March 18, 2021 • 43 mins
Whitney commandeers the slave narrative along with a motley crew of allies, to prove that Whites can own and tell the truth about slavery. But first, the duo ‘forge a new nation’ in media, as Erika revisits a role she played on a miniseries - Ona Judge, the “beloved” runaway slave girl of George Washington. Later, New England patriot Katrina Browne owns her grisly, family legacy as the largest, slave-trading family in America. And bestselling author, Edward Baptist, describes the human cost and atrocities built within the industry of slavery, by conjuring up the lore of the dreaded “whipping machine.” Meanwhile, Erika reclaims the narrative, calling in a favor and advice from the ultimate disrupter, Rev. Al Sharpton. Finally, it’s Dow versus Alexander, when the pair asks, “What's in a name?” Whitney compares his centuries-long, British-American family history, from The Book of Dow to the smoky, white shroud covering Erika’s African-American history, and slave name, Alexander.
Clips from "George Washington II: The Forging of a Nation" are courtesy of MGM Media Licensing.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
I'm Erica Alexander and I'm Whitney down Welcome to Reparations
The Big Payback, a production of Color Farm Media, I
Heart Radio and The Black Effect Podcast Network. Erica, I
want to play you something two stitches, two tiny stitches
and one across like this man, excellent, Only you have
(00:32):
clever fingers and the mind to match you make it
easy to learn. Man. Sound familiar? Yes? Yes, uh, that's
the ghost from mini series past. It's a familiar because
it's me. I'm sixteen and I'm playing the part of
a slave name only Judge in a mini series called
George Washington The Forging of a Nation. Yeah, I remember that.
(00:55):
Where'd you get that from? Wow, Whitney, Yeah, I see,
Well she was Martha Washington's personal slave, is what I know.
At least that's what they told me. And you might
add other duties, you know, like polishing Georgie Porgie's cherry tree.
But yeah, that was one of my first gigs. I
was thrilled to get it too because I got to
(01:16):
act alongside of the legendary Patty Duke and shop at
the gift shop. You know, they filmed that at Mount
Vernon Plantation. Well, you know Erica. I had a chance
to watch this many series and it looked like in
this that you and Martha were pretty tight. No, only
and Martha were pretty tight, not me, don't get it.
Let's let's be clear about this. And maybe I don't know.
(01:37):
You know my friend Gingeri who does the Uncivil podcast,
that's the first place I heard on these real story
Otherwise I wouldn't know much about it. But I mean,
it's extraordinary how African American and their slave experience have
mostly been authored by white people. I mean to a
lot of black people. That's like Nazis writing Jewish Holocaust
(01:58):
memoirs and think it's for roots. Because boom, that's when
it changed things and we started taking the narrative back.
But up until that point, for the most part, it
was from a white point of view. And just to
be clear, George Washington, the Forge in nomination is supposed
to be about his life, not hers. But if there's
an industry that could need urgent care and redress of
reparations inside of media and storytelling, yeah that's Hollywood. Because
(02:22):
the white gaze is single handedly deformed and destroyed blackness. Well,
I would argue that the media has also deformed whiteness
to Erica, not to destroy it, but to present it
as something that it wasn't. Now, do you mind hearing
from some more white people on slavery? Yes? I mind?
Are you crazy? Did you just hear what I just said?
I mean, we're like on different planets right now. But Erica,
(02:43):
I think you're letting white people off the hark I
let them off the hook. Okay, Yes, they should have
to tell the accurate story. There are some white people
who are trying to do that. Will you give it
just a chance? It's you're saying it's possible that they can.
I mean, but see, I'm saying that they did it
whether it was possible or not. And I'm sure, by
the way, some people did a lot better than most.
But you want to do it now here? Do the
(03:03):
history of slavery from a white point of view? That's ballsy,
I can. Okay, black people, everybody, you know what. I'm
gonna give this white man a chance to do his
thing here. Do not send the letters to me. Okay,
thank you, Erica, Good luck player. Okay, now let's get
back to ony lovely, only lovely. I watch you like
(03:26):
a hawk man. Then I practice in my room till
I get it right. I'm beginning to think that you
learn faster than I can teach you. Ma'am. I I've
been wanting to say this for a long time. When
Mama died of the fever, he took us in. I
just want you to know how thankful I was and
always want me My dear only took us in thankful. Well,
(03:53):
it's interesting phrasing for a slave. Well, what could I say?
The whole truth would have distr Roy George Washington's hero mythology.
So the writers created a story that preserves him and
mangles only Yeah, the story is sanitize. The result is
a made for TV Frankenstein movie, Miss thank You. It
(04:16):
was one of my first I'm happy to be in
this Whitney. You're bringing this up and you're tearing it
apart now rethinking everything If that's not my attention. But now,
I don't know if you remember there's a big plot twist.
One is missing. Oh I remember, then where could she be, George? Oh,
I'm sure she just met a friend in the market
(04:38):
and they went down to look at the ships. I
have the most awful feeling something's happened Christopher. Mrs Washington
is worried about Ony. She's been missing for several hours.
You know where she might be. I say she's been
acting out the strange later, strange this for an all
(04:58):
the time, Molly. Would you bring Molly to us? Please? Yes, sir.
She hasn't been herself. She used to come to me
with all her little concerns and questions. For days now
she's kept herself, hasn't affected her work. She's too conscientious
for that. But all I get is yes, ma'am. No, ma'am,
(05:22):
I'm afraid for George. Molly. Do you know where only is? No, Sir,
I think you do. No, Sir, Molly, you must tell
us the truth. She may be in trouble, need help. No, please, Molly.
She run away with Gerald, the Frenchman. I wondered, ma'am
(05:43):
vernon because he tried with me first. He's gonna do
it wrong. I know, Oh, George, Molly, do you know
where they went? They long gone, Newson, New England. Freedom
free either he doesn't care about her freedom. He wants her.
(06:05):
She'll be ruined and he'll abandoned her. I didn't want
her to go, ma'am. I swear I didn't. I know,
it's all right, Why would she want to flee situation
where she's treated so well, where she's loved. Wow, there's
a lot to unpack in that scene, Erica, Yeah, that
was riveting. No comment on the plot. Media and storytelling
(06:30):
suffered then like it does now from a chronic white superiority.
It's like a dry rod. It's just up in there,
and um, only or any other black person is unrecognizable,
you know inside of that. That's not only by the way,
that's her hologram, her balances visited and made it made
(06:52):
for TV movie, that's not her. So yeah, but Erica,
let's be honest here. Don't you think that was the goal? Right,
Like the rewriting and presentation of history to support the
idea of American exceptionalism and the inherent goodness of white Americans. Right?
You know, the scene seems laughable now to us, but
it's really not because the real story of Owny Judge
(07:12):
and George Washington was so bonkers. You know, George Washington
place an ad in the Philadelphia Gazette on May seventy
six after you know, his loving ony went missing, and
this is what he said, absconded from the household of
the President of the United States. Owny Judge, a lightning
loottle girl, much freckled, with the very black eyes and
bushy hair, just like you. She said, I just now
(07:37):
I'm really happy I got the role because I don't know.
I don't look anything like who they're describing. But gone.
She's a middle stature, slender and deliberate, Oh delicately delicately,
about twenty years of age. She has many changes of
good clothes of all sorts, but they are not sufficiently
recollected to be described, which I think is really weird.
Here's those person he loves. He doesn't even remember what
(07:58):
she looks like, really saying that, you know, Well, no,
he didn't know, he said, he knows what she looks like.
She he doesn't know where her clothes looked like. Trust me,
that black, bushy eyed stuff. That's telling us a lot freckled.
It's like, no, she knows, he knows, you know. Then
he goes on with my favorite line. He says, there
was no suspicion of her going off, nor no provocation
(08:20):
to do so, no provocation, And then he goes on
to offer ten dollars to anyone who will quote bring
her home only ten Wow, damn as if that's her home? Right?
So right? No provocation apparently, Erica, owning someone who you
know is supposed to provoke you. If if somebody owned you,
would that provoke you? Please? I get provoked nowadays if
you look at me wrong. So you know, what do
(08:42):
you want? Look? I know I know that I provoke
you at times two. But that's that's another story, Erica.
When you play it roll, you said that you didn't
know owing his real story that you were here. You
are yet a young black woman playing a young black
woman who was a slaved by George Washington, the father
of our country, and he was so concerned about escape
because he quote loved her at the time. How did
(09:04):
that hit your ears? It didn't, I know awareness of it.
You know. By the way, being black is a state
of minds. Certainly being negro is a state of minds.
