How to Talk about Black History When Diversity is Under Attack
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From KQED in San Francisco, I'm Alexis Madrigal. It was 99 years ago that Dr. Carter G. Woodson created a week for African American historical remembrance, which eventually grew into what we now call Black History Month. Gerald Ford officially recognized Black History Month in 1976, and the many stories of this time have diffused into the broader culture of the United States. But this year, it feels different.

The Trump administration's attacks on diversity, equity and inclusion have put a chill on the celebrations. We're going to talk about how we arrived at a place where honoring Black history is being questioned just five years after the so-called racial reckoning of 2020. It's all coming up next after this news.

Hey, Alexis Madrigal here. We've got a little pledge break going right now, so you get a little bonus on the pledge-free stream, podcast, or on our replay at night. I'm going to be writing some mini essays. We're calling the series "One Good Thing," and it's a doom loop antidote, little tributes to bits of Bay Area culture and geography. So each day during the pledge break, I'll have one for you right in this slot. Today, it's a particular way to get into the city.

There is an obvious answer to the best form of transportation to get into San Francisco, and that answer is the ferry. It doesn't really matter where you get on the ferry, Oakland, Alameda, Sausalito, Vallejo, whatever. The point is the ride, being out on the bay, seeing the barges and birds, opening up this other space.

I know that I'm a lover of the maritime world of our region, but on the ferry, the water transforms into something that connects us, actually, and reaches out to the greater expanses of the Pacific and the Earth and the Moon.

But of course, this is a human system and the destination is downtown San Francisco, the pulsing hub of the whole region, even in its current state. And there's this moment for me as you pass under the Bay Bridge where the whole city comes into full view and the ferry begins to line up for the drop-off and it's just dizzying, magical, futuristic.

It's easy for me to imagine it's a spaceship dropping me, not a ferry, and that before me rises a new civilization. It's a form of the sublime, the terror and beauty of the city and its hills and the canyons between its buildings.

This is not the little mushroom of awareness you get popping up from a BART station or the creeping filmstrip view from the Bay Bridge, a swipe at the majesty of the city from the side, just a little glance. This is the city in full, all before you.

By the time I clipper-card my way off the boat, I am dancing with urban anticipation of the feeling that the world is my oyster, that of all the humans ever to have lived, I am certainly one of the luckiest ever to be walking from the Shimmering Bay into San Francisco, surrounded by all the peoples of the Earth trying to build a livable future here at the end of the continent.

And all that I have to do to participate in this great artifact of humanity is to buy an ice cream cone or bustle into a building or hop on a bike or stop to listen to a busker or stare at a squadron of pelicans swooping low over the bay. That's the infinite optionality of the city as you arrive on the ferry. That's your one good thing this morning. Hey, welcome to Forum. I'm Alexis Madrigal.

Over the last four decades, many people have dedicated their lives to researching Black history and the history of American race relations. They have unearthed a mountain of evidence of institutional racism and so many examples of Black history that reflect grace under fire, transcending racial boundaries, and holding this country to its promises in a myriad of ways. Few things in our country are as clear as the thick streak of anti-Blackness twisted around the flagpole of the nation.

But, you know, this year feels different. The new administration has taken a variety of steps to make it harder to teach and therefore to know the lessons, grim and hopeful, of our country's racial history. This year, Black History Month feels like something we need more than ever. So today we talk with three different experts who each approach black history from a different angle about this new part of our nation's history and how they understand it today.

it within the black historical context. We're joined this morning by Adam Harris, a senior fellow with the Education Policy Program at New America, former education reporter for The Atlantic and author of The State Must Provide, Why America's Colleges Have Always Been Unequal and How to Set Them Right. Welcome, Adam. Thanks so much for having me.

We're also joined by Michael Herrett, who's a journalist, author, poet, and public historian. He's the author of Black AF History, The Unwhitewashed Story of America. Also co-founder of Contraband Camp, a subscription-based journalism project covering the intersection of race, politics, and culture. Welcome, Michael. Thank you for having me. And we're joined by Tiffany Caesar, who is assistant professor of Africana Studies here in the city at San Francisco State University. Welcome. Good morning, everyone. Good morning.

