#10 | Racial (In)Justice in Authoritarian Times

00:00:14: And welcome, in the name of Howe Hebelamoufa to our tenth episode on justice.

00:00:22: Our discursive series that we co-curate with a famous legal and human rights organization ECCHR The European Center for Constitutional Human Rights.

00:00:35: I'm Margarita Tzomu.

00:00:36: I am curator for theory and discourse here at The Howell Co-Curator of this series.

00:00:45: So the constellation of today's guests speaks directly, I would say to the objective of this series.

00:00:53: We started in order to investigate whether and how law can be a vehicle for justice... ...in civil society.

00:01:02: And we started it at that moment where we felt threats by authoritarian drift that puts pressure on civil rights, an artistic freedom of expression or freedom of assemblage and international law.

00:01:17: And now two years into the series, we find ourselves in a political moment that resonates with what Kimberly Crenshaw writes about today.

00:01:28: She describes our retrenchment of progressive institutional achievements for racial and gender justice.

00:01:37: And Crenshaw points out backlashes like this are not an exception but actually a repeated phenomenon in US history for black civil rights movements.

00:01:52: The question he says is not if there's the backlash or not, how effective and long it will be?

00:02:00: As we know, she introduced us or she invented the concepts of intersectionality and critical race theory.

00:02:09: And provided all with tools to understand how also democratic and legal institutions have been producing structural inequality in racism.

00:02:20: She also provided us with tools on how to transform these structures And some of us would not have their positions or wouldn't stand on that stage today if it was for her to equip social struggles with arguments, analysis and policy.

00:02:37: Right?

00:02:39: She says.

00:02:40: the redemption two point zero targets this very two concept.

00:02:46: This is what she shows in a book that intersectionality and critical race theory are specifically targeted by the US administration today, erasing banning vocabulary, banning policy programs abolishing institutional infrastructures for equity diversity and inclusion with argument of reverse discrimination.

00:03:12: And we all know here in this space that we hear these arguments more also Germany at home.

00:03:20: So Alice Huster's and Genghis Baskanmas are here tonight to attest that what Kimberley Crenshaw is describing for US, it also happening in Germany.

00:03:33: There is political forces demanding the abolition of these structures to abolish equity.

00:03:41: Commissioners are demanding to abolished whole fields of studies, gender studies post-colonial studies race studies in universities and so on.

00:03:50: So I could not imagine better conversation partners for Crenshaw than Alice and Jengies And let me introduce them briefly before I welcome them on stage.

00:04:02: So, Jengis Barskanmas is one of Germany's leading and have to say the few anti-discrimination scholars for law in critical race theory.

00:04:13: He is a professor of Law & Social Work at the University of Applied Science in Fulda.

00:04:19: he is here tonight because has been working with Kimberley as her former student.

00:04:25: He leads the project Inclusive Administration, which is part of this study Institutions and Racism at The Research Institute for Social Cohesion.

00:04:33: And he has written the first book on racism in law in Germany.

00:04:38: Of course you all know Alice Huster as an author and cultural critic from her vastly received

00:04:45: books

00:04:46: Was weiße Menschen nicht über Rassismus hören wollen?

00:04:49: or Her newest book Anti-Opfer?

00:04:52: Her work has traced with precision how Germany processes and so often refuses to process its own structures of racial and gendered exclusion.

00:05:03: So let me end it.

00:05:04: in her epilogue, Kimberly Crenshaw quotes Toni Morrison saying that racism and fascism are two succubus twins.

00:05:13: And I quote Before there is a final solution There must be first solution A second one Even third.

00:05:24: The move toward a final solution is not a jump.

00:05:29: It takes one step, then another than another end of quote and we would like dear audience to hope that We with you together will try And continue to be attentive and to resist every Of these steps.

00:05:48: thank You and welcome our guests.

00:05:58: Good evening Berlin.

00:06:00: My name is Cengiz Barskanmas and together with Alice we will be moderating this event as a trialogue.

00:06:11: We would like to engage Kim on the basis of her newly published book, we'd like talk about racial justice or slash racial injustices in authoritarian times.

00:06:28: But let me first introduce you, Professor Dr.

00:06:33: Kimberley Crenshaw.

00:06:36: Maybe I should keep this part short because it is a very long part and I highly assume that many of you already know Kim and Kim's body of work.

00:06:49: but still maybe just couple of few words to Kim.

00:06:53: Kim is a professor at two universities, ever since she is professor if I'm not wrong.

00:07:00: At UCLA School of Law where there's a critical race studies program and If i am not misinformed the only Critical Race Studies Program so far?

00:07:12: At least in law faculty.

00:07:14: And same time She Is a Law Professor at Columbia Law School Very important Recently, I was recently informed that the African American Policy Forum where she is Executive and Founding Director already exists thirty years.

00:07:38: And...I didn't know that to be honest!

00:07:41: It thought it something about one decade but not sure what i missed there.

00:07:48: yeah maybe we'll find out Margarita mentioned in her introduction that Kimberly Crenshaw conceived, coined introduced the concept of intersectionality.

00:08:01: At the same time she is also co-founder of The School Of Thought I would say critical race theory and it was my honor to work with Kim after being with her at Columbia Law School building a sort of network called the critical race theory Europe.

00:08:24: Which means that Kim has been traveling couple times to Germany and therefore I am very, very much excited.

00:08:34: Kim again will have conversation in German context.

00:08:41: We started the conversation many, many years ago.

00:08:45: You are informed what is going on in the German context and of course our conversations.

00:08:53: I will also give a couple examples so that we have transatlantic dialogue as well.

00:09:01: So to put it other words... ...we're here tonight because The U.S.-American context and the German context are two very important contexts in which authoritarian dynamics take place, therefore it is highly interesting to see associations where we can see connections about a context shortly through this event.

00:09:35: It is going to be a trialogue, as we said.

00:09:40: I am very honoured that we have Alice Hacer's here and both of us did our homework.

00:09:49: We read the book And... Exactly!

00:09:54: So we've made lots of notes which is the reason why we are convinced that this trialogue should take place at a stage, and we thought as you might not have read the book... At the end of conversation.

00:10:17: there will unfortunately be no occasion to ask questions.

00:10:23: However I know how events so far.

00:10:28: We will go afterwards to have some drinks and grab some food, I'm sure we'll get opportunities there for conversation.

00:10:39: In the hope that I am not forgetting anything... ...I would like to give the floor to my colleague Alice.

00:10:51: Thank you very much for introducing this... Evening.

00:10:56: Hello Kimberly Crenshaw We are so excited that you're here and You.

00:11:05: we start with your book because I feel like if watched a couple of interviews with you And there's so many people who want to talk about.

00:11:13: There is some many things to talk, but then i feel sometimes The book it's like people don't even get to the books that we start with a book now because from there.

00:11:24: There are so many discussions that we can have.

00:11:27: and What struck me?

00:11:29: also you?

00:11:31: You're known for your work for your theory, but you're also an incredible writer Because it was such.

00:11:40: I Was such a joy to read this book And it felt very nourishing because I can imagine that in this moment, it feels so fragile and there's such a backlash.

00:11:58: The question is what to say now?

00:12:02: What do you bring into these

00:12:04: moments?".

00:12:07: You chose a memoir but also distinguish between memoir and black memoir.

00:12:19: It's not a sub-genre, but there is difference.

00:12:31: I would love for you to explain why your work brought you to reflect on life.

00:12:42: What made you choose this genre?

00:12:45: and this form.

00:12:48: Well, thank you and before I get started.

00:12:51: I want to think both of you for taking up this challenge This task this conversation Of reading on behalf of everybody else who hasn't had an opportunity To do so.

00:13:04: And my goodness what?

00:13:06: An amazing thing too.

00:13:08: Two have the opportunity to do with you all in all of you.

00:13:12: So i wanna Thank Everybody Who made this possible.

00:13:17: And it's so affirming because I have to say that, I asked myself many times over the... Many years.

00:13:26: I was writing this is This The Thing That I Need To Be Doing Now?

00:13:31: Is This The Work That The Moment Is Calling To be Created?

00:13:37: and It Was a Hard question to answer given the fact that over five years I've been working on this, we have moved from a period of racial reckoning after George Floyd and Breonna Taylor were both killed by American police creating largest social justice movement in American history.

00:14:09: And perhaps one of the most significant and profound ones that reached outside its borders.

00:14:16: So, that was a tremendous moment of energy... ...and collective trauma in collected demands That just pushed racial justice discourse sort of decades ahead where it had been clearly beyond the myth post-racialism to something else, and that something was using a new grammar.

