August 18, 2021 • 44 mins
Race plays a fundamental role in naturalizing social, political, and economic inequalities in the United States. Daniel Martinez HoSang and Joseph Lowndes document the changing politics of race and class in the age of Trump in their book PRODUCERS, PARASITES, PATRIOTS: Race and the New Right-Wing Politics of Precarity, which ultimately brings to light the changing role of race in right-wing politics. Racial subordination is an enduring feature of US political history, and it continually changes in response to shifting economic and political conditions. HoSang and Lowndes are here with a primer on, and insightful analyses of, The 1619 Project launched by the New York Times in August 2019, The 1776 Report commissioned by Donald Trump and released in January 2021, and recent and ongoing attacks on critical race theory in the US.
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Joseph Lowndes (00:11):
It's not enough to say that people who have an
authoritarian right wing visionof the American nation are
simply racist.
Daniel Martinez HoSang (00:21):
So I I think the kind of debates that
you're charting out, kind ofnationally are actually touching
the ground in pretty localizedways around things like
curriculum and what kind ofcurriculum allows us to get our
heads around the currentconditions and what space we
have actually to offer somecritique of the dominant liberal
narrative of kind of steady,multicultural inclusion.
Narrator (00:49):
Race plays a fundamental role in naturalizing
social, political, and economicinequalities in The United
States. As Dan Martinez Hosseinand Joe Lowndes note in their
book Producers, Parasites,Patriots, Race and the New Right
Wing Politics of Precarity,racial subordination is an
enduring feature of US politicalhistory, and it continually
(01:09):
changes in response to shiftingeconomic and political
conditions. In the countrytoday, there is an
intensification of racializedaggression against people of
color not seen since a massiveresistance to the civil rights
movement in the mid twentiethcentury. While these conditions
would seem to provide anextraordinary opportunity for
those committed to a vision ofeconomic redistribution and anti
(01:30):
racism, in our politics and inour thinking, it seems we
inevitably collapse back into aclass race divide when engaging
with the politics of precaritywith which we are faced. Dan and
Joe are here today with a primeron and insightful analyses of
the 1619 project launched by theNew York Times in August 2019,
the 1776 report commissioned byDonald Trump and released in
(01:52):
January 2021, and recent andongoing attacks on critical race
theory in The United States.
This conversation was recordedin July 2021.
Daniel Martinez HoSang (02:03):
Alright. Hi, Joe.
Joseph Lowndes (02:05):
Good morning, Dan.
Daniel Martinez HoSang (02:06):
I know you well. I've known you for a
long time, but, the folkslistening to this podcast, may
not. So, tell us about yourself,Joe.
Joseph Lowndes (02:17):
I am a, professor of political science
at the University of Oregon. Mywork over time has addressed
mainly US politics, but notonly. I've studied the rise of
the, political right. I alsostudy and write about
institutional and party politicsas well as racial politics.
Daniel Martinez HoSang (02:39):
I'll just say quickly to introduce
myself. I teach in theethnicity, race, and migration
program at Yale. I write about,social movements, anti racism,
anti racism in, education inparticular. Joe and I were
formerly colleagues at theUniversity of Oregon in ethnic
studies and political science,and that's where we started
working on this book, Producers,Parasites, and Patriots. Today,
(03:03):
we're gonna talk about, the 1776report, the attacks on critical
race theory, how that has to dowith a kind of this question of
a dynamic and really veryrapidly changing sense of how
conservatism operates.
Joe, I wonder if we could start,like, maybe talking about the
book and the kinds of questionsyou were interested in and we
(03:23):
were interested in bringing to,Producers, Parasites and
Patriots, and and what we werenoticing at the time in the last
ten years about the ways thatracial politics seem to be
shifting.
Joseph Lowndes (03:34):
Mhmm. Mhmm. Yeah. In some ways, there were
there were two kinds ofquestions. One of them was kind
of a always complicated andalways kind of shifting politics
of race and class in The UnitedStates and the ways in which
these two phenomena, I guess,interact, interrelate, are
(03:55):
coconstituted, and yet arealways, having to be renovated
and reshaped to meet newpolitical realities.
On the left, particularly in TheUS Left, I think also among
scholars of race, there are verylively questions about how to
think about class in the contextof a, a settler and white
(04:15):
supremacist country. And, youknow, and I think those are many
fruitful debates and discussionsand many not fruitful debates
and discussions. But I think wewere trying to get a little bit
of a handle on that forourselves. And the other thing
is that related to that weresome surprising things that we
were noticing on the landscape.Now in this moment when we, you
know, when The US is in its ageof most kind of economic
(04:39):
inequality, really ever.