Being a nigger is a state of mind. And she
would have seen herself as maybe a very you know,
she's in the big house, but she's still a nigger
in their eyes. So the film is faithful to her
status only didn't exist anymore to the filmmakers than she
(09:26):
existed in seventeen seventy three, except as decoration to George
Washington and his benevolence and all other stuff. And look
at it was interesting when you say delicately formed. That's
amazing that they described her that way. That's a mind ripper.
But it makes me think, you know, talking about not existing.
You know, there's another famous George, George Floyd, who was
(09:49):
killed in an eight minute, forty six second blockbuster. Everyone
saw that one, but he did not exist to that
white officer. And that's why if you look at media,
representation matters, and we need reparations. If you want black
lives to matter, well, let me try and do my
part here, Erica, and re contextualize the story that we
(10:10):
just heard the story of Onie and George. Here's the
real story that there was no Frenchman only found out
that the loving Martha had decided to give her as
a wedding present to her granddaughter. And she knew this
granddaughter who was just awful, so she decided to leave.
She just jumped on the ship called the Nancy that
was headed to Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and she settled down there,
(10:31):
married a free black man named Jack Stains and they
had three children. Now Washington never stopped pursuing her, of course,
and when he discovered her whereabouts, he sent this man
named Whipple to try and convince her to come back.
What's amazing is she agreed, but she had one condition
that if she came back, the Washington's would promise to
free her after their death, not while they were she
(10:53):
was alive for coming back, but after they died. So
she essentially was agreeing to serve as their slave for
have her long we're gonna be alive for and well,
that of course was not agreeable to George Washington, so
he hatched another plan with his nephew, and he was
gonna kidnap her, but luckily for her, the locals tipped
her off and she got away. Grape Vine worked finally
for once. Yeah, but he never stopped trying to get her,
(11:16):
and he wanted to come for her children too, because
even though Stains her husband was a freeman, the children
had with only legally belonged to the Washington So by
getting her he could get her three children as well.
He didn't become George Washington, the general that saved America
from the British by giving up. He was always going
to come for her. That's her, you know, he was
(11:36):
his property to her. I mean, she was no one.
But we got to give a shout out to the
underground Grapevine finally working for a sister. You know, they
helped her escape. Again, She's being watched, she's being pursued,
she's on the run. I mean, only's white folks keep
popping up and saying we own you your hours, We're
(11:57):
gonna pursue you and find ways to pursue you over
yind you that we still own you Black folks. I
promise you feel that today. I mean, we are just
surveilled all the time, under surveillance, and it's astonishing and
it's manifested in just different ways. You heard that young
black man in Texas, Rodney Reese, he's walking home from work,
(12:18):
Whitney crazy story. Yeah, well he was arrested because he
was walking in the street. Now this is during a
massive climate catastrophe. The police had time to do that,
to arrest a young man. He had his mask on.
He's balking home from Walmart, minding his own business. But
their business has always been to undermine our business, to
(12:38):
watch us, to pursue us. And you know, I have
friends who right now say they feel surveilled through zoom
and claim they have to justify their whereabouts even under quarantine,
like oh where you ad you know, and they don't
like doing that. I mean, everything is connected, you know,
the will turns. It's interesting Erica. Also, what we see
with the storytelling. One of the things that white people
(12:59):
have always done is they've been able to tell stories
about themselves because they didn't have They could always deny
the evidence. There was like plausible deniability. And what's happening
with all these things like that, like you know, talking
about Rodney Reaess and some of these other stories, is
that there's actually evidence now that can't there. With these
bodycams on the police, with the cell phones people are carrying,
they're now showing the story and white people are forced
(13:21):
to watch this new story and reevaluate the context of
how they're seeing things. And you know, this is what
we're learning. There's what we're talking about, right, is that
the stories we tell ourselves about America, as you call it,
America the Beautiful, is that things are always a little
more complicated, a little darker than we'd like to admit,
not just a little whitney. Come on, they're a lot
darker and they're very complicated. You know, you're doing too
(13:44):
much little stuff that's minimizing. It's not little, it's a
very it's a lot complicated, Yes, a lot more complicated. Continue.
The other thing we've been talking about, how this strand
of slavery, the sort of strand of horror that sort
of permeates so many of these stories that's not called out.
I think I think that reparations include a storytelling component,
(14:05):
a component where we retell our stories and we people
have to relearn history and learn the full story so
Americans have a true understanding of their history. So in
the full story of Washington, you know, Mr I cannot
tell a lie, and who was celebrated for freeing his slaves.
After his death, he pursued a young black woman who's
only crime what she wanted to seek, the same freedom
(14:27):
that he had spent decades fighting for. You know, it's
funny that guy Whipple who sent to actually try and
convince her to come back. He wrote to Washington telling
him quote, a thirst for freedom had been her only
motive for absconding. And this is how you know, the
founder of our country, the father of our country, responded,
which is pretty depressing. I regret that the attempt you
(14:48):
made to restore the girl should have been attended with
so little success to reward unfaithfulness. This was about her
asking to be freed out of death with a premature preference,
thereby connect beforehand the minds of all her fellow servants, who,
by their steady achievements, are far more deserving than herself
of favor. So what he's saying is that only people
(15:11):
who submit to bondage willingly are deserving your freedom. Anybody
who has the temerity to try and take freedom for
theirselves like he did, well they should forget about it. Yeah, well,
you know, the father of our country is the father
of our suffering, the father of our bondage, the father
of tremendous evil. And again, you know, And if you
(15:33):
just flip the script a little bit and see it
from the Africans point of view, he's he's worse than Hitler.
He's setting up a country to be independent but self
supportive of the biggest holocaust in world history. So let's
get that straight. Number one. But I think we should
(15:54):
move on because holl is this is cute, and I
like thinking about, you know, old jobs that I have
and I really really do despite that, I still will
chair us the time I had on there, and you
know what it meant for me to be chosen to
be on a series like that, because it was a
big deal and moved me forward. But let's move on,
because only just one slave story in a long history
(16:15):
of slavey, and we got a hall ask if we're
going to get through it. So this woman, she's got
a very interesting history and has been telling the truth
and putting it out there. Her family was an owner
of slaves, a white woman named Brown. My father would
whisper when he was talking about black people, and there
(16:35):
was just a message that came through that whisper that
was we have to be very carefully and we can't
talk about this much. So it wasn't that he was
saying anything overtly racist or anything like that, but just
to sort of like tread lightly, kind of feeling that
pervaded the low voice. My name is Katrina Brown, and
(16:58):
my life revolves primarily around my discovery that my ancestors
were the largest slave trading family in US history. It
was just complete cognitive dissonance the idea that they could
have been slave traders, so the idea that I came
from a family of ministers and academics, and like my
grandfather was a philosophy professor, my other grandfather was a minister,
(17:22):
So there was some pride around not being in money
making occupations but being in more service the betterment of
mankind type occupations. So no one realized that the Dwolves
were basically the largest slave trading family in US history.
So statistically they brought more Africans on their ships than
(17:45):
any other family north or south. So a huge fortune
was amassed from all of this that was pretty much
squandered by a couple of generations later. We wouldn't be
able to say we inherited my directly from the slave trade,
but it's really obvious to me that we have been
in the elite ever since, and it fits the pattern
(18:08):
where once you're in the elite, you marry other elite families.
So I'm like super aware of the class privilege that
has remained even if we're not at like the uber
rich level, and I'm super aware of how much social
capital I have. So we've gone to a lot of
Ivy League schools, private schools, you know. So I've had
(18:31):
just the best education, and that's a pattern in the family.
So just extremely aware of how much we were set
up to succeed basically, and to be able to go
into the professions of our choosing, etcetera, etcetera. Embarrassing might
sound like too small of a word, but it's just
embarrassing to admit the ways in which the cover up manifested,
(18:54):
you know what I mean. It's so mortifying still, Like
can I even say this that it was being trivialized?
How could it have been trivialized, of all things to trivialize.
But there was the kind of party line, shall we
call it was about referring to them as pirates, scally wags,
boys will be boys, you know. That was kind of
(19:16):
the energy around it, like a dismissive like those back then,
those you know, that's what people did back then, and
those wrapped scallions. You know, there's a way in which,
despite working on this for twenty five years, it's still
too shocking to even contemplate. There's still too much nous
to it that operates within my psyche. I had a
(19:38):
cousin who shared with me early on she said, I
assumed that if it was the Dewolf's and it was
the slave trade, it must have been a polite slave trade.
And then she of course laughed at herself because she
was like, of course, it wasn't a polite slave trade.