00:14:46: It words that came out of some of my work.

00:14:50: So intersectionality was often being used in protest to bring awareness of the fact that anti-blackness, across gendered reality uh...that not only impacted men of color African American men but women as well.

00:15:07: That's where say her name came from so much.

00:15:11: this worked with generative at that moment.

00:15:14: And then that created this tremendous backlash.

00:15:19: I have to say, but was not surprised about the back lash.

00:15:24: my very first article is called race reform and retrenchment so typical dynamic in which forward momentum is meant by a push backward.

00:15:36: And sometimes that pushed backwards goes deeper and further, lasts longer than the momentary push forwards.

00:15:44: so I knew it was coming The question how to respond when it arrived.

00:15:52: And so much of the backlash was distorting the ideas, telling different stories about critical race theory and intersectionality.

00:16:02: Some of those stories produced a dialogue about critical-race theory that labeled it as un-American, labelled it as divisive, labeled it an abstraction... that was cooked up in an Ivy Tower somewhere and labeled it as coming from out of the country.

00:16:27: So, at that moment I could have written a treatise or theoretical sort of defense off-the work but it seemed to me piece of the critical race genre that we were just starting to give voice too, was perhaps what I was trying of a couple of parents, I'd say.

00:17:01: It's clearly subgenre critical race theory because the stories that I tell reflect the role law has played in shaping structures and institutions around race.

00:17:26: racial hierarchy and racial power is.

00:17:29: Where does that take place?

00:17:31: How do we find it, how to know when you see

00:17:33: it?".

00:17:34: That's not a theoretical discovery – here marries with a longer tradition of memoir that is written by racialized subjects.

00:17:54: So when we think about Malcolm X's memoir, James Baldwin, George Jackson and Angela Davis these are all are a subgenre of traditional memoirs, in the sense that they're about discovery.

00:18:18: They are about life experiences that our lesson delivering and also character making but in the context of a history and institutions that have created very narrow limited space for people who are racialized as black.

00:18:46: So they're talking about these questions, we're talking law question but not from stories up or down.

00:18:55: so my book is an attempt to find the intersections between traditional memoir, memoir that deals with racial themes and structures.

00:19:11: And racial themes in structures as presented by and seen through legal encounters.

00:19:17: so that's kind of what I was trying to do.

00:19:20: Yeah!

00:19:22: To me it makes a lot sense because As The Backlash also you already mentioned contains a lot of these accusations that it being so detached from actual life and its theoretical, hypothetical which is not true.

00:19:44: but we need text and reminders.

00:19:46: It becomes clear in your memoir.

00:19:50: I personally also, I loved it because you have this line and maybe I'm paraphrasing but say... You're born in fifty-nine so at some point that you are the younger siblings of civil rights and antiwar movement.

00:20:16: You come into the world.

00:20:18: It's this sixty.

00:20:19: so the civil rights movement is in like a full swing, but you are child.

00:20:26: and So The activism that you know.

00:20:31: there's the historical like the pictures that we have of you know Selma and Martin Luther King And In Washington and stuff all that happened when you were very little.

00:20:46: You are brought up in a world where it's kind of like post So rights act being passed and there is, It feels like you remember when Martin Luther King Jr.

00:21:01: got shot at Malcolm X died but Like...it seems that the movement is retrieving.

00:21:09: But here you are And I feel like that generation the accomplishments and what they're dealing with is a little bit forgotten.

00:21:18: because this, um... And I'm so glad that you wrote this down also.

00:21:24: Because my mother's part of that generation My mother she was like the little sister of an older brother.

00:21:32: It felt there are many things So many moments which shaped her life.

00:21:40: they're not really told yet.

00:21:42: So I think this work is also continuing a story and filling in the gap that we haven't looked at so much, but can you maybe talk about it?

00:22:05: In the book, you talk about... You are in school with also white students.

00:22:14: You live and come from a middle-class family.

00:22:18: it feels like could be everything is already done basically but that's not your experience

00:22:27: Not at all.

00:22:32: I'm really delighted the book landed that way, you know for you because I did want to fill in some pieces of this story about battle and struggle that had to happen after.

00:22:59: And frankly, the fact a lot of the warriors who believed this struggle for inclusion was basically over when segregation fell is... The tension between them part of the story, too.

00:23:20: I mean in their view just getting into the institution was sort of end-of-the-story but many of them had never gone to these institutions like Thurgood Marshall didn't go to Harvard Law School.

00:23:33: so he wasn't fully aware.

00:23:37: For the German audience it's the first supreme... the First Black Supreme Justice.

00:23:43: Oh, The Supreme Court?

00:23:45: And you argued Brown

00:23:47: versus Board of Education which brought down formal segregation.

00:23:51: so there's a generational dimension uh...of these civil rights movement and racial justice movements that in many ways is lost when we are now engaging in contemporary struggle about what what the current value of that legacy is, What Is The Capital That Has Been Created?

00:24:14: There's a whole piece Of It.

00:24:17: People Don't Really Understand.

00:24:19: So I Very Much Wanted To Speak to That And Identify Critical Race Theory and Intersectionality As The Product Of This Next Generation's Encounter With Afterlife Of Segregation Which Is As Real as The Life of Segregations.

00:24:38: post-segregationist society, which is different from a society that never was a segregationist society.

00:24:45: It's a subgenre of the kind of society and we were encountering it as we were matriculating into newly desegregated institutions.

00:25:00: So a lot of the stories emerge from that reality, this story about being in high school play written by The Great Lorraine Hansberry called To Be Young Gifted In Black.

00:25:14: It's beautiful play and has roles for It's a multi-racial cast, but in the newly integrated school there were white parents who thought that play was racist because it is called to be young gifted and black.

00:25:30: So they cancelled the play and restaged another one instead which supposedly race neutral.

00:25:38: And so I went from having the opening starring role as Lorraine Hansberry in that play.

00:25:53: to playing a maid who serenades Professor Higgins as he tries to create the ideal woman.

00:26:02: I mean, it was sexist.

00:26:04: It was everything but- To

00:26:05: The White Parents had felt way more race neutral

00:26:08: for you... Race neutral?

00:26:10: Yeah For me to play the maid.

00:26:13: So these were just many of the stories that made it clear That racial power can exist beyond the formal, legal white-only signs that are clearly seen in a post segregationist society as expressions of racial power.

00:26:35: People get that but they don't get it at.

00:26:45: white self-perception can be deeply embedded in institutions, even when they don't announce themselves to be so.

00:26:54: So all of these were the kind of stories that those of us who watched The Civil Rights Movement unfold had a sense it had something do with that stuff but we are ones experiencing.

00:27:12: It's also important to remember, and this is something that I credit my mother for making clear to me.

00:27:21: Even as i was growing up —and especially now— there is this perception... ...that the problem happened a long time ago!

00:27:30: A LONG TIME

00:27:31: AGO!!!

00:27:32: And why are we still talking about it?

00:27:35: Why're we still inserting into spaces in which, obviously is no longer relevant.

00:27:43: Well... In my lifetime I was born in a state of unfreedom.

00:27:49: when i was born Um, it was still legal to prohibit people of different races from marrying.

00:27:57: It would still legal To refuse to sell your home to someone Of a different race?

00:28:03: It was still illegal to adopt policies and practices that excluded People From employment on the basis of race .It Was Still Legal To Deny People The Right To Vote By A Whole Range Of Mechanics That Kept Them From Exercising Political Power.

00:28:21: So I was born in a moment after enslavement, but before freedom.

00:28:28: This stuff affected my life!

00:28:30: Yes it's not that long

00:28:32: ago... It wasn't as long ago of my grandfather.

00:28:37: father was enslaved.

00:28:39: So we're not talking about, you know I think there's this sense that when we see the pictures in black and white influential figure in allowing me to see how recent that history was, is that she was born and raised in the town I was born-and-raised.

00:29:06: She's what we call racemen of the twentieth century which meant they were fully aware.

00:29:20: Terms and conditions outside of our immediate agency would likely impact our life in significant ways, but The call was to resist it in every way possible In every way safe.

00:29:34: And sometimes in ways that were not safe.

00:29:37: So she would take me around town and show Me this is the place where as a three-year old my mom put me in the waiting pool and they drained the pool while I was splashing around.

00:29:50: This is the place where they wouldn't serve black people in this same kind of frosty root beer mugs that would serve white-people root beer, and they'd serve it to us in papered cups.

00:30:03: So all around town... ...I was able see just underneath a surface were still structures And culture of racial exclusion so that the life I inherited was not taken for granted.

00:30:22: It is a product of cultural and legal warfare my family had engaged in, effectively being socialized into seeing better anticipate and resist when it came my way.