Right? The the scholars call thesecond gilded age, but it's
really something more than athan the second gilded age
insofar as the gap in wealthbetween the richest Americans
and everyone else is bigger thanit ever has been. And we're
partly concerned about how thatdisrupts, destabilizes, and
shifts, political groundinstitutionally, discursively
(05:02):
from movements to parties toindividual identifications. And
so, within that, with with thekind of the understanding that
destabilized class politics andalways reshifting race politics,
you're going to see some,movement and change over time.
One of the things we noticed wasthat the white workers in public
(05:25):
sector unions, on the one handand kind of the the the white
poor, particularly in largeswaths of exurban and rural
America that were no longerflourishing, were no longer
protected, were no longer hadtheir whiteness as a form of
indemnification.
So two things we noticed. One,the conservatives were beginning
(05:47):
to attack these poor whites asif they were no longer part of
the club of whiteness. And in inusing new racial language to
talk about poor whites either inAppalachia or elsewhere, which
was interesting to us to seewhat happens when white people
are falling off the bottom. Dotheir their former allies seek
to keep them in, or do they letthem drop out and then accuse
(06:10):
them and blame them for theirown inability to flourish? And
the other one with with publicsector unions, it was a a moment
when there were real attacks onpublic sector unions across the
board.
Many of these racialized attackson, government workers, but
these were attacks that hit alot of white workers as as well
as black and Latino workers. Sowe were kind of interested and
(06:30):
see how that the the curiousnessof and the it's kind of
scrambling of both political andracial codes that allow these
new kinds of attacks to, becausethat was that was one part of
the book. The other half of itwas to look at the ways in which
the right from the RepublicanParty on rightward to the far
right, militia movement, altright, etcetera, was oddly
recruiting people of color andusing anti racist discourse and
(06:55):
using, black and brown identityas generative forms of far right
articulation.
Daniel Martinez HoSang (07:02):
So, you know, it was really on the one
hand trying to keep these, youknow, somewhat contradictory
ideas that there continues to bea dominant racial order,
absolutely marked by whitesupremacy, by the exploitation
of Black and Brown workers, thatthat has not changed. And at the
same time, because of theseintense forms of economic
(07:23):
inequality and precarity, wewere seeing new justifications,
regimes, descriptions, andaccounts that help to kind of
shore up that inequality. Thismight be a way for us to start
talking about the 1776 report,which came out, as, most folks
will remember, in early January,Trump's last days in office. All
(07:46):
of its kind of credited authorswere pretty, unapologetic self
identified conservatives, folkson the right. It was meant to be
a kind of response in some ways,a rhetorical response at least,
to the 1619 project produced bythe New York Times, a few years
earlier, which argued that tounderstand The United States'
(08:07):
national formation, we couldn'tjust go back to the nation's
founding in 1776, we had to lookto 1619 and the start of a
system of race based slavery andanti blackness to really
understand the nation'sformation.
This took on kind of newpolitical significance in the
fall when a kind of journalistnamed Christopher Rufo, launched
(08:29):
the first in a salvo of attacksagainst, critical race theory,
arguing that critical racetheory had somehow now come to
define and capture governmenttrainings, all kinds of
indoctrinations, diversity work,etcetera. So, Joe, I thought we
could work through a little bitabout what's the kind of
dominant account you've beenhearing to explain this recent
(08:51):
explosion in both kind ofconservative panics and
political spectacles over antiracist education in general,
perhaps critical race theory inparticular. What's the kind of
dominant interpretation thatyou've been hearing about this?
Joseph Lowndes (09:06):
Well, the dominant liberal interpretation,
let's say, is that it's anattempt at, you know, censorship
of, a more full education forAmericans, be they school
children or people in highereducation of the the real roots
of, the American politicalsystem forged in in slavery. And
I think, you know, part of it isthis is this is an idea that's
(09:29):
reactionary. It comes from theright that, of course, every
good liberal knows that you musttalk about slavery, and every
good liberal knows that you musttalk about forms of disparity
and discrimination and, youknow, should embrace new modes
of of thinking of a pluralistAmerica, a diverse America. And
I think so it's it's almost asif from the from the liberal
(09:50):
side, what you get is a desirefor a fuller origin story and a
fuller sense of both Americanoriginal sin and American,
redemptive promise. I think thatthat's those are the kind of the
two sides of it.
Daniel Martinez HoSang (10:04):
Yeah. And and there's some truths to
this. Right? That the both theattack and the 1776 report, you
know, should just be understood,you know, primarily through a
lens of kind of like censorship.That really what's at stake is
to kind of prohibit, outlaw, orstigmatize all discussions about
race, about racism and racialsubordination, and to kind of
(10:26):
rob critics of racial inequalityand segregation of any kind of
language in which to address it.