There's no such thing as a polite slave trade. But
it was by way of saying, like, we're good. People
(20:00):
were nice, people were polite, right, That's who we are.
So if we did it, we must have done it
in a polite manner. So you have caught me in
the act of manifesting that tendency to minimize and to
understate it, because to state it baldly as it is
is just still to me so upsetting. So if I
(20:20):
were doing it, do over, I would say, they purchased
human beings who had been kidnapped by force, and we're
in a complete and utter state of terror. And it
was the most horrific type of circumstance one could possibly imagine.
And my ancestors did it over and over and over again.
And as my cousin Tom said, they must have known
(20:42):
it was evil. How could you not when you were
hearing people screaming in the holds below and yet they
somehow told themselves stories to justify that this was okay.
And their blood runs in me rascals in scallywags, that's
another way to put it. Uh yeah, Or at least
(21:04):
she's admitting that her family history had been sanitized, like
George Washington. There's a pattern that develops very clearly. What
a brutal system though, right? I mean, it makes me
wonder just karma exists. I'm not mean spirited, Whitney, I
don't want you to think that. But has this knowledge
been brutal for Katrina Brown's family because they've prospered, they've
(21:28):
done well. I mean, are the sins of the father
really visited upon the sun inside of the family? What
do they feel? But she's certainly trying to bear the
weight and atone for that evil legacy. But I don't know.
Maybe white folks, you know, in in your DNA, it
isn't encoded the same way that it is for the
descendants of slaves. But I'll keep looking for signs of life.
(21:49):
Maybe it's a cosmic curse, Whitney, that's cast upon your
people that will always keep most whites at arm's length
with their reckoning of slavery. Yeah. I mean it may
you may have that, but it's working for you now,
but it will not stop nemesis. If we're talking about storytelling,
Nemesis is on your ass, no doubt. I think the
(22:10):
only way to stop at Erica's for wet Americans to
fully acknowledge their legacy. They have to accept their history
if they want to live as moral humans. That's kind
of what I think. And I think that any sentient
white person with the slightest bit of self reflection has
to grapple with us. You know, we white people have
been the dominant storytellers for so long, and we could
(22:31):
use tools to lie the necessary facts, or we'd use
minimizing language to create a moral space for ourselves in
a story. We know that in our hearts is immral.
And I'm gonna get a little fan boy here when
I talk about Edward Baptist. He wrote a book called
The Half Has Never Been Told that I think all
white people should read, and I'm gonna paraphrase him here,
and he says something like historians have for years to
(22:53):
use minimizing language about the true nature of the slave system.
They talk about discipline, quote, and punishment as if there
were some logical basis for the system of slavery, rather
than simply naming it for what it was, a super
profitable economic system. Who lowest gear was torture. A man
named Henry Clay, named after the almost president, Secretary of
(23:16):
State senator from Kentucky. Henry Clay, who had been born
in North Carolina and then as a young adult sold
to Louisiana, talks about the enslavery who had he was
owned by, who had a whipping machine, and so when
somebody didn't do their work at the speed in the
pace that the slave owner thought was appropriate, they'd be
(23:37):
tied down on the whipping machine and somebody would crank
a handle and that would turn a wheel which had
a bunch of whips attached to it, and it would
whip the person who was tied down on the bench
that was part of the machine. I read this story
and I said, you know, this is working on a
couple of different levels here, right, So it's working on
a level for Henry Clay and that he may or
(23:57):
may not have actually seen this thing, right, But it's
also working on a level that I think he probably
intended as a metaphor. Right, This is a metaphor for
the system of labor. En slavery itself didn't do the
amount of labor that you were supposed to do. Right,
If you refuse to to consent to the extraction of
(24:18):
your labor, you were going to be tortured in a
predictable fashion, which of course inspires people to do whatever
they can to try to avoid that torture. So I
thought about that, and I said, you know, this also
is a a metaphor for the system on a couple
of levels as well, because there are a number of
(24:39):
different forces that are acting to push even en slavers
are getting pushed right to extract even more labor. Right,
the more cotton that gets produced relative to supply, the
lower the price is going to be. And so to
increase revenue, they are going to push. They're going to
turn the whipping machine, if you will. They are going
to push enslave people to work harder. And so the
(25:02):
whipping machine, if you think about it as a metaphor
for the system of measurement and torture with the intent
of increasing the amount of labor extracted, that whipping machine, right,
is geared into the other machines, the other relationships which
might call the political economy of the Atlantic world, of
(25:22):
the Anglo European world in the first half of the
nineteenth century all the way up until the Civil War, right,
Because if cotton prices go up, that's going to inspire
more people to buy more slaves increase their amount of production.
If cotton prices go down in many cases, will inspire
(25:44):
them to increase production as well, so they can increase
the total amount of revenue. So, no matter what happened,
the whipping machine was going to keep turning faster and
faster because it's tied into these other movements of supply
and demand. In the industrializing West, the whipping machine used
to inspire fear, used to improve productivity from other slaves
(26:06):
who want to avoid a similar fate. It reminds me
of stopping frisk It reminds me of three strikes, you're out.
I mean, it's all ways to keep a nigger in line. Really,
it's insidious. Well, you wanted to have white people talk
about slavery, how's your team doing? Well, that's not really
for me to answer, right, I think it's for you,
And I think that if we're gonna talk about slavery,
(26:28):
who better we created it, we perpetuated it, we benefited
from it. Don't you think we should also contribute to
explaining it accurately for a change, you know, as well
as work to help clean up the mess. And that's
you know. I think a lot about this Baldwin quote
about not being able to change anything you don't face.
So I think it's our obligation it is. I mean, look,
(26:50):
white people always rely on black people to lead the
racial conversations, and it gives them permission to lay in
the cut. But if you ignore it, it's self sabotage.
We see what happens racist a white construct fixed to
black people. Black people cannot save you all from destruction.
You know, how can you save a destroyer? White people
(27:10):
have to get it there, tearing up their own village
by denying that they're not only the source of the boogeyman,
they are the boogeyman. Boom whin, Sorry, Whitney. I know
I tried. I tried to let you use all white
voices to tell the story of the history of slavery,
(27:33):
but it just didn't feel right. So it's time for
me Errikey to disrupt the disruptor. I gotta figure out
how though you actually think that there should be a
hotline for black people. When we need to talk to
white people about difficult topics that have to do with
black people, we call the hotline and it would immediately
(27:53):
patch us through to somebody that can help the rest
of us sort this stuff out. I know Mega Marcot
where she had that hotline with. She was hanging out
with those royals and Buckingham Palace. I'm lucky because I
have friends who have friends who have friends who can
help me. So let's do this. Like who wants to
be a millionaire? I'm gonna call a friend. Who am
I gonna call? Oh? I know, I know, I know
(28:14):
who to call. This be all he's perfect, he's perfect.
Let me do this. Come on, come on, please be in.
He's an o G, raised by o G, was born
a print of the movement and raised by black kings.
And this man is in the struggle. He's our equivalent
of American royalty. Yeah, I know he can figure this out.
(28:35):
Reverend Owl, thank you so much for this. I know
you are very busy man, and I admire you so much.
I really appreciate your time. Asked to be with you, Erica,
No problem, and I have a lot of respect for
you down through the years. Oh thank you, sir. I
appreciate that. I don't need to tell you that everywhere
we go there are white voices who author black stories,
(28:57):
and they've done it throughout the years, whether it's slave
narratives and those types of things. Why do you think
that white people feel compelled to take the lead and
sometimes take over telling stories and narratives about black folks.
What it comes down to is white supremacy. They take
ownership and some of the the cucriminal, but it's there
(29:20):
that they are more qualified to tell us our story
and others our story than we are ourselves. I was
reading this book on Frederick Douglas and how when Frederick
Douglas was the runaway slave workers way from New York
to New England, and there was buzz around the abolitionists
world about this well built slave that was bright, could read,
(29:47):
and that we could use him to go out there
and push our cars. And the white New Englanders who
were being abolitionist movement brought him in and they started
bringing them around the various allemages, and then he started speaking,
and they were like no, no, no, no, we don't
need you to talk. We just need you to be there,
be the slave. We'll do the talking. It's like we
(30:10):
are really not saying you're equal. We sympathize with y'all,
but let us do the talking. Let let us write
out the screenplay. Let us tell the black experience, Oh no,
you're not ghetto enough. Come on, that's moneyed up, rather
than allowing us as equals to say, wait, manute, this
is our journey and we know our journey better than anybody.