00:30:46: And so I think a lot of us in that generation, we weren't in my mom's generation... We were quite in my brothers because they are the ones out there marching but we were sentient conscious human beings who then received the baton when went into these institutions.

00:31:06: If I might jump in there, what i really liked while reading your book Kim is and I realized that actually you're not only a legal scholar but You are hidden historian.

00:31:18: I Really like the way how you historically contextualize Your life personal life in a broader black context an US-American context.

00:31:30: So which is part of the storytelling?

00:31:32: And I totally get to sense that it is actually a critical race, Memoir.

00:31:39: And obviously you at Cornell studied African-American studies and it's... You can't miss while reading the book but in very beginning on first page start with.

00:32:01: interesting is, not the word I guess but very foundational experience at Harvard University where actually critical race theory and intersectionality emerge in that experience.

00:32:16: Can you elaborate more on that?

00:32:18: Well so one of the constant themes orientation in the book was a notion of The We.

00:32:32: And it is part of being erased, men and women of the twentieth century—the idea that we rise or fall together...we advance or push back together.

00:32:43: that is one of the axiomatic dimensions of white supremacy.

00:32:48: The whole group um, Is burdened by it or not.

00:32:53: so we was a very strong orientation That I had from my family.

00:32:59: but One's notion of we can often be disappointed when there is not a reciprocal understanding of the wee.

00:33:09: So gender became one my first moments of recognizing that we-ness could sometimes be undermined or vitiated by different commitments made among the wee about significance and importance.

00:33:26: fighting all the forms of discrimination that pushes back or marginalize us in, in... In The Corner somewhere.

00:33:34: So I start this book with a story of being part-of-a-wee, a threesome of my study partners to African American men and myself.

00:33:49: One Of Men And The Group was one of the first members, if not the first member of an exclusive Harvard drinking club.

00:33:59: called the Fly Club, and there are clubs like this all over elite campuses everywhere.

00:34:07: The point is it's where the Krim Dalla Krim meet each other and become lifelong friends.

00:34:13: It's where families that go on to have presidents of the United States in them, signs of wealthy families...it's where power meets.

00:34:28: He would tell us all these stories about how great this club was.

00:34:33: And we were like, I don't know if it sounds so great?

00:34:37: Why would want to go in that club but is important for him host as the first black guest of his clubs?

00:34:46: So my other friend and i make a pack with eachother.

00:34:53: The Pack was We weren't going take any shit.

00:34:58: We had an agreement about what shit was, right?

00:35:02: So if we go there and they don't treat us right.

00:35:05: And you know... There's anything that doesn't smell right or feel right.

00:35:10: We're not having it when we have each other back.

00:35:12: so... You know, Dooley bonded-we got to the front door.

00:35:16: of course It has a big bell knocker.

00:35:18: We knocked on the door and step back and wait for our friend open the door which he does, but then he steps outside and closes the door behind him.

00:35:30: Which signaled to us that this was the beginning of the shit.

00:35:32: we said were not going.

00:35:33: take So across our arms brows furrowed.

00:35:39: We're ready to rumble.

00:35:41: And he says relax it's not what you think is.

00:35:46: I forgot a very important detail about your arrival here.

00:35:53: Kim can't come through the front door.

00:35:56: Because we have a policy that women, Can't Come Through The Front Door She's Gotta Go Around To The Back Door.

00:36:04: Now For Me This Was Again Shit

00:36:08: Relax It'S Just Sexism It'S

00:36:10: JUST SEXISM.

00:36:12: You Know Which To Me Is

00:36:14: Right.

00:36:15: They don't have the same feeling about it, I mean they actually did... It did de-escalate for them because like oh!

00:36:23: Its just that.

00:36:25: and i'm like Oh what do you mean?

00:36:27: its just that?

00:36:29: And it became abundantly clear to me.

00:36:31: That pack we had had riders, small print.

00:36:37: The small print was We are a We as long as we're fighting against the things that impact us in this same way.

00:36:47: We are not a wee when it comes to access to institutions, were'e not a wwe When It Comes To Making Sure You Get Treated With The Same Dignity And Respect That I get treated with?

00:37:01: and so In that moment recognizing they were not going to stand with me, um.

00:37:08: Not be disrespected was shocking enough but more hurtful Was the fact that they were relying on Me?

00:37:18: To make a scene.

00:37:19: it was like The real injury That might happen here is if I acted out in some way or five said i'm.

00:37:25: If I can't come from through the front door i'm not coming In at all barging my way through the front door.

00:37:31: They were not down for supporting myself.

00:37:34: actualization at that moment, so I did not resist in that moment.

00:37:45: I bowed to their expectations and the performative command behave, perform respectably in this space.

00:38:01: So I went around to the back door.

00:38:05: whatever i had that night whether it was what I was drinking or whether I was forcing myself to swallow...I got so sick!

00:38:15: In a club at night..that I really really have to hold back because I was tempted to leave a gift of my indignity all over the safari decorated interiors of their game room.

00:38:28: But when it finally came time to leave, I insisted on going out of front door and marched down stairs as I slammed And when I got back to my room, I was still like sick.

00:38:43: That kind of the world is spinning kinda sick that you start bargaining with... The universe?

00:38:51: If you take this off me, I swear!

00:38:53: I

00:38:53: swear!!

00:38:54: I

00:38:54: swear!!!

00:38:54: I will never consume what's clearly not sitting well in my body.

00:39:00: I won't do it again.

00:39:02: just deliver me for this.

00:39:04: and i think the prayer turned into a physical illness that I get when, find myself in this situation like that.

00:39:15: When the asymmetrical solidarities are being presented to me Like we expect you to stand for This principle or for this definition of The We but were not going be there For You.

00:39:28: so partly because I think it was physical.

00:39:32: The churning in my stomach starts before I actually connect what's going on, and is like oh wait!

00:39:38: What's happening here?

00:39:40: And that was the beginning of my willingness to speak back against those asymmetrical solidarities.

00:39:51: Now as you know i ended by saying You know, I can't say to you it's always easy to do.

00:39:57: It is not always easy.

00:39:59: the part company with family and community.

00:40:09: was virally proud of, and now many times I find myself parting company with the nation that demands a certain asymmetrical solidarity in exchange for nothing.

00:40:21: And so often struggle with is it better to go the easy way?

00:40:25: The Easy Way, the Easy

00:40:27: Way.".

00:40:28: Then as I say on the book when feel like it... ...I remember that drinks inside there suck anyway!

00:40:44: There's an epilogue two weeks ago.

00:40:48: No, wait.

00:40:49: I've been here a month—a month ago!

00:40:53: A friend of mine and we were at Harvard talking about the book decided to go in just get some pictures for kicks and giggles showing me at The Fly Club.

00:41:05: And so we'd go and I march up into the door pretend that i'm knocking on it.

00:41:09: then I would go around through backdoor take picture.

00:41:12: Well while im there young African American man walks out and looks like he's about to go in the club.

00:41:20: And I say, hey excuse me?

00:41:24: Are you a member of the

00:41:25: Club?".

00:41:25: Yes i'm a member at The

00:41:26: Club."I

00:41:27: said,"Hey!

00:41:27: I really want to know.

00:41:29: do you guys still force women to go around the back

00:41:32: door?".

00:41:34: He turned on his heels and walked straight into the the door not saying a word.

00:41:39: to me it was like... I was not standing there.

00:41:43: so then that got mad.

00:41:45: And then I did go up to the door and buzzed the door.

00:41:50: And a guy comes out, he's you know older guy clearly...I guess he is house manager or house father whatever like.

00:41:57: well can i help you?

00:41:59: Look!

00:41:59: I just want to know do you guys still make women going around in the backdoor?

00:42:04: He said, this is a private club.

00:42:07: It's like.

00:42:07: I know it's the private club but i just want to know do you make women go around and back door?

00:42:13: he stepped back in and slammed the door.

00:42:16: now This Is In twenty-twenty six.

00:42:19: that was more than forty years ago That had happened.

00:42:23: And what gets me is that I Was mad about it.

00:42:27: I was I felt away About.

00:42:31: it really impacted Me all day long that A, this institution was still discriminating against women.

00:42:39: Even as the discourse now in The United States has been what there's any discrimination it's against white men.

00:42:47: its wokeism when you have moment this dynamic that's still going on.

00:42:55: So the contradiction between the dominant discourse, it says the real problem around race and gender is too much a discourse about equity in justice an inclusion And then meantime they're continuing not only to exclude women but fundamentally disrespect and humiliate us at the same time.