But part of what you're sayingis it's not quite as simple as
that because there's actually anadmission of kind of some
language to talk about race. Andit's the language of, you know,
what others have called civicnationalism, which is to
(10:47):
acknowledge that indeed therehave been some, episodes of
racial domination. Theyacknowledge slavery. They may
acknowledge even examples ofcolonialism. But the argument is
that the civic bonds that kindof hold the nation together have
withstood that and indeed thekind of anti racist mover
sensibility should be to upholdthose civic bonds.
(11:10):
So and to have the discussionsabout racism and slavery and
abolition within the acceptableboundaries of civic nationalism.
It's what we read. It's almostwhat every school kid reads in
their US History book today. Sorather than a kind of full out
prohibition, it's instead a akind of insistence that these
discussions can only take placewithin the boundaries of, civic
(11:33):
nationalism and Americanexceptionalism.
Joseph Lowndes (11:36):
Yeah. I think that's that's right. And so I
guess for us, really, in someways, the question is what that
kind of response or reaction tothe attack on the 1619 project
or more broadly the attack oncritical race theory or
education around race andslavery, or as you said, or at
the boundaries of settlercolonialism. What does that
(11:56):
limit, or what does that leaveout, or how are we constrained
by that kind of language? Who isleft uncriticized in, you know,
in in the couching it that way?
Daniel Martinez HoSang (12:06):
Yeah. I mean, I think part of what this
seeks to render as, illegitimateor I mean, this is where the I
think the language of patriotismreally courses through all of it
is that any kind of structuralcritiques, I mean and really,
here's the interesting thing forme, Joe, is that it's a critique
of liberalism that actuallyseems to most outrage and
(12:30):
liberal institutions and liberalnorms and laws that is actually
what's the kind of greatestoffense to if you, you know,
kind of unpack the seventeenseventy six project, which is
that the kind of dominant laws,kind of legal infrastructure,
the sets of anti discriminationlaws that have been put into
place. I mean, that's what'svenerated in the 1776 report.
(12:52):
It's the, capacity of theseprevailing institutions to
actually deal with theseconflicts. So I think there's
just a really interesting kindof genealogy here because, I I
mean, as you know, critical racetheory emerges in the legal
academy in the eighties andnineties actually as a critique,
less about racial conservatismand really more about liberal
(13:12):
institutions and the prevailingset of anti discrimination laws
and why twenty years after theirpassage, they proved so limited
in addressing underlyingpatterns of segregation and
inequality.
So here you have, you know,primarily scholars on the left,
scholars of color, critiquingliberal institutions. And now we
(13:33):
have these folks on the rightrallying to actually defend the
liberal institutions, you know,from this more kind of radical
critique. And so that's partpart of what I think is, you
know, disorienting at least forme is, you know, the the
critique from the right here isactually not about, like,
western chauvinism orexceptionalism. That's not the
language we're hearing this.It's a it's a critique of
(13:54):
liberal institutions, and Ithink that's where some
interesting politics seem to beunfolding.
Joseph Lowndes (14:00):
Mhmm. Mhmm. Wait. So when you say that the
seventeen seventy six projectseeks to criticize liberal that
it they themselves arecriticizing liberal
institutions.
Daniel Martinez HoSang (14:09):
Well well, I think that it's the
seventeen six project and thecritics of critical race theory
that actually are defending thisproject of, you know, what we
you know, what others havecalled civic nationalism, which
is that the prevailing sets oflegal institutions, anti
discrimination laws, etcetera,are kind of most capable of
addressing the, you know,continued effects and endurance
(14:33):
of racial inequality. So it'snot that they're all together
saying no discussion should takeplace about race, about
segregation, about legacies ofslavery, etcetera. They're
arguing that those discussionsshould only happen within the
norms of kind of USexceptionalism and, liberal
rulemaking. And I think the thereaction is in part to to to
(14:54):
critics of those liberalinstitutions, which is what
critical race theory and broadlya a more kind of foundational
approach to anti racist work.It's a skepticism about those
laws, about anti discriminationlaws, about the markets, about
these other liberal norms foractually being able to address
racial inequality.
Joseph Lowndes (15:14):
That's actually kind of an interesting territory
here. So on the one hand, the,seventeen seventy six project
seeks to I mean, I it's as Iread it, the sixteen nineteen
project sought to say, look.There are stained origins of the
of The United States founding,and that there are problematic
elements that we would find inthe American Revolution, that we
(15:36):
would find in the constitution,that we would find in the early
developmental years of therepublic, which both were found
partly on or built and extendedforms of white supremacy in ways
that are, now still within theAmerican political system.
