June 18, 2020 • 46 mins
What's in a word? This week, hosts Dope Knife and Linqua Franqa explore definitions of the word 'racism,' and the ways that language inflects our political reality. They speak with 22-year-old Kennedy Mitchum, who recently and successfully petitioned Merriam Webster to change their definition of the term. And they react to an array of songs addressing the topic of racism from LL Cool J to Eminem.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
Ah, you're listening waiting on reparations production by her radio reparations. Uh,
let's give us into the lock tap but but talk
ways as chocol white as a death block at a
cock fight on my life, getting told it I'm chocolate,
that I'm scary spice. Doesn't even matter that I'm pot
spice for the dark side. I'd be fairly bright, but
(00:23):
it doesn't matter. Took a shot dead on the coplights
like a bad dog. It's another case left this uppercase.
Took a tap pole out of water, a bottom p
parisite to baking the pavement the favorite height. But some
a day, well, my mother weights with the pepper five.
It's wondering whether I'm und late my buddy's traits and chocolates.
What would I do with my verse not written well?
I am a black man, no doubt. Shit as hell
(00:44):
could be somebody's talking practice. When they lick a shell
ship for health, heart, sickle cell or you pick a cell.
I chose rap because I'm lazy and short fun playing
a chords dog. I'm trying to stay out of court,
still single, because I'm threatened by the pain of divorce.
They're shooting niggas like they made it as board. It
blazed in my fourth love staying indoors so for sure, hot,
(01:04):
so cold, don't even want to go outside. Sucking pigs
are patrolling with a chrome down nine. If I getten
to a scuffle and I know whout that taste smag
on my tongue when I breathe, I don't know what
to believe. I'd protest, but I don't want a disease.
So I'm dressing like a billboard, feeling like a product.
Hope the scouts from thinking NIGG is selling narcotics. Dope
(01:26):
dove a A what's happening? My name is dope Knife.
I'm lingal franca. We are waiting on reparations. Give us
a goddamn money. How are you doing? I'm doing all right.
I just got out of a seven hour commission meeting
in which public comment was given by you know, around
(01:46):
a hundred hundred and fifty again, back up, back up,
back up, seven hour commission meetings. So what time is
it right now? It is sucking one and it's in
the morning. I'm not gonna live how couple of glasses
of wine and I've smoked a few blunts. Oh before
I forget. The beats on this episode are provided by
(02:08):
my homie Factor Chandelier. That's at Factor Chandelier on Instagram.
He's a dope ass producer. You guys should check them out.
You know. I actually this is my day of my
corn and I was going to I was gonna say,
it's my fourteenth day of quarantine. So you know, I
(02:29):
haven't gotten sick. Yeah, you know, I think I'm gonna
go get tested for COVID tomorrow. But I'm assuming that
either didn't get it from you or if I did
get it on a symptomatic so guidn't I got from
the contact tracer I spoke to was that after ten days,
have I had no symptoms, I could start going on
public again, which I started to do today. We're in
(02:51):
your mask, of course, we're in my mask, of course,
but yeah, I mean, I guess we're COVID free. Yeah,
I'll find out tomorrow. I took a break on how
much I was smoking the last two weeks. I was like, man,
if I start getting symptoms and I was burning them down,
And so today I woke up, I was like, man,
I'm feeling kind of good. I mean, you know, knock
on wood or whatever you gotta knock on. But I
(03:12):
was like, Hey, I'm just gonna smoke all thettle dope today.
I want to talk about the commission meeting for a
minute for a second. So many people came out in
the support of my plan to defund the police in
a win a word. You know, we've been calling it
like reimagining public safety as a way to gain more
public buy in, but I want to say that on
(03:33):
the air one. I mean, yeah, whatever, like people find
like I'd be using to defund the police fucking hashtag
to like get likes and spread awareness even though like
you know what's in the name, I'm saying, it's all
like taking care of Like there's no more you don't
need that political strategy in the bag anymore. You are
(03:53):
listening to this show. You're not going to be fooled
by me in public saying reimagine public safety. Like literally
at the meeting, all the Republicans and most of the
fucking like radical an ar kiss regular towny like young
folks that came through were like either like you, I
don't support defunding the police or fun, yeah, abolish the police.
(04:15):
Defunding It isn't even enough and so it doesn't really
matter what terminology we use. People know what we mean.
So even if I do think reimagining public safety is
an honest take of like what I'm trying to do,
I really want us to take a creative and like
bold approach to like thinking a new what it means
to keep our community safe. It means giving the police
(04:35):
less money if they're if they're going to be demilitarized. Yeah,
so so that was exciting. But they did take maybe
like four or five hours and then so it is
it just like literally four four and five hours people
just coming up and talking for three minutes? Yeah? Is it?
Would you describe most of the discourses like grievance or so,
(04:55):
about twenty and thirty people came out in opposition to
defunding the police. The rest of the folks that came out,
the other hundred or so eighty or so, um, weren't
supported of funding the police. We've had mostly peaceful protests
here in Athens so far, except for police violence where
they tear gas and shot with bean backgrounds peaceful protesters
(05:16):
a couple of weeks ago. Um. But tonight we had
a gathering of like blue Lives Matter Republicans waving American
flags on the steps of city Hall, and then folks
that are here to you know, end an unpaid prison
labor and like defund the police that were like playing
fun the police by in w a and dancing and
(05:37):
like holding signs, and reports indicated that an older white
man who was with the Blue Lives Matter crowd came
up the steps of city Hall and attempted to rest
away a megaphone from a black transactivist that was leading
the Black Lives Matter protests, dragging him down the stairs, uh,
(05:57):
in like an altercation. And so it's like we've had
all this peaceful ship until the fucking right wing appears.
We've been just chilling, singing Kumbaya and we each all overcome.
And then it's I mean they're the I mean they're
the ones who are like ripping down like people signs
and ship costing little girls and stuff. Yeah, but I
(06:20):
guess I ever had to mention. The car caravan on
Saturday went well. We had about a hundred car show
out and we drove around decides to police violence and
happens shut down downtown for about an hour of the
radio show. I'm try getting ready to do do that again,
and we're gonna do it again the Saturday, and I'm
actually bringing your ass now there's none of us protavirus. Yeah,
I'm gonna go participate now. Yeah, it's gonna be cool.
It's gonna be cool. But you had some exciting news
(06:41):
this week also. Oh um, yeah, No, I I got
to do uh fundraiser with the legendary Jerry Conway. He's
the co creator of The Punisher and used to write
Spider Man and a bunch of other cool comic book things.
But he put out a call to get some you know,
illustrators and artists who were of color to do a
(07:04):
little reappropriation of the Punisher logo, the character that he created.
It's you know, the logo has been appropriated by police,
which is really ironic because the cops have started wearing
the Punisher skull unlike the uniform stickers on their car
and ship and any sort of passive following of the
(07:25):
comic book. And it's quite explicit the Punisher doesn't funk
with cops. He especially the Punisher especially doesn't funk with
cops who funk with him. Yeah, but I know, I
got to design like a you know, black Lives Matter
skull and all the proceeds are going towards Black Lives Matter.
So far, I think the whole thing is raised. Like
(07:45):
I think like twenty three thou dollars. That was like
two days ago when I checked. So that's ill man.
I'm proud of you. Proud of you. Yeah. And then
also it put me on to you know, some of
the fellow artists who participated in it. That's sick put
onto some new black you know, illustrators and stuff. So
there's a link to that in my Instagram Bio Dope,
(08:07):
underscore knife, So just check that out. I feel like
we should have done this in reverse. But like we've
got lots of good news to me, we also got
a lot of bad news this week. I've been getting
death threats for one on the internet. One man uh
suggested which platform on Facebook. One man said I should
be hung from a tree. Another man suggested that brooks
(08:30):
me thrown through the windows of our home. Didn't you
didn't some cops get involved. Cops called me to let
me know that they were investigating the situation. Asked if
I wanted to press charges, and I decline because I
mean there's two things they suggested that it might be
unlikely that they could be brought up they could be
effectively prosecuted for this since they didn't explicitly say I'm
(08:51):
going to hang you from a tree it which just
suggested that this is something that should happen. Someone should
throw Brooks through our window. But in addition, I feel
like I I like, I just don't believe that the
criminal legal system reforms people like these motherfuckers get thrown
in jail and then they're around a bunch of other
white supremacist who have committed crimes, they get involved in
like a white supremacist gang, They get their ideology re
(09:13):
entrenched to that experience or just bitterness through having been
uh incarcerated over threats to a black activist, and they
just like double down on that mission in their lives. So,
like what we need to do instead is to like
take a really close look at the schools they went to,
the churches they have attended, who their parents are, what
(09:33):
affiliations they have in terms of organizations in the community,
and like do kind of an autopsy on like how
do these organizations, how do these institutions create such evil men?
And how do we reform and remake those institutions so
that we stopped making people like this because you know,
Robbie Bailey or whatever, Chuck Jones like, it's too late
(09:54):
for them, but it might not be too late for
their sons that are going to Athens Christian right now
if we figure out how to fix athletes Christian and so,
I just want to redirect people's attention to like the
structural level of like what makes racists, rather than punishing
individual racists for the institutions that made them shitty. You
know where else there's a lot of racists in our
comments section podcast. Oh our comments section is a hot
(10:20):
shit show. Yeah you checked that ship out, you know what.