00:43:15: I find that such an astonishing add-on, thank you for the epilogue also because it seems like forty years ago they were confident in their discrimination.

00:43:27: You could even say... It didn't occur to them maybe!

00:43:31: But now in twenty and twenty six they know about it.

00:43:36: so don't want talk but still refuse change hard to, like.

00:43:46: I think that was something i really had to work through um also as a person who once believed that once there is enough theory and enough concept and people would get it.

00:43:58: There would actually be a willingness to change.

00:44:00: yeah.

00:44:01: And now I think what this time makes very clear is like It's not they don't understand They know very well...It's

00:44:08: about ignorance!

00:44:09: It's about power.

00:44:11: That-that Is the great epiphany you know, of this moment of backlash.

00:44:17: But what they also... And I think that it's something which becomes very clear in your memoir is the post-the Postal Rights Movement.

00:44:30: time was a time where people found ways to not say their thing but kind to do the thing without saying that thing.

00:44:47: So it becomes, not... It's a lot harder to grasp and there is for example your family was affected by it That you know.

00:44:59: its not segregation anymore but now gentrification or like the development for this city and all of a sudden, A lot of black homeowners.

00:45:10: And home-owning is especially in way that United States are set up as one of foundations to build wealth and stability and generational wealth maybe.

00:45:22: A lot back home owners In your book you say it's about a million people during their time have are forced out of their homes or forced to give away their property for less than it was worth by the time they bought it.

00:45:39: Not because, um... For the advancement of everyone so for the betterment of we-the community.

00:45:48: It's as a coincidence would have is that black neighborhoods had to go for highway where there has be properties.

00:45:57: So how does to figure out?

00:46:02: how was it for you find language and navigate this time where clearly see people are still discriminated against, but can't say a race.

00:46:19: It's so hard to pinpoint that.

00:46:22: May I add the question?

00:46:27: from a legal scholar to legal scholar, isn't that also the case with if we look at the latest decision of US Supreme Court Louisiana versus Calais and We're still talking about gerrymandering right?

00:46:41: And it is never-ending story.

00:46:44: Maybe you can elaborate little bit more on gerrymandering for the German audience.

00:46:50: I would love you two connect both questions.

00:46:56: Suddenly I feel like i'm in a dissertation defense But actually these are very connected questions, so you know the top line is simply this To think that racial equity and inclusion our advanced solely by color blindness ignores the story that you elevate, the way black communities and property owners in United States basically have a leaky bucket when it comes to how wealth is generated because their property isn't secure against consequences of political powerlessness which almost always presents itself.

00:47:46: Which of our citizens who in our community will have to set their interests aside?

00:47:52: for the things that we think will benefit all of us, whether it is a new highway that will bring industry into town.

00:48:02: Whether it's a new industrial park that will attract businesses in to town?

00:48:08: Whether it is toxic dump site that will allow us to find a place to put our crap?

00:48:19: All these are things decided by in politics.

00:48:23: Well, who's going to lose?

00:48:25: the people have least amount of power?

00:48:29: How is it that neighborhoods are slated for these things, with that reflects the history of segregation.

00:48:37: You were able to do it to the most powerless people because they have been packed into communities because of segregation now.

00:48:48: Segregation was legal until the mid-Nineteen sixties and even after that It continued to shape access to housing And property of the practices called redlining or blockbusting that were still practiced widely by other housing markets.

00:49:11: So, you know what does it look like?

00:49:13: My family experienced There are these black people here.

00:49:28: And neighborhoods without Black People, or worth more than neighborhoods with Black People.

00:49:33: but who decides that?

00:49:35: It's the housing market.

00:49:38: and this realtors come around knocking on doors.

00:49:41: as soon a Black family moves in says you better sell now!

00:49:45: You'd better sell quick for undermarket because if don't sell now your gonna lose value of property.

00:49:53: so they get fire sale going going on, in the meantime because there's so few options for middle-class black people to move somewhere.

00:50:02: The price of the homes that remain go up.

00:50:05: who makes some money off of that right?

00:50:09: That is way racism capitalism come together to create the racially distributive consequences.

00:50:19: it is a problem that has multiple dimensions.

00:50:25: So this why these communities, middle-class African Americans are more likely to live close to toxic waste dumps than even poor white folks.

00:50:37: It's why black folk who invest the dollar in their property don't get back as much as white people do.

00:50:47: Did race play an explicit legal role in any of this stuff?

00:50:51: Did somebody at city council say, you know what I want to make a resolution that the toxic waste dumps should all go where black folks live.

00:51:02: That's not how it happens.

00:51:04: But they don't have to say it that way because everybody knows why the black communities are segregated, They know uh...that they're right for their picking and we'll announce.

00:51:17: ten years in the future The highway is gonna come through here And banks aren't going allow people to invest in this area Because it will be slated for urban renewal.

00:51:30: All of this happened in my town.

00:51:33: All of these happen with my mother's property, My Mother inherited two homes and an apartment building from her father.

00:51:42: by the time they came to condemn the property To take it for An auto manufacturing company It was worth less than then.

00:51:52: it was when our Father bought it And This is true story.

00:51:57: They cleared out the entire black community to build an industrial park for a company called White Motor, and white motor never came.

00:52:08: That that Industrial Park it was like a graveyard forever racially articulated law or policy to create white supremacist conditions.

00:52:26: What you do need is a commitment to address the consequences of disempowerment, not just the particular tool or technique of being racially specific but the reproduction of the disadvantage.

00:52:42: that's what our generation started to see when we went to law schools was only paying attention to the techniques that were used in the last century.

00:52:54: They weren't paying attention, do they?

00:52:56: Techniques that we're using today to extend the shadow of the past into the present.

00:53:07: so yeah The Calais context is another moment where the Supreme Court effectively said if you want draw districts in a way that cracks, stacks or packs black voters into one district.

00:53:29: Or separate them out so they cannot aggregate their political power to elect someone of their choice That is what the Voting Rights Act protected.

00:53:41: They protect it against Whatever means the local districts were advancing to effectively make it unlikely or impossible for black and brown folks to elect someone of their choice.

00:53:56: So sometimes, that means taking a relatively compact district of Black folk who lived together because of segregation.

00:54:05: you could have drawn in a way that allowed them to crack them up and put a third of em in one white district, or you pack them all together so that the power they could have is outvoted by white voters who are pursuing fundamentally different interests.

00:54:37: So what the court effectively said here, it's You can do that as long as reason your doing that because their all Democrats.

00:54:48: Or you can do That As Long As Your Doing It Because You Want To Protect The Incumbent.

00:54:55: Well, now let's think about it because we're talking red states.

00:54:58: We are talking southern states and the old Confederacy.

00:55:03: Precisely those states that created white primaries.

00:55:08: Those states killed people when they tried to register in vote.

00:55:12: We were talking about Selma Alabama which was seen as one of the bloodiest civil rights struggle since the Civil War.

00:55:21: These are the districts in which incumbency tells you more about that past, where black people couldn't elect people of their choice than freedom to elect people your choice now.

00:55:34: so You're able To reproduce That same condition Of The Past.

00:55:40: just saying you're doing it for a different reason just saying that the only reason why black folks are losing elections is not because they're Black, it's because their Democrats.

00:55:52: But their Democrats... Because Democrats in the South were the ones that were more responsive to the concrete interests and needs of communities, that had been historically discriminated against.

00:56:06: So the line between race and political party is not nearly as sharp as a Supreme Court wants to say.

00:56:15: it is so.

00:56:16: they effectively said That The Voting Rights Act has said using these policies and procedures to prevent black people, brown people from electing someone of their choice is itself unconstitutional.

00:56:32: So the racism that they see is the remedy to that problem right?

00:56:37: You try to remedy vote discrimination.

00:56:40: you tried a remedy being pushed out political process.

00:56:44: use race consciousness as way.

00:56:46: do

00:56:46: that.

00:56:47: That Is The Legal Problem.

00:56:50: Another side of that is affirmative action, which is framed as reverse discrimination.

00:56:55: Right?

00:56:55: Which is a core topic of critical race theory.

00:56:59: So why?

00:57:01: I would like you to take us again back to the emerging off critical race Theory and maybe explain our audience in a nutshell your understanding of Critical Race Theory in the hope that

00:57:18: we can... And affirmative action, right?

00:57:20: No no not necessarily affirmative action and also to bridge it to the project of critical race theory Europe.

00:57:30: Okay Genghis!

00:57:34: So a critical-race theory actually did come out of a concrete institutional conflict over what the post-segregation law school should look like?

00:57:47: What is their mission, who is qualified to come and teach there.