So, it is February. It is Black History Month. And, Michael, I'm going to start with you. I mean, does this month feel different for you in the midst of this new administration's policies and positions? I think the resistance to essentially everything black and how it's heard it under the newest term, whether it's CRT or DEI or WOKE,

Mm hmm.

Adam, this is the proclamation that President Trump put out for Black History Month. And I just wanted to get your reaction to it. I mean, this is a piece of it. Quote,

American heroes such as Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, Thomas Sowell, Justice Clarence Thomas, and countless others represent what is best in America and her citizens. Their achievements, which have monumentally advanced the tradition of equality under the law in our great country, continue to serve as an inspiration for all Americans. We will also never forget the achievements of American greats like Tiger Woods, who have pushed the boundaries of excellence in their respective fields, paving the way for others to follow.

Given the broader context that Michael was just talking about, what do we make of a of a proclamation like this? And it's kind of unusual set of people. Yeah. You know, it's interesting the way that the proclamation sort of ties black achievement sort of in that post civil rights era landscape.

to sort of political party identification or, you know, kind of harking back to a couple of years ago when people were saying sort of shut up and dribble, right? Celebrating athletes for their work in their respective fields. You know, as Michael was saying, right, this sort of effort from those proclamations to the executive orders are about sanitizing American history and sort of thinking about what sort of things can be

sort of put front and center there, right? You think about the states that banned Black people from learning to read in 1740 and then following suit on after that, Alabama charging people $500 for teaching a Black child to read, you know, Black people being banned from reading the Bible because they thought it would give them ideas of liberation. And so there's this like, there's this history of

Black education and the sort of uplift, and even in the original sort of proclamations around Negro History Week, Black History Month, they really sort of talked about, you know, the need to publish, for Black people to publish their history into this prejudiced world. Otherwise, that sort of prejudice would just continue to perpetuate itself. You know, Tiffany Caesar, one of the things that really strikes me about that paragraph of proclamation is it's got,

leaders from the abolition movement. It's got modern day people, but nobody from the civil rights movement, which is kind of striking given how prominent the civil rights movement has long been in Black History Month celebrations. What would you say about that? Well, I would say that, you know, it's not surprising, you know, when it comes to the current state of Black history and how Black history, Black culture, Black beings is being attacked.

In addition, when it comes to Black history, we have to constantly fight for it. We have to constantly fight for the inclusion and the relevancy of it. So not including, you know, the importance of the civil rights movement and the leaders that contributed towards, you know, freedom, towards change. To me, it's not surprising. And I think that's why at this particular moment, when we see the banning of these particular holidays, right, and the attacks,

on centuries of freedom, on centuries of resilience, is that now more than ever, we have to raise our voice and come together to say, hey, not only are we fighting for Black history, we're fighting for the totality of Black history. Michael, when I look at the way that federal agencies have responded to the new administration,

It seems like they've been pretty quick to cancel, you know, Black History Month programming and to to move away from the teaching of the totality of black history, as Tiffany put it.

Do you think that's like a durable thing or do you think that's just like they're just ducking right now while this administration is cutting everything? Well, I think that, again, you have to understand that, you know, America has always been in every federal agency. The education system has always been resistant to teaching black history. And when you...

Look at what is going on now with President Trump's executive orders. It reflects that lack of knowledge when you can divorce or dismiss things as DEI. It's because you don't understand the history of how white America treated people.

Black education, whether it was burning Emanuel A.M.B. down when they found out that people there were teaching enslaved people to read, or whether you consider the fact that we think that people couldn't teach slaves

enslaved people to read. But in reality, the laws were that you couldn't teach any free black person to read. If you don't know the history of redlining, if you don't know the history of Jim Crow, then you won't, you can divorce it from the projects and the policies that address these historical disparities and just heard it under the umbrella of DEI or wokeness because you don't know that history. Right.

Right. Like knowing the history is actually sort of destructive to that project of trying to say, well, why are cities the way they are? It's it's if you don't know that there's a structural racism baked into a lot of these things, then how can you make sense of the city other than, you know, it's the failure of Democrats or something like that?

Or the failure of black people. Or the failure of black people.

Because we don't tell them that, you know, we have studies that show that the average black child attends a school that is underfunded versus white children by $1,266 per year. And so you don't have to address a policy when you don't know that history. Yeah.