I glanced at it, But like I just in in
general when whenever I do stuff, I'm like one of
those kinds are. I tried my hardest to not count
numbers and not read comments because I obsess section. I
loved about what man, I just get. I didn't enough
(10:44):
people have commented on it. You know, my my little brothers,
you know in the military. He was like, yo, man, good, Yeah,
I'm good. I'm good. So I mean I guess all
that to say, you know, leave us some five stars
if you like the show. Yeah, it's about what you
like about the show. It's also good feedback for us
moving forward. Um. But this kind of leads into what
(11:07):
we're going to talk about for today's episode, which is
going to be part one in a reoccurring series that
we're going to be doing where we spotlight different aspects
of racism in a series that i'd like to call
So I think it's really important to do this because
(11:27):
I think we've been operating from some basic assumptions that
we want to make sure that we share with our audience.
We've been working out the premise throughout the show that
folks you know, hold these same basic assumptiance about what
racism is and how it operates. But I think it's
important as well to take a step back and explore
where we're coming from and what these things actually mean.
Uh as like a practical matter for just like yo,
(11:49):
we you know, love you for listening, and I want
to make sure we're all on the same page, but
also into in line with the theme of the show,
thinking about the way that how we define racism also
inflex our political reality. I see a lot of times
in public policy. I saw earlier tonight in our commission meeting,
how definitions matter so much for how resources get allocated,
(12:11):
how the laws upheld. We were having a debate earlier
about what the term resources mean. A bunch of funding
was going out to all these indigence services providers and
organizations that do work with the homeless, etcetera, who provide resources,
and this one entity didn't get funding because it wasn't
defined as like providing resources, like well, isn't education or resource?
(12:33):
Isn't edgucy, like isn't you know, this training or resource
for people? And so we have to be very clear
and what different words mean in order for like governments
to operate and for public policy to be effective. It's
just like in the battle of debates and ideas, it's
like the words or weapons, and it's like you have
to know how to wield them. Right, We totally totally
interpretation matters so much, And so we're gonna get a
(12:54):
little bit into the definition of racism today both to
like establish a common ground with y'all and to kind
of think about the way that um that language influences
our political reality, especially when you're having discussions with people
who you are trying to prove that an action, something
they did, or that an aspect of what you guys
are discussing two people who are trying to prove that
(13:16):
it isn't racist. They're always quick to jump to the
dictionary definition of the word racism to prove what it means.
So let's check out a couple of those, right, So
we have in the Oxford languages, we have the belief
that different races possess distinct characteristics, abilities, or qualities, especially
so as to distinguish them as inferior or superior to
(13:38):
one another. And then in the columns English Dictionary, have
got the belief that races have distinctive cultural characteristics determined
by hereditary factors, and that this endows some races with
an intrinsic superiority over others Abusive or aggressive behavior towards
members of another race on the basis of such a belief. Now,
what all these definitions do is firmly set a con
(14:00):
sept of racism is being a belief, a doctrine to
that someone subscribes to. Uh. These are safe definitions because
they frame racism is being strictly like a moral failing
and something that only pertains to some of us and
not all of us. You know, it's something that you
can write off as being, oh, that person is bad
(14:21):
because that person thinks X, and it doesn't necessarily address
the broader aspects of racism and how it affects every
aspects of our lives. This is kind of like applying
the bad apples philosophy to the definition of racism. Well,
the thing about the bad apples like metaphor is that
the full saying is that a couple of bad apples
(14:42):
spoil the whole bunch. I think that's very like, uh
poignant for thinking about the way that systemic racism, institutional
racism operates. Because when you have individual actors all or
you know, even some of them doing this kind of thing,
and you have other people who aren't checking their power
when it comes to enforcing regulations or you know, and
(15:06):
interacting with others in a racist way, but you don't
have any sorts of accountability around that, the whole system
becomes inflected with this this racist ideology. And so through
every sort of interpersonal interaction with folks, every single middle
level manager and that decides not to hire a black person.
It might not be a companywide policy per se, but
(15:29):
it becomes systemic when um, it is a trend historically
and no one is checking that, and so it's kind
of accepted as the status quo. Yeah, it's like, it
doesn't require that somebody be actively racist in order for
it to perpetuate. Like, all all that work was done
hundreds of years ago. Literally, systems were put in place,
So it's like, hey, let's have this be so ingrained
(15:51):
into the fabric of society so that hundreds of years
from now, even if public sentiment changes, those systems are
still in place to perpetuate this system of racism. This
very issue of defining the word racism came to the
(16:14):
attention of Drake University graduate Kennedy Mitchum a few months ago.
She sent an email to Marry and Webster the Dictionary
bringing this up and urging that they update the definition
for the word racism to represent the true meaning of
what the word is. Making her case, she stated, racism
is not only prejudice against a certain race due to
color of a person's skin, as it states in your dictionary.
(16:37):
It is both prejudice combined with social and institutional power.
It is a system of advantage based on skin color.
To her surprise, they hit her back up the next
day and they actually agreed with there and they updated,
they updated the definition, and she changed the definition of
the word racism. And we actually have Kennedy here with
us today to talk about the case he made to
(16:58):
marry On Webster and the impact the definitions change. Okay,
so we're here with Kennedy Mitchell, recent Drake University graduate,
twenty two year old that effectively lobbied Mary A. Webster
to get their definition of racism changed in the dictionary.
How are you to David Kennedy, I'm doing good. How
(17:18):
are you? I'm good. It's good to have you here. Yeah,
So talk to us a little bit of what about
what informs your definition of racism my own experiences. I've
definitely been a part of a lot of predominantly white
institutions growing up um in St. Louis. A lot of
that racism that I experienced. It was more blatant, a
(17:42):
lot more overt, but going into college, a lot of that,
you know, it was way. It was a lot more microaggressions,
It was a lot more covert, It was a lot
more undercover. They did, they didn't really want to acknowledge
it as racism. So those binds, those different experiences definitely
(18:04):
made me understand how racism is very multidimensional. It's more
than just calling someone the in word or just derogatory turns.
It's a lot of the way that systems work to
continue to oppress people. It's it's a way that people
continually there implicit by it still works to you know,
show that oppression. So my life experience is definitely it
(18:28):
formed the way that I see the word. Now, what
was like the deciding factor that something happened that made
you just open your web browser that day and send
that email out? Was it like a particular incident or
was it just a build up the frustration. It was
really both. But I think the current climate definitely sparked
that a lot more because I've gotten into, you know,
(18:50):
arguments about where racism is and what is and what's
not racists, like multiple times on social media. But a
couple of weeks ago when I posted about you know,
some things that I experienced at Drake and a person
you know wanted to say, no, that's that's not racism,
and that encopied and paste the marrying Webster definition, and
I explained to them, I was like, oh, Yeah, this
(19:15):
is the last straw I can more um, And that's
what prompted me, especially right now, Like if you don't
understand that it's more than that, then it's more than
just the basic the surface level things is deeply ingrained
and a lot of these systems we see then, Like
I don't know what to tell you, So I'm like,
(19:36):
let me just hit up. I found that they were
just the root of one problem. They were it was
just one way that people would go is the definition way.
So I'm like, okay, let me reach out to Marry
and Webster and asked them to change it since a
lot of people want to use that definition as a
way to kind of stay stagnant and not really grow
(19:56):
and understanding. Yeah, for sure. Would you mind speaking on
some of those early incidences of racism that you experienced,
as well as how they differ from some specific examples
of the covert kinds of racism you encountered at Drake
in high school? Like I had one girl she came
up to me, like my first day of high school
(20:17):
and she wrote uh, like with the sharpie and she
came up to me and she wrote on me, and
she was like, wow, it still shows up and I'm like,
oh yeah, like girl was Yeah, definitely this this sense
of entitlement to black bodies in this like sense of
comfort with like touching us, coming too close to us,
(20:38):
violating our personal space. Up until like riding on a person.
Sure this person was like an adolescent, but like these
people gotta learn at some point exactly exactly, and I
mean earlier on, I was like, especially because I was
in the environment that was predominantly white, but a lot
of it was the climate was still like Okay, I'm
still treated like normal, Like I was still able to
(20:59):
be myself. So I was definitely in that same mindset
like when I was younger, when I was like fifteen sixteen, like, oh,
maybe there's just a few rotten apples, you know, like
that girl, maybe that's going to be an isolated incident.
But up until like the Mike Brown thing, I was like, oh,
like no, this is not this is not an isolated
(21:22):
incident because you know, a lot of people's true colors
came to show. Because I think that was my junior
of high school and I was like the diversity club
president and everything, and I was just able to understand
like how much deeper it is in comparison to when
I went off to college, and it was a lot
of the you know, when I walked out, when I
(21:44):
walked down the hallway, no one would make eye contact
with me. When I went When I was in different
group projects, a lot of people didn't value my opinion.
I would say something and then five and they would
be like, um, hey, ignored. And then five seconds later
a white on her part was saying the exact same thing.
They oh my god, yes, that is such a great idea,
(22:05):
and I'm like, oh my god, I just said that.