00:57:52: What kind of careers can be served by this post segregationist institution?

00:57:58: so my generation went into these institutions on the assumption that having admitted us in significant numbers unlike the way they had dealt with us in the past, meant that there was a deeper wider commitment to lifting up and pushing forward what had happened in the middle of the twentieth century which I and a lot of others went to law school, To be that next generation.

00:58:43: under repair.

00:58:44: We were repairing the exclusions of the past, so I wanted to be a lawyer like Thurgood Marshall and go to law school hoping to study with Derek Bell, who was a famous law professor at the time.

00:59:09: Not knowing that he had just left out of exasperation because the institution was thinking okay we got Derek and you teach your little course?

00:59:17: And that's good!

00:59:18: We're done with it.

00:59:20: When we went to the dean so what are going?

00:59:24: do serve us?

00:59:28: educate this new generation of students, all races about what the aftermath of the collapse of segregation ought to be.

00:59:37: How are we going rethink how our institutions function?

00:59:41: What is next step in a longer-term battle against the ghosts?

00:59:48: and their response was shocking but illuminating.

00:59:52: they basically said Our mission is not to do that.

00:59:59: We let Derek teach the course because he wanted it, but its really a fundamental part of an illegal education like corporations might be or corporate tax.

01:00:12: and then they said in terms that were going to hire other people of color and women.

01:00:20: My dean said, wouldn't you prefer an excellent white professor over a mediocre black one?

01:00:26: That was sort of the subtitle.

01:00:29: like you have a picture but you don't know what rationalizes the picture until they tell you.

01:00:35: And so they told us that the picture was made up of people who deserve to be there.

01:00:41: So if no one liked you was on the faculty than no one like you deserved to be there.

01:00:48: And that was something we were just not willing to accept as the unvarnished truth, so started looking more closely into what it meant to deserve-to-be-there and what it means to serve-to–be-their is part of a group who has always been You know, what does it mean to be qualified?

01:01:10: To teach at Harvard Law School.

01:01:12: First that meant you had go either Harvard or Yale Or one of the other elite law schools.

01:01:18: It wasn't big on accepting people a color and definitely Wasn't being unaccepting women.

01:01:23: harvard didn't accept women into the nineteen fifties.

01:01:26: so The pool of candidates who have the requisite qualifications was already limited by the discrimination that the very institution was practicing.

01:01:41: And then on top of it, you had to clerk for a Supreme Court justice and they were only hiring people who came from those institutions?

01:01:49: Then you have to work for a blue chip law firm that would only hire clerks... I mean so with like multiple levels of embedded exclusion that we're then justified in race-and gender neutral terms.

01:02:05: That gave us the first moment of thinking critically about how liberal institutions thought themselves to be race free simply because they could point some neutral qualifications on paper, which in practice were not neutral at all.

01:02:24: So our view of affirmative action actually came from A Supreme Court case that had been decided early in the sixties, it said once you've engaged and a patterned practice of exclusion is not enough to simply say we're not doing anymore.

01:02:42: You have got.

01:02:42: take affirmative action to dismantle thing created otherwise machine will keep producing outcomes even under race neutral or gender-neutral.

01:02:55: So affirmative action number one is not about putting less qualified people in a position In which they're not suitably matched for.

01:03:06: it's About interrogating the terms of what you call qualifications and interrogating.

01:03:11: What?

01:03:12: The job really or should be by those lights, the lawyers who created an entire constitutional revolution not having been educated at Harvard and Yale but educated at Howard University.

01:03:31: Who created a legal miracle That should have counted as qualifications, especially if we're trying to create a new democracy that is truly inclusive.

01:03:43: Who do we have to look too?

01:03:44: give us the guidance and wisdom?

01:03:47: To actually DO THE WORK!

01:03:50: TO CREATE THE PATHWAYS THROUGH THE LAW!

01:03:53: TO DO A BETTER JOB!

01:03:55: at confirming some of the promises that have been made.

01:03:58: But they were stuck in a very traditional way of thinking about what the mission, the role and the function of the institution was so critical.

01:04:09: race theory eventually became the project of those who are students at time created an alternative course on our own who brought scholars of color from across the country to teach Derek Bell's book, and then other scholars who basically grew out that moment created by students.

01:04:32: so five years later.

01:04:34: We all came together in a convent.

01:04:37: It was hot as Hades, no air conditioning and we sweated through the process of trying to identify what holds all our work together?

01:04:48: And what name are going give it?

01:04:50: so it's sort of christened critical?

01:04:53: It is chrissened race because about race and chrissen theory but understanding how although races not real Racial power is and law helps to facilitate that

01:05:16: in the book.

01:05:16: you also mentioned That at a critique, but also people like Malcolm X post when it came to integration school integration that Integration meant or desegregating meant to integrate black people in white schools.

01:05:36: But there was never even thought about integrating white people into black schools.

01:05:43: And there was already, the movement was oh we need to bring Black people in these white institutions.

01:05:51: so whiteness were seen as neutral and away?

01:05:56: To me it feels like critical.

01:05:57: race theory is also a demand of saying no there's knowledge experience history that needs to be integrated.

01:06:08: It's everything can stay the same.

01:06:11: just the faces will change.

01:06:14: it is with these phases come Yeah, comes history come structure comes experience.

01:06:21: that also needs to be seen in this institutions and its like Its looking back.

01:06:27: Like right critical race theory is actually you.

01:06:32: I don't know that Europe and In the US It is perfectly clear that there's everything made and produced by black people, it was like Black music.

01:06:44: Black books... And critical race theory to me allows us actually say well if you're saying this as a black literature or knowledge You're kind of saying that is like white music and white knowledge.

01:07:02: So to grapple with that, I think put a name on it was extremely helpful but yet... It's also shock for the system you can feel.

01:07:16: until now And what i find so interesting they took exactly this term critical race theory and said it was racist, and it was indoctrinating.

01:07:32: And to a point that there was like panic especially in schools up-to elementary schools.

01:07:42: That is dangerous ideology To make white people feel bad about themselves.

01:07:48: So I admire your patience your endurance, because I think i would have lost my mind a long time ago.

01:08:01: if how are you?

01:08:02: But coming back to the...I'm saying all this.

01:08:07: To come back to center motive of your memoir and that is not only looking like making sure You know, if you are observing us.

01:08:22: we're observing you but also talking back.

01:08:25: Back-talking and maybe you can elaborate more what that as a practice is to you?

01:08:33: So I... What i'm trying to do is capture and repurpose the sense of back-talkings as a transgression.

01:08:43: it's something is you are not supposed to do in a condition of being subordinate to higher power, whether it's apparent or something beyond that.

01:09:02: Backtalking starts with the acknowledgement and that in refusing to abide by what the relationship contours expect of you, violating the rules.

01:09:20: You are challenging the authority.

01:09:23: You're questioning the rightfulness the vision of the world that allows for this authority to command, this view.

01:09:37: You should accept the idea that we live in is pretty much the way it can only be.

01:09:45: you should accept framing that naturalizes your position.

01:09:52: subordination with respect to higher power.

01:09:56: That's a lot how families think about why their kids shouldn't talk back.

01:10:02: But we also have to recognize that's how authoritarians treat us as citizens.

01:10:09: As children, people who have no authority and power should accept the dictates of all-powerful men or strongmen.

01:10:26: I think that the moment calls for us to talk back.

01:10:34: I think that is one thing we do have control over, our willingness to accept and set aside what we really think because power tells you all fidelity in silence to me.

01:10:51: so i try what the moments were when I challenged the logics that were given to me for the contours of my life.

01:11:04: And those are moments where basically, I was talking back.

01:11:10: Talking back is what led to critical race theory.

01:11:13: Criticality Theory is talking back to the idea that our racial structures are just what they are and we can't do anything about it.

01:11:21: Intersectionality IS talking back, so you experience race discrimination here in gender discrimination there and never the twain shall meet!

01:11:32: Talking Back To It says That Simply Is Not True.

01:11:36: And Your Refusal Courts Law To Acknowledge That subordinates and marginalizes entire groups of people who are subject to more than one form of discrimination.

01:11:49: So talking back often means that we're not accepting the absence, were not accepting conditions or what's told And may have develop tools in words language That allow us express thing.

01:12:07: trying resist Backtalking has now been framed as wokeness.

01:12:18: So the attack on our back talking is to relabel back talking, As itself a bad thing.

01:12:26: so it's the reassertion of the authoritarian effort To silence critique to silence questioning to silence The construction Of new knowledge and new policies And new practices.

01:12:39: Now I have been saying this for several years now and a lot of our allies not really paid attention, or they've tried to pivot their way out of it.