We're talking about the importance of Black History Month at a time when diversity is under attack with Michael Harriot, who is journalist, author, poet, and public historian, author of Black AF History, The Unwhitewashed Story of America, also joined by Tiffany Caesar, assistant professor of Africana Studies at SF State, and Adam Harris, a senior fellow with the Education Policy Program at New America. We'd love to hear from you. What does Black History Month mean to you this year? You can give us a call, 866-733-6786.

forum at kqed.org. We'll be back with more right after the break.

Turing with Tia is the quirky YouTube talk show where Tia Creighton is the host and all her guests are talking AI chatbots. Whether it's health and beauty, science and technology, pop culture, or current events, Turing with Tia delivers answers about everything. That's T-U-R-I-N-G, Turing with Tia, a funny and fascinating way to experience artificial intelligence. Only on YouTube at Turing with Tia.

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Welcome back to Forum. I'm Alexis Madrigal. We're talking about the importance of Black History Month at a time when diversity is under attack. Joined by Adam Harris, senior fellow with the education policy program at New America, also author of the book, The State Must Provide, Why America's Colleges Have Always Been Unequal and How to Set Them Right. Joined by Tiffany Caesar, assistant professor of Africana Studies at SF State. Michael Herriot, who is journalist, author, poet, public historian, author of Black AFH.

history. Love to hear from you. How has learning black history influenced you? What more do you want to learn about? You can give us a call. Number is 866-733-6786. That's 866-733-6786. You can email your comments and questions to forumkqed.org. You can find us on social media, Blue Sky, Instagram, we're kqedforum.com.

Adam, I wanted to look at the executive order that President Trump issued called Ending Racial Indoctrination in K-12 Schooling. And in it, it calls for and defines a, quote, patriotic education. So just quoting here.

On the definition, quote, patriotic education means a presentation of the history of America grounded in one inaccurate, honest, unifying, inspiring and ennobling characterization of America's founding and foundational principles to a clear examination of how the United States has admirably grown closer to its noble principles throughout its history.

Well, what's your take on this? As someone who studies education. Yeah. Yeah. You know, it's interesting because they tried a version of this at the tail end of the first Trump administration, right, where he established the 1776 commission. And there were those who said that, yeah,

We should wait on the 1776 Commission's report. Perhaps they really are just trying to ground us in a sort of civics education because, you know, if you harken back to the founders, you know, you could look at George Washington or Benjamin Rush or any sort of number of

the founding fathers, and they all sort of pushed for one of the same things, and that was sort of citizenship education. George Washington said in his first address before Congress that there's nothing that better deserves your patronage than the arts and the sciences because knowledge in every country.

is to share a basis of public happiness. Basically, the founders were thinking of a way to cultivate that idea of citizenship within its people. And so they thought that education was the best way to do so. So they sort of had their own version of patriotic education. But, you know, it

After looking at that 1776 report, kind of thinking through how the administration has dealt with race in the early stages of this administration, and then pieces like this, right? In the 1776 report, it says the civil rights movement was turned to programs that ran counter to the ideals of its founder right away, right? Basically arguing that all of the efforts to address that legacy of discrimination were

ran counter to the ideals of the civil rights movement. So in the piece of that description, it says, an accurate, honest, unifying, inspiring- Right, and ennobling. Exactly, and ennobling, right? It seems as if it will be portrayed more as a sort of jingoistic love of country, regardless of all of the misdeeds, and without knowing all of the misdeeds that are necessary to have a real robust understanding of America. Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, Tiffany Caesar, I feel like in the 1960s, when you see what people are saying about ethnic studies, you know, starting at SF State, you know, where you're a professor, the argument basically is that we've been taught a false history, a history that is perhaps unifying, inspiring and ennobling, but not actually accurate and honest.

And I guess, how do you feel as someone who teaches in the ethnic studies department, having the government basically say, we want our history to be both accurate and honest, but inspiring and ennobling? I am...

first of all, I'm very proud to be a part of San Francisco State University College of Ethnic Studies. As a professor of Africana Studies, the first Black Studies program created, right, due to the Black Student Union Third World Liberation student strike. And again, I would say that I'm not surprised, right? I'm not surprised at the controversy. I'm not surprised at the...

the divided statements of either or. We at San Francisco State University pride ourselves on truth. We pride ourselves on inclusivity and diversity and inclusion.