Daniel Martinez HoSang (15:52):
Yeah. And I'll just just to add to
that. That's right. And endurein all of these ways, right, in
the structure of housing marketsand transportation systems, in
popular culture, in educationand the curriculum, that they're
kind of not just they're bothbaked in, but, constantly
evolving and saturate all ofthese institutions. They're not,
you know, and as critical racetheorists would say, they're not
(16:13):
aberrational.
They're not irregular orexceptional. They're kind of,
central and constitutive of theway these institutions are
organized.
Joseph Lowndes (16:22):
Mhmm. Mhmm. That's exactly right. And the
seventy seventy six projectwants to say, look. The
possibilities of, a moreexpansive project of
egalitarianism and of, aninclusive civic nationalism are
what's really, in the so calledDNA of our of our founding and
(16:43):
constitution.
And that this that the systemitself is capacious enough to
render these and attacks on,American origins. I guess what
it feels like to me a little bitis that you've got defenders of
the sixteen nineteen projectsaying, look. We have to face
some real problematic originshere as a way of thinking
(17:06):
through ongoing and evolving,and as you say, new forms of,
racial inegalitarianism. Wecould say that the seventeen
seventy six project or reallykind of the right more broadly
these days want to say whatyou're saying what you're what
you're attacking is Americaninnocence. What you're attacking
is an idea that America wassomething else besides having,
(17:30):
at its moment of founding,visions of freedom and
egalitarianism and democracy, inits sights.
That and this is the thing. Forthe right, it feels like what
they are unable to bear is thisattack on American innocence and
attack on the founding. Fordefenders of 1619, what it seems
like is it is kind of a sense ofwe're not calling to for guilt
(17:55):
and blame. We're calling for, aresponsible politics going
forward to forge some otherpath. But I it feels like that
is kind of like a debate withincivic nationalism, a debate
within kind of Americanidentity, a debate within and
among people who themselves wantto claim different visions of
(18:16):
American identity.
Right? That may leave out a lotof things altogether. I mean, it
might be if you were to push,you know, some of the logic of
critical race theory and some ofthe logic of 1619 further, it
might be to say, what is left todefend, or what do we wanna say
about, this this Americanproject that we seek to to
(18:37):
recover. Right? I mean, theproblem is on the one hand,
there's a question aboutinstitutions and public
policies.
On the other hand, there'ssomething about nation and
culture. Right? I mean, what ifthere had been imagine a 1492
project. Right? Just say that,like, the the very the very
foundings of The US nation, thatis itself such an extraordinary
(19:00):
genocidal crime that what are weseeking to defend, or what are
we seeking to redeem, or whatkind of set of promises?
Would you hear often fromdefenders of 1619 is to say, we
want to have America not as anot not as something that was
perfect at the founding, but asa promise at the founding.
Right? So those are the twosides. Whether it was whether it
(19:21):
was immaculate conception or,whether it was original sin, but
there's ways in which the thetwo sides of that, that's kinda,
like, two rival origin stories,you know, might limit our
ability to think more deeplyabout, the ways in which
liberals are themselvescontinually reproducing and
(19:42):
enlisted in the reproducing ofof ongoing racial projects.
Daniel Martinez HoSang (19:47):
Yeah. So I I think you're you're kind of
suggesting this is actually adiffering accounts of
redemption, right, and ofAmerican redemption and, like,
which one will prevail. And it'strue that, you know, the essays
Nicole Hannah Jones, the kind oflead essay in the sixteen
nineteen project. The argumentis that African Americans have,
(20:07):
you know, long nurtured andpracticed and articulated the
most robust forms of democracy,but as you're suggesting,
American democracy. So one thatit still imagines that the
nation is the ideal and mostkind of effective container to
harbor, right, all of our bestdreams about care and life and
(20:28):
survival and kinship.
Mhmm. And then, of course, thatcomes at the expense. It just
comes to the expense of longstanding black political
critiques of the nation also asa site of militarism, of
violence, of imperialism, andthat it's kind of, you know, the
the forms of inequality andviolence and exploitation even
internally are also baked in.That's not redeemable in any
(20:50):
kind of sense. So, there's a waythat they're both kind of
competing for that same senseof, like, who is the, like,
ethical and moral interpreter ofthe, you know, a certain kind
of, like, redemptive vision ofthe nation.
