The Battle Over Black Studies
Notes from America with Kai Wright
WNYC Studios
4.4 • 1.5K Ratings
🗓️ 21 February 2023
⏱️ 32 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Black studies is not about inclusion. It’s about disruption – which is why some fear it.
Black studies is under partisan attack, not only in Florida but around the country. With the effort to eliminate the field of study comes the erasure of scholarship and activism. Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, African American studies professor at Northwestern University and author of the book “Race for Profit: How Banks and the Real Estate Industry Undermined Black Homeownership,” has faced this firsthand. Taylor has been removed from the College Board’s A.P. African American studies course, and continues to be threatened. She joins host Kai Wright to discuss the real ideas behind Black studies and her new magazine Hammer & Hope, which centers Black politics and culture.
Companion listening for this episode:
American Political Myths Have Consequences For Us All (2/9/2023)
From the “Southern Strategy” to the civil rights movement, we’re surfacing what is true about our nation’s past, and what is propaganda masquerading as history.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | We're here on the campus of Howard University and we're asking people when was the last |
| 0:06.1 | time you learned a new idea that challenged the way you see yourself or the world around |
| 0:11.2 | you. |
| 0:12.2 | In class last week my professor was discussing the idea of radical self-care as introduced |
| 0:17.7 | by Audrey Lord that self-care doesn't mean that you're lazy but it's rather productivity. |
| 0:24.7 | If you're not boring into yourself you can't help your community or the people around you. |
| 0:29.9 | I'm actually a transfer student. |
| 0:31.2 | I wanted to go to Howard's shadow of high school but everybody was pushing me to go to |
| 0:34.4 | PWI. |
| 0:35.4 | It wasn't until my best friend kind of sat me down I realized that that was such an invalidating |
| 0:39.8 | opinion of HBCUs. |
| 0:41.3 | Yes, actually during class we were having a discussion about the systems right now that |
| 0:46.1 | are direct consequence of racist policies from 200-300 years ago. |
| 0:59.9 | It's Snotes from America, I'm Kai Wright and welcome to the show. |
| 1:15.7 | Here's the thing about new ideas. |
| 1:18.7 | The best ones, the most consequential ones, they are often hard to take in. |
| 1:23.0 | They challenge us and not just intellectually. |
| 1:25.7 | They call into question things we hold dear or that make us feel comfortable or they |
| 1:29.5 | just seem obvious. |
| 1:31.3 | The sky is blue and the earth is flat until someone points out that it is in fact not. |
| 1:36.8 | New ideas that are of consequence are often hard. |
| 1:40.4 | And black people in the United States have very often been the bearers of new hard ideas |
... |
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