In Class with Carr, Ep. 316: "Six/Seven"

0:00 This success goes to all of you but most of all it goes to those who people wanted to be forgotten. This has gone on a record and the record of the universal body that we all accept the United Nations that this was the gravest crime against humanity. OUR ancestors must be rejoicing in their graves >> and all the torture and adversity they went through. They must be happy that this day the world has recognized

0:49 that they are not forgotten and that the pain they went through and the torture they went through has been recognized by the United Nations. the world's highest body that we all ascribe to. Before we went to the UN today, we went to the African burial grounds. >> And we all know the history behind the African burial grounds. We said Christian prayers. We said Muslim prayers. We said traditional African prayers. We poured libation and called on our ancestors to stand behind us in what we're going to do today. And today I think that they answered our call and

1:36 we achieved success. But this is not the end. This is the beginning. >> What we've achieved today creates a platform for the struggle for reparative reparatory justice. And so we must not rest because we have achieved this success. We must take this success and begin to work so that those who denied the ancestors their humanity, those who denied the ancestors their dignity can accept the truth that this is what happened. the revisionists and all those who would seek to erase

2:22 them out of the footnotes of history. Today we've accepted that this was a grave crime against humanity. The gravest indeed. And that the next steps in terms [clears throat] of reparations, in terms of justice, in terms of apology are what we need to work on and we need to keep this coalition. >> We can't achieve it alone. This victory is not for Ghana. We did it for the whole Africa and all people of African descent. And I believe that if we keep this coalition, we will take the next steps together. And I'm sure that the unity that we have shown will lead us to

3:08 the end so that at the time that we have gotten to the destination, our ancestors, humanity, and their dignity will be restored once again. Today's victory is to ensure that we do not forget and we'll never forget. As long as this resolution has been passed, our ancestors will never ever be forgotten. >> Good everything, Dr. Carr. Good everything. >> Everything. Good everything. President Hunter. >> Yes. Hi. >> Hey. [laughter] You good? >> Yeah, I am. I am. How are you?

3:54 >> I'm doing just fine. >> You look beautiful. You look just fine. You look >> You look wonderful. >> How are they? Yes. >> Uh, so that's the president of Ghana. Um, I know about this. Were you Were you at the African burial ground? >> I wish I could have been. No. Um, I knew about it. I really wanted to go. Would have good been good to see my friend Johnny Kleley who's the lead ranger there and responsible for that region. >> Yeah, you're there. you. Yeah. Well, used to be used to take >> used to take first year students there from Howard every year until >> Howard University and its neoliberal wisdom, anti-affrican wisdom decided to take the freshman seminar from us. But we still go and uh Enkichi Taifa was there. Uh sister Enichi was there and a lot of other people. >> Lar Daniel Favors was there as well. Yes

4:39 to Urban View channel 126 where talking powers becomes action and she was going through you know she actually played this um as well and talked about you know both the protesters that were there which is weird like okay so reparations you want it but you want to argue anyway. Um, and >> we we'll talk about them today. They're sick. They're sick and we're going to get reparations for them, too. It's all right. They'll be they'll be rehabilitated. Listen, >> listen. We ain't got time for all of the nonsense at this point. Have to have time. As a teacher, I have to have [laughter] >> not for the nonsense. I'm I'm saying yes. Go. Let's go. Let's do all of the things you you're going to do today. Um, but there were there was a vote. There was a vote, right?

5:24 123 member states. And this is the African Was it everyone was part of the UN? It was the UN resolution A80 L48. They all they all voted. >> 123 >> 123 said yes. This is the greatest crime, the gravest crime against humanity. 52 abstained including Egypt. Interesting. And three countries voted no. >> Yeah. Yeah. including the one that has us hostage. I know y'all love America, but I don't know why. I say I do know why. Just education and the uh severing of continuity, but that's why we're here. That's why we're here. Um, but yeah, we

6:10 should uh take 30 seconds and raise the ones who abstained either because they are beholden to the United States as Cece is in Egypt or because they are still white nationalists and they are the main ones responsible for the human trafficking for all of our descendants of slaves friends who somehow think that um they are foundational I think black Americans. This is not where the crime started. So shout out to all the abstensions and that would be Albania, Andor Armenia Australia Austria Belgium Bosnia Hzgavana Bulgaria Cambodia Canada Croatia Cyprus Czechia, uh the Czech Republic used to be Denmark, the Danes, Estonia, Fuji,

6:57 Finland France Georgia Germany Germany. We'll come back to Germany when we talk about Brian Stevenson in a minute. Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland Italy Japan Latvia Lexenstein Lithuania Luxembourg uh Malta Monaco Montenegro the Netherlands, New Zealand, North Macedonia Norway Oman Palao uh Paraguay, um, Portland, I'm sorry, no, Portland, I'm tripping. Poland, the Polish, shout out to Alecqualenza, uh, Portugal, Republic of Malddova, Romania, San Marino, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Ukraine, and the United Kingdom. Shout out to all you who stood on the fence of world history because either you are beholden to the United States of America or because you are actually racist. And in the case of

7:43 Germany, since nothing bad ever happened there, we understand uh that you are in solidarity with your uh colonial uh power European friends. Every state in the European Union abstain. [snorts] >> They could have voted no. >> United States, Israel, and Argentina. >> So So what what's the distinction for you between the no votes and the abstensions? >> Well, [snorts] the nos are just predate racists. uh Malay who has 20 billion dollars of our tax money as we speak in Argentina who spoke at the CPACH Hungary uh white nationalist internationalist convening uh last week in support of the white nationalist who's running for re-election Victor Orban in Hungary but

8:28 you know Steve Bannon and his crew was there the son of BB the butcher was there Netanyahu was there in Hungary so I understand Malay Malay is a white nationalist he's the trump of the tropics now and you know with the exception As I mentioned of that country and one other that abstain, Latin America came in strong on the side. After all, the blood of Africa runs through every country in in Latin America. And of course, Israel as a settler colony state, which has a right to exist like every other every other country, but certainly not a right to engage in genocide, which we'll talk about a little bit later in terms of the definition of a moral crime, which transcends whenever it occurred, which is the United States's uh argument as to why they didn't vote for it. We'll come back to that quote in a minute from the