And though we do see these particular laws and policy occurring, our culture is not changing. We are still teaching multiple classes that are surrounding diverse populations. We still have many programs that encourage topics that are right now contested.

And I think that we have to just kind of continue in the tradition of the 1960s that the students did. Right. The students dismantled higher education because there was no inclusion of particularly black history. It started with black history. It started with the Black Student Union. Right.

And one of the things we have to understand is that the members of the Black Student Union, they were already mature in their activism. They came from the South where they were doing sit-ins, where they were protesting. Some of them were veterans, right? So they already had this history of, you know, protecting the U.S., but also coming back to America and feeling like their efforts were not, you know, really promoted anymore.

And so there is this spirit of activism within San Francisco State University that despite the challenges that we see concerning these legislations and these banning, it really does not stop the spirit. You know, Michael, there's also this question of, you know, inspiring and ennobling to whom, right? I mean, it feels like...

They're not every story is going to be inspiring and ennobling to every group of people. Right. Right. I think, though, black history and teaching it accurately can be inspiring and ennobling to everyone. Right. When you consider if you know how this country treated its black citizens, right.

And put that in context of the advances and the progress we've made today, that is what many white people refer to as the American dream. There is nothing in the history of this world that hasn't been lobbed at.

Black Americans and the fact that we are where we are today is an inspiration. And so by, you know, oppressing or suppressing the true history of this country, you don't you can't understand the American dream. You can't understand what this country and what its citizens have achieved. Right. Because you want to filter it.

through that white lens. You don't even know why there is a Black History Month if you don't know this, right? Carter G. Woodson would be considered woke today, right? He specifically, you know, he specifically created Black history because of these kinds of efforts. When you think about the things that, you know, this administration is doing now, right? It would have

They are defunding the organizations who actually promoted the first Black History Month. Omega Psi Phi was a college institution that Carter G. Woodson belonged to, to America.

spread to the world this idea of what was initially Negro History Week. And so because they don't know Black history and because they have filtered it through the lens of whiteness, we can't know the history of America, the inspirational part of America's story, and they can't understand what is going on now. Yeah.

You know, Adam Harris, you mentioned the 1776 Project, which was more or less a counter to Nicole Hannah-Jones' 1619 Project in the New York Times, right, which spurred his whole package and books and classroom curriculum and stuff, which was trying to deal with

The sort of the entanglement of slavery with the very founding of the country and its growth into what we now know as the United States of America. And without like sort of relitigating the 1619 Project, it's history. One of the things that I thought was really interesting about it, when you go back and you look at it, Nicole Hunter Jones is essentially making the argument that.

That, in fact, black history of resistance against racism is, in fact, an inspiring thing for the whole country because it was sort of forcing the country to enact its principles.

Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely. It was sort of showing the full face of America in order to show the resilience of people who built America is sort of inherently inspiring story, right? It's the idea that we've made it through so much before that we continue to fight to perfect this thing that did not love us.

Right. That, you know, black folks have have loved this country to be better. And so it was a sort of, as you mentioned, right, a direct response to that, in part because, you know, there is a sort of fear that white people have sort of associated with that race.

Fuller recounting of history, right? It's it's as we say that the past isn't that that far away, right? Yeah, exactly right my you know Clint Clint Smith has this really great line in

in How the Word is Passed that my grandfather sat on the lap of a man who was enslaved, right? And that's just that his grandfather's grandfather was enslaved. And so that's not that long ago. And so there's this like interesting implication that where basically their families can also be implicated in the way that black people's families are implicated in, you know,

trying to fight against the sort of oppressive structures. There are also implications for those whose families were trying to fight to keep those oppressive structures in place.