(30:33):
And that is a form of white supremacy. I run
into it even in my civil rights political work, where
progressives feel that they can tell blacks how we deal
without suffering. Lady, we get you all ourselves. And I'm
not saying we shouldn't have allies. I'm not saying we
can't work with people, but you can't take ownership of
me and you. A person that was like a father
(30:56):
figure to be James Brown, and part of the problem
that I saw a first hand that he had is
that you actually had musical producers and presidents of record
companies that wanted to tell him how to do black music. Well,
you know, Mr Brown, that's a little too raw, that's
a little too why don't we kind of modify that
(31:19):
a little. And Jay was saying, maybe that's where I
got it from. You're gonna tell me how to be black.
You're gonna tell me what I'm doing. And that was
his fight, and he did not get some of the
things that other more quote mainstream black artists got till
later in light because they considered him to get up
and I'll never get Erica. In the last year of
(31:40):
his life, he said to me, he said, you know
what raver I said. What he said, The difference between
me and some artists is they wanted to go mainstream
for commercial and financial success. He says, I wanted to
make mainstream come black because I was not gonna be
(32:00):
me in order to make a few doubts. And that's
how I grew up an activism and what I do
immediate and a lot of people they will play whatever role,
not only on the screen on the set, they play
that role in the office and let other people write
their story to them, like we don't have enough sense
to know our own stories, to write our own story.
And we thank them for interpreting to us a journey
(32:23):
that we went through and know that they only are
guessing about that's I think where the rubber meets the
road is the exact storytelling that we tell ourselves. I
have a theory about Mr George Floyd. I believe that
he was killed because of the narrative in the white
officer's mind who told him that he was not only
able to do it, he would do it with impunity,
(32:46):
and he could do it in broad daylight. And that's
still were not better because as a white man, as
you say, white superiority, that narrative runs deep. What do
you say to that type of thinking and how it's
placed in the white of mind. I think that you
hit it right on the head. It's a bond sense
of entitlement, that of costs. I can put my knee
(33:11):
on the neck and uh, it might not be nice
to the family, but nothing's going to happen to because
I'm white and they are blacks. That's just the assumption,
which is why of walking to the pulpit to preach
the funeral of George Floyd. But halfway through the sermon, Erica,
it hit me why George Floyd resonated with so many
(33:34):
of us, Because we've gone through a lot of police
fatality before but the outporn was global, and it was
because the knee on his neck symbolized what all of
us have gone through. And that's what I preached about.
We would have been better in Hollywood and Halem if
y'all didn't put your knee on our neck, that knee
(33:55):
on our neck, that you would hold us down and
as because why we weren't rising, we were a rose
if you didn't have your knee on our net. And
when we saw that cops knee on George's neck, we
thought about what happened to our career, as our professions,
our families, because we've been fighting the knee on our
(34:15):
neck all of our lives, all of our existence since
we got here. And that is what George Floyd represented,
and that's why it resonated inside of us even so
consciously when we didn't understand why, well, we've been told
a version of ourselves that is stereotypical. I don't even
know if we know what a real black person looks
(34:36):
like half the time because it's been distorted, and we've
also accepted that distortion. What do we need to do
to return ourselves to some sort of narrative that starts
to not only tell our story, but tell our story
not through the Negro that was created beforehand. I think
we've gotta go back and discover who and what we are,
(34:58):
and that is manifested in different ways. We owe different tribes,
but that all of those were real. We've got to
claim who we are unapologetically, and then we must stand
and own that space and say that's non negotiable. And
anyone else from the outside that wants to interfere and
(35:21):
in many ways modify our story. We must tell our
community we are not patronize them or support them. We
can no longer allow ourselves to be interpreted by those
that do not understand us. And that's why I think
that we've got to start with our authenticity. If I've
(35:43):
got to be somebody else for you to accept me,
then I'm bowing the white supremacy. God made me. You
don't have to remake me. I will find the way
He made me. Just get out of my way, get
your need on my neck. That's the best hotline you
could ever have, straight to Reverend Shopton. But I need
(36:06):
to get back to Whitney. See what he's got in
store for me. Whin There's one more thing I want
to talk about when it comes to storytelling, Erica and
that's protagonists. You know, protagonists have names Adam Ishmael Lowman. Yes,
I know, they're all white men. Our names means something
and tell us something about the role of the hero
in the story. And you're My name's Erica. Alexander and
(36:30):
Doo mean very very different things. When I was growing up,
we had a book in our house called the Book
of Doo. This book cataloged various branches of our family,
going back to nine when a guy named Henry Dow
sailed here from England. You know, I was never that
interested in the book. It was big, had a lot
of charts and stuff, but it did have some value
to me in the sense that I kind of knew
(36:52):
where I came from in a very specific sense, like
who my ancestors were and how their stories flowed through
the history of our country. And I bring this up
because I thought about this the other day when you
were we were talking to our producer and you complimented
her on her name and she replied, that's my slave name.
And that phrase always brings me up short. It's so
(37:12):
direct into the point, and it's a hard reminder of
how different our histories are and how visible those histories
are in the most direct and gratidian ways. So thinking
about that, maybe want to ask you Eric about your
name Alexander. I wondered if you do it's origin and
how you felt connected to it. You know, I know
you know genealogy, but your name reflects a very different history,
(37:35):
and I wondered how you thought about it well with me.
First of all, I want to say that I think
it's really cool that you know who you are. It's
even some heavy stuff. It's a rare gift for anybody
to have a book like that, and I recommend you
spend more time appreciating that mighty Book of dow And
I'd like to see it too. Did y'all put any
(37:56):
of your bad deeds in it? You rascals and scaliwags
or worse? It's just just the good stuff. But listen,
You're yesterday contained seeds to your tomorrow, So it's no
shade to you. By the way, I can bet you
that what your family accomplished with all those centuries, and
I'm not saying they didn't work hard and sweat and
toil all that stuff in the Book of Down but
(38:18):
I know I accomplished in half a lifetime and on
a Google doc with the help of a series TV
in network you know presents. But the people who write
these things down and appreciate it and move it on,
they're seeking immortality. And I think I have already a
little piece of that. And it wasn't easy to get
(38:40):
because both my parents were orphans. And yes, DNA tells
the real story of who I am. I know I
have this blood from the Congo and from Ghana on
a few other places, but my real self is manifested
in real time. I I'm who I am right now,
And like many black people, I created myself from the
(39:02):
mud that was laid at my feet. But whatever parts
and pieces I could get, So no, if you want
to know, I don't care or know what white man
or woman gave my family its name, because it was
not meant to identify me, certainly not anybody who had
gotten that name. It was meant to disappear us a brand.
(39:22):
It's an ugly brand as far as I'm concerned, and
it's meant to lay claim to our family's destiny, and
it hasn't invested in our welfare or our human potential.
I can't quantify the weight of my enslaver's inherited name.
It's impossible. I just feel that the loss of having
to carry it while I accomplish the impossible. That's why
(39:46):
so many Black people change or alter and dispose of
their names. If you're talking about people like Muhammad Ali,
my friend Queen Latifa, L. L. Coo, J quest Love,
Malcolm X, Harry Tubman, my Angelou Stevie, wonder they they
gave themselves those names. We implant our intention inside of
them and and a rebirth happens. It creates space from it.
(40:09):
You know, in America, black people need an alter ego
to vanquish the evil that is around us. Now, after
having said all that, my name is Erica Rose Alexander,
and Alexander means protector of the people, and I shall
continue to endeavor in that pursuit. I was renamed princess
(40:32):
by the way twice in Africa by two different queen
mothers in two different countries, thirty years apart. That was
a powerful thing to go back and experience that. So
you should know that I am African royalty. But to
keep things casual, I give you permission Whitney Dow of
the Book of Doos to simply call me your highness
for the great it's your choice, and you're welcome next
(41:00):
time on reparations. The big payback. Slavery was eliminated in
eighteen sixty five around the passage of the thirteenth Amendment.
So people think that's history, that's a long time adult,
and why are we still talking about it. The attitude
is get over it, And so I think it's important
to restate some of those very pointed facts of brutality
(41:22):
in the inhumanity of slavery. Most of our education we
were deprived of really in depth understanding of slavery. It
wasn't in our schools. We were basically trying to overcome.
And I remember the slave narratives. I've read them here
and there in the recent years. And I remember the
(41:43):
writing of a slave woman to her husband he had
been sent to another plantation. She said, come quickly, because
I and your daughter are going to be sold tomorrow,
and your son will be sold on the block in
another day. Who could live like this? Is that not
worthy of a commission to study and to determine how
(42:06):
we can do better and how we can make amends.