9:14 white nationalist representative from the United States, the UN. And it's the same excuse that France gave. It's the same excuse that all the EU countries gave, namely that there was no international law in place when the trafficking occurred. But finally, the distinction I would make between a no vote and a an extension is the no vote is 10 toes down against the resolution. And it is against the resolution. As I said, the fig leaf they're using is that there's no legal structure or framework for it. The abstensions work both ways. For the open supporters of white supremacy who are using the law as an excuse, it presents to them as an act of betrayal. So in other words, uh Bozo Trump Malay the the butcher will look at

10:02 the abstensions as you're not with us completely even as you're beholden to us and you didn't cave to the economic pressure and to the political for those who voted yes which is the whole world. >> Yeah. They will look at it as an act of not as an act of betrayal but as a hey for the Europeans they're going to look at it as yes that's what y'all did cuz y'all don't want traffic us. Okay. But for the rest of them they looking like they looking at Cece like yeah man we know. We know one day you're going to come over. One day you come. But right now the fact that you didn't go all the way over there. We know. We know why you didn't go. It's the same thing many of us say when we go to our friends at work who come in as the supervisor and say, "Look, I don't want to document pay." But don't say nothing else. Just go ahead and write it. We know, you know, it's the same. So, I think that's the

10:48 distinction I would make between the two. >> What precipitated this vote? What was there? What happened? Well, you know, that's interesting that you that that you asked that because this is the second decade of the UNE uh decade of Africa. Uh they renewed it for an additional 10 years. This is um a moment when the geopolitics make a statement like this possible. And and make no mistake about it, John Muhammad came, President Muhammad with the backing of the African Union, which has a lot of problems, a lot of contradictions, I wouldn't shrink from any of the criticisms of the um the African Union.

11:36 At the same time, just as in the days after World War II and the anti-colonial movements that began as soon as these uh terrible formations tried to impose their will on the world as when they fight each other, whether it be World War I, whether it be World War II in terms of Europeans and the colonial powers, those who have been subject to that who have been victimized by the historical circumstances that led to the rise of Europe which is quickly ending. This is why again I think it's very important that we've been reading chapter by chapter page by page Howard French's

12:21 excellent book born in blackness because it shows you a lot of this is just historical accident but as this thing unravels the age of Europe is very close to an end. It gives breathing space to the whole world to push back in ways that are arguably more effective now and more possible now than at any other time in world history prior to the the creation of the contemporary global social structure which never existed before this in terms of human existence. So it's easier now. the United Nations, which the white nationalists say is a useless, ineffective organization, and I embrace and and agree with them that it is, if we're using their lens, which is of course the lens of fragile white

13:08 nationalism that is collapsing as we speak. You never want to be in front of the whole world even if it's in front of the states into which the whole world is organized because again the nation state is a very recent formation in terms of human social structures and that's another reason why now you didn't see nation states before the last 500 years and here at the end of the cycle of the age of Europe if we survive nuclear war that is as a species the framework provides a voice for ostensible representatives of each of the countries into which the eight plus billion people of the world have been formed. And it was very inspirational, very instructive to see the debate, not even the debate, the discussion, not

13:53 even the discussion, the statement of support, the statements of support that came from many countries in the wake of President Muhammad's introduction of the the resolution. And the resolution to be clear as the reed went through who was a commissioner of course on the New York State Commission for reparations. The the resolution itself which was delivered to be very specific on why this past week and why that day specifically the 25th of March 2026 which is the United Nations International Day of Remembrance for the victims of slavery and the international slave trade. This was agenda item 119 on the agenda and it was I think the 19th of these days that has been put into place since the first day was agreed

14:38 upon by the UN. So that's why it was on the 25th on Wednesday the 25th. But the reason that this resolution was introduced and the discussion that came after it was had because not only of the day, not only of the possibility, but we're in the middle of the end of Europe in terms of European domination, in terms of white domination, and they're fighting. So Ghana is taking a representative lead, and it's very important to understand that. So if you watched if you all I got a chance if you hadn't get a chance please watch some of the conversation that was had after watch President Muhammad that wasn't the introduction what we just saw what we saw that was after the introduction he's had a private kind of meeting and he's

15:24 giving some remarks on the historical significance but if you watch him introduce this resolution which was a resolution to declare the uh the the trade in African people the human trafficking which in the resolution restricts it to the transatlantic trade. Even though we know it was trans oceanianic, not just the Atlantic Ocean, the Indian Ocean, the Mediterranean Sea, but the language of the resolution targets the Atlantic in part because of course Europe is the is the main perpetrator. We have not forgotten Islam, haven't gotten the Arabs at all. All that's folded into the conversation, but Oh, go ahead. >> No, no, no. I'm just I want to ask you another question, but continue. >> Yeah. >> No, no, jump right in because we having conversation. This is the beautiful thing about it as we enter our seventh

16:09 cycle. 67. We gonna get to that too. >> Dr. Car. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. 67. >> Nonsense word for a nonsense time. >> Yeah. [laughter] Oh, >> the the man the irony. Um, as as we as I'm processing and I'm thinking about all this, you know, reading Howard French, not just this book, his book on Encruma, the secondation, >> you know, it's it's frustrating to not be able to have nuance conversations with the masses. We always get ham hocked or or railroaded into these very binary, very rigid ways of seeing this not very complicated but very nuanced um

16:55 terror that was exacted upon human beings for centuries. How do we how do we drown that out for people who are here in class with car maybe for the first second time maybe here to troll maybe here to you know actually learn how do we get them to turn down the volume on the nonsense that you are going to address today so that we can actually have a conversation that leads to some resolution. Not just a resolution with a vote but some resolution in terms of how we move forward collectively to actually build the kind of world we all deserve to live in. Or maybe we don't deserve to live in it. But I know I know I want to live in it. >> That's a good that's a good way of putting it. Maybe we don't deserve to live in it. And uh that's not a decision