You know, Michael, one of the things I find so strange about this month and this time right now is if we just step back to 2020, it seemed like there was truly widespread interest from all kinds of people to at least learn something about the histories of racial discrimination. You know, like not necessarily racism as an interpersonal dynamic, but as a kind of structural feature of the world. And now it seems like I see...

very few at least governmental or like corporate or, you know, it just seems like a lot of that energy is gone. How do you see this kind of progress backlash dynamic? Well, when you think about 2020, it wasn't as if America woke up one day and realized, oh, we haven't been doing enough. They were strong armed people.

into those positions, right? We were strong-armed. America was strong-armed into offering all of its citizens the right to participate in democracy. America was strong-armed into, you know, rethinking the most inhumane system of capital human subjugation in the history of the world. All of that, none of that was an aha moment and neither was 2020. They were forced to

And it goes back to what we were saying earlier, is that like no battle is won. We have to keep fighting. We thought we had a Voting Rights Act until it was dismantled in 2012. We have to always keep fighting for these things because there is always a

a section of this country who is trying to undo that progress, which is what we're seeing now. So we were never a country who said we will treat America's history with the dignity and respect

and importance that it deserves. And we are not the country that wants to dismantle all of the progress we made since 2020 or since 1965 or since 1865. We're somewhere in between. And understanding history will teach us where we are. Tiffany, how do you see the 2020 to 2025 era here, like kind of the difference in polarity?

It reminds me of after the Civil War, right? You know, I...

the stark differences that occurred right after the Civil War, right? You know, we have Reconstruction. We have this wonderful time period in which we see an increase of Black political thought. We see an increase in educational institution, an increase in Black people feeling as if for one moment, you know, in their lives that they can be a part of the American thread, right?

And then, you know, we have the 1870s in which the troops are pulled out. And then we have the increase of white supremacy, lynching, you know, economic, you know, dismantling. False history of the Confederacy. Yeah. Economic dismantling of everything that these black people worked so hard to get. Right. And it was just, you know, you build this house and then you watch it burn. Right.

So 2020 to 2025, we're watching we're watching the burning right of all this work that we did to to try to bring awareness to police brutality, to disenfranchisement, right, to racism and things of that nature. But yet I would say there's still this glimmer of hope. Right. We rebuild. Right.

You know, Black people are known to rebuild and recreate and transition and evolve. And so in the midst of watching this particular fire occur, you know, we are also planning for the next move, the next move of liberation, you know, the next fight, the next dismantling of this hierarchy that must be stopped. Yeah. Yeah.

You know, Adam, I was remembering from your book the kind of strategies that people took, like particularly legally, right? That there would be just kind of – I kind of remember it as sort of like a battering ram. Like it would just be like one. They'd bounce off, they'd bounce off, they'd bounce off, and eventually they'd win like a legal victory against Jim Crow and the system that developed after Reconstruction. Yeah, yeah, no, exactly. It was, you know, a –

Like I said, sort of long march, right? You think about all of the cases that built up to the cases that became Brown v. Board of Education. So the Lloyd Gaines case in Missouri, which fundamentally established that you had to at least have a separate institution because the lie of separate but equal was that not only was not it was not only that

the schools were not equal. It was also that at times they did not have a separate school for the black students to attend, right? And so if you wanted to go to dental school in Missouri, you were just kind of out of luck. You were a black student trying to go to law school in Oklahoma, you were out of luck. And so there was a sort of really interesting legal strategy that was to tear down at the sort of principles that were undergirding the lie of separate but equal little by little

And what we've seen in the sort of early weeks of this administration, where we are about a month in now, is this sort of push, this early push among advocacy groups to start suing, to either block some of these actions that will have detrimental effects on education, higher education, and the rest of sort of American society. And

those cases in some places be successful in court. We're talking about the importance of Black History Month at a time when diversity is under attack. Adam Harris, senior fellow with the Education Policy Program at New America, joins us. He's the author of the book, The State Must Provide, where America's colleges have always been unequal and how to set them right. Also got Tiffany Caesar, assistant professor of Africana Studies at SF State, and Michael Harriot, who is journalist, author, poet, and public historian, author of Black AF History Month.

What does Black History Month mean to you this year? I mean, how are you commemorating? Give us a call. Number is 866-733-6786. That's 866-733-6786. You can also email forum at kqed.org. You can find us on social media. Here's a couple of comments that have come.

been coming in. One listener writes,

Chirt writes in to say, this attempted erasure of black history infuriates me. We should be taking more time learning this history and not ignoring it. I've made a practice to read at least a few books a year about black history and other marginalized folks and recently read John Lewis's autobiography. I think the reason the Trump administration wants us to forget and overlook these histories, because if the masses see how unjust, violent and small minded these histories are, there will be uprisings everywhere against the current people in power. I'm Alexis Madrigal. Stay tuned for more right after the break.