How we can make the healing not only reflect on
African Americans, but all of America. This podcast is produced
by Eric Alexander ben Arnon in Whitney Down. The executive
producers are Charlemagne the God and Dolly s. Bishop. The
(42:28):
supervising producers Nicole Childers, and the lead producer is Devin
Mavock Robins. The producer writer Serres Castle, and the Associate
producer is Kevin Famm. With additional research and writing support
provided by Nile Blast. Original music by d J d
t P Reparations. The Big Payback as a production of
(42:51):
Color Farm Media, I Heart Radio and The Black Effect
Podcast Network in association with Best Case Studios. For more
podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app,
Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
I'm Erica Alexander and I'm Whitney down Welcome to Reparations
The Big Payback, a production of Color Farm Media, I
Heart Radio and The Black Effect Podcast Network. Erica, I
want to play you something two stitches, two tiny stitches
and one across like this man, excellent, Only you have
(00:32):
clever fingers and the mind to match you make it
easy to learn. Man. Sound familiar? Yes? Yes, uh, that's
the ghost from mini series past. It's a familiar because
it's me. I'm sixteen and I'm playing the part of
a slave name only Judge in a mini series called
George Washington The Forging of a Nation. Yeah, I remember that.
(00:55):
Where'd you get that from? Wow, Whitney, Yeah, I see,
Well she was Martha Washington's personal slave, is what I know.
At least that's what they told me. And you might
add other duties, you know, like polishing Georgie Porgie's cherry tree.
But yeah, that was one of my first gigs. I
was thrilled to get it too because I got to
(01:16):
act alongside of the legendary Patty Duke and shop at
the gift shop. You know, they filmed that at Mount
Vernon Plantation. Well, you know Erica. I had a chance
to watch this many series and it looked like in
this that you and Martha were pretty tight. No, only
and Martha were pretty tight, not me, don't get it.
Let's let's be clear about this. And maybe I don't know.
(01:37):
You know my friend Gingeri who does the Uncivil podcast,
that's the first place I heard on these real story
Otherwise I wouldn't know much about it. But I mean,
it's extraordinary how African American and their slave experience have
mostly been authored by white people. I mean to a
lot of black people. That's like Nazis writing Jewish Holocaust
(01:58):
memoirs and think it's for roots. Because boom, that's when
it changed things and we started taking the narrative back.
But up until that point, for the most part, it
was from a white point of view. And just to
be clear, George Washington, the Forge in nomination is supposed
to be about his life, not hers. But if there's
an industry that could need urgent care and redress of
reparations inside of media and storytelling, yeah that's Hollywood. Because
(02:22):
the white gaze is single handedly deformed and destroyed blackness. Well,
I would argue that the media has also deformed whiteness
to Erica, not to destroy it, but to present it
as something that it wasn't. Now, do you mind hearing
from some more white people on slavery? Yes? I mind?
Are you crazy? Did you just hear what I just said?
I mean, we're like on different planets right now. But Erica,
(02:43):
I think you're letting white people off the hark I
let them off the hook. Okay, Yes, they should have
to tell the accurate story. There are some white people
who are trying to do that. Will you give it
just a chance? It's you're saying it's possible that they can.
I mean, but see, I'm saying that they did it
whether it was possible or not. And I'm sure, by
the way, some people did a lot better than most.
But you want to do it now here? Do the
(03:03):
history of slavery from a white point of view? That's ballsy,
I can. Okay, black people, everybody, you know what. I'm
gonna give this white man a chance to do his
thing here. Do not send the letters to me. Okay,
thank you, Erica, Good luck player. Okay, now let's get
back to ony lovely, only lovely. I watch you like
(03:26):
a hawk man. Then I practice in my room till
I get it right. I'm beginning to think that you
learn faster than I can teach you. Ma'am. I I've
been wanting to say this for a long time. When
Mama died of the fever, he took us in. I
just want you to know how thankful I was and
always want me My dear only took us in thankful. Well,
(03:53):
it's interesting phrasing for a slave. Well, what could I say?
The whole truth would have distr Roy George Washington's hero mythology.
So the writers created a story that preserves him and
mangles only Yeah, the story is sanitize. The result is
a made for TV Frankenstein movie, Miss thank You. It
(04:16):
was one of my first I'm happy to be in
this Whitney. You're bringing this up and you're tearing it
apart now rethinking everything If that's not my attention. But now,
I don't know if you remember there's a big plot twist.
One is missing. Oh I remember, then where could she be, George? Oh,
I'm sure she just met a friend in the market
(04:38):
and they went down to look at the ships. I
have the most awful feeling something's happened Christopher. Mrs Washington
is worried about Ony. She's been missing for several hours.
You know where she might be. I say she's been
acting out the strange later, strange this for an all
(04:58):
the time, Molly. Would you bring Molly to us? Please? Yes, sir.
She hasn't been herself. She used to come to me
with all her little concerns and questions. For days now
she's kept herself, hasn't affected her work. She's too conscientious
for that. But all I get is yes, ma'am. No, ma'am,
(05:22):
I'm afraid for George. Molly. Do you know where only is? No, Sir,
I think you do. No, Sir, Molly, you must tell
us the truth. She may be in trouble, need help. No, please, Molly.
She run away with Gerald, the Frenchman. I wondered, ma'am
(05:43):
vernon because he tried with me first. He's gonna do
it wrong. I know, Oh, George, Molly, do you know
where they went? They long gone, Newson, New England. Freedom
free either he doesn't care about her freedom. He wants her.
(06:05):
She'll be ruined and he'll abandoned her. I didn't want
her to go, ma'am. I swear I didn't. I know,
it's all right, Why would she want to flee situation
where she's treated so well, where she's loved. Wow, there's
a lot to unpack in that scene, Erica, Yeah, that
was riveting. No comment on the plot. Media and storytelling
(06:30):
suffered then like it does now from a chronic white superiority.
It's like a dry rod. It's just up in there,
and um, only or any other black person is unrecognizable,
you know inside of that. That's not only by the way,
that's her hologram, her balances visited and made it made
(06:52):
for TV movie, that's not her. So yeah, but Erica,
let's be honest here. Don't you think that was the goal? Right,
Like the rewriting and presentation of history to support the
idea of American exceptionalism and the inherent goodness of white Americans. Right?
You know, the scene seems laughable now to us, but
it's really not because the real story of Owny Judge
(07:12):
and George Washington was so bonkers. You know, George Washington
place an ad in the Philadelphia Gazette on May seventy
six after you know, his loving ony went missing, and
this is what he said, absconded from the household of
the President of the United States. Owny Judge, a lightning
loottle girl, much freckled, with the very black eyes and
bushy hair, just like you. She said, I just now
(07:37):
I'm really happy I got the role because I don't know.
I don't look anything like who they're describing. But gone.
She's a middle stature, slender and deliberate, Oh delicately delicately,
about twenty years of age. She has many changes of
good clothes of all sorts, but they are not sufficiently
recollected to be described, which I think is really weird.
Here's those person he loves. He doesn't even remember what
(07:58):
she looks like, really saying that, you know, Well, no,
he didn't know, he said, he knows what she looks like.
She he doesn't know where her clothes looked like. Trust me,
that black, bushy eyed stuff. That's telling us a lot freckled.
It's like, no, she knows, he knows, you know. Then
he goes on with my favorite line. He says, there
was no suspicion of her going off, nor no provocation
(08:20):
to do so, no provocation, And then he goes on
to offer ten dollars to anyone who will quote bring
her home only ten Wow, damn as if that's her home? Right?
So right? No provocation apparently, Erica, owning someone who you
know is supposed to provoke you. If if somebody owned you,
would that provoke you? Please? I get provoked nowadays if
you look at me wrong. So you know, what do
(08:42):
you want? Look? I know I know that I provoke
you at times two. But that's that's another story, Erica.
When you play it roll, you said that you didn't
know owing his real story that you were here. You
are yet a young black woman playing a young black
woman who was a slaved by George Washington, the father
of our country, and he was so concerned about escape
because he quote loved her at the time. How did
(09:04):
that hit your ears? It didn't, I know awareness of it.
You know. By the way, being black is a state
of minds. Certainly being negro is a state of minds.
Being a nigger is a state of mind. And she
would have seen herself as maybe a very you know,
she's in the big house, but she's still a nigger
in their eyes. So the film is faithful to her
status only didn't exist anymore to the filmmakers than she
(09:26):
existed in seventeen seventy three, except as decoration to George
Washington and his benevolence and all other stuff. And look
at it was interesting when you say delicately formed. That's
amazing that they described her that way. That's a mind ripper.
But it makes me think, you know, talking about not existing.