17:41 that is left up just to us as a species. The earth will be here. Uh the question is will the human beings be here? So the earth may get rid of us all. We've talked about that many times. But how do we do that? I think we do it first by being here. We're here every week. And shout out to everybody. I see people in the uh in the uh the so-called chat, the embangi as we call it in Nubia who thought they missed today. No, you didn't. So, >> yeah, I'm sorry. That was on me. I was trying. >> No, no, no, no, not on you. >> Literally just got off out of an airport, which Well, I'll talk about on Monday, but um [laughter] I asked Dr. Carr if we could start a little late so I could get here. But yeah, and I appreciate >> Well, I appreciate you, too. when I when and let me just take this moment not only to thank you because again to jump

18:26 off a plane especially these days and come straight to starting that's no small task and I know that rhythm but also to underscore that you know our times have changed over the years and sometimes Saturdays are impossible for one of us usually me which means we've had to you know go live on Mondays not Mondays on s Fridays sometimes or or hella early as we did a couple couple weeks ago when I was in Montgomery, uh we had to go early and you've never uh done anything other than say let's make it happen. In the early days, we didn't go live at all and going live was a treat. And so we've built this road by walking it. And so yeah, for everybody who is normally with us at 7:30 on at Eastern time uh here in on the east

19:12 coast of the United States of America and the criminal enterprise known as United States of America, you got to sleep in a little bit if you're in Nubia because you knew because everybody posted that it was posted in Nubia that we start at 10:30. For everybody else, you didn't miss. So if you been up early and thought we gonna No, we didn't break the stream. We serious about that. So you know, tell everybody to come on in and jump in. If you're in the barber shops, if you are uh in the uh retirement homes, if you're used to doing this on your daily walk, if you're used to doing this in other places and and and and you didn't miss, tell a lot of people who are in these spaces and and I named those couple of spaces there importantly because as I said a couple years ago when I was in Nashville, I walked into the barber shop and they said, "We have y'all on in the morning." You know, that's before we went started going at 7:30. Yes, we were

19:57 a little bit later in the morning and there were times when we started at noon, you know. Uh and then there are most of the people who come in to the conversation come in after we have had the conversation we're having now for for so for some people coming in who catch our conversation after we've had it in real time. You having the the joy of of being in conversation with everybody. And I'm looking in both uh both chats, both embangis. And yeah, no kings is today. Thank you, brother Nelson, for for raising that. I'm looking in the uh in the Embangi in Nubia and here in the in the YouTube side, somebody asked me about this jersey I have on. Shout out to the Mizi, the folks at Misi. That's M I Zi Zi Shop. Maze shop. These are Africans who have put together some beautiful

20:44 baseball jerseys and hockey jerseys. They got Ghana. They got it. They got Nigeria finally dropped. They got the Panaffrican joints. They got the public the uh uh Puerto Rico and Dominican Republic, you know, so I'm all about the black owned businesses. So when I saw somebody with one on maybe last year, early last year, I'm like, "Hey, where you get that?" They told me where I said, "Let me get a couple of those." So I just happened to have this, of course, back in the closet. And I said, "On this occasion, we should rock the Ghana." I ain't never I ain't never wore this. I just had it, but when it got warm and so yeah, I'm rocking it. I had a Haiti joint and I've worn the Haiti, you know, particularly in solidarity with the Haitians. We had a guy on this week, uh, Mr. Johnson, who works at a think tank here in DC to update us on what's going on in in Hayiti as they're getting ready to put this gang task force out in the

21:29 street, another uh, concoction of the West trying to jam our people in Haiti up. So, I believe in we're in solidarity as well. And that is partially an answer to what you raised, bra, how do we break through in our Africana studies conception category framework, which is the anchor that anchors our work here. uh that anchors that work of jailbreaking the black university as we pass our sixth cycle, sixth year of doing this and enter our seventh cylindrical cycle. Hence the uh part of the reason why we're calling this week 67. We'll get to that in a minute. We know that our African states conceptual category framework, you know, social structure, governance, ways of knowing, science and technology, uh

22:14 cultural meaning making and movement and memory. the six there. There's another six, but this actually six actually means something. The fourth of our category, science and technology, provide us a window into trying to grapple with the answer to the question you raised. How do we break through? How do we break through the noise? in the science and technology that we live in now. How the question we raised in our African states framework is how do African people how have we used how we created how we have have we adapted technology? How have we come up with ways of thinking about interacting with the material world and material reality the science to to to to move through time and space during our time in space? Well, we're in a moment in terms of science and technology where there's a continuing fracture of points of sharing opinion, sharing

23:01 mass opinion, sharing information. It means more and more points of entry there. Everybody's got a microphone, everybody's got a platform. Not everybody, but so many people that it feels like everybody. So that when we started six years ago, just a little over six years ago, we're at the end of March 2026. It was early March, late February, early March 2020 when we started this weekly conversation with a conversation on Adabe Wales. And then the second conversation we had for those of you who have been with us since the beginning and you can see all of our conversations in they're archived in in Nubia and you can see many of them most of them either on the Karen Hunter platform or your platform prof on YouTube or coming to the narrative platform you can see many of them here

23:48 the second of our 316th conversations this being the 316th but God so loved the world the 316th conversation that we've had the second of those 316 consecutive weekly conversations was you know why studying our history is so important and for 316 consecutive weeks we've had those conversations which began as 20-minute conversations 22 minute conversations in terms of the third conversation because that was the first week of May when the piller committee had uh announced that it had awarded uh the 1619 project New York Times 1619 project a pulis surprise collectively and another and an award separately for the lead essay in the