Like it honestly is like mental warfare sometimes because you
think you're just it's like gaslighting. You think you're just
being extra. You think it's just are you problem until
you actually talk so you know people who look like
you and who experience the same exact things, and they're
like while you're they're like, yeah, those microaggishes, man, Like
(22:28):
that's enough is enough, And especially even from your own
professors who are paid, who are literally paid to you know,
educate you. But here you are and they're calling you
a different black girl's name every single every single chance,
every twing. When my when I first got on the commission,
here it happens the mayor would frequently mix me up
(22:51):
with the black auditor who have very short hair. She
is like kids like me, but like she's sitting in
a completely different part of the chamber and always is.
And she'd be like, oh, you know, Stefaniely made a
good point when I just said it, and I'll be like,
you know what the flush you're the mayor of a
city or the mayor of a city. But yeah, So,
(23:11):
like there's these these overtly aggressive forms of racism that's
like antagonization through you know, getting like violation of the
personal space stuff like that, and then there's these more
subtle forms of marketilization through averted eye contact or just
missing opinions that definitely build up over time to diminish
a person's self esteem, you know, lisens of self worth,
(23:33):
and like a lifetime of that is like really heavy
to bear, no doubt, But talk to us a little
bit about you know what, uh, what was wrong with
the old definition of racism in the dictionary. Right, So
the definition basically states, you know that racism is belief
(23:54):
that you know, one's race determines their abilities and that
racial differences, those racial differences make one race superior to
the other. But the thing is, it's not just racism.
Isn't just believing that you're better than someone because of
the color of your skin, or just calling someone those
avertly you know, derogatory terms. I mean, you have to
(24:15):
when we're talking about racism, we have to really describe
how it really infiltraits, like every every part of our lives,
every aspect. You must include the word systemic when we're
describing racism because a big part of racism is putting
systems in place that are designed to keep one racist
people behind. So that's not that originally wasn't included in
(24:40):
the definition, but it's super important to add that in there. Yeah. Yeah,
it reminds me of that Sclear Carmichael quote. If a
white man wants to lend me, that's his problem. If
you've got the power to lend me, that's my problem.
Racism has had a question of attitude, it's a question
of power exactly. So now, like assuming so that they
(25:02):
are going to change the definitory, okay, they changed it.
So now that the definition has changed, at least in
one dictionary, like, what what's the next step? What do
you think or some we're really trying to get that
change in every diction. Well right now I'm working with
a lot of different scholars to get it changed in
every dictionary because it's still like in the Oxford Dictionary,
(25:24):
which is a very prominent one, and in dictionary dot
com they still only have that basic you know, um
basically what I described earlier. So that's that's the next
step besides just trying to you know, inform people on
the deeper aspects. I feel like a lot of people
who want to be ignorant, they're still gonna be ignorant
(25:45):
about it until it's like they're not going to experience it.
But it's like you have to just boom. You have
to really just be open to other people who might
not have the same experiences as you, and just listen.
I think this is a very important time to just
sit back and at people's voices be heard, and actually
listen to your counterparts and what they're saying instead of
(26:05):
just trying to be ignorant about it, because that's not
gonna get us anywhere. So it's really gonna just leave
us in the same position we are now, where there's
black men, black women being killed, being murdered, being abducted,
and there's nobody being held accountable for because apparently black
people want to act like black bodies, you know, they're
not worth They're not worth anything, which is just not true.
(26:28):
What do you think is the wider impact of the
definitions change. I think that I hope that it allows
for a lot more a lot more um conversations about
racism that are actually accurate to what racism is. I
think that it was definitely people were trying to take
racism and you know, just make it whether they wanted
(26:50):
it to be because of how loosely you know, worded
that it was in the beginning. So I hope that
allows for more productive conversation. I hope that allows for
people to understand their biases and actually put forth some
change to actually you know, correct them, because it's not
always on people of color to come up with solutions.
(27:11):
This is a time where you see, we need solidarity
and we need people of all races to really come
together to fix the problem because I mean, at the
end of the day, we didn't create it, so it
really needs to be addressed and solved altogether universally. Hey,
I had one last question. Every everything that I've seen
(27:32):
of people like covering you and what you've done. They
only refer to you as a college graduate, So is
there is is there something else that we can refer
to you as I think that that has been bothering me,
especially because my Drake experiences have hurt me so much,
(27:53):
Like it's really been a mental warfare and like been
such uh like, I don't it's really annoying how they're
getting a lot of publicity and how they're really getting
during all of this when at the end of the day,
they didn't take care of me at all as a
student there. They still aren't taking care of their people
students of color, which you can basically ask anyone. So
(28:13):
I'm glad that you brought that up because who that is?
That is so that bothers me so much because they're
just taking so much pr from this, but they're still
not putting anything in place to actually protect and actually
hold those professors accountable who say racist stuff, hold those
students accountables who do racist stuff that might not be
(28:34):
overtly racist, but it still hurts all the same. So
you can just call me by my name, Kennedy Mitchum.
I also don't the black because a lot of other
people are just saying, you know, black women. But I'm like,
I'm not just black woman. I'm like, yeah, exactly, I'm
(28:57):
educated the world. We literally I'm like, oh my god,
but that's so funny you brought that up. Well this Mitchum,
thank you for coming and talking with us on the
Wait in the Reparations podcast. So thank you for your time,
(29:17):
thanks for having me. And so when you have these
systems that we're constructed through these iterative interactions between people,
this one person that you know treated someone in some way,
and then like I get a bunch of people who
are treating someone this way, and it creates the system
(29:38):
that's been in place for hundreds of years, thousands of years. Um.
What's interesting from a public policy perspective is the way
that we are hindered in our policy from addressing the
status quo of the system that which is racist and
um dismantling parts of that system that that that are racist. So,
(29:58):
for example, in the local government, we've been trying to
work on getting more minority contractors with city contracts for
paving roads, building buildings, doing roofing, doing solar panel installation
because all of these white um firms have had advantage
for hundreds of years, tens of decades, UH with regards
(30:19):
to the way that they've been able to recruit capital
and actually maintain a business, whereas black businesses were burned
to the ground, et cetera. But law prevents us given
like equal protections on the law, it's equally discriminatory for
us to give UH contracts to exclusively white people as
it is to give contracts exclusively to black people. There's
(30:39):
no way that we can and act a law that
says we are going to give of our city contracts
to black owned firms, because that's discrimination as well. And
so this kind of this this kind of policy helps
uphold the system, but it operates under the guys of
(31:00):
protecting everyone from discrimination. Like everyone's equal to begin with,
everyone's already equal, So like you can't discriminate against white
people by saying we're going to give contracts to black
owned firms. And it really prevents us from actually addressing
the historical roots of a lot of the disparities that
we have in our community because of these things that
(31:21):
have been so ongoing for such a long time historically.
If are we good, I'm good, Yeah, especially since the
intellectual part of the episode is over. Now I can
(31:42):
just laugh at exactly so. So and you know, going
with the episode for the music discussion, we're gonna we're
gonna talk about some songs that are themed in racism,
you know, about the topic of it, either dealing with
you know, an aspect of it. I tried to be
really specific with it and just look for songs that were,
(32:06):
you know, systhetic racism, but there's just so many songs
that are just about racism broadly that this is like,
now we just gotta talk about it. So this first
one is actually like a real classic. Um, this is
Brad Paisley featuring l O. Cool J Accidental Racist. When
(32:26):
I see that white cowboy hat, I'm thinking it's not
all good. I guess we're both guilty and judge in
the cup. I got the book, Yo, get all the
way to the funk out of here with that. This
is real? What are yours? This? That was two? Yeah? Yep, No,
there's like a they even they did press for this. Yeah,
(32:47):
there's like a CNN clip of them talking about this
that looks like a parody. It looks like a fucking
state farm commercial. I'm gonna trying not to think about that.
So that's just a little bit of l l's verse.
But Brad Paisley, he's singing about going into like a
coffee shop and getting served by I assume a black waiter,
(33:13):
and he's got a Leonard Skinner shirt on. So he's
got the rebel flag and he's feeling bad about it,
and I think this shouldn't really happen. I think this
is really went into some place where in the rebel
flag is some some black people custom out and he
went to the studio like I have to call l
(33:35):
where's cool, James? I just any sort of rap country ship,
miss me? You know, I want to say that. But
like the Nelly tim McGrath joint, in a certain frame
of mind, I can see how people fused with that.
I mean, I'm just that. I'm just saying I understand
thought it was. Yeah, you know, how are you gonna
(33:58):
make fun of it when you know reseillable? I think
I think in the in the right hands, anybody can
anybody who's capable can make anything dope. And obviously l
J is one of the greatest rappers of all time.
But that ship was trash um. So the next joint
is a pretty interesting one. This is a journa lucas
I'm not Racist from It's his conversational concept song check
(34:22):
us out, talking about slavery like he was a round
back then, like he was picking cotton off the round
back then, like he was on the plantation getting down
back then. I'm not racist. This is like the dialogue
between like the maga hat wearing bearded white guy and
then the black dude. Right yeah, the black kids like
sitting at like a table together. It's framed as a conversation.