Turing with Tia is the quirky YouTube talk show where Tia Creighton is the host and all her guests are talking AI chatbots. Whether it's health and beauty, science and technology, pop culture, or current events, Turing with Tia delivers answers about everything.

That's T-U-R-I-N-G, Turing with Tia, a funny and fascinating way to experience artificial intelligence. Only on YouTube at Turing with Tia. Support for KQED Podcasts comes from Star One Credit Union, now offering real-time money movement with instant pay. Make transfers and payments instantly between financial institutions, online or through Star One's mobile app. Star One Credit Union, in your best interest.

Welcome back to Forum. Alexis Madrigal here. We're going to get to more of your calls and comments in this part of the show. We're talking about the importance of Black History Month with a senior fellow with the Education Policy Program at New America, Adam Harris, Michael Herrett, a journalist and author, poet and public historian, and Tiffany Caesar, assistant professor of Africana Studies at San Francisco State University.

As we talk about, like, you know, the importance of recalling these histories, I thought maybe we'd just go around the horn and have you each tell us a piece of Black history that you feel like at this particular moment feels, you know, particularly relevant and that you want to share with people. You want to start here, Tiffany? Thank you so much. I...

I live in the Bay Area, and there are so many wonderful institutions that you can support. And so one of the things I would say is by frequenting these particular cultural heritage institutions, like the Black Panther Party Museum that just opened in Oakland, the West Oakland Mirror Project, going to the San Francisco Public Library African American Center, but also making sure that you...

support local black press with the San Francisco Bayview National Black Newspaper, right, that has been chronicling what's happening in the Bay Area for years. And so it's

One of the things that brings me joy is even despite the challenges that we're seeing, I live in an area in which I can actively go out my door and encounter Black history. And I encourage everyone to do that within their own community. Yeah. African American Museum and Library in Oakland, too, is really great. I mean, so many oral histories and bits of the

like the history of the black community in the East Bay. And I also love at San Francisco Public Library too, The Spokesman was a paper in the late 60s, early 70s that covered a lot of black history in Bayview Hunters Point. It's amazing because it's like everything from people's birthdays to like rats in a housing project to like, you know, all these different individual components of life.

all that are shared in the paper. Michael Herrett, how about you? Is there a particular story you think speaks to this moment? - Well, the story that is to me is most relevant is that in 1868, after the Civil War, when states were instructed to rewrite their constitution to be accepted back into the Union, the majority black constitutional delegation of South Carolina, which was a majority black state,

create literally created what we now call the American education system. They guaranteed in its constitution the right of everyone to receive an education, how states split education into school districts and have superintendents. It's a creation of Black Americans

Right. It had never existed before constitutionally guaranteed until black people created it. So this whole conversation is a part of black history, but also part of black history is that after they did it.

5% of the schools that black people built in America were burned to the ground right after Reconstruction. And so this is instructive to understanding what we are seeing today. And again, those schools weren't separate, weren't unequal. The schools...

30 percent of the children in the South went to schools that were built by their communities and not funded by the state. They were they were essentially black owned and black run. So that is the importance of education that black people gave to America and not vice versa. I did not know that piece of history. Thank you so much for that. I mean, Adam Harris, how about you?

I think I'm going to come back to the Ada Louise Simple Fisher piece because I think that, well, so many people know the stories of, you know, thinking about Brown v. Board of Education, thinking about sort of Little Rock, even thinking, even if you're thinking about Tennessee and the Clinton 12, not as many people know Ada Louise Simple Fisher. And she was

You know, valedictorian of her high school class, right? She had the sort of resume that could have now sort of got you into Harvard or any other college you wanted in the country. But because she was black, right, she went to University of Arkansas Pine Bluff. I guess it was Arkansas A&M back then. And then transferred to Langston University in 1942. And, yeah.

You know, she ultimately became one of the names on one of the big desegregation cases that was a precursor to Brown v. Board of Education. That case didn't make it to the Supreme Court until 1949. Yeah.