24:36 project by my colleague Nicole Hannah Jones. Well, we talked about that and so what we have done over the arc of these 316 weeks, these six years going into our seventh cycle is try to answer the question that you raised. Even as we did that in the dead of a of a a global pandemic which meant from those 20-minute conversations those 20 minute conversations they turned into hourong conversations two hours sometimes three or four hours in the dead of co and I shouldn't have said it in that way I mean certainly no pun intended literally no pun intended but as people were suffering and struggling this became a lifeline and so when we see the Kindred family soul coming in and being in conversation

25:22 with us you know Philip Bailey from earth, wind or fire, you name it. People are all in here having this conversation. And some folks and I and that's why I mentioned nursing homes in particular and assisted living facilities because there are elders who are now ancestors for whom one of the last things they heard on this planet were our voices because and as their family members have said to us over the ark of these years. We gave them great comfort. We gave them great hope and we gave them gave them great determination to pass on into the ancestral realm knowing that their work had not only been in vain but that it would continue in our bloodline and our in our in our labor. That is an awesome responsibility and I don't take and you don't take pride we don't take this responsibility lightly in answering the question of how do we help because these Yes ma'am. But go ahead jump on in.

26:07 >> I was just co-signing. That's right. >> Oh yeah. Absolutely. and and and we know that you do this you do this five days a week on the radio and on Saturdays and then on Sundays convening reading groups and bringing people together. This is a uh as uh the good brothers in gangstar would say. This is a daily operation as Dr. Oinga would say when he would call me at 2:00 in the morning uh with edits to something he had dictated to me earlier in the day that I was typing on my uh laptop back in Temple University in 1993 and 1994 1995 as he's working on a book that he's dictating to me out of his mouth and he called me at 2 o'clock in the morning I said Dr. Bing, you still up? You still up? I said, yeah. And he look he told me, Greg, it's our life. It's our life. This is what we do. What else you going to do with your life? What else are you going to do with

26:53 your life? And so we take that very seriously. So week after week we pour these clean glasses of water and after a year of it because you had determined that we really require another place where we can kind of have this conversation but have it in a way that also institution builds in a material sense the appearance of narrative and Nubia and then continuing in that work you said you know let's let's expand connect network out even more places so you bring so many much of this conversation which you had already been doing into the Sirius XM space all while maintaining accessibility given finally to the science and technology that we find ourselves in into a space like YouTube and then to podcasts and

27:39 everywhere else so that everybody's talking at the same time but even as everybody is talking at the same time and all these platforms have mushroomed so that in the in the middle of co when we had tens and 20s and hundreds of thousands for a couple of those conversations that we had. People tuned in in real time. We understand the value of this place is not quantitatively in terms of numbers, but in terms of consistent demonstration of a standard that we refuse to lower because it would reach more people. The easiest thing in the world would be to come in with the hot takes, to come in with the controversial, unnuanced conversations, to come in and say something inflammatory. If anybody thinks that that's hard, then you're not

28:25 paying attention to what's going on. I watched a conversation, part of a conversation the other day with the good brother Shannon Sharp Club Shay, which of course, you know, everybody wants to talk about cats. Fine, that's no problem. And uh he had on his couch someone who was talking about um the electric vehicles in China. We all know BYD, but then the other ones. And Shannon Sharp was sitting there, good brother, and he was like, "Yeah, that ain't never going to happen in the United States. They never going to let them cars come in the United States. I've never even seen one. Hey man, I ain't mad at you, brother. First of all, you're wrong. Second of all, the reason that Second of all, the reason that you're wrong is because the market is going to break the back of the United States of America. It's not going to happen today or tomorrow or next year, but it will happen eventually. It will happen eventually because the thing you

29:11 don't understand about capitalism, capitalists don't believe in flags, whether it be Ghana or the United States or Brazil or England or Germany. Capitalists don't believe in in flags. The Chinese have already entered and are crushing slowly or very quickly actually the European market. Soon you will be able to buy a BYD my friend because the capitalists don't give a damn about you about me about any of but in your lack of awareness of that that's not a indictment of Shannon Sharp. He played football. That's why we know him and he's smart enough to have translated this as has the former quarterback of the Carolina Panthers has figured out how to translate that into being in front of our faces all the time. But if you think for a minute that them talking like we're talking now would attract those kind of eyeballs then you don't know this is the chaos but we're not

29:57 here for the quantitative as you say often prop the fact that and it's interesting when you're thinking about this in this context the numbers of people who come in weekly here and we can count on usually around at a floor of 20,000 sometimes multiples of that even now that is not just the people who are coming in and coming in once or twice are three or four times. That's the people who they touch. There's not a day that goes by that I'm not in a space that you're not in a space and you know, I'm out in these streets a lot where I don't run into people in every walk of life, the cat driving the bus or the people riding the bus and the people who are running the institutions that I get off the bus to get more walk into to be in conversation. I don't care whether it's CEO of corporations or somebody who is

30:43 unhoused who is selling copies of the local paper that the unhoused produce here street sense and they say hey man y'all keep this up you tell profund and let me tell you right now that is a deeper more indelible and ultimately more liberatory reach than anything out there that is consistently talking and I'm talking about even the talking heads who still haven't figured out that race is not the center of what we need to be talking about even as it's important We'll come to that. So how do we reach we keep going not not quantitatively but in the terms of the consistent demonstration of the standard and in a way that is accessible. That's that that would be the last thing I say about that. Meaning that over the arc of our time and for uh as for the intent of how I

31:30 look at it in terms of what we're doing and what I mean very concretely and specifically about quote jailbreaking the university. I'm gonna take a a a moment here and uh pull out here of uh of the internet since I'm sitting in front of computer the place where you can go to read the very concrete way that I look at what we're doing and I will put it in uh the embanks this is a article that I wrote last year year before last called tour uh introduction to Africana studies tour freedom course design and it kind of traces what we have done. I've done this before but I just put it in the uh the YouTube and I'll put it in the Nubians have it. Everybody in Nubia, everybody