01:12:54: Or they have tried to appease the way out and engaged in anticipatory compliance.

01:13:00: this is what Timothy Snyder says.

01:13:03: The response to authoritarianism, facilitation of fascism comes from bowing in advance refusing actually talk back.

01:13:15: I think for most part people thought that was an exaggeration.

01:13:19: It was just about us.

01:13:21: Those of those who do this crazy race stuff until This administration produced a list of words and concepts that can no longer be expressed to describe or to Marshall governmental resources, to advance social policy.

01:13:40: What are these words?

01:13:43: discrimination bias women Women, black people equity inclusion.

01:13:56: These are all the words that make up The Grammar to express the practice of creating a multiracial democracy.

01:14:06: so the cat is out-of-the bag.

01:14:08: now it's no longer a secret what anti wokeness Is All About.

01:14:13: they want us To go to sleep in A period Of Time That They're Destroying Our Democracy.

01:14:18: Now, I think it's an easy question.

01:14:21: I don't think that makes sense to go to sleep when there is a tornado going on and they're basically trying to destroy all the structures we've created to advance.

01:14:30: everything has moved us forward from the latter part of the twentieth century so now its battle between those who want take away vision by unwriting this story by unsaying the things that were said, by suppressing an acknowledgement and awareness.

01:14:49: without these ideas we cannot address some of contemporary consequences.

01:14:57: The battle line is clear!

01:15:00: What side do people want to place themselves on?

01:15:08: If that's not a strong sentence or word, accuse almost academic institutions... ...that they haven't been strong enough to hold back their pushback.

01:15:17: Just to inform you Kim, intersectionality as a concept is also redlisted in Germany since... A political party is asking universities who are teaching intersectionality gender and post-colonial theory.

01:15:33: So I think it's not false to say that what critical race theory is Doing in the States.

01:15:42: Is what post-colonial Theory, is doing?

01:15:45: In the German context Also because critical race here he is not so Not so known too exactly and recently Conrad Adenauer stiftung published a book really like on the basis of one claim saying that postcolonial theory is divisive, it's anti-western.

01:16:09: That resonates totally to how critical race theory was accused.

01:16:22: Now I think we made a jump forward to authoritarianism and you mentioned also the word fascism.

01:16:30: In your book, you rely on Toni Morrison's elaboration of racism and fascism.

01:16:38: if i'm not wrong Margarita in the beginning quoted Toni Morrison as well.

01:16:48: paraphrase a famous sentence, maybe you could elaborate more on that.

01:16:55: Because it's really not clear to me still when I hear your talking about black history the history of race in this state and from a Black perspective Does it really matter that is fascism or not?

01:17:17: Or what's the relation of racism and fascism from a black perspective.

01:17:23: I want to put a very provocative question in here, are we talking about fascism?

01:17:33: because white people also realize that might affect them?

01:17:46: So let me see if I can slide my way into this without ruffling too many feathers.

01:17:56: The famous quote was Langston Hughes, a famous twentieth century poet who in the midst of many debates about what is fascism?

01:18:10: Can we describe the United States as having fascistic dimensions was famously quoted as saying, you don't have to tell the Negro what fascism is.

01:18:21: It's life that we live

01:18:22: here.".

01:18:24: And I was shocking a lot of people and highly contested because there is.

01:18:31: this sense is racism.

01:18:39: It's white supremacy, it's not fascism you know?

01:18:42: Fascism is something else entirely different.

01:18:48: Tony Morrison comes along and calls racism and fascism Secubus Twins basically conjoined twins, ugly in their birth reinforcing each other.

01:19:04: And so on a very famous speech that she gave She talked about the different steps.

01:19:10: before there's a final step There are other steps That Are part of this and she writes About how Many Of The Steps rely On Racialists.

01:19:24: narratives about the state, about the nation.

01:19:30: These are not narratives that are limited to... And now I'm talking about how Americans think of it.

01:19:40: when the debate about this framework comes up in United States Are we heading into direction?

01:19:49: The litmus test is always looking to Europe Looking over here.

01:19:54: Well, we didn't do that or We don't have this Or you know these signals are not there without looking internally in the United States.

01:20:05: so we Have a distinct discourse?

01:20:09: We have a distinct set of practices and they our practices and discourses is that run The list of all of the conditions that are descriptive of a fascist framework.

01:20:23: So we're, MAGA is right now a discourse.

01:20:30: it says We were at our best!

01:20:33: We were in the golden ages before all these others actually asserted themselves and took us off the path of greatness.

01:20:46: That is a fundamental dimension of a fascist appeal.

01:20:50: You create a myth of the past, you otherize people who you say got in the way of that glorious past?

01:21:00: You use that mythologizing as a way of justifying doing things to them that majority would never tolerate or accept and only do so because it's being done for others By the time it becomes clear that thing they're doing to other is never going.

01:21:21: just stay, we have already given up our fundamental democratic practices.

01:21:29: Culture plays a role the universities play a role, science plays a role.

01:21:35: So you start to tell a story and then bring in all of these other institutions either willingly or coercively to sign on to the story.

01:21:46: that's allowing dramatically horrific anti-democratic things to happen?

01:21:52: And you defend it by saying your defending the soul.

01:21:58: I beg you to look at what our president says.

01:22:04: Who are present in attacks?

01:22:06: What he achieves by doing so, how the actual function of government has now been so attacked and dismantled that we have him basically doing what he wants to do without much constraint at all, and still you have thirty or forty percent of the population saying that it's necessary in order to save the soul of the nation.

01:22:35: Now I don't know what you want call that...I know what I called it!

01:22:42: But the main point is that racism is a lost leader that facilitates the destruction of

01:22:50: democracy.".

01:22:57: The narrative is, oh the US in their political strategies and ways are very different from Europe especially when it comes to fascism.

01:23:11: And people in Europe even love to call United States' oldest democracy... And you like the oldest democracy?

01:23:19: for whom?

01:23:20: That's a question!

01:23:23: But there is this idea that also especially for Germany, post-World War of Germany the United States have been a North Star and it's like we need to orange ourselves towards the united states.

01:23:41: To overcome our fascist ways.

01:23:44: What I find interesting now if you look in present time the narratives in Europe and the United States, they become very similar because this approach of colorblindness that you see in these current administrations.

01:24:03: I mean it's also Ronald Reagan tried to kind-of like... There were other presidents who came up with a colorblind approach.

01:24:12: but there is uniting the idea that it is actually racist to talk about race.

01:24:22: It's racism and we don't need all of this, and it is deferring our values like marriage or something can happen if you have a race-talk.

01:24:35: That what conservatives are saying but also rightists say.

01:24:42: even more heartbreaking sometimes, is that I also feel like parts of the progressive and left are over it.

01:24:53: They say race as a destructive wokeness... The talk about race which basically what they mean when saying wokenness.

01:25:08: it's not helpful and we should just focus on class because all the questions that, or disadvantages that racialized people are facing our actually classes issues.

01:25:21: And we can solve everything with by pursuing materialist like material justice in a way.

01:25:30: so what do you say to Class?

01:25:37: over everything and everything else Feminism anti-racism is basically included in the package.

01:25:45: So of course we have that same as you're pointing out.

01:25:47: We have that Same debate In The United States You know, they we call it the race class narrative And the way It plays out in the US from even the progressives who want to talk about race say Well, here's how we should talk about it.

01:26:05: We should talk race as a divisive concept that distracts us from talking.

01:26:15: the tremendous concentration of wealth happening at the time and long as we continue to talk about race won't be able to grapple with oligarchies developing all around.

01:26:33: And of course there is truth to the idea that race has always been used, and I'm talking about in United States as a divisive strategy to discipline effectively white working class sensibilities away from the solidarities occasionally popped up as a real threat to the ruling class in American society.

01:27:12: Populism, In United States wasn't initially you know racist me first kind of politic.

01:27:22: One of the first populists was Tom Watson in The Late Nineteenth Century who tried to link up the former enslaved people with working class white folks, who actually did not benefit financially from enslavement just a psychological wage of being subject to racial subordination.

01:27:48: But once that appetite for just being above the enslaved was deeply instituted in society, it was always there to be activated.

01:28:03: So by the time of Tom Watson's end his career he became one virulent racists out there, starting from a position of populism moving to a deep and abiding embrace of the idea of white supremacy.

01:28:25: Now what is the solution to that in a racially subordinating society?

01:28:33: How do you address the long-term willingness of elites to use whiteness as a disciplinary force, um...to create common cause with interests that are not common at all.