Well, I guess it finished at the Supreme Court in 1949. But this was, you know, six, seven years that she was really fighting to get into this institution, to get the education that the state was legally required to offer her. And so I just think about the length of these fights. Yeah, the long fight, yeah. Yeah, yeah. How hard and what these people sacrificed in order to, you know, make this a more perfect union, right? To live up to the ideals of democracy.

of the founding document. - Let's bring in Kathleen in Nevada. Welcome, Kathleen. - Yes, I was, that was a, I'm very passionate about this subject. Just a moment, please. - Oh, sure. - I heard someone say they were trying to erase black history, and I don't think that that's quite accurate. I think what they're trying to erase

is the history of America. America within the history of America is Black history, from the first items sold on Wall Street where Black Americans are slaves, people in the White House by personal means,

knowledge of one another. People who work there may even, I'm sure, somehow shaped what the leaders thought and how they maybe tried to make changes because they watched these people being diligent and respectful and all the things they did, all the creations, all the

all the ways that we help build America. Those are the things that they're trying not to show. And there's also some shame in the way black Americans are treated. So it's the, I don't want to look at the shame. And we don't really want to change because even the history of history books in American schools doesn't show true history, not only true black history, but true American history. So there's

entire hundreds of years of false narrative. So, black history. Thank you so much. I'll let you catch your breath there. Thanks so much for sharing that with us. I mean, I think...

Maybe I'll come to you on this, Tiffany. I mean, there is such a tradition of excluding this history that even though, you know, ethnic studies programs got rolling in the 1960s, you know, as Kathleen notes, there was a long time where it was much more difficult to contest some of these narratives about this country. I love the fact that she said black history is American history.

One thing we have to constantly affirm is that the United States is diverse. It's made of many people.

When America was created, you know, Christopher Columbus, you know, that long narrative of he created and, you know, found the United States. But there was indigenous people already here. And then, you know, we have so many more people coming into the United States. Our history is made of diverse people. And so it's absolutely correct to say when you attack black history, when you attack blackness,

Latino/Latino history, when you attack Arabic history, when you attack women's and gender studies,

you're attacking the core of what the United States is built on. We have a foundation. Our foundation of the United States is built on diversity, equity, and inclusion. We would not exist if we didn't have those particular issues. So absolutely, I just wanted to say I affirm that, you know, when we are erasing Black history, we are in fact erasing American history. Mm-hmm.

Michael, you know, Jeff over on Blue Sky writes to say, I'm concerned that too often white folks acknowledgement of Black History Month becomes a celebration of the, quote, exceptional black person, which itself can be a form of racism. How do you try and address this in kind of your own work? I always point out that when we talk about the first black congress,

blah, blah, blah, right? The first Black person to graduate from Harvard, right? I always think it is important to note why that person is the first, not because there weren't any more exceptional people before this person graduated from Harvard, but because white people would not let her or let them into Harvard, right? That is the history of America, right? And so,

we overcame a thing that was structural and systemic that white people embedded

And when I say white people, right, like we can talk about the indigenous people for some reason. We could talk about, you know, the enslaved people, the black people, the Latino people. But for some reason, there's a problem with saying white people. Right. But it is a system that was created for and by white people that.

created the obstacles that that first black person or that black excellence example of black excellence had to overcome. And I think it is important every time we mention what these black people achieved, we have to also mention that.

what they overcame. Superman isn't a superhero because he has super strength. It's because he defeats the villains why we love him, right? Like we wouldn't read a comic book with him burning wood with his eyes to make a campfire. He has to defeat something, which is what makes him a hero. And the reason these people are heroes are...

partly because of the villains they defeated to get where they achieve, get what they achieved. So true. I mean, it is one of those fascinating things, but so many, um, stories tend to exclude someone's, you know, battling some racist system, but it kind of excludes the actual system itself. And it just becomes just about the person rather than like why it was that person was had to, you know, execute that superhero status. Um,

Got a couple of comments here I want to get to. Elizabeth writes,

M.K. writes, when I was in fifth grade in the 70s, my teacher read Black Like Me by John Howard Griffin. I believe the book had the intended simple impact. Imagine walking in another's shoes. The experience of daily life is very different depending on the color of your skin. I don't even know what to say about the fact that this book would now most likely be banned from most elementary school curricula.

This is a fundraising period for KQED Public Radio. For more information about how to support KQED, go to kqed.org. I'm Alexis Madrigal. You know, Adam, I wanted to take up the point of that last comment with you, which is what do we know about how our actual schools are responding to this kind of flurry of executive orders and other things?