32:16 in Nubian Nation has it and somebody drop it in there as well. I'll drop it in there as well in a minute. Uh you have this this is an article that I wrote that actually chronicles how this kind of emerged how CO hit and at first I thought okay the HBC uses time to jailbreak the black university. So we started with Sanc Kofa. Shout out to highly and shriek germa and all the crew at Sanc Kofa. We started on YouTube and then Prof. You said can I press record and the rest is history. We went from there to YouTube and then a platform Nubia and narrative and the rest we have been building and continuing to build. And what I do in this article is walk through the concept. Now in the space we have here in class we do a little bit of current events whether it be from newspapers magazines websites

33:02 journals, ephemerra. We do a we intersperse that with a a question on literacy that we answer through suggesting books and other readings and study recommendations and demonstrations of how to go through reading. You know reading is hard for people who can't read but for people who can but who are illiterate not illiterate. illiterate, in other words, can read and choose not to. You know, we introduce here are some books, here's some articles, here's some here's some thinking, and here's how perhaps to model how to go through some of it because I am I am all the totals on the planet down about this. I I believe one of my fa one of my deep principles as a first person in my family go to college and as someone who will never leave that

33:47 grounding. We had a long conversation about an hour with the good brother my friend now Maurice Edington who was the president of the University of the District of Columbia himself first generation student out of Berkeley California Berkeley High School who came all the way across the country to go to Fisk University got a PhD uh scientist at Vanderbilt University for 25 years was at the Florida&M University as provost eventually chief operating officer who now is the president of University of District Columbia uh the public HB.CU DCU here in the District of Columbia. And if you all are on Sirius, you'll hear that interview next week on channel 126. We're talking powers and becomes action. We had a long conversation with him and I've been looking forward to this for quite some time. But I'm 10 toes down with Maurice Edington. I'm 10 toes down with President Edon on this subject.

34:32 Everybody can learn. That's why he took the job at the nation's public H.B.CU because understand when you take the job at the University of District Columbia, you're at the heart of empire. And what you do there, they got a community college. She said, "You could start with a certificate program and stay here and go all the way through a law degree or a doctorate. You could do all that work in a place where you are invited in." And people say, "Well, I don't have this test score, right?" Hey, man, are you breathing? Yeah. Come here. Let's go. I'm 10 toes down on that. So for people who go out here and try to mystify either because they think it's necessary or because they they are in their some kind of insecurity thinking they got to show that they can manage all this language to demonstrate they're smart to people who that still won't be enough for them to be human in the eyes of those people you're trying to plead to who think that somehow you can mystify

35:18 academic language and make it seem like more than it is. I'm all the toes on the planet down to demystify that to destroy it. That's what jailbreak means to me. We're all capable of thinking and understanding and it's going to take all of us to do that. So we do that piece of what's going on now. We'll talk about that a little bit later certainly because there's a birthright citizenship case that's going to be argued before the Supreme Court on Wednesday. That might be the most important case to be argued before the Supreme Court in quite some time here in the United States. We do that literacy piece. We introduce here's some books. Here's some articles whether you ever read them or not. What's been demystified is the idea that you couldn't do it if you didn't want to. And part of it is me saying here's the stuff that I think you don't need to spend no time on. We're going to talk about a couple of those books today. We do the intellectual DSI as I call it the

36:06 crime scenes investigation. That's why when we leave here, whether it be all of us prof together as you had us in in Galveston last year on Junth or whether it be me going to Montgomery every time I'm down there or going to Philly or going to Nashville or going wherever I am with Dayton, Ohio with uh Olci and Larry down there to Martin Delaney's place or the Paul Robson house, wherever you find wherever I go, we not going to miss a Saturday. And so we're going to have that conversation and we going to have it together. We're going to do that. Whether it be the genealogy, what you in the be early years called the you should know. Here are some people that we should think about. We should always keep in mind here are some events that we should always keep in mind. You should know those elements from the beginning is always coming in this. In fact, we will mention it because today

36:52 is the 58th anniversary of the sanitation strike that Martin King helped lead the march of the 28th of March. For those of you watching it another day, it was the 28th of March, Saturday. Now, today is the 28th of March where Dr. King found himself in Memphis. A detour in his organizing of the poor people campaign that literally changed the governance formation of what we call in social structure renderings the civil rights movement. Had King lived, it'd be a different movement. But he did not live on top of the earth. He became an ancestor. And so Jesse Lewis Jackson, among others, emerges with the same trajectory have taken place. No, it wouldn't have because King is different than Jackson. If people say we don't need leaders, what we need is movements. Please understand that

37:38 avatars have been with us since the beginning of humanity and that those avatars become very important when their attitudes reflect the attitudes of masses of people, but their outsized individual talents allow them to channel those attitudes toward an effective intervention in oppressive situations. Martin King is very important because he is Martin King and he's very important because of his partner Ketta Scott King out of Marion, Alabama. Shout out to uh my man uh Andrew Billingsley who on Saturday after I left here, we went down to the 100th uh birthday celebration of Dr. Billingsley, a man who was born not too far from where Ketta Scott was born there in Alabama and then married in

38:24 Alabama. This is the man right here, Andrew Billingsley. was at Hampton Hampton University Student Center and I can say that I am so thrilled cuz I hadn't been to Hampton in years. I'm embarrassed to say I hadn't been to the camp of How University Hampton University. I don't have a battle in I don't have a dog in a fight at a real HU by the way. Y'all know that. But I hadn't been to Hampton in 40 years. Last time I was at Hampton, I was an undergraduate at Tennessee State and I was acting and and you know I was in the forensics team. You know, I was doing one act plays and all that kind of stuff. And we had the annual convening of the national speech and dramatic arts group, NADAZA, which is the black drama HBC. Drama programs at historically

39:09 black colleges. And we had our final competitions on the campus of Hampton, the home by the sea. And Hampton is a beautiful campus. It was beautiful then, but they have built so much in the last 40 years. And I wish I could have spent more time. I'm going back down there soon just to spend some time around the campus. and it happened to be accepted students day. So, the campus was just full of parents and students and we're trying to get to the reception before the lunchon. But Dr. Billingsley, this this man right here, this is my hero right here. In fact, uh I had him sign his last book. Well, he's got a book coming up. He's writing about his father. His nephews are helping him. 100 years old man on he never stops working. And y'all go through the compendium, you'll see us talking about Andy Billingsley. Shout out to him. Shout out to his partner, Mama Amy Billingsley.

