History isn't cut and dry.

There was not some, you know, tome of facts that has been handed down in generations and

we all read off the same book.

If history is cut and dry, someone's got to cut it.

Someone's got to dry it, right?

Black studies are really efforts to capture the ways that the history experiences, culture,

lives of black people, African-Americans, what our lives are about, what constitutes them

historically, culturally, politically, over time.

And you can kind of walk through the history of black America in this way that black people

were emancipated because it was in the interests of the country to preserve the union.

It's notes from America, I'm Kai Wright, welcome to the show.

The partisan attack on history did not start with Rhonda Santis, but his obvious presidential

aspirations make it clear that we are going to be arguing over the history of these United

States and how it is told at least through the end of the Republican presidential primary.

So just settle in.

And here's the thing, the cost to us all for this whole political moment.

It will not only be the forms of censorship and erasure that continue to emerge in schools

around the country right now.

There's also this other thing that's something like an opportunity cost, all these debates

over stuff on which there's already consensus among reputable historians.

They take up space in the public conversation, space in which we should be wrestling with

new ideas, new questions about the dominant narrative and what it leaves out, our white

...