A lot of it got flak when it came out
(34:43):
because some people thought that the white dudes verseus was
either longer or had had more thought put into it
or something like that. I don't know, Like in in
any event, it's like it's the song that he chose
to make, you know what I mean, I don't really
give it any sort of judgment on that. It's more
(35:03):
the quality of it that I'm thinking about. Well, also
the way it's positioned, I mean, like structurally in the song,
Like when I first watched it, like watched the music
video and I just the music video starts and this
is white guy rapping about how black people are bad.
I was just like, yea, what the fuck? From from
like a Artie Farzi standpoint. I think that's like the
(35:27):
intention is like it invokes, it invokes like every action.
Yeah yeah, yeah, immediately are kind of a little bit
pissed off. I mean the second you know again, it's
it's another one of those songs where admittedly it's like
the first few times I heard it a few years ago,
I was like, you know, I kind of felt the
same way, But listening to it more these last few
days leading up to this, it's like, all right, the
(35:49):
argument that both of the verses are equally as long,
and that you know, they both have equal time if
you actually like look at it. So it's like, Okay,
I don't know, I don't I don't minded as much
as I did when I first heard it, but maybe
I'm getting soft or something. Definitely getting soft. I mean,
it definitely gets hokey towards the end because they like
make up and hug and it's like, oh, if only
(36:12):
we could just put the races aside and hug it out.
So yeah, you know, I mean, I hear all those criticisms,
but it's wrapped really well, and I just digged the concept.
It's not like a I I dig I dig it
when people do songs that like maybe like damn, I
wish I had thought about that first, you know, And
(36:32):
this song definitely has some of that. So the next
joint is Black America again by Common featuring Stevie Wonders.
Black anytime anybody is like black on black crime needs
to end and like doesn't actually bring into like bring
(36:53):
into it the systemic to mention of like why we're
killing each other And like my it's just rolled back
in my skull and I fucking die a little bit that.
I mean, I think there was he was that was
just one bit of the song. I don't think that's
a fair description of that song. But I don't know
(37:15):
is that like is that your Is that your only feeling?
You know? I mean, because that song to me is like, yeah,
that's what it's like typical. I don't I'm not saying
this in a bad way at all, but it's like
it's like standard Common, fair, you know what I mean.
Like he's always like hitting on those sort of points,
and I mean, I think it's I don't think that
(37:37):
we should be so reactionary that Common can't say black
men don't kill each other. I mean, it's one thing
if Ben Shapiro's punk Asked is saying it, but Common
should be able to say it. You know what I mean?
You disagree? I mean like you don't hear fucking Luke
Bryant singing songs about how white people need to stop
(37:57):
killing each other? What the fund is a luke when
when most fucking homicides happen intra racially. I I understand that.
I just don't think that Commons mentioned of this in
the song is like coming from the same place that
somebody concern trolling when you're trying to bring up systemic
(38:18):
racism is coming from when they do it. This is
an episode about systemic racism. If motherfucker's are addressing the
systemic roots of the issues in our community, they're not
serving us. And I'm sorry being like put the guns down?
Who the fund? You thought, like, no, it's no, But
(38:38):
listen and think about it for a second. How many
people do you think Common got to put their guns
down over this song? I don't know, yeah, because nobody
fucking put their guns down over the song. However, if
a song had been crafted around addressing the roots of
black homicides in already in you know, housing, insecurity, in
(39:02):
a lack of education. Why are they funding that ship again,
just the sliver of a six minute long song to
raise awareness for the for like policy change that could
like actually impact the roots of of intra racial homicide.
Fucking that would be when the guns down because of
(39:23):
the ship. I honestly, I honestly think that's an unfair
characterization of one line. Well fuck you no for real though, Like,
I mean, this is a six minute song that's called
Black America. Again, the nigga definitely hits on systemic racism
(39:45):
at least a couple of times in the ship. I'm
not even trying to hate on the rest, and I'm
not even trying to detigrate any of commons. You is
your argument that that should never be mentioned at all?
I don't think it's useful to tell people put their
guns down unless you're actually mediating like gang conflict in
like an actual interpersonal way. But I mean that's that's
(40:06):
where it stems from. Though, Man, next song, I didn't
get into this. I mean, look, look, I mean just
just keeping it real, Like I grew up on Gangster Rap.
That was like the first rap that rap ship that
I listened to, you know what I mean when I
first started listening to rap, and it's like there was
(40:29):
like the ethos of it wasn't really yeah, yo, like
killing each other is dope. You know what I'm saying?
Like that that wasn't you know, like like as a
matter of fact, it was quite like vehemently like nah,
like like put the gun down, black black man. Don't
we need to stop shooting each other? You know what
(40:50):
I mean? Like we need to like aim like in
some cases people are like we need to aim at them,
which brings us to the next song. This. Okay, So
when I say the name sir Mix a Lot, what
do you think about du dun dun dun dun dun
dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun du I
(41:11):
like big butts and I cannot lie you did nah?
But the girl walks in with the inmates and a
round thing in your face. You get degree. So yeah,
Sir Mix a lot, cervix. You know I was. I
used to listen to Sir Mix a lot, like around
when Baby Got Back first came out and It's like
I actually had that album that that was on It's
(41:32):
called mac Daddy. Actually, it's executive produced by Rick Rubin
and Sir Mix a Lot did a lot of the
beats on it. But I've been saying since I was
a little kid that Sir Mix a Lot is one
of the most underrated rappers of all time that just
nobody gives credit to because of the strength of Baby
Got Back. They forgot how nice he was on the mike.
(41:54):
But this Ship has some crazy concept songs on it.
I mean, and there's ship where he's rapping like he's
a Ferrari. There's a song where he's rapping from the
perspective of being heroin. So he's got this cut on
that album that's called jack Back that is pretty much
(42:14):
just like a Nazi murder fantasy about him beefing with
the class with like a squad of skin heads and
getting revenge killing because they burned across in his yard.
It's really fucking awesome. Let's check a little out a
little bit of that wild. I mean, it's and I
(42:37):
really enjoy that, you know, because we were just talking
about you know, black on black crime. But it's like
this is essentially a nineties gangster rap song, but the
antagonist of this gangster rap story isn't another black man,
it's actual skinhead racist that he's like doing drive byes
(42:58):
on and catching slip all right, And last We Got
It is actually my favorite of the joints that I
found and I was listening to. This is a Marlin
a song by Marlon Craft called Gangshit. Let's check this out.
We're gonna make America white again. Sound when of them people,
(43:21):
people who work harder than me, because we all spighted
them sitting there so fucking dopey. It's yeah, it's just like, yeah,
when I first heard that ship, it was stuck in
my head for days. But I like, I think, I
think this is similar to the journal Lucas I'm not
racist one in the sense of like the framing and
(43:44):
how it's set up where the rappers taken on the
character of these different personalities. That was just a snippet,
But in the course of the song, he plays the
role of a cop and he's like talking about how
the cops of you black people. Then he plays the
role of a landsman and he's talking about how the
klansman and views black people, and then he plays the
role of like a black guy who's actually in jail,
(44:06):
who grew up in the hood, and he's like, my
gang ship landed me in prison, and your gang ship
got you on the street walking the beat, and you
sitting at home, you know, with your family and ship
having dinner, Yeah, sitting around the dinner table, and it's
just it's just really, I think it's a I think
it's more effective than the General Lucas song because it's
a better song, you know what I mean. It's got
(44:26):
like a catchy hooked I think the beat is better.
It's just it's just the iller song. And kind of
that's important when you're trying to make messages with your ship,
is that it sounds good because I think your point
can get across, right. It's important for like catching the
attention of your audience to like layer them into paying
attention to the broader message exactly. So that's gonna be
it for our music discussion, and that's gonna be it
(44:49):
for our episode. I for one, feel like rapping. I
feel like rapping two. And I also want to wish
everyone a very happy June Teo this Friday. Yeah, don't
don't work general. Generally, don't buy ship, They're gonna work.
(45:17):
Uh uh, you see, I ought to be I proud
of you, just like my parents thought i'd be, instead
of squandering my doctorate party and hardily lost in the
Coxae looking like chocolate broccoli for not the locking people.
I'm watching me constantly because I'm bread and straightened until
the Great Tenth, when I decided I was kind of
tired of her moodiness. They should they should change this.
(45:38):
My looks like Andy Davis and the racist suppose the
observation of white is a million. I don't God truly
to spit, but when it comes to written verses, I
am truly legit. I'm on another different curve. I in
school with you, prick, because what I dropped and give
the earth and KI could dude in this ship, I'm
proving it this bit of scene words and then I did.
I stacked the bread and that means work and not persist.
(45:59):
I'm mixed the red head in the green herb and
night Quick come off the head with a mean verse
and let it rip, nigger ship. How do you got
the kid, I'm the alchemist, I ansis and if you
brought the pip let me like the stick. I'm the
prince with the lion fist. I'm about the ships on
the ship. What the fund is dripped without a risk.
In the meanwhile, I'm gonna leave your host piste off
a freestyle better than your whole dis guy the quick
(46:21):
nod to my dope heads. You're gonna get robbed from
now one. Not knife nigga, no, just god dope. Yeah, yeah,
I'm dope night, and we are waiting on reparations. See
you guys next week. Waiting on Reparations as a production
of I Heeart Radio. Listen to Waiting on Reparations on
(46:44):
the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get
your podcasts.