39:55 Uh, shout out to all of the people, his daughter, his his son-in-law, all the people, his nieces, nephews, all of the his grand nieces who did a poetic rendering, it was very just very important, a very important moment. But um you know thinking about him in that context and thinking about you know trying to get to the celebration which was in the Hampton Student Center had to stop like four times cuz there were parents and there were children uh the students who were accepted who are touring the grounds. And so all of the greetings that I mentioned a minute ago that I'm supposed to come back and convey to you, Professor Hunter, also come from the parents of the students who are coming to Hampton in the fall. tell I said I'll tell her next week. I promise you. So to those students, all

40:41 you parents who stopped me, who's taking pictures and like you gonna be there Saturday? I saw you this morning. I saw y'all before I came. Okay, I saw you in the hotel room before I came over here. Just know Yes. Yes. Yes. There's no number. You can't put no number on that. It might show up as uh one YouTube view, but that's a whole family. And whoever else is in the conversation, I wanted to mention that. But in that process then uh of this creating this genealogy you should know the final component is that component which is the grounding component of every week which is the community discussion which we continue in Nubia in office hours which is why office hours was created a space for us to continue the conversation but which is going on right now. So as I'm looking Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Please see somebody said this. Thank you Louisiana refugee in Nubia. Crime scene

41:28 investigation. I'm willing to do that. He said I'm willing to do that in the high school. I'm going to put that in high school. Yeah, please put it in your course cuz I'm writing on that right now. I call it intellectual CSI. And you know, my my colleague uh who of course one of the most brilliant minds we produce, Angie Porter, Professor Angela Porter, uh already quoted me on that and writing it as she's developing Africana legal studies. And I'm not saying that for any proprietary sense. I'm saying that because as that court as that as that concept kind of echoes out, one of the reasons that I write and have to write is because people will take that conversation and make it try to make it mean completely something else. No, this whole country is a crime scene. So, anybody trying to use intellectual CSI for anything other than that, you have misused it. And don't worry, if I find

42:13 out, I'll make you famous the following week. But at any rate, so to think about this this week, I thought maybe we could use the term as we have just p we're in almost a liinal space, an indeterminate space, a between space. We started because of the in-class conversations we've had late February, early March, we were in the middle of that pandemic 2020. So we just are in the cycle where we're passing the sixth cycle of in class and we are now at the same time just entering the cycle the seventh cycle. Yeah. So it's, you know six seven. But if you've read at all or if you've

42:58 listened at all, and you know, I have the fortune the the fortune of being around young people all the time, college age students, high school age students. That's where I've lived my entire life. I was either a teenager or in conversation with teenagers. So you when I finished college, I was 22 years old. And maybe with the exception of that first year at Ohio State when I was my first year of law school when I was 23 years old turned 23 that might be the only year the only time wasn't even a full year when I wasn't actively involved in some form of education teaching in a space where there were children involved or teenagers young adults involved. So I spent my whole life in those spaces. So 67 was nothing.

43:43 I saw it when it came, you know, and I also understand that it like everything else that comes out when you're that age and coming into adulthood, uh it was something that young people created and I like the way that it was put. uh uh my former student who now uh is a journalist, a wide ranging journalist, Aisha Rasco, when she did a piece at National Public Radio last year, late last year on the quote unquote real meaning of 67 and one of the young people said it's like an inside joke with no inside. So don't try to figure out what it means. It don't mean nothing. In fact, the person person told Aisha said, "If you read too much into it, you're missing the point." One of the scholars who calls herself studying this says it's antiensical play. It's it's not a nonsense word.

44:31 It's an anti-ensical word. So don't think nonsense. Think anti-sense. I I I mean it don't mean nothing. Was it Was it LaMelo Ball 67? Yeah. You thinking too much. It's 67. What was 67? It's 67. You know what I'm saying? But here's the thing that'll blow our minds. Democracy is 67. Oh, we going to get into that. So I figure it's not just the move from the sixth year to the seventh year, sixth cycle to the seventh cycle. It's really that's giving it more meaning than anything that was intended. And that means that the way I'm using it today is just as valid as the way anybody else uses it, which speaks to the indeterminacy of this space we're in. Another reason in class is so important is to disabuse

45:17 us of the notion that any of these things that have been said that are anti-African or antihuman have any force. That's why John Muhammad doing what he did. That ain't going to mean nothing. You tell me something that does mean something. Your bozo friend and told y'all that he could bomb everybody out of existence today and he could open the hor the straight of her moose. As you are listening to this in your car and getting ready to go to the gas station, you tell me 67. Come [laughter] on, you tell me. He can do, you know, uh, this past Thursday, there was a there was an article in the New York Times by Lydia Paul Green. Um, longtime journalist for the New York Times, and every time I read Lydia Paul Green, I think about Randall Robinson roasting Lydia Paul Green over uh, Paul Green's writing about Heidi 20 years

46:03 ago. He writes about Paul Green's columns in his book, no actually longer than that, quartery ago. book, The Debt, an excellent book on reparations. In fact, still for me the go-to book on reparations for that era and really for a lot after it. Uh that's the first book I ever picked. Uh you remember this uh Sister Dr. Kelly Mickens back in the day when we picked the first book for Philadelphia Freedom Schools, for all of our high school students to read and invited Randon Robinson to Philly. came and spent that time with us and left so touched by the fact that you had a couple hundred high school students reading his book line by line and came and peppered him with questions he had even thought about that that now ancestor wrote about us in his second book the second book of that uh there were three books he wrote in that