You know, there's another famous George, George Floyd, who was
(09:49):
killed in an eight minute, forty six second blockbuster. Everyone
saw that one, but he did not exist to that
white officer. And that's why if you look at media,
representation matters, and we need reparations. If you want black
lives to matter, well, let me try and do my
part here, Erica, and re contextualize the story that we
(10:10):
just heard the story of Onie and George. Here's the
real story that there was no Frenchman only found out
that the loving Martha had decided to give her as
a wedding present to her granddaughter. And she knew this
granddaughter who was just awful, so she decided to leave.
She just jumped on the ship called the Nancy that
was headed to Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and she settled down there,
(10:31):
married a free black man named Jack Stains and they
had three children. Now Washington never stopped pursuing her, of course,
and when he discovered her whereabouts, he sent this man
named Whipple to try and convince her to come back.
What's amazing is she agreed, but she had one condition
that if she came back, the Washington's would promise to
free her after their death, not while they were she
(10:53):
was alive for coming back, but after they died. So
she essentially was agreeing to serve as their slave for
have her long we're gonna be alive for and well,
that of course was not agreeable to George Washington, so
he hatched another plan with his nephew, and he was
gonna kidnap her, but luckily for her, the locals tipped
her off and she got away. Grape Vine worked finally
for once. Yeah, but he never stopped trying to get her,
(11:16):
and he wanted to come for her children too, because
even though Stains her husband was a freeman, the children
had with only legally belonged to the Washington So by
getting her he could get her three children as well.
He didn't become George Washington, the general that saved America
from the British by giving up. He was always going
to come for her. That's her, you know, he was
(11:36):
his property to her. I mean, she was no one.
But we got to give a shout out to the
underground Grapevine finally working for a sister. You know, they
helped her escape. Again, She's being watched, she's being pursued,
she's on the run. I mean, only's white folks keep
popping up and saying we own you your hours, We're
(11:57):
gonna pursue you and find ways to pursue you over
yind you that we still own you Black folks. I
promise you feel that today. I mean, we are just
surveilled all the time, under surveillance, and it's astonishing and
it's manifested in just different ways. You heard that young
black man in Texas, Rodney Reese, he's walking home from work,
(12:18):
Whitney crazy story. Yeah, well he was arrested because he
was walking in the street. Now this is during a
massive climate catastrophe. The police had time to do that,
to arrest a young man. He had his mask on.
He's balking home from Walmart, minding his own business. But
their business has always been to undermine our business, to
(12:38):
watch us, to pursue us. And you know, I have
friends who right now say they feel surveilled through zoom
and claim they have to justify their whereabouts even under quarantine,
like oh where you ad you know, and they don't
like doing that. I mean, everything is connected, you know,
the will turns. It's interesting Erica. Also, what we see
with the storytelling. One of the things that white people
(12:59):
have always done is they've been able to tell stories
about themselves because they didn't have They could always deny
the evidence. There was like plausible deniability. And what's happening
with all these things like that, like you know, talking
about Rodney Reaess and some of these other stories, is
that there's actually evidence now that can't there. With these
bodycams on the police, with the cell phones people are carrying,
they're now showing the story and white people are forced
(13:21):
to watch this new story and reevaluate the context of
how they're seeing things. And you know, this is what
we're learning. There's what we're talking about, right, is that
the stories we tell ourselves about America, as you call it,
America the Beautiful, is that things are always a little
more complicated, a little darker than we'd like to admit,
not just a little whitney. Come on, they're a lot
darker and they're very complicated. You know, you're doing too
(13:44):
much little stuff that's minimizing. It's not little, it's a
very it's a lot complicated, Yes, a lot more complicated. Continue.
The other thing we've been talking about, how this strand
of slavery, the sort of strand of horror that sort
of permeates so many of these stories that's not called out.
I think I think that reparations include a storytelling component,
(14:05):
a component where we retell our stories and we people
have to relearn history and learn the full story so
Americans have a true understanding of their history. So in
the full story of Washington, you know, Mr I cannot
tell a lie, and who was celebrated for freeing his slaves.
After his death, he pursued a young black woman who's
only crime what she wanted to seek, the same freedom
(14:27):
that he had spent decades fighting for. You know, it's
funny that guy Whipple who sent to actually try and
convince her to come back. He wrote to Washington telling
him quote, a thirst for freedom had been her only
motive for absconding. And this is how you know, the
founder of our country, the father of our country, responded,
which is pretty depressing. I regret that the attempt you
(14:48):
made to restore the girl should have been attended with
so little success to reward unfaithfulness. This was about her
asking to be freed out of death with a premature preference,
thereby connect beforehand the minds of all her fellow servants, who,
by their steady achievements, are far more deserving than herself
of favor. So what he's saying is that only people
(15:11):
who submit to bondage willingly are deserving your freedom. Anybody
who has the temerity to try and take freedom for
theirselves like he did, well they should forget about it. Yeah, well,
you know, the father of our country is the father
of our suffering, the father of our bondage, the father
of tremendous evil. And again, you know, And if you
(15:33):
just flip the script a little bit and see it
from the Africans point of view, he's he's worse than Hitler.
He's setting up a country to be independent but self
supportive of the biggest holocaust in world history. So let's
get that straight. Number one. But I think we should
(15:54):
move on because holl is this is cute, and I
like thinking about, you know, old jobs that I have
and I really really do despite that, I still will
chair us the time I had on there, and you
know what it meant for me to be chosen to
be on a series like that, because it was a
big deal and moved me forward. But let's move on,
because only just one slave story in a long history
(16:15):
of slavey, and we got a hall ask if we're
going to get through it. So this woman, she's got
a very interesting history and has been telling the truth
and putting it out there. Her family was an owner
of slaves, a white woman named Brown. My father would
whisper when he was talking about black people, and there
(16:35):
was just a message that came through that whisper that
was we have to be very carefully and we can't
talk about this much. So it wasn't that he was
saying anything overtly racist or anything like that, but just
to sort of like tread lightly, kind of feeling that
pervaded the low voice. My name is Katrina Brown, and
(16:58):
my life revolves primarily around my discovery that my ancestors
were the largest slave trading family in US history. It
was just complete cognitive dissonance the idea that they could
have been slave traders, so the idea that I came
from a family of ministers and academics, and like my
grandfather was a philosophy professor, my other grandfather was a minister,
(17:22):
So there was some pride around not being in money
making occupations but being in more service the betterment of
mankind type occupations. So no one realized that the Dwolves
were basically the largest slave trading family in US history.
So statistically they brought more Africans on their ships than
(17:45):
any other family north or south. So a huge fortune
was amassed from all of this that was pretty much
squandered by a couple of generations later. We wouldn't be
able to say we inherited my directly from the slave trade,
but it's really obvious to me that we have been
in the elite ever since, and it fits the pattern
(18:08):
where once you're in the elite, you marry other elite families.
So I'm like super aware of the class privilege that
has remained even if we're not at like the uber
rich level, and I'm super aware of how much social
capital I have. So we've gone to a lot of
Ivy League schools, private schools, you know. So I've had
(18:31):
just the best education, and that's a pattern in the family.
So just extremely aware of how much we were set
up to succeed basically, and to be able to go
into the professions of our choosing, etcetera, etcetera. Embarrassing might
sound like too small of a word, but it's just
embarrassing to admit the ways in which the cover up manifested,
(18:54):
you know what I mean. It's so mortifying still, Like
can I even say this that it was being trivialized?
How could it have been trivialized, of all things to trivialize.
But there was the kind of party line, shall we
call it was about referring to them as pirates, scally wags,
boys will be boys, you know. That was kind of
(19:16):
the energy around it, like a dismissive like those back then,
those you know, that's what people did back then, and
those wrapped scallions. You know, there's a way in which,
despite working on this for twenty five years, it's still
too shocking to even contemplate. There's still too much nous
to it that operates within my psyche. I had a
(19:38):
cousin who shared with me early on she said, I
assumed that if it was the Dewolf's and it was
the slave trade, it must have been a polite slave trade.
And then she of course laughed at herself because she
was like, of course, it wasn't a polite slave trade.
There's no such thing as a polite slave trade. But
it was by way of saying, like, we're good. People
(20:00):
were nice, people were polite, right, That's who we are.
So if we did it, we must have done it
in a polite manner. So you have caught me in
the act of manifesting that tendency to minimize and to
understate it, because to state it baldly as it is
is just still to me so upsetting. So if I
(20:20):
were doing it, do over, I would say, they purchased
human beings who had been kidnapped by force, and we're
in a complete and utter state of terror. And it
was the most horrific type of circumstance one could possibly imagine.
And my ancestors did it over and over and over again.