01:28:50: With the exception of the idea of we all push down-we all punch down in order to find a space and a rationale and reason is really causing all kinds of trouble for the Democrats and for progressives.

01:29:16: The way some of them wanna deal with that trouble was just not to talk about it, but its a loaded gun sitting on the table that has repeatedly across time been picked up in fire at what's supposedly this coalition?

01:29:31: so you can't get people out of a racist orientation by not acknowledging that it's there.

01:29:40: That is what many other left want, but its never going to work as long they are still that wage or hierarchy and thing gives value.

01:29:52: so thats whats happening on the black-and-brown side of racism.

01:30:02: that are not just false consciousness.

01:30:06: If we look at what the destruction of the federal government has done right now, um uh the conservative estimates or three hundred thousand black people and brown people have lost jobs women in particular.

01:30:18: it's probably even more than that-that's a disproportionate burden.

01:30:26: intergenerational consequences.

01:30:30: The left is basically asking black and brown people not to speak about that, You know my allergy, it's asymmetrical.

01:30:50: We're supposed to stand up for a class solidarity that doesn't stand-up for the way racism has produced class

01:30:58: consequences.".

01:31:00: It makes no sense.

01:31:01: but yet there is this belief.

01:31:04: if you just close your eyes and don't speak we'll be able win back these next elections.

01:31:10: then come around.

01:31:13: Well, the history of United States suggests otherwise.

01:31:17: When Reconstruction was brought to an end when the idea of the party that prosecuted The Civil War and freed the slaves is we can't afford this anymore.

01:31:30: We cannot be associated with equal rights or these people.

01:31:35: Once they made their decision They never came back.

01:31:39: And if you want proof So they're not coming back.

01:31:46: once they realize that there are winning coalitions, that can be maintained as long we step away from or don't deal with the difficult problems of race.

01:31:57: And in the meantime you have what is effectively framed a mere cultural war and real people losing their lives.

01:32:12: You know, so defunding research on maternal mortality of black women.

01:32:18: Black women have a maternal mortality rate that is lower than any westernized nation.

01:32:27: Research is designed to address why this happening.

01:32:30: That research has been defunded as DEI research on why toxic waste dumps are disproportionately creating high death rates for black and brown people.

01:32:46: That's been defunded, so what is framed as just a war between woke and unwoke?

01:32:54: is really a war on particular bodies with specific casualties that we're now asked not to speak about in the name of color blindness.

01:33:05: It's asking us to step away from real equity and inclusion for fantasy, if you hold our tongue right now will be able join coalition.

01:33:17: who come back around later there?

01:33:20: no evidence it has ever happened and highly unlikely.

01:33:26: That is gonna happen now.

01:33:36: I think the notion of memory politics was slightly mentioned, And i would like to introduce that in a more profound way...I think one of the main features of authoritarianism and fascism Is try to take control about memory politics right?

01:33:53: Through whole your book we can witness To what extent The current administration is trying to rewrite the history and make other histories actually invisible.

01:34:08: And I think, unfortunately we are actually dealing not with a same but similar dynamics in German context particularly after October seventh We can see that battle on memory politics has been intensified more.

01:34:29: So I would like, after post-seventh October is not only a big issue here but also at the University where you are.

01:34:41: At Columbia University faculty, staff members were fired.

01:34:47: Queer scholars were fired Jewish queer scholars are fired because they were in solidarity with the protesters.

01:34:53: and if we also take into account The police violence here at the in the streets Here in the city where we are now talking.

01:35:03: And having said that So That is also where you quote paraphrase Simone de Beauvoir, when she's saying the person is political and you make out of that a political as personal as well.

01:35:23: Can you unpack that little bit?

01:35:27: So this does go back to the stories I'm trying tell in my book on.

01:35:34: why am building up an out from memoir rather than set principles down to ground?

01:35:45: The politics of the assault on critical race theory, on the sixteen-nineteen project which is an effort to integrate enslavement as a condition And of course, the efforts to use intersectionality.

01:36:03: To bring other forms of marginalization and exclusion to the forefront Of how we think about what The American project has helped create and needs address.

01:36:17: All these are ways in which political rollback ends up being an assault on our ability to tell our stories, and a salt-on our ability research what we supposedly have the right to research.

01:36:37: And importantly in what we have the Right To Say!

01:36:40: So... The First Amendment for most part of my career has been used as way saying that no The First Amendment in the United States is a thing that says, Congress shall make no law abridging or undermining freedom of speech.

01:37:02: And basically it's sort of almost like religious conviction.

01:37:06: I can say whatever whenever want to.

01:37:10: you know matter what and who no matter how when.

01:37:14: for most part marginalized populations on university campuses have had the fact that it is a regulation free space.

01:37:27: So even moments where there are direct assaults, you know, racist things have been said.

01:37:37: The efforts to try and create campus hate speech codes the effort is trying acknowledge some of the harms that do come from being in a hostile environment.

01:37:50: those were largely panned rejected and repudiated by progressive organizations liberal organization And brown and black people were told, grow a thicker skin.

01:38:07: We cannot protect your feelings in compromise our commitments to free inquiry, free

01:38:16: expression.".

01:38:19: It was so much a commitment that some of the attacks on critical race theory where attacks had said you know, your definition of racism.

01:38:29: Your definition of exclusion and discrimination basically compromise our freedom of speech.

01:38:37: I'll even go one step further.

01:38:40: Even the rules that were designed to address integration were attacked on First Amendment grounds because the argument was, The first amendment protects against freedom of association.

01:38:54: Which means the Freedom to Disassociate as well!

01:38:58: So we have a First Amendment right To exclude and to discriminate.

01:39:03: so the First Amendment has been used As A discourse to insulate racial subordination from direct advocacy, from critique and sometimes against actual anti-discrimination laws.

01:39:22: So in this moment where free speech has now been redefined on my campus and other campuses in terms of the perspective that's being advanced appears to a lot of us as making political decisions carry personal consequences.

01:39:50: So, to say certain things or to protest or challenge definitions what anti-Semitism is for example That has now been framed a violation of campus codes.

01:40:08: That's now being framed as discourse that can lead to expulsion, and so we're looking at sort of two different things.

01:40:19: one the substantive commitments that are now being used to define what is acceptable discourse in what isn't?

01:40:29: And we're also looking at the asymmetry what can be said about who's history and what cannot.

01:40:38: So there is now a sense that we can't talk about segregation in, in a lot of schools the Montgomery bus boycott having been about white supremacy.

01:40:53: It has to be about the fact that Rosa Parks couldn't sit where she wants too, but not why she couldn't see it when she went through.

01:41:01: so now we have like a real delicacy around how much of our history we can tell and also at the same time a constraint For us, it's hard not to conclude that.

01:41:22: It is the perspective that has been critiqued and suppressed rather than an overarching idea about free speech because we frankly don't seem have free speech in our schools or on

01:41:39: campuses.".

01:41:54: It's similar dynamics are going on in the German context.

01:41:59: At the Bundestag, which is a legislative body at the federal level.

01:42:04: we have now two resolutions called anti-Semitism I resolution and anti-semitism II second resolution imposing certain definition of anti semitism which isn't breach off academic freedom obviously but also including some provisions that lead to a securitization of the campus.

01:42:27: and in another state, in Germany, Niedersachsen.

01:42:36: The act on high schools or universities are going into direction where students might be ex-matriculated basis that actually goes back to free speech and same things are debated also in the Berlin context.

01:43:00: It is insane how we have reached a momentum here where it really looks like what's going on in your country, definitely not so far away from this country.

01:43:17: all the politics of actually mainstream parties, and not even like a... I mean it's same there.

01:43:23: but in US context historically someone like Trump is considered as out-of category right?

01:43:34: not really like a professional politician, and he's someone crazy doing that.

01:43:39: But here in this context I think it is unfortunately these are political figures who actually main actors and players into doing that.

01:43:50: just to add one point Unfortunately the progressives part of that discourse authoritarian discourse Not all them but parts for progressives or part I think

01:44:05: October, twenty-twenty three.

01:44:08: Seventh of October, Twenty-Twenty Three really cost a big disruption in the United States especially to be seen on campuses but in Germany and also it is very similar But then also specific what is happening now in full force, as we already pointed out it's like this.

01:44:36: Really not looking at certain parts of history.

01:44:39: who can tell whose history?

01:44:40: Who actually try to suggest from an historical analysis how we got here?

01:44:46: because I think that also something you do with your memoirs telling your story, and from that you can understand how certain political dynamics why they are here today.

01:45:02: And in Germany we have this as seen very effectively.