Ah, you're listening waiting on reparations production by her radio reparations. Uh,
let's give us into the lock tap but but talk
ways as chocol white as a death block at a
cock fight on my life, getting told it I'm chocolate,
that I'm scary spice. Doesn't even matter that I'm pot
spice for the dark side. I'd be fairly bright, but
(00:23):
it doesn't matter. Took a shot dead on the coplights
like a bad dog. It's another case left this uppercase.
Took a tap pole out of water, a bottom p
parisite to baking the pavement the favorite height. But some
a day, well, my mother weights with the pepper five.
It's wondering whether I'm und late my buddy's traits and chocolates.
What would I do with my verse not written well?
I am a black man, no doubt. Shit as hell
(00:44):
could be somebody's talking practice. When they lick a shell
ship for health, heart, sickle cell or you pick a cell.
I chose rap because I'm lazy and short fun playing
a chords dog. I'm trying to stay out of court,
still single, because I'm threatened by the pain of divorce.
They're shooting niggas like they made it as board. It
blazed in my fourth love staying indoors so for sure, hot,
(01:04):
so cold, don't even want to go outside. Sucking pigs
are patrolling with a chrome down nine. If I getten
to a scuffle and I know whout that taste smag
on my tongue when I breathe, I don't know what
to believe. I'd protest, but I don't want a disease.
So I'm dressing like a billboard, feeling like a product.
Hope the scouts from thinking NIGG is selling narcotics. Dope
(01:26):
dove a A what's happening? My name is dope Knife.
I'm lingal franca. We are waiting on reparations. Give us
a goddamn money. How are you doing? I'm doing all right.
I just got out of a seven hour commission meeting
in which public comment was given by you know, around
(01:46):
a hundred hundred and fifty again, back up, back up,
back up, seven hour commission meetings. So what time is
it right now? It is sucking one and it's in
the morning. I'm not gonna live how couple of glasses
of wine and I've smoked a few blunts. Oh before
I forget. The beats on this episode are provided by
(02:08):
my homie Factor Chandelier. That's at Factor Chandelier on Instagram.
He's a dope ass producer. You guys should check them out.
You know. I actually this is my day of my
corn and I was going to I was gonna say,
it's my fourteenth day of quarantine. So you know, I
(02:29):
haven't gotten sick. Yeah, you know, I think I'm gonna
go get tested for COVID tomorrow. But I'm assuming that
either didn't get it from you or if I did
get it on a symptomatic so guidn't I got from
the contact tracer I spoke to was that after ten days,
have I had no symptoms, I could start going on
public again, which I started to do today. We're in
(02:51):
your mask, of course, we're in my mask, of course,
but yeah, I mean, I guess we're COVID free. Yeah,
I'll find out tomorrow. I took a break on how
much I was smoking the last two weeks. I was like, man,
if I start getting symptoms and I was burning them down,
And so today I woke up, I was like, man,
I'm feeling kind of good. I mean, you know, knock
on wood or whatever you gotta knock on. But I
(03:12):
was like, Hey, I'm just gonna smoke all thettle dope today.
I want to talk about the commission meeting for a
minute for a second. So many people came out in
the support of my plan to defund the police in
a win a word. You know, we've been calling it
like reimagining public safety as a way to gain more
public buy in, but I want to say that on
(03:33):
the air one. I mean, yeah, whatever, like people find
like I'd be using to defund the police fucking hashtag
to like get likes and spread awareness even though like
you know what's in the name, I'm saying, it's all
like taking care of Like there's no more you don't
need that political strategy in the bag anymore. You are
(03:53):
listening to this show. You're not going to be fooled
by me in public saying reimagine public safety. Like literally
at the meeting, all the Republicans and most of the
fucking like radical an ar kiss regular towny like young
folks that came through were like either like you, I
don't support defunding the police or fun, yeah, abolish the police.
(04:15):
Defunding It isn't even enough and so it doesn't really
matter what terminology we use. People know what we mean.
So even if I do think reimagining public safety is
an honest take of like what I'm trying to do,
I really want us to take a creative and like
bold approach to like thinking a new what it means
to keep our community safe. It means giving the police
(04:35):
less money if they're if they're going to be demilitarized. Yeah,
so so that was exciting. But they did take maybe
like four or five hours and then so it is
it just like literally four four and five hours people
just coming up and talking for three minutes? Yeah? Is it?
Would you describe most of the discourses like grievance or so,
(04:55):
about twenty and thirty people came out in opposition to
defunding the police. The rest of the folks that came out,
the other hundred or so eighty or so, um, weren't
supported of funding the police. We've had mostly peaceful protests
here in Athens so far, except for police violence where
they tear gas and shot with bean backgrounds peaceful protesters
(05:16):
a couple of weeks ago. Um. But tonight we had
a gathering of like blue Lives Matter Republicans waving American
flags on the steps of city Hall, and then folks
that are here to you know, end an unpaid prison
labor and like defund the police that were like playing
fun the police by in w a and dancing and
(05:37):
like holding signs, and reports indicated that an older white
man who was with the Blue Lives Matter crowd came
up the steps of city Hall and attempted to rest
away a megaphone from a black transactivist that was leading
the Black Lives Matter protests, dragging him down the stairs, uh,
(05:57):
in like an altercation. And so it's like we've had
all this peaceful ship until the fucking right wing appears.
We've been just chilling, singing Kumbaya and we each all overcome.
And then it's I mean they're the I mean they're
the ones who are like ripping down like people signs
and ship costing little girls and stuff. Yeah, but I
(06:20):
guess I ever had to mention. The car caravan on
Saturday went well. We had about a hundred car show
out and we drove around decides to police violence and
happens shut down downtown for about an hour of the
radio show. I'm try getting ready to do do that again,
and we're gonna do it again the Saturday, and I'm
actually bringing your ass now there's none of us protavirus. Yeah,
I'm gonna go participate now. Yeah, it's gonna be cool.
It's gonna be cool. But you had some exciting news
(06:41):
this week also. Oh um, yeah, No, I I got
to do uh fundraiser with the legendary Jerry Conway. He's
the co creator of The Punisher and used to write
Spider Man and a bunch of other cool comic book things.
But he put out a call to get some you know,
illustrators and artists who were of color to do a
(07:04):
little reappropriation of the Punisher logo, the character that he created.
It's you know, the logo has been appropriated by police,
which is really ironic because the cops have started wearing
the Punisher skull unlike the uniform stickers on their car
and ship and any sort of passive following of the
(07:25):
comic book. And it's quite explicit the Punisher doesn't funk
with cops. He especially the Punisher especially doesn't funk with
cops who funk with him. Yeah, but I know, I
got to design like a you know, black Lives Matter
skull and all the proceeds are going towards Black Lives Matter.
So far, I think the whole thing is raised. Like
(07:45):
I think like twenty three thou dollars. That was like
two days ago when I checked. So that's ill man.
I'm proud of you. Proud of you. Yeah. And then
also it put me on to you know, some of
the fellow artists who participated in it. That's sick put
onto some new black you know, illustrators and stuff. So
there's a link to that in my Instagram Bio Dope,
(08:07):
underscore knife, So just check that out. I feel like
we should have done this in reverse. But like we've
got lots of good news to me, we also got
a lot of bad news this week. I've been getting
death threats for one on the internet. One man uh
suggested which platform on Facebook. One man said I should
be hung from a tree. Another man suggested that brooks
(08:30):
me thrown through the windows of our home. Didn't you
didn't some cops get involved. Cops called me to let
me know that they were investigating the situation. Asked if
I wanted to press charges, and I decline because I
mean there's two things they suggested that it might be
unlikely that they could be brought up they could be
effectively prosecuted for this since they didn't explicitly say I'm
(08:51):
going to hang you from a tree it which just
suggested that this is something that should happen. Someone should
throw Brooks through our window. But in addition, I feel
like I I like, I just don't believe that the
criminal legal system reforms people like these motherfuckers get thrown
in jail and then they're around a bunch of other
white supremacist who have committed crimes, they get involved in
like a white supremacist gang, They get their ideology re
(09:13):
entrenched to that experience or just bitterness through having been
uh incarcerated over threats to a black activist, and they
just like double down on that mission in their lives. So,
like what we need to do instead is to like
take a really close look at the schools they went to,
the churches they have attended, who their parents are, what
(09:33):
affiliations they have in terms of organizations in the community,
and like do kind of an autopsy on like how
do these organizations, how do these institutions create such evil men?
And how do we reform and remake those institutions so
that we stopped making people like this because you know,
Robbie Bailey or whatever, Chuck Jones like, it's too late
(09:54):
for them, but it might not be too late for
their sons that are going to Athens Christian right now
if we figure out how to fix athletes Christian and so,
I just want to redirect people's attention to like the
structural level of like what makes racists, rather than punishing
individual racists for the institutions that made them shitty. You
know where else there's a lot of racists in our
comments section podcast. Oh our comments section is a hot
(10:20):
shit show. Yeah you checked that ship out, you know what.