And as my cousin Tom said, they must have known
(20:42):
it was evil. How could you not when you were
hearing people screaming in the holds below and yet they
somehow told themselves stories to justify that this was okay.
And their blood runs in me rascals in scallywags, that's
another way to put it. Uh yeah, Or at least
(21:04):
she's admitting that her family history had been sanitized, like
George Washington. There's a pattern that develops very clearly. What
a brutal system though, right? I mean, it makes me
wonder just karma exists. I'm not mean spirited, Whitney, I
don't want you to think that. But has this knowledge
been brutal for Katrina Brown's family because they've prospered, they've
(21:28):
done well. I mean, are the sins of the father
really visited upon the sun inside of the family? What
do they feel? But she's certainly trying to bear the
weight and atone for that evil legacy. But I don't know.
Maybe white folks, you know, in in your DNA, it
isn't encoded the same way that it is for the
descendants of slaves. But I'll keep looking for signs of life.
(21:49):
Maybe it's a cosmic curse, Whitney, that's cast upon your
people that will always keep most whites at arm's length
with their reckoning of slavery. Yeah. I mean it may
you may have that, but it's working for you now,
but it will not stop nemesis. If we're talking about storytelling,
Nemesis is on your ass, no doubt. I think the
(22:10):
only way to stop at Erica's for wet Americans to
fully acknowledge their legacy. They have to accept their history
if they want to live as moral humans. That's kind
of what I think. And I think that any sentient
white person with the slightest bit of self reflection has
to grapple with us. You know, we white people have
been the dominant storytellers for so long, and we could
(22:31):
use tools to lie the necessary facts, or we'd use
minimizing language to create a moral space for ourselves in
a story. We know that in our hearts is immral.
And I'm gonna get a little fan boy here when
I talk about Edward Baptist. He wrote a book called
The Half Has Never Been Told that I think all
white people should read, and I'm gonna paraphrase him here,
and he says something like historians have for years to
(22:53):
use minimizing language about the true nature of the slave system.
They talk about discipline, quote, and punishment as if there
were some logical basis for the system of slavery, rather
than simply naming it for what it was, a super
profitable economic system. Who lowest gear was torture. A man
named Henry Clay, named after the almost president, Secretary of
(23:16):
State senator from Kentucky. Henry Clay, who had been born
in North Carolina and then as a young adult sold
to Louisiana, talks about the enslavery who had he was
owned by, who had a whipping machine, and so when
somebody didn't do their work at the speed in the
pace that the slave owner thought was appropriate, they'd be
(23:37):
tied down on the whipping machine and somebody would crank
a handle and that would turn a wheel which had
a bunch of whips attached to it, and it would
whip the person who was tied down on the bench
that was part of the machine. I read this story
and I said, you know, this is working on a
couple of different levels here, right, So it's working on
a level for Henry Clay and that he may or
(23:57):
may not have actually seen this thing, right, But it's
also working on a level that I think he probably
intended as a metaphor. Right, This is a metaphor for
the system of labor. En slavery itself didn't do the
amount of labor that you were supposed to do. Right,
If you refuse to to consent to the extraction of
(24:18):
your labor, you were going to be tortured in a
predictable fashion, which of course inspires people to do whatever
they can to try to avoid that torture. So I
thought about that, and I said, you know, this also
is a a metaphor for the system on a couple
of levels as well, because there are a number of
(24:39):
different forces that are acting to push even en slavers
are getting pushed right to extract even more labor. Right,
the more cotton that gets produced relative to supply, the
lower the price is going to be. And so to
increase revenue, they are going to push. They're going to
turn the whipping machine, if you will. They are going
to push enslave people to work harder. And so the
(25:02):
whipping machine, if you think about it as a metaphor
for the system of measurement and torture with the intent
of increasing the amount of labor extracted, that whipping machine, right,
is geared into the other machines, the other relationships which
might call the political economy of the Atlantic world, of
(25:22):
the Anglo European world in the first half of the
nineteenth century all the way up until the Civil War, right,
Because if cotton prices go up, that's going to inspire
more people to buy more slaves increase their amount of production.
If cotton prices go down in many cases, will inspire
(25:44):
them to increase production as well, so they can increase
the total amount of revenue. So, no matter what happened,
the whipping machine was going to keep turning faster and
faster because it's tied into these other movements of supply
and demand. In the industrializing West, the whipping machine used
to inspire fear, used to improve productivity from other slaves
(26:06):
who want to avoid a similar fate. It reminds me
of stopping frisk It reminds me of three strikes, you're out.
I mean, it's all ways to keep a nigger in line. Really,
it's insidious. Well, you wanted to have white people talk
about slavery, how's your team doing? Well, that's not really
for me to answer, right, I think it's for you,
And I think that if we're gonna talk about slavery,
(26:28):
who better we created it, we perpetuated it, we benefited
from it. Don't you think we should also contribute to
explaining it accurately for a change, you know, as well
as work to help clean up the mess. And that's
you know. I think a lot about this Baldwin quote
about not being able to change anything you don't face.
So I think it's our obligation it is. I mean, look,
(26:50):
white people always rely on black people to lead the
racial conversations, and it gives them permission to lay in
the cut. But if you ignore it, it's self sabotage.
We see what happens racist a white construct fixed to
black people. Black people cannot save you all from destruction.
You know, how can you save a destroyer? White people
(27:10):
have to get it there, tearing up their own village
by denying that they're not only the source of the boogeyman,
they are the boogeyman. Boom whin, Sorry, Whitney. I know
I tried. I tried to let you use all white
voices to tell the story of the history of slavery,
(27:33):
but it just didn't feel right. So it's time for
me Errikey to disrupt the disruptor. I gotta figure out
how though you actually think that there should be a
hotline for black people. When we need to talk to
white people about difficult topics that have to do with
black people, we call the hotline and it would immediately
(27:53):
patch us through to somebody that can help the rest
of us sort this stuff out. I know Mega Marcot
where she had that hotline with. She was hanging out
with those royals and Buckingham Palace. I'm lucky because I
have friends who have friends who have friends who can
help me. So let's do this. Like who wants to
be a millionaire? I'm gonna call a friend. Who am
I gonna call? Oh? I know, I know, I know
(28:14):
who to call. This be all he's perfect, he's perfect.
Let me do this. Come on, come on, please be in.
He's an o G, raised by o G, was born
a print of the movement and raised by black kings.
And this man is in the struggle. He's our equivalent
of American royalty. Yeah, I know he can figure this out.
(28:35):
Reverend Owl, thank you so much for this. I know
you are very busy man, and I admire you so much.
I really appreciate your time. Asked to be with you, Erica,
No problem, and I have a lot of respect for
you down through the years. Oh thank you, sir. I
appreciate that. I don't need to tell you that everywhere
we go there are white voices who author black stories,
(28:57):
and they've done it throughout the years, whether it's slave
narratives and those types of things. Why do you think
that white people feel compelled to take the lead and
sometimes take over telling stories and narratives about black folks.
What it comes down to is white supremacy. They take
ownership and some of the the cucriminal, but it's there
(29:20):
that they are more qualified to tell us our story
and others our story than we are ourselves. I was
reading this book on Frederick Douglas and how when Frederick
Douglas was the runaway slave workers way from New York
to New England, and there was buzz around the abolitionists
world about this well built slave that was bright, could read,
(29:47):
and that we could use him to go out there
and push our cars. And the white New Englanders who
were being abolitionist movement brought him in and they started
bringing them around the various allemages, and then he started speaking,
and they were like no, no, no, no, we don't
need you to talk. We just need you to be there,
be the slave. We'll do the talking. It's like we
(30:10):
are really not saying you're equal. We sympathize with y'all,
but let us do the talking. Let let us write
out the screenplay. Let us tell the black experience, Oh no,
you're not ghetto enough. Come on, that's moneyed up, rather
than allowing us as equals to say, wait, manute, this
is our journey and we know our journey better than anybody.
(30:33):
And that is a form of white supremacy. I run
into it even in my civil rights political work, where
progressives feel that they can tell blacks how we deal
without suffering. Lady, we get you all ourselves. And I'm
not saying we shouldn't have allies. I'm not saying we
can't work with people, but you can't take ownership of
me and you. A person that was like a father
(30:56):
figure to be James Brown, and part of the problem
that I saw a first hand that he had is
that you actually had musical producers and presidents of record
companies that wanted to tell him how to do black music. Well,
you know, Mr Brown, that's a little too raw, that's
a little too why don't we kind of modify that
(31:19):
a little. And Jay was saying, maybe that's where I
got it from. You're gonna tell me how to be black.