Yeah, I think so far what we've seen is, you know, basically institutions are historically risk averse. And so if it seems like they are going to be sued, if it seems like they're going to lose federal funding, despite the fact that no institution, no sort of four year higher education institution is lost.

Title IV funding based on a Title VI discrimination violation, even when states were, according to the government, out and out segregating institutions more than two decades after Brown v. Board of Education. They never lost funds for a Title VI violation. And so I think that schools are...

very sort of nervous. There have been a lot of association leaders who have basically said with regards to admissions in particular, right, if you are running an admission system that

follows the letter of the law as it was handed down and, you know, students for fair admission versus Harvard, then you're good. You just, if you stay with that, that is the letter of the law. In some ways, because some of the executive orders, some of the dear colleague letters have just far outstripped what the law is actually saying. And so there is

a lot of concern. There's a lot of fear. There's a lot of, you know, we've seen places pause budgets, not try to spend too much money given the potential NSF and NIH funding freezes. But basically, there's just a lot of worry and confusion around both higher education and K through 12 because there's

This thought that they don't necessarily know what is going to be enforceable and what is going to be enforced as opposed to just sort of conjecture. Seems like some of that chaos is kind of the point, too. Let's let's bring in Ruth in Sebastopol. Welcome, Ruth.

Hi, my name is Ruth, and I just wanted to thank you for this show. It's very, very inspiring. I'm Jewish, and I was raised in New York, where there was a lot of anti-Semitism, and my parents were discriminated against. So I know that, I kind of understand, they always had friends of different cultures, and that was really important growing up, and they fought for all the rights of everybody. I also want to say that

I celebrate Women's History Month, and I have black friends that say, you know, we live 365 days out of the year, as women do, as we all do, so it's American history. I totally agree. There's a wonderful museum called the MOAD, the Museum of African Diaspora, which is on Mission Street, and it's a great museum with lots of great art and music and family days, and so I encourage people to go visit and see where the diaspora was. And also, I work

with artists in the schools and bring music, dance, theater. And I work with a group called Sova So, who are the singers with Bobby McFerrin. And they do a wonderful, wonderful school show on Black History Month and sing songs from Africa, from the South, from the current day. And so I, you know, I love that. And that's a really important way to educate all of us, not just kids. So thank you for this show. Yeah, I appreciate you sharing those resources. Thanks. Thanks so much.

You know, Tiffany, as a scholar, I know you've got a couple of books in the hopper right now. Are you concerned at all about the future of scholarship that's specifically focused on black people in history? I am very concerned because as a scholar, I have the right to write books.

and express myself freely. However, freedom of speech is being attacked right now. Censorship is being attacked right now. As a person who looks at the Black population historically, a person who talks about Black women's leadership, a person who talks about reparations and all these other things that are pertinent to the global Black community, there is a real fear that I might be censored. So when it comes to the books that I am currently working on,

I do feel this pressure to get them out because as much as I want to be hopeful and I want to be, I guess, optimistic about the freedom that we have and that nothing is really going to happen. If this too shall pass, I am also reminded again of reconstruction and what happened after reconstruction. And I do feel like this is a now or never type of thing. And so to be in spaces where,

like this particular podcast, to share the narrative of Black history, to write books that include the narrative of California reparations and the work of Black women who own African-centered institutions, it must be done. At the same time, we also have to continue to create these networks so that we can advocate and fight for our right to speak freely when it comes to what's going on in the U.S. Yeah.

It's a good place to end it. We've been talking about the importance of Black History Month at a time when diversity is under attack with Tiffany Caesar, assistant professor of Africana Studies at San Francisco State University. Thanks so much for joining us, Tiffany. Thank you. We've also been joined by Michael Herrett, journalist, author, poet, public historian. You should check out his book, Black AF History, The Unwhitewashed Story of America. Thanks for joining us, Michael.

Thank you for having me. And we've been joined by Adam Harris, a senior fellow with the education policy program, New America, former education reporter for The Atlantic and author of The State Must Provide, Why America's Colleges Have Always Been Unequal and How to Set Them Right. Thank you so much, Adam. Thanks for having me, Alex. I'm Alexis Madrigal. Stay tuned for another hour of Form Ahead with Mina Kim. ♪

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