I glanced at it, But like I just in in
general when whenever I do stuff, I'm like one of
those kinds are. I tried my hardest to not count
numbers and not read comments because I obsess section. I
loved about what man, I just get. I didn't enough
(10:44):
people have commented on it. You know, my my little brothers,
you know in the military. He was like, yo, man, good, Yeah,
I'm good. I'm good. So I mean I guess all
that to say, you know, leave us some five stars
if you like the show. Yeah, it's about what you
like about the show. It's also good feedback for us
moving forward. Um. But this kind of leads into what
(11:07):
we're going to talk about for today's episode, which is
going to be part one in a reoccurring series that
we're going to be doing where we spotlight different aspects
of racism in a series that i'd like to call
So I think it's really important to do this because
(11:27):
I think we've been operating from some basic assumptions that
we want to make sure that we share with our audience.
We've been working out the premise throughout the show that
folks you know, hold these same basic assumptiance about what
racism is and how it operates. But I think it's
important as well to take a step back and explore
where we're coming from and what these things actually mean.
Uh as like a practical matter for just like yo,
(11:49):
we you know, love you for listening, and I want
to make sure we're all on the same page, but
also into in line with the theme of the show,
thinking about the way that how we define racism also
inflex our political reality. I see a lot of times
in public policy. I saw earlier tonight in our commission meeting,
how definitions matter so much for how resources get allocated,
(12:11):
how the laws upheld. We were having a debate earlier
about what the term resources mean. A bunch of funding
was going out to all these indigence services providers and
organizations that do work with the homeless, etcetera, who provide resources,
and this one entity didn't get funding because it wasn't
defined as like providing resources, like well, isn't education or resource?
(12:33):
Isn't edgucy, like isn't you know, this training or resource
for people? And so we have to be very clear
and what different words mean in order for like governments
to operate and for public policy to be effective. It's
just like in the battle of debates and ideas, it's
like the words or weapons, and it's like you have
to know how to wield them. Right, We totally totally
interpretation matters so much, And so we're gonna get a
(12:54):
little bit into the definition of racism today both to
like establish a common ground with y'all and to kind
of think about the way that um that language influences
our political reality, especially when you're having discussions with people
who you are trying to prove that an action, something
they did, or that an aspect of what you guys
are discussing two people who are trying to prove that
(13:16):
it isn't racist. They're always quick to jump to the
dictionary definition of the word racism to prove what it means.
So let's check out a couple of those, right, So
we have in the Oxford languages, we have the belief
that different races possess distinct characteristics, abilities, or qualities, especially
so as to distinguish them as inferior or superior to
(13:38):
one another. And then in the columns English Dictionary, have
got the belief that races have distinctive cultural characteristics determined
by hereditary factors, and that this endows some races with
an intrinsic superiority over others Abusive or aggressive behavior towards
members of another race on the basis of such a belief. Now,
what all these definitions do is firmly set a con
(14:00):
sept of racism is being a belief, a doctrine to
that someone subscribes to. Uh. These are safe definitions because
they frame racism is being strictly like a moral failing
and something that only pertains to some of us and
not all of us. You know, it's something that you
can write off as being, oh, that person is bad
(14:21):
because that person thinks X, and it doesn't necessarily address
the broader aspects of racism and how it affects every
aspects of our lives. This is kind of like applying
the bad apples philosophy to the definition of racism. Well,
the thing about the bad apples like metaphor is that
the full saying is that a couple of bad apples
(14:42):
spoil the whole bunch. I think that's very like, uh
poignant for thinking about the way that systemic racism, institutional
racism operates. Because when you have individual actors all or
you know, even some of them doing this kind of thing,
and you have other people who aren't checking their power
when it comes to enforcing regulations or you know, and
(15:06):
interacting with others in a racist way, but you don't
have any sorts of accountability around that, the whole system
becomes inflected with this this racist ideology. And so through
every sort of interpersonal interaction with folks, every single middle
level manager and that decides not to hire a black person.
It might not be a companywide policy per se, but
(15:29):
it becomes systemic when um, it is a trend historically
and no one is checking that, and so it's kind
of accepted as the status quo. Yeah, it's like, it
doesn't require that somebody be actively racist in order for
it to perpetuate. Like, all all that work was done
hundreds of years ago. Literally, systems were put in place,
So it's like, hey, let's have this be so ingrained
(15:51):
into the fabric of society so that hundreds of years
from now, even if public sentiment changes, those systems are
still in place to perpetuate this system of racism. This
very issue of defining the word racism came to the
(16:14):
attention of Drake University graduate Kennedy Mitchum a few months ago.
She sent an email to Marry and Webster the Dictionary
bringing this up and urging that they update the definition
for the word racism to represent the true meaning of
what the word is. Making her case, she stated, racism
is not only prejudice against a certain race due to
color of a person's skin, as it states in your dictionary.
(16:37):
It is both prejudice combined with social and institutional power.
It is a system of advantage based on skin color.
To her surprise, they hit her back up the next
day and they actually agreed with there and they updated,
they updated the definition, and she changed the definition of
the word racism. And we actually have Kennedy here with
us today to talk about the case he made to
(16:58):
marry On Webster and the impact the definitions change. Okay,
so we're here with Kennedy Mitchell, recent Drake University graduate,
twenty two year old that effectively lobbied Mary A. Webster
to get their definition of racism changed in the dictionary.
How are you to David Kennedy, I'm doing good. How
(17:18):
are you? I'm good. It's good to have you here. Yeah,
So talk to us a little bit of what about
what informs your definition of racism my own experiences. I've
definitely been a part of a lot of predominantly white
institutions growing up um in St. Louis. A lot of
that racism that I experienced. It was more blatant, a
(17:42):
lot more overt, but going into college, a lot of that,
you know, it was way. It was a lot more microaggressions,
It was a lot more covert, It was a lot
more undercover. They did, they didn't really want to acknowledge
it as racism. So those binds, those different experiences definitely
(18:04):
made me understand how racism is very multidimensional. It's more
than just calling someone the in word or just derogatory turns.
It's a lot of the way that systems work to
continue to oppress people. It's it's a way that people
continually there implicit by it still works to you know,
show that oppression. So my life experience is definitely it
(18:28):
formed the way that I see the word. Now, what
was like the deciding factor that something happened that made
you just open your web browser that day and send
that email out? Was it like a particular incident or
was it just a build up the frustration. It was
really both. But I think the current climate definitely sparked
that a lot more because I've gotten into, you know,
(18:50):
arguments about where racism is and what is and what's
not racists, like multiple times on social media. But a
couple of weeks ago when I posted about you know,
some things that I experienced at Drake and a person
you know wanted to say, no, that's that's not racism,
and that encopied and paste the marrying Webster definition, and
I explained to them, I was like, oh, Yeah, this
(19:15):
is the last straw I can more um, And that's
what prompted me, especially right now, Like if you don't
understand that it's more than that, then it's more than
just the basic the surface level things is deeply ingrained
and a lot of these systems we see then, Like
I don't know what to tell you, So I'm like,
(19:36):
let me just hit up. I found that they were
just the root of one problem. They were it was
just one way that people would go is the definition way.
So I'm like, okay, let me reach out to Marry
and Webster and asked them to change it since a
lot of people want to use that definition as a
way to kind of stay stagnant and not really grow
(19:56):
and understanding. Yeah, for sure. Would you mind speaking on
some of those early incidences of racism that you experienced,
as well as how they differ from some specific examples
of the covert kinds of racism you encountered at Drake
in high school? Like I had one girl she came
up to me, like my first day of high school
(20:17):
and she wrote uh, like with the sharpie and she
came up to me and she wrote on me, and
she was like, wow, it still shows up and I'm like,
oh yeah, like girl was Yeah, definitely this this sense
of entitlement to black bodies in this like sense of
comfort with like touching us, coming too close to us,
(20:38):
violating our personal space. Up until like riding on a person.
Sure this person was like an adolescent, but like these
people gotta learn at some point exactly exactly, and I
mean earlier on, I was like, especially because I was
in the environment that was predominantly white, but a lot
of it was the climate was still like Okay, I'm
still treated like normal, Like I was still able to
(20:59):
be myself. So I was definitely in that same mindset
like when I was younger, when I was like fifteen sixteen, like, oh,
maybe there's just a few rotten apples, you know, like
that girl, maybe that's going to be an isolated incident.
But up until like the Mike Brown thing, I was like, oh,
like no, this is not this is not an isolated
(21:22):
incident because you know, a lot of people's true colors
came to show. Because I think that was my junior
of high school and I was like the diversity club
president and everything, and I was just able to understand
like how much deeper it is in comparison to when
I went off to college, and it was a lot
of the you know, when I walked out, when I
(21:44):
walked down the hallway, no one would make eye contact
with me. When I went When I was in different
group projects, a lot of people didn't value my opinion.
I would say something and then five and they would
be like, um, hey, ignored. And then five seconds later
a white on her part was saying the exact same thing.
They oh my god, yes, that is such a great idea,
(22:05):
and I'm like, oh my god, I just said that.
