How the Word is Passed with Clint Smith

Why Is This Happening? The Chris Hayes Podcast

MS NOW, Chris Hayes

Msnbc, The Chris Hayes Podcast, Government, Politics, Chris Hayes, Why Is This Happening?, Withpod, Versant, Ms Now, News, Society & Culture, Versant Media

4.6 • 9.1K Ratings

🗓️ 1 June 2021

⏱️ 52 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

What we call history isn't a fixed thing; it's a narrative, contested and fought over, changing over time. Right now, the United States is in the midst of a massive historical battle over its own narrative, specifically the legacy of slavery and race in America. The backlash to that fight is spilling into public policy as Republican state legislatures push to regulate the way students are taught about the founding of our country. In Clint Smith's new book "How The Word is Passed", Smith studies our understanding of slavery through the stories we tell of it. He travelled to the cemeteries and plantations and prisons home to these stories to see up close how they reckon with - or fail to reckon with - their own relationship to our country's legacy.

Transcript

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0:00.0	For so many people in this country, history is not something that is based on empirical evidence.
0:05.9	It is not something that is based on primary sources.
0:08.9	It is not something that is based on being presented with historical documents.
0:14.0	It is a story.
0:15.4	It is an heirloom.
0:16.7	It is a story they have been told and a story that they tell.
0:22.1	Hello and welcome to Wise's Happening with Me Your Host, Chris Hayes.
0:25.6	You know, it is a trueism.
0:30.6	I think that everyone learned at some point in their education, maybe in history class,
0:35.6	in, you know, as early as grammar school or in high school or in college or in graduate school.
0:41.6	You know, what we call history isn't just some fixed thing.
0:45.6	It is contested. It is fought over.
0:48.6	It changes over time. It is not seldom the past.
0:51.6	That is true in terms of understandings that we have about even very factual matters.
0:57.6	When certain developments in tool building happened, when certain kingdom conquered another,
1:04.6	what year that might be, things that come through us through archaeological records,
1:08.6	might be adjusted over time as new information comes in.
1:11.6	But then there is always this sort of interpretive battle.
1:14.6	You know, there are figures who certain eras view as heroes and others view as villains.
1:21.6	There are all kinds of obvious ways in which the victors get to write history.
1:26.6	I think an example of that I always think about is that like Andrew Jackson is on the $20 bill.
1:33.6	And if you're a Cherokee person in this country, like he is the person that pursued ethnic cleansing against your people.
	...

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