01:45:13: the right has broken up with solidarity between racial justice And what is also happening here, they broke up the... solidarity or the union of people fighting against anti-Semitism and people fighting racism, making it seem like these are very separate issues.

01:45:37: And one can't be compared with other... ...and also history of anti-semitism cannot compare to the history of racism because we have what is said here its relativising the Holocaust.

01:45:54: if you kind of like make comparison or Make Kind Of Say Like One Maybe Led to The Other Or one Has Since?

01:46:04: What has Happened Before The other?

01:46:06: maybe There's also a Throughline there.

01:46:08: I don't.

01:46:09: i don't know how To Kind of like not See it that Way but Here It is Seen as something.

01:46:14: That Is That yeah, But it is Basically.

01:46:19: We are now in This Weird Moment.

01:46:22: I find it scary, but also fascinating how the right managed to become a party of working class and free themselves from being anti-Semites.

01:46:39: Now it's left.

01:46:40: The left are the bougie anti-semites now which is so... And this all happened in way by kind pointing at discourse about race and about queerness, I have to say also.

01:46:59: And feminism in parts but especially intersectional feminism?

01:47:05: These are the people who kind of like destroy it all make it a lot divisive and flip it around.

01:47:09: I find that extremely scary and fascinating.

01:47:15: how it

01:47:15: feels... It reads familiar!

01:47:19: Of course you know I will, one of the things that I write about in a book is what happened to critical ideas in Florida.

01:47:36: Ron DeSantis's governor of Florida and at certain point he decided he was gonna try out Trump-Trump on the right by attacking these ideas.

01:47:51: There was an African-American studies course, advanced placement course that was being proposed and DeSantis decided he would draw a line in the sand.

01:48:03: and came up with a little box of all the things that were in this course, that he was refusing to allow be taught.

01:48:12: And it included intersectionality, included critical structural racism.

01:48:17: It included whole list of things you know had been surfaced in twenty-twenty at the end of day and goes through your progressives and liberals.

01:48:28: I'm going just put liberal mainstream institutions.

01:48:31: they ended allowing him to excise all of these histories and concepts from this course by basically creating the conditions for a heckler's veto.

01:48:46: What they ended up saying, This is The College Board which is a billion dollar organization.

01:48:53: mainstream centrist organization Basically said that these ideas were no longer useful because they were divisive.

01:49:05: Well, who created the division around it?

01:49:09: It was a right-wing project.

01:49:11: to go after feminism as gender ideology and go after critical race theory is racist reverse discrimination in sometimes even anti-Semitic.

01:49:22: To go after all of these ideas now there They are small group of people But they're an incredibly powerful group of really deep pockets.

01:49:34: What makes it effective, what makes it a heckler's veto is the institutions who are willing to give themselves over them by not pushing back against the claim that these ideas are no longer useful or by allowing as wokeness or critical race theory, as anti-semitic.

01:49:59: Like not pushing back allows those claims to actually circulate as being partially probably or likely true because they don't want to fight it.

01:50:11: We thought that was the end of it when DeSantis basically said, even after they took these ideas out we're still not gonna teach this course.

01:50:21: And then came up with a new course that framed enslavement basically as full employment policy right?

01:50:28: So there rewriting everything but what also did?

01:50:34: to create winning to create support, I guess.

01:50:38: Or to advance this idea about who the real races are?

01:50:42: Who the real anti-Semites are... They created requirements to teach about the history of anti-semitism even as they were erasing the histories So the history of genocide in United States taken out of the curriculum.

01:51:02: The way enslavement is taught, taken out from the curriculum.

01:51:06: so they're creating hierarchies that are themselves divisive and that suppresses connections between American racism and anti-Semitism, one would never know that some of the policies in practices that traveled outside we're making the point obvious, there's a politics to what gets taught and what gets erased.

01:51:44: They understand that better than we do so.

01:51:48: when they are about taking all this stuff out and exclusively focusing on some forms of subordination in excluding others...they know it is helping advance a right wing agenda over the wall at us.

01:52:08: And we are basically fighting each other about it, right?

01:52:12: Well, we should take that out of the curriculum and does make people feel better.

01:52:16: We should not talk about because can't maintain a class forward momentum if stuff is in there.

01:52:28: They are sitting pretty knowing they're taking away our capacity to even create a narrative that holds all these isms together as A common interest.

01:52:38: so I look at this moment and To be honest, as you were saying earlier.

01:52:45: I kind of don't have a lot to say them the maga folks because there on brand they know it to create a world that was ugly, they have to erase the ugliness of it by taking our ability away to name it.

01:53:02: To have the grammar to describe it?

01:53:04: To erase the history.

01:53:06: Our side isn't fighting to promote the history as much as theirs is fighting to destroy it and that again is an asymmetrical situation.

01:53:17: then we're unable Fight, unless we show up and reject these frames.

01:53:24: And insist on our histories all of our history's being told in K through twelve undergraduate graduate and beyond.

01:53:33: We've got to show up an fight and so far were fighting each other about whether even a common war.

01:53:48: I think this are very strong closing words but i would also like To give you the chance explain how you actually do that in a very specific way, which is... You started with your organization the Backtalking Academy.

01:54:08: What's it about?

01:54:09: Well... So Backtalkers' Academy basically our virtual summer school we are.

01:54:18: I think i'm missing one of those sessions even right now.

01:54:23: So it is an effort to bring people together who have an orientation towards back talking, but maybe doing in a isolated way want multi-lingual about the way they talk back may want to connect with others, to practice back talking or understand what the imperative is.

01:54:48: So we meet every Wednesday for home room in which panel conversations that are interrogating things like, how has feminism been disciplined and distorted to serve the purpose of patriarchy in authoritarianism?

01:55:13: Like why is it?

01:55:15: we're not able talk back against effort to distort feminism.

01:55:20: That's one.

01:55:22: many another fight that we're having now is a fight about memory.

01:55:27: We are in the middle of a memory war and devastating consequences.

01:55:34: So we have people who can connect the dots.

01:55:36: a lot of these things, People haven't instinct about.

01:55:40: but unless they're gonna really lean in and study it or Unless there going to you know read everything that happens which is hard to do because Who wants to read how?

01:55:50: The world is coming apart every day.

01:55:52: That's kind of depressing But there are some people who were willing to do it for us Dill it for us and to connect in a way that's accessible.

01:56:03: To listen the way That helps us shape how we talk back.

01:56:07: so, that's How?

01:56:11: I am my organization.

01:56:12: try to step outside of just academic production.

01:56:16: i'd love being an academic but if It has no connection too the world, I wouldn't be doing it.

01:56:25: I would be doing something

01:56:27: else.".

01:56:27: So i consider myself as trying to curate knowledge through accessible means so people have useful ways of thinking about the world that we're in and figuring out how they want to move in this world.

01:56:43: Of course you know my objective-my hope is the arc of the moral universe.

01:56:52: I want to believe that it bends towards justice, but it doesn't do it automatically.

01:57:00: people have put their hands on and do the bending.

01:57:05: i wanna assist in by bringing into conversation who are doing the bending inviting other ppl.

01:57:13: I don't know how this thing is going to end.

01:57:22: The only thing that we know, if you start doing the back talking and not doing the bending... This will NOT end.

01:57:33: well!

01:57:34: We KNOW THAT MUCH!

01:57:36: And i think thats all WE NEED TO KNOW in order to actually join together and be more effective.

01:57:42: back talking, In all of the spaces where we can muster The courage To do so.

01:57:48: Thank you

01:58:04: We haven't even said our closing words yet And it's already.

01:58:07: people are ready.

01:58:10: Yeah I can stop clapping which i Can understand but um

01:58:15: We're almost closing.

01:58:16: Yeah, so you would like to before.

01:58:19: yeah I just wanted To say thank-you and I can't I don't I could break out in like a speech of gratitude because So much of Personally but also professionally Your work has shaped me has helped me to understand myself And the world better.

01:58:43: I'm just also very personally grateful for your knowledge, you're back talking and making it accessible to people outside of the academic room.

01:59:03: I think that is so important and the movements, they wouldn't be the same without your work all over the world.

01:59:11: Thank you very much for this evening today!

01:59:32: Kim our conversation takes place since years.

01:59:39: it might be the case.

01:59:40: meanwhile we are colleagues But for me, you still are the professor who is inspiring and empowering me.

01:59:49: And I really want to thank you that... You're still there fighting this and keep inspiring us and you are demanding!

02:00:00: That's a right thing to do – be demanding towards all of our forces….

02:00:08: …and I would like Berlin to think Kim, once more for being here and in the hope that she will enrich us also into next years.

02:00:21: Thank you, Kim!