Like it honestly is like mental warfare sometimes because you
think you're just it's like gaslighting. You think you're just
being extra. You think it's just are you problem until
you actually talk so you know people who look like
you and who experience the same exact things, and they're
like while you're they're like, yeah, those microaggishes, man, Like
(22:28):
that's enough is enough, And especially even from your own
professors who are paid, who are literally paid to you know,
educate you. But here you are and they're calling you
a different black girl's name every single every single chance,
every twing. When my when I first got on the commission,
here it happens the mayor would frequently mix me up
(22:51):
with the black auditor who have very short hair. She
is like kids like me, but like she's sitting in
a completely different part of the chamber and always is.
And she'd be like, oh, you know, Stefaniely made a
good point when I just said it, and I'll be like,
you know what the flush you're the mayor of a
city or the mayor of a city. But yeah, So,
(23:11):
like there's these these overtly aggressive forms of racism that's
like antagonization through you know, getting like violation of the
personal space stuff like that, and then there's these more
subtle forms of marketilization through averted eye contact or just
missing opinions that definitely build up over time to diminish
a person's self esteem, you know, lisens of self worth,
(23:33):
and like a lifetime of that is like really heavy
to bear, no doubt, But talk to us a little
bit about you know what, uh, what was wrong with
the old definition of racism in the dictionary. Right, So
the definition basically states, you know that racism is belief
(23:54):
that you know, one's race determines their abilities and that
racial differences, those racial differences make one race superior to
the other. But the thing is, it's not just racism.
Isn't just believing that you're better than someone because of
the color of your skin, or just calling someone those
avertly you know, derogatory terms. I mean, you have to
(24:15):
when we're talking about racism, we have to really describe
how it really infiltraits, like every every part of our lives,
every aspect. You must include the word systemic when we're
describing racism because a big part of racism is putting
systems in place that are designed to keep one racist
people behind. So that's not that originally wasn't included in
(24:40):
the definition, but it's super important to add that in there. Yeah. Yeah,
it reminds me of that Sclear Carmichael quote. If a
white man wants to lend me, that's his problem. If
you've got the power to lend me, that's my problem.
Racism has had a question of attitude, it's a question
of power exactly. So now, like assuming so that they
(25:02):
are going to change the definitory, okay, they changed it.
So now that the definition has changed, at least in
one dictionary, like, what what's the next step? What do
you think or some we're really trying to get that
change in every diction. Well right now I'm working with
a lot of different scholars to get it changed in
every dictionary because it's still like in the Oxford Dictionary,
(25:24):
which is a very prominent one, and in dictionary dot
com they still only have that basic you know, um
basically what I described earlier. So that's that's the next
step besides just trying to you know, inform people on
the deeper aspects. I feel like a lot of people
who want to be ignorant, they're still gonna be ignorant
(25:45):
about it until it's like they're not going to experience it.
But it's like you have to just boom. You have
to really just be open to other people who might
not have the same experiences as you, and just listen.
I think this is a very important time to just
sit back and at people's voices be heard, and actually
listen to your counterparts and what they're saying instead of
(26:05):
just trying to be ignorant about it, because that's not
gonna get us anywhere. So it's really gonna just leave
us in the same position we are now, where there's
black men, black women being killed, being murdered, being abducted,
and there's nobody being held accountable for because apparently black
people want to act like black bodies, you know, they're
not worth They're not worth anything, which is just not true.
(26:28):
What do you think is the wider impact of the
definitions change. I think that I hope that it allows
for a lot more a lot more um conversations about
racism that are actually accurate to what racism is. I
think that it was definitely people were trying to take
racism and you know, just make it whether they wanted
(26:50):
it to be because of how loosely you know, worded
that it was in the beginning. So I hope that
allows for more productive conversation. I hope that allows for
people to understand their biases and actually put forth some
change to actually you know, correct them, because it's not
always on people of color to come up with solutions.
(27:11):
This is a time where you see, we need solidarity
and we need people of all races to really come
together to fix the problem because I mean, at the
end of the day, we didn't create it, so it
really needs to be addressed and solved altogether universally. Hey,
I had one last question. Every everything that I've seen
(27:32):
of people like covering you and what you've done. They
only refer to you as a college graduate, So is
there is is there something else that we can refer
to you as I think that that has been bothering me,
especially because my Drake experiences have hurt me so much,
(27:53):
Like it's really been a mental warfare and like been
such uh like, I don't it's really annoying how they're
getting a lot of publicity and how they're really getting
during all of this when at the end of the day,
they didn't take care of me at all as a
student there. They still aren't taking care of their people
students of color, which you can basically ask anyone. So
(28:13):
I'm glad that you brought that up because who that is?
That is so that bothers me so much because they're
just taking so much pr from this, but they're still
not putting anything in place to actually protect and actually
hold those professors accountable who say racist stuff, hold those
students accountables who do racist stuff that might not be
(28:34):
overtly racist, but it still hurts all the same. So
you can just call me by my name, Kennedy Mitchum.
I also don't the black because a lot of other
people are just saying, you know, black women. But I'm like,
I'm not just black woman. I'm like, yeah, exactly, I'm
(28:57):
educated the world. We literally I'm like, oh my god,
but that's so funny you brought that up. Well this Mitchum,
thank you for coming and talking with us on the
Wait in the Reparations podcast. So thank you for your time,
(29:17):
thanks for having me. And so when you have these
systems that we're constructed through these iterative interactions between people,
this one person that you know treated someone in some way,
and then like I get a bunch of people who
are treating someone this way, and it creates the system
(29:38):
that's been in place for hundreds of years, thousands of years. Um.
What's interesting from a public policy perspective is the way
that we are hindered in our policy from addressing the
status quo of the system that which is racist and
um dismantling parts of that system that that that are racist. So,
(29:58):
for example, in the local government, we've been trying to
work on getting more minority contractors with city contracts for
paving roads, building buildings, doing roofing, doing solar panel installation
because all of these white um firms have had advantage
for hundreds of years, tens of decades, UH with regards
(30:19):
to the way that they've been able to recruit capital
and actually maintain a business, whereas black businesses were burned
to the ground, et cetera. But law prevents us given
like equal protections on the law, it's equally discriminatory for
us to give UH contracts to exclusively white people as
it is to give contracts exclusively to black people. There's
(30:39):
no way that we can and act a law that
says we are going to give of our city contracts
to black owned firms, because that's discrimination as well. And
so this kind of this this kind of policy helps
uphold the system, but it operates under the guys of
(31:00):
protecting everyone from discrimination. Like everyone's equal to begin with,
everyone's already equal, So like you can't discriminate against white
people by saying we're going to give contracts to black
owned firms. And it really prevents us from actually addressing
the historical roots of a lot of the disparities that
we have in our community because of these things that
(31:21):
have been so ongoing for such a long time historically.
If are we good, I'm good, Yeah, especially since the
intellectual part of the episode is over. Now I can
(31:42):
just laugh at exactly so. So and you know, going
with the episode for the music discussion, we're gonna we're
gonna talk about some songs that are themed in racism,
you know, about the topic of it, either dealing with
you know, an aspect of it. I tried to be
really specific with it and just look for songs that were,
(32:06):
you know, systhetic racism, but there's just so many songs
that are just about racism broadly that this is like,
now we just gotta talk about it. So this first
one is actually like a real classic. Um, this is
Brad Paisley featuring l O. Cool J Accidental Racist. When
(32:26):
I see that white cowboy hat, I'm thinking it's not
all good. I guess we're both guilty and judge in
the cup. I got the book, Yo, get all the
way to the funk out of here with that. This
is real? What are yours? This? That was two? Yeah? Yep, No,
there's like a they even they did press for this. Yeah,
(32:47):
there's like a CNN clip of them talking about this
that looks like a parody. It looks like a fucking
state farm commercial. I'm gonna trying not to think about that.
So that's just a little bit of l l's verse.
But Brad Paisley, he's singing about going into like a
coffee shop and getting served by I assume a black waiter,
(33:13):
and he's got a Leonard Skinner shirt on. So he's
got the rebel flag and he's feeling bad about it,
and I think this shouldn't really happen. I think this
is really went into some place where in the rebel
flag is some some black people custom out and he
went to the studio like I have to call l
(33:35):
where's cool, James? I just any sort of rap country ship,
miss me? You know, I want to say that. But
like the Nelly tim McGrath joint, in a certain frame
of mind, I can see how people fused with that.
I mean, I'm just that. I'm just saying I understand
thought it was. Yeah, you know, how are you gonna
(33:58):
make fun of it when you know reseillable? I think
I think in the in the right hands, anybody can
anybody who's capable can make anything dope. And obviously l
J is one of the greatest rappers of all time.
But that ship was trash um. So the next joint
is a pretty interesting one. This is a journa lucas
I'm not Racist from It's his conversational concept song check
(34:22):
us out, talking about slavery like he was a round
back then, like he was picking cotton off the round
back then, like he was on the plantation getting down
back then. I'm not racist. This is like the dialogue
between like the maga hat wearing bearded white guy and
then the black dude. Right yeah, the black kids like
sitting at like a table together. It's framed as a conversation.
A lot of it got flak when it came out
(34:43):
because some people thought that the white dudes verseus was
either longer or had had more thought put into it
or something like that. I don't know, Like in in
any event, it's like it's the song that he chose
to make, you know what I mean, I don't really
give it any sort of judgment on that. It's more
(35:03):
the quality of it that I'm thinking about. Well, also
the way it's positioned, I mean, like structurally in the song,
Like when I first watched it, like watched the music
video and I just the music video starts and this
is white guy rapping about how black people are bad.