You're gonna tell me what I'm doing. And that was
his fight, and he did not get some of the
things that other more quote mainstream black artists got till
later in light because they considered him to get up
and I'll never get Erica. In the last year of
(31:40):
his life, he said to me, he said, you know
what raver I said. What he said, The difference between
me and some artists is they wanted to go mainstream
for commercial and financial success. He says, I wanted to
make mainstream come black because I was not gonna be
(32:00):
me in order to make a few doubts. And that's
how I grew up an activism and what I do
immediate and a lot of people they will play whatever role,
not only on the screen on the set, they play
that role in the office and let other people write
their story to them, like we don't have enough sense
to know our own stories, to write our own story.
And we thank them for interpreting to us a journey
(32:23):
that we went through and know that they only are
guessing about that's I think where the rubber meets the
road is the exact storytelling that we tell ourselves. I
have a theory about Mr George Floyd. I believe that
he was killed because of the narrative in the white
officer's mind who told him that he was not only
able to do it, he would do it with impunity,
(32:46):
and he could do it in broad daylight. And that's
still were not better because as a white man, as
you say, white superiority, that narrative runs deep. What do
you say to that type of thinking and how it's
placed in the white of mind. I think that you
hit it right on the head. It's a bond sense
of entitlement, that of costs. I can put my knee
(33:11):
on the neck and uh, it might not be nice
to the family, but nothing's going to happen to because
I'm white and they are blacks. That's just the assumption,
which is why of walking to the pulpit to preach
the funeral of George Floyd. But halfway through the sermon, Erica,
it hit me why George Floyd resonated with so many
(33:34):
of us, Because we've gone through a lot of police
fatality before but the outporn was global, and it was
because the knee on his neck symbolized what all of
us have gone through. And that's what I preached about.
We would have been better in Hollywood and Halem if
y'all didn't put your knee on our neck, that knee
(33:55):
on our neck, that you would hold us down and
as because why we weren't rising, we were a rose
if you didn't have your knee on our net. And
when we saw that cops knee on George's neck, we
thought about what happened to our career, as our professions,
our families, because we've been fighting the knee on our
(34:15):
neck all of our lives, all of our existence since
we got here. And that is what George Floyd represented,
and that's why it resonated inside of us even so
consciously when we didn't understand why, well, we've been told
a version of ourselves that is stereotypical. I don't even
know if we know what a real black person looks
(34:36):
like half the time because it's been distorted, and we've
also accepted that distortion. What do we need to do
to return ourselves to some sort of narrative that starts
to not only tell our story, but tell our story
not through the Negro that was created beforehand. I think
we've gotta go back and discover who and what we are,
(34:58):
and that is manifested in different ways. We owe different tribes,
but that all of those were real. We've got to
claim who we are unapologetically, and then we must stand
and own that space and say that's non negotiable. And
anyone else from the outside that wants to interfere and
(35:21):
in many ways modify our story. We must tell our
community we are not patronize them or support them. We
can no longer allow ourselves to be interpreted by those
that do not understand us. And that's why I think
that we've got to start with our authenticity. If I've
(35:43):
got to be somebody else for you to accept me,
then I'm bowing the white supremacy. God made me. You
don't have to remake me. I will find the way
He made me. Just get out of my way, get
your need on my neck. That's the best hotline you
could ever have, straight to Reverend Shopton. But I need
(36:06):
to get back to Whitney. See what he's got in
store for me. Whin There's one more thing I want
to talk about when it comes to storytelling, Erica and
that's protagonists. You know, protagonists have names Adam Ishmael Lowman. Yes,
I know, they're all white men. Our names means something
and tell us something about the role of the hero
in the story. And you're My name's Erica. Alexander and
(36:30):
Doo mean very very different things. When I was growing up,
we had a book in our house called the Book
of Doo. This book cataloged various branches of our family,
going back to nine when a guy named Henry Dow
sailed here from England. You know, I was never that
interested in the book. It was big, had a lot
of charts and stuff, but it did have some value
to me in the sense that I kind of knew
(36:52):
where I came from in a very specific sense, like
who my ancestors were and how their stories flowed through
the history of our country. And I bring this up
because I thought about this the other day when you
were we were talking to our producer and you complimented
her on her name and she replied, that's my slave name.
And that phrase always brings me up short. It's so
(37:12):
direct into the point, and it's a hard reminder of
how different our histories are and how visible those histories
are in the most direct and gratidian ways. So thinking
about that, maybe want to ask you Eric about your
name Alexander. I wondered if you do it's origin and
how you felt connected to it. You know, I know
you know genealogy, but your name reflects a very different history,
(37:35):
and I wondered how you thought about it well with me.
First of all, I want to say that I think
it's really cool that you know who you are. It's
even some heavy stuff. It's a rare gift for anybody
to have a book like that, and I recommend you
spend more time appreciating that mighty Book of dow And
I'd like to see it too. Did y'all put any
(37:56):
of your bad deeds in it? You rascals and scaliwags
or worse? It's just just the good stuff. But listen,
You're yesterday contained seeds to your tomorrow, So it's no
shade to you. By the way, I can bet you
that what your family accomplished with all those centuries, and
I'm not saying they didn't work hard and sweat and
toil all that stuff in the Book of Down but
(38:18):
I know I accomplished in half a lifetime and on
a Google doc with the help of a series TV
in network you know presents. But the people who write
these things down and appreciate it and move it on,
they're seeking immortality. And I think I have already a
little piece of that. And it wasn't easy to get
(38:40):
because both my parents were orphans. And yes, DNA tells
the real story of who I am. I know I
have this blood from the Congo and from Ghana on
a few other places, but my real self is manifested
in real time. I I'm who I am right now,
And like many black people, I created myself from the
(39:02):
mud that was laid at my feet. But whatever parts
and pieces I could get, So no, if you want
to know, I don't care or know what white man
or woman gave my family its name, because it was
not meant to identify me, certainly not anybody who had
gotten that name. It was meant to disappear us a brand.
(39:22):
It's an ugly brand as far as I'm concerned, and
it's meant to lay claim to our family's destiny, and
it hasn't invested in our welfare or our human potential.
I can't quantify the weight of my enslaver's inherited name.
It's impossible. I just feel that the loss of having
to carry it while I accomplish the impossible. That's why
(39:46):
so many Black people change or alter and dispose of
their names. If you're talking about people like Muhammad Ali,
my friend Queen Latifa, L. L. Coo, J quest Love,
Malcolm X, Harry Tubman, my Angelou Stevie, wonder they they
gave themselves those names. We implant our intention inside of
them and and a rebirth happens. It creates space from it.
(40:09):
You know, in America, black people need an alter ego
to vanquish the evil that is around us. Now, after
having said all that, my name is Erica Rose Alexander,
and Alexander means protector of the people, and I shall
continue to endeavor in that pursuit. I was renamed princess
(40:32):
by the way twice in Africa by two different queen
mothers in two different countries, thirty years apart. That was
a powerful thing to go back and experience that. So
you should know that I am African royalty. But to
keep things casual, I give you permission Whitney Dow of
the Book of Doos to simply call me your highness
for the great it's your choice, and you're welcome next
(41:00):
time on reparations. The big payback. Slavery was eliminated in
eighteen sixty five around the passage of the thirteenth Amendment.
So people think that's history, that's a long time adult,
and why are we still talking about it. The attitude
is get over it, And so I think it's important
to restate some of those very pointed facts of brutality
(41:22):
in the inhumanity of slavery. Most of our education we
were deprived of really in depth understanding of slavery. It
wasn't in our schools. We were basically trying to overcome.
And I remember the slave narratives. I've read them here
and there in the recent years. And I remember the
(41:43):
writing of a slave woman to her husband he had
been sent to another plantation. She said, come quickly, because
I and your daughter are going to be sold tomorrow,
and your son will be sold on the block in
another day. Who could live like this? Is that not
worthy of a commission to study and to determine how
(42:06):
we can do better and how we can make amends.
How we can make the healing not only reflect on
African Americans, but all of America. This podcast is produced
by Eric Alexander ben Arnon in Whitney Down. The executive
producers are Charlemagne the God and Dolly s. Bishop. The
(42:28):
supervising producers Nicole Childers, and the lead producer is Devin
Mavock Robins. The producer writer Serres Castle, and the Associate
producer is Kevin Famm. With additional research and writing support
provided by Nile Blast. Original music by d J d
t P Reparations. The Big Payback as a production of
(42:51):
Color Farm Media, I Heart Radio and The Black Effect
Podcast Network in association with Best Case Studios. For more
podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app,
Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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