46:48 trilogy the debt and then the second book he wrote the reckoning what blacks owe to each other which in ways kind of helped populate what I was thinking of through the lens of Jacob Kurthers as the governance formation category the debt, what the that book on reparations Rand Robinson wrote was called the debt, what America owes blacks. That's a social structure conversation. Then he wrote the reckoning, what blacks owe to each other. I said, for me that's governance. That's who we who we do. And then the third was his brilliant book that he wrote about going to his uh wife Hazel's home country in the Caribbean uh called Quitting America. Ron Robson was always clear but in the first of those three books you know he talks about this idea where he's very critical of Lydia Paul Green uh also in his book um an

47:36 unbroken agony there were there were a couple of people who we picked more than one of their books for freedom school students to read over the years and we read another of Rand Robinson's books and he came back to Philadelphia actually came to University of Maryland Eastern Shore memory serves me correctly uh uh in Jle and all the folks who were there to have conversations with us about Haiti was called an unbroken agony and he's very critical of the Paul Green but Paul Green wrote an article uh this past week in the New York Times which where Paul Green observes that America does not know how to exist in a world it does not control. That is absolutely true and it's been true from the beginning of this criminal enterprise. And I thought about it because between moving between seizing

48:21 temporary control of state and federal governments, which is what the white nationalists have done here, to too many states in this United States of America, uh at least almost half of them, uh 24 26 that President Muhammad mentioned in a conversation he had in Philadelphia at the Human Rights Council when asked about the anti-LGBTQ legislation that's currently uh being advanced in as a private bill in the Ghana legislature. When asked about his perspective on that, he said, "Listen, we're going to let the legislative process do what it does. We're going to let it move through, and if it makes it uh to uh my desk as president, I have the option of vetoing it or sending it back to parliament for changes. I also have the option of consulting, you know,

49:06 with the legal authorities to see if this is constitutional." Now, what he didn't say in response to this question was whether or not he would support it because he has said in previous years if that bill were to reach his desk, he would sign it and has some terrible things in it. We'll talk more about that in a minute. Now, the previous president uh Ido didn't sign it. He said in fact that it would violate the Ganaian Constitution and they would not go Ghana would not go backward in terms of any of these things that might impose some kind of penalty on you if you're queer in Ghana. But but Ado didn't sign the bill before he got out of the presidency. He said that he was against it, but he didn't sign it. And so it it lapsed instead of bringing it back. But I'm bringing that up because in answering the question, what President Muhammad did say was, you know, half the half the states in the United States of America

49:52 got anti- queer legislation, anti-quer LGBTQ laws and policies. And so I'm saying that because this Paul Green article where she says that America does not know how to exist in a world that does not control really between vacasillating between seized temporary control of state and federal government which these anti-human anti-common humanity anti-LGBTQIA anti-lack anti uh everybody anti-Latino these white nationalists they've seized temporary control of about half the states and right now they have temporary capture of the federal government. We saw what the MAGA Muppet did. Those of you who are working in TSA, uh, who are looking at Bozo, because Bozo said he's going to give an executive order to the wrestling Mark Wayne Mullen, the head

50:39 now of Homeland Security in the United States of America to pay you. Please understand, it's probably unconstitutional and illegal. Although there may be some uh some budgetary maneuvering because I see the nasty piece of work Russell Votes fingerprints all over this. They're trying to get another power grab at the expense of the people who haven't been paid that you just saw prof in the airports. The understand that all of that is because the white NAS have temporary temporarily captured the federal government and are trying to cement just a few more breaths before their white nationalist project collapses in on them and their white nationalist lungs, political lungs collapse. And it is our duty to speed that moment. But through moving between those temporary controls of state and local uh government, white nationalist politicians in the United States are fighting desperately

51:26 to impose their narrow ideology on the country's fragile stitched together uh stitched together whitenas project that's part of a larger a larger stitch together whiteness project that this genocidal genocidebased European settler colonybased country we call the United States of America built on stolen African labor sustained by a narrative of stealth creation in this 250th year the cesqua uh semi uh quincentennial year half of 500 years and they going to make it another 250 but this narrative this narrow narrative that projects inevitability and dominance that Paul Green wrote this week and says America

52:11 doesn't know how to exist in a world it does not control well here's a here's a bullet For you white nationalists, you've never controlled it. Every time you tell us George Washington, the father of our country, every time you tell us America, greatest country in the world, every time you tell us we can impose our will on anyone else, you know what it is? 67. But you rely on us leaning into this 67 explanation of who you are for us believing in that. You believe in things you don't understand, you suffer. You're allowing us doing that for you to continue this mythology. The illusion that this contemporary social structure we lives we live in the illusion that you seek to impose aresh at this semi-quincentennial is that the United States is somehow founded as anything

52:59 other than part of Europe's global rise and that the rest of us are a terrible inconvenience that you couldn't kill that you couldn't stamp out. But what you're beginning to realize as this country in the United States population continues to move toward reflecting the world's overwhelming non-white majority. This illusion is unraveling as excesses of nivism in the US and other places, eurosentrism always, and racial capitalism. As these things are producing global fracture, desperate attempts to prop it up don't matter and to seize control of the old system. Because you got people who are not white who are trying to figure out how to prop up the system so they can take charge of it. Muhammad Ben Tholman, son of Salman,

53:46 MBS baby. The world now, even in the in the commercial news entertainment press, the world is reporting NBS that you and your friends whispering into Bozo's ears. You ain't even whispering no more. He already gave $2 billion to my man in the dead man suit. Jared Kushner's son-in-law who's out there with the crypto king, Steam Wick, Steve Wickoff trying to profit off of this disaster stuff. The Trump crime family and his friends. But MBS, everybody know you paid Kushner at the end of the last Trump presidency. Two billion you put in his sovereign wealth fund setting it up for possibly now. And you calling Trump every day telling him to bomb the S, bomb the ish out of Iran so that you maybe can get control over this criminal