I was just like, yea, what the fuck? From from
like a Artie Farzi standpoint. I think that's like the
(35:27):
intention is like it invokes, it invokes like every action.
Yeah yeah, yeah, immediately are kind of a little bit
pissed off. I mean the second you know again, it's
it's another one of those songs where admittedly it's like
the first few times I heard it a few years ago,
I was like, you know, I kind of felt the
same way, But listening to it more these last few
days leading up to this, it's like, all right, the
(35:49):
argument that both of the verses are equally as long,
and that you know, they both have equal time if
you actually like look at it. So it's like, Okay,
I don't know, I don't I don't minded as much
as I did when I first heard it, but maybe
I'm getting soft or something. Definitely getting soft. I mean,
it definitely gets hokey towards the end because they like
make up and hug and it's like, oh, if only
(36:12):
we could just put the races aside and hug it out.
So yeah, you know, I mean, I hear all those criticisms,
but it's wrapped really well, and I just digged the concept.
It's not like a I I dig I dig it
when people do songs that like maybe like damn, I
wish I had thought about that first, you know, And
(36:32):
this song definitely has some of that. So the next
joint is Black America again by Common featuring Stevie Wonders.
Black anytime anybody is like black on black crime needs
to end and like doesn't actually bring into like bring
(36:53):
into it the systemic to mention of like why we're
killing each other And like my it's just rolled back
in my skull and I fucking die a little bit that.
I mean, I think there was he was that was
just one bit of the song. I don't think that's
a fair description of that song. But I don't know
(37:15):
is that like is that your Is that your only feeling?
You know? I mean, because that song to me is like, yeah,
that's what it's like typical. I don't I'm not saying
this in a bad way at all, but it's like
it's like standard Common, fair, you know what I mean.
Like he's always like hitting on those sort of points,
and I mean, I think it's I don't think that
(37:37):
we should be so reactionary that Common can't say black
men don't kill each other. I mean, it's one thing
if Ben Shapiro's punk Asked is saying it, but Common
should be able to say it. You know what I mean?
You disagree? I mean like you don't hear fucking Luke
Bryant singing songs about how white people need to stop
(37:57):
killing each other? What the fund is a luke when
when most fucking homicides happen intra racially. I I understand that.
I just don't think that Commons mentioned of this in
the song is like coming from the same place that
somebody concern trolling when you're trying to bring up systemic
(38:18):
racism is coming from when they do it. This is
an episode about systemic racism. If motherfucker's are addressing the
systemic roots of the issues in our community, they're not
serving us. And I'm sorry being like put the guns down?
Who the fund? You thought, like, no, it's no, But
(38:38):
listen and think about it for a second. How many
people do you think Common got to put their guns
down over this song? I don't know, yeah, because nobody
fucking put their guns down over the song. However, if
a song had been crafted around addressing the roots of
black homicides in already in you know, housing, insecurity, in
(39:02):
a lack of education. Why are they funding that ship again,
just the sliver of a six minute long song to
raise awareness for the for like policy change that could
like actually impact the roots of of intra racial homicide.
Fucking that would be when the guns down because of
(39:23):
the ship. I honestly, I honestly think that's an unfair
characterization of one line. Well fuck you no for real though, Like,
I mean, this is a six minute song that's called
Black America. Again, the nigga definitely hits on systemic racism
(39:45):
at least a couple of times in the ship. I'm
not even trying to hate on the rest, and I'm
not even trying to detigrate any of commons. You is
your argument that that should never be mentioned at all?
I don't think it's useful to tell people put their
guns down unless you're actually mediating like gang conflict in
like an actual interpersonal way. But I mean that's that's
(40:06):
where it stems from. Though, Man, next song, I didn't
get into this. I mean, look, look, I mean just
just keeping it real, Like I grew up on Gangster Rap.
That was like the first rap that rap ship that
I listened to, you know what I mean when I
first started listening to rap, and it's like there was
(40:29):
like the ethos of it wasn't really yeah, yo, like
killing each other is dope. You know what I'm saying?
Like that that wasn't you know, like like as a
matter of fact, it was quite like vehemently like nah,
like like put the gun down, black black man. Don't
we need to stop shooting each other? You know what
(40:50):
I mean? Like we need to like aim like in
some cases people are like we need to aim at them,
which brings us to the next song. This. Okay, So
when I say the name sir Mix a Lot, what
do you think about du dun dun dun dun dun
dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun du I
(41:11):
like big butts and I cannot lie you did nah?
But the girl walks in with the inmates and a
round thing in your face. You get degree. So yeah,
Sir Mix a lot, cervix. You know I was. I
used to listen to Sir Mix a lot, like around
when Baby Got Back first came out and It's like
I actually had that album that that was on It's
(41:32):
called mac Daddy. Actually, it's executive produced by Rick Rubin
and Sir Mix a Lot did a lot of the
beats on it. But I've been saying since I was
a little kid that Sir Mix a Lot is one
of the most underrated rappers of all time that just
nobody gives credit to because of the strength of Baby
Got Back. They forgot how nice he was on the mike.
(41:54):
But this Ship has some crazy concept songs on it.
I mean, and there's ship where he's rapping like he's
a Ferrari. There's a song where he's rapping from the
perspective of being heroin. So he's got this cut on
that album that's called jack Back that is pretty much
(42:14):
just like a Nazi murder fantasy about him beefing with
the class with like a squad of skin heads and
getting revenge killing because they burned across in his yard.
It's really fucking awesome. Let's check a little out a
little bit of that wild. I mean, it's and I
(42:37):
really enjoy that, you know, because we were just talking
about you know, black on black crime. But it's like
this is essentially a nineties gangster rap song, but the
antagonist of this gangster rap story isn't another black man,
it's actual skinhead racist that he's like doing drive byes
(42:58):
on and catching slip all right, And last We Got
It is actually my favorite of the joints that I
found and I was listening to. This is a Marlin
a song by Marlon Craft called Gangshit. Let's check this out.
We're gonna make America white again. Sound when of them people,
(43:21):
people who work harder than me, because we all spighted
them sitting there so fucking dopey. It's yeah, it's just like, yeah,
when I first heard that ship, it was stuck in
my head for days. But I like, I think, I
think this is similar to the journal Lucas I'm not
racist one in the sense of like the framing and
(43:44):
how it's set up where the rappers taken on the
character of these different personalities. That was just a snippet,
But in the course of the song, he plays the
role of a cop and he's like talking about how
the cops of you black people. Then he plays the
role of a landsman and he's talking about how the
klansman and views black people, and then he plays the
role of like a black guy who's actually in jail,
(44:06):
who grew up in the hood, and he's like, my
gang ship landed me in prison, and your gang ship
got you on the street walking the beat, and you
sitting at home, you know, with your family and ship
having dinner, Yeah, sitting around the dinner table, and it's
just it's just really, I think it's a I think
it's more effective than the General Lucas song because it's
a better song, you know what I mean. It's got
(44:26):
like a catchy hooked I think the beat is better.
It's just it's just the iller song. And kind of
that's important when you're trying to make messages with your ship,
is that it sounds good because I think your point
can get across, right. It's important for like catching the
attention of your audience to like layer them into paying
attention to the broader message exactly. So that's gonna be
it for our music discussion, and that's gonna be it
(44:49):
for our episode. I for one, feel like rapping. I
feel like rapping two. And I also want to wish
everyone a very happy June Teo this Friday. Yeah, don't
don't work general. Generally, don't buy ship, They're gonna work.
(45:17):
Uh uh, you see, I ought to be I proud
of you, just like my parents thought i'd be, instead
of squandering my doctorate party and hardily lost in the
Coxae looking like chocolate broccoli for not the locking people.
I'm watching me constantly because I'm bread and straightened until
the Great Tenth, when I decided I was kind of
tired of her moodiness. They should they should change this.
(45:38):
My looks like Andy Davis and the racist suppose the
observation of white is a million. I don't God truly
to spit, but when it comes to written verses, I
am truly legit. I'm on another different curve. I in
school with you, prick, because what I dropped and give
the earth and KI could dude in this ship, I'm
proving it this bit of scene words and then I did.
I stacked the bread and that means work and not persist.
(45:59):
I'm mixed the red head in the green herb and
night Quick come off the head with a mean verse
and let it rip, nigger ship. How do you got
the kid, I'm the alchemist, I ansis and if you
brought the pip let me like the stick. I'm the
prince with the lion fist. I'm about the ships on
the ship. What the fund is dripped without a risk.
In the meanwhile, I'm gonna leave your host piste off
a freestyle better than your whole dis guy the quick
(46:21):
nod to my dope heads. You're gonna get robbed from
now one. Not knife nigga, no, just god dope. Yeah, yeah,
I'm dope night, and we are waiting on reparations. See
you guys next week. Waiting on Reparations as a production
of I Heeart Radio. Listen to Waiting on Reparations on
(46:44):
the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get
your podcasts.
Popular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations.
The Nikki Glaser Podcast
Every week comedian and infamous roaster Nikki Glaser provides a fun, fast-paced, and brutally honest look into current pop-culture and her own personal life.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.