forth and so on. They took with him with his hands behind his back. Okay. By the way, the idea that these people cannot get angry. One, okay, that that they must stay totally obedient and submissive. Except that there he is is one problem okay. The full range of emotions that humans have.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that I can get ticked off. She can get ticked off. Okay, one black civil rights wound up saying I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired. Okay. Aretha Franklin sang a song. all I want is R-e-s-p-e-c-t. Okay, but past that, we chastise individuals. We penalize individuals because they step out of the good mammy role or the uncle Ben role. Okay. The comforting, quiet, strong black woman that never gets angry, never gets emotional, so forth and so on.
RK: One second, Rodney. Uncle Ben, in this case, you were using that as the example of the person depicted on the rice all those years. You know, on the-
RDC: Yes, sir. Yes, sir.
RK: Yeah.
RDC: Yes sir, that’s the male stereotype version, that that that’s similar to the mammy stereotype. Okay. on the other side, who, the mammy who takes care of our children, who breastfeeds so forth and so on and never, never gets angry. Okay. All right. The, the angry black woman called the sapphire okay. She is ridiculed and punished for being a strong black woman who will tell you exactly what she feels.
Okay. All right. That again, my mama, my mother was a strong black woman and she would let you know when she was upset with you. Okay. All right. To curtail that and to send to and to and to one stigmatize those individuals that fall into this characterization. Right. Does just as much damage as all the other stereotypes, because one, it denies a woman, a black woman, in this case of the full range of human emotions.
Okay, not one, not two, but the full range. Okay. All right. Not stereotypical and falling into this category versus this category versus this category. But again the full range of human emotions okay. Not gendered, not sexualized, not objectified, but how you feel at that time. That’s an aspect to freedom, sir. Okay. Who gets to tell me how I feel?
Okay. All right. Who has that right? And this is what I’m challenging in that section. No one has that right. And besides, we’re taking a sliver of one’s personality. What might have happened at this one moment with this one person and using this to define you in totality? No, sir. You are at that moment you’re angry.
Okay, but guess what? I see you with that kid and you’re loving. I see you with your husband, and you make me stir. Okay? I see you running for president of the United States. And I see that you’re intelligent. Okay? And aggressive and eager to serve the people. And by the way, even as we speak, there are those that would want to characterize her into, in terms of Kamala Harris, and put her into some type of stereotypical race, gender bags and she defies all of those definitions by saying, you know what?
I’m not limited to your to your small mind or stereotypical roles. I’m a full fledged human being, okay? And that’s what it’s all about.
RK: Towards the end of your book, you acknowledge that Martin Luther King Jr’s famous I have a dream speech still fosters hope. But you wonder whether we need new dreams, new dreamers even. What are these dreams and how can they translate to systemic change?
RDC: Is interesting thing. The young people today, we need to listen to them and their dreams. Okay. Our job as older people within society. The scriptures say that your young will dream dreams. Okay? And your old will prophesise. Our job, by the way, is to help the young people not only to dream, but empower them to make those dreams a reality.
Okay, what are those dreams? I don’t know, okay? It is for our current young children that are just now infants. Okay. To to to be empowered to have the best education and access to resources that we as a, as the wealthiest country in the world. There’s no reason why our children aren’t, all of our children aren’t the best educated that literally America could buy.
Okay. All right. Only when that happens can we look and see. Oh, wow. Look at what they’re doing. Okay, look at what they’re doing. Okay. I mean, we thought AI was something they, they got AI standing on its head. That’s old history. Okay. That’s ancient history. Okay. All right, I just, I what we need to be able to guarantee is that all humans endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights of life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness.
Those three, by the way, translate into the capacity to dream and the power to realize those dreams. And then the joy that comes from living out those dreams.
RK: Thank you, thank you. Rodney, thanks so much for talking about, I absolutely loved digging into your book with you today. Thank you so much for being so generous with your time. And, I’m going to let everyone know where to find your book in a moment. I just wanted to ask first, is there any where we can find you online?
RDC: You know what I tell people? That I am the most public person that you’ll ever, come across. You see my name right there? You do a Google search. Okay. I’m at Miami University of Ohio. Okay. but I’m also on all kinds of other, locations and places. Look me up, send me an email. I love to, I respond to all of them within 3 or 4 weeks. All right. But, but also, wherever you are, whoever you are, I want you to dream, I want you to help others to dream and to live out those dreams.
RK: We will. Thank you. Rodney. ‘Critical Race Theory and the Search for Truth’ by Rodney D. Coates is published by Bristol University Press. You can find out more about the book by going to bristoluniversitypress.co.uk and also transformingsociety.co.uk.