54:31 enterprise system. Everybody sees it. They even reporting in the commercial news entertainment uh media. But here's the problem. You have NBS and anybody else who aspires to that crown. That crown got all the jewels and gone. That that crown is going to be worth as much as that Burger King crown shortly. I'm sorry. Uh y'all read the news a couple of weeks ago. They said they retired the Burger King mascot. He was creepy anyway, but they kept the crown. Guess what? That that cardboard crown they give out at Burger King, that's going to be about worth what this world system is going to be worth shortly. So MBS, if you fighting for that, bro, you got a problem. Plus read in yesterday's paper that the clean energy billionaires, them boys who live in Texas and got a home in Angola and everywhere else now they coming after the white nationalists who have been messing this thing up who through their white nivism have been saying they want to go and dig some coal

55:17 and get all the oil and no cuz these are clean energy billionaires. There's a front page article in the in the New York Times this week about how they going in Texas after Chip Roy. Y'all know Chip Roy that that that that white nationalist. Uh he was one of the ones in the main uh in front of the microphone over the past couple of days as the MAGA Muppet blocked paying the TSA workers. And here's Chip Roy running up there. But the clean energy billionaires in Texas have spent uh $600 million and they're going to spend another half million dollars trying to get him out of his seat in Texas. not over his racial ideology, but because he's one of the main people blocking the transmission to clean, blocking the conversion to clean energy. But guess who else is now blocking the conversion to oil? I mean the conversion. Guess who else is blocking

56:04 maintaining oil as the go-to energy source? Uh let me think. Let me think. Oh yeah, Iran. You know how many people are looking at these white nests? It's like, man, we told we need to go clean energy. them people who were getting their shipments fifth of the world's oil from the straight of Hermuz. But against all this backdrop, against this uh these desperate attempts to prop up this current system or to seize control of the old system, guess what's emerging? Demands for renegotiation by those who have suffered the most under it. And as we read Howard's book, Born in Blackness, and as you say, Prof, talking about the second emancipation, the encrum book, uh it it's a good moment. We mentioned this last week in in office hours, so we might as well say it here.

56:50 Uh we're going to advance and then part two of our conversation, which will bring us up to the living now. We're going to go right into the second emancipation and just put the set together after we finish morning blackness, which we will do over the next couple of weeks. For those of you who are continuing with us, if you have a subscription to Narrative and have not yet activated Nubia, or if you're in Nubia and not yet have come in on Monday nights, you know, we got over a couple thousand people every week going through this book page by page. So, you can get in uh next week. We're going to start in the fifth part of the book. And that's the last part of the book where he brings it up to where we are now. And then we'll take a moment to breathe to think about that. And we'll talk about what happened at the UN this week in our conversation uh this week in office hours. But and then we gonna go into the second emancipation. But against this backdrop, that 19th annual UN

57:36 International Day for Remembrance of the victims of slavery and the transplanted slave trade became a site of growing demands or reckoning. The system is weakening now. Ral Bunch writing about it in the early 19th century. Here we are, you know, before World War I broke out. Well, actually right around the time World War broke out and after because Bunch was all about that anti-colonialism, that decolonial moment. And now World War II, you see the countries break loose in the Caribbean, in Latin America, in uh in Africa, other places in Asia. And what you see is they try to maintain control at that point. And what do they do? They exert military control. They depose uh governments. They they undermine people whether it be Mosed in Iran, which starts this mess with the Sha being replaced, or whether it be Salvador Yende in Chile, or whether it be all

58:21 those governments. And of course the one that continues to persist much to the chagrin of the white nationalists of the United States of America and the Spanish speaking white nationalists who joined them. Shout out to little Marco the Italian Spanish not Cuban. At least that's what you said ain't it Lil Marco as you came out as a white man in Europe in Munich a couple of weeks ago. Much to their chagrin Kuba persists. Much to their chagrin Russia may be helping them with oil shipments. much to their chagrin. Mo, who is now Mexican Navy, looking for a couple of boats that were headed toward Cuba because looks like maybe uh Pistol Pete as uh as as as Gerald Horn calls him or the runt rooster as I call him, Pete Hexiff, maybe they blew them up uh in the Gulf of Mexico. But the point is that they persist. It's a problem. You can't kill every head of

59:07 state. And in the case of Iran, you keep decapitating them and they grow another head that's younger and more angry at you than the one they cut off. So, let's be clear. this this moment of renegotiation against all this backdrop when Muhammad shows up on that podium this week from Ghana representing Africa not just Africa but as we just heard him say every African in the world. So all you blackfaced nivists I got something for you coming to you in a minute. This resolution on behalf of Africans globally declaring the trafficking of Africans the greatest crime against humanity in history and demanding repair is a problem was passed overwhelmingly by the member states rejected in both telling descent and abstension from the old global power states and those held hostage by them. the votes that vote

59:54 exposed both the hopes and the fears in the current world social structure and raises urgent questions about responsibility about memory and about repair. So we're in this seventh cycle now having come out of the sixth cycle and as we we enter the cycle thinking about this question of 67 as a moment of transition as a moment of ambiguity as a moment that where we have to engage in active collective meaning making that sixth and final category in our conceptual categories movement and memory. How do we pass on from generation to generation to generation the information that we have learned and narratives that fortify us that bring us together? We're in a moment which this Africana studies framework is essentially important to Africans and other people because it centers our voices. It centers our intellectual

1:00:41 traditions and it addresses both the origins of white supremacy and the questions of what we must be done now. Cuz let's not mistake it. Pursuing this as an anti-racist project with all due respect to my friend and now colleague at Howard Ibram Kendy who's just written the book. I'm looking at it right now. I'm not telling you to go buy it. I'm reading it so you don't have to. chain of ideas. You know what I did? I went through all the footnotes, including the ones online, which are as long as the ones in the book. And I went back through and read the whole uh table of contents, then went back through and read the first few pages of each chapter. And now I'm going to go I'm going through and reading the whole thing. Africa is not in there. It's not about Africa. Africans are not in there except as victims of white supremacy. And it it's it's a it's a compendium of anti-racist

1:01:27 stuff around the globe. But that ain't what we do here. We talk about those things in the first category, social structure, because they're necessary.

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