Joseph Lowndes (21:06):
Yes. That's exactly right. And here's the
thing, I think where ouranalysis that we try to develop
in our book, I feel like,matters here in part because,
you you know, you'll see, thethe people who attack the 1619
project, people who areattacking critical race theory,
people who are attacking morebroadly a new and very open anti
racist moment over you know,say, you know, we give the the
(21:30):
mark the periods of it with thesixteen nineteen project, the
killings of George Floyd andBreonna Taylor, and the
development of, ChristopherRufo's attack on critical race
theory. You know, the people whoare, involved in the attack on
an emergent black politics areare accused of by liberals often
as being like, that's fascism.That's authoritarianism.
(21:51):
That's, you know, that's that'swhere we see it. Radical black
politics has always said, like,there was already it's always
been fascist or it's always beenauthoritarian. It's always been
built in. So then for I thinkfor the analysis in our book,
partly is what we noticed isthat it's not enough to say that
people who have an authoritarianright wing vision of the
American nation are simplyracist, and those who want, you
(22:16):
know, a more liberal version aresimply anti racist. What partly,
what we see is that the anti CRTpeople continually want to
enlist and put on the forefrontblack people and brown people
who are also critical ofcritical race theory, you know,
also critical of 1619, who whowant to redeem a vision of the
American nation and of thefounders and of the constitution
(22:39):
and of the American revolution.
You see it over and over again.And there's something that that
criticism has deep appeal to the1776 folks because they see that
as built in. They don't seethemselves as racist. They see
themselves as as, having a aversion of, like, 1776 anti
racism. And the thing is,liberals who wanna see
(23:02):
themselves on the other side,it's almost like a a mirrored
opposite.
Liberals who wanna seethemselves as as, you know,
fully anti racist may themselvesbe implicated in all forms of
racial exclusion, racialstratification, and everything
else. And so I I think partlywhat we're trying to analyze
this book is the ways in whichthe the codes that we wanna use,
(23:24):
the comfortable codes aroundrace and identity and politics
get scrambled, as we begin tothink about capitalism, the
authoritarian state, and thepolitical right. And I and that
puts us in different kind ofterritory and demands of us
maybe a a different kind of oror to recover a different kind
of critique.
Daniel Martinez HoSang (23:45):
Yeah. I think, you know and, certainly,
this has, like, very materialeffects. So, like, rhetorically,
you know, the kind of contentionthat the 1776 project and the
attacks on CRT are, exclusivelydone in the name of censorship
of a kind of, like, nineteenthcentury white revanchist, lost
(24:07):
cause narrative. I mean, thoughthose elements clearly are
coursing through all of this. Soit's it's not that it has
nothing to do with it.
The problem is, and I thinkyou're getting it, is if we only
understand it as that project,the this kind of effort to,
like, rebuild and defend, awhite Christian nation from any
forms of critique and attack, wemiss the ways actually that the
(24:27):
right is actually quiteconversant in the language of
liberal norms, civicnationalism, a certain kind of
pluralism and inclusion, thatit's not simply about an acting
a kind of like, white ethnostate. And in fact, that's
always been a kind of,relatively in The US minor note
of right wing racial projects,even white supremacist racial
(24:51):
projects. And if weunderestimate their kind of
capacity to work through thelanguage of racial liberalism,
of inclusion, of civic belongingand membership, you know, the
critique in response will justit won't be, like, sophisticated
enough to account for what's,you know, these developments on
the right.
Joseph Lowndes (25:09):
Yeah. I think that's exactly right. And I and
I think sometimes people whowanna defend sixteen nineteen or
critical race theory will claimonly the most modest ground for
it by saying, look. We're onlytrying to say that this must
also be part of the teaching ofAmerican history. We're only
trying to say that, we needdiversity, equity, and inclusion
(25:30):
in our corporate practices, inin in trainings of managers.
And the the the problem isclaiming that most modest ground
is almost to give the game awayentirely to the other side. It's
to say that, look. We're justcalling for a a form of American
civic nationalism that takesthese things into account. As
opposed to saying, going theother direction with it and
(25:53):
saying, yes. 1619 actually meansthat, you know, we we have to
rethink, and problematize theentire project of American
nation building and ofcapitalism and, you know, which
which goes, obviously, as weknow, hand in hand with with
both slavery and land theft andgenocide.
That that's all those are thingsthat are deeply wrapped up
(26:14):
together. So we actually, whatis demanded of this moment is
and what, you know, at itsheart, sixteen nineteen does is
push forward that and open upvery uncomfortable and very
radical questions. Same as yousaid with critical race theory
at its origins that it really isit was to say, like, look. The
American political system wasforged, you know, at a at a
(26:36):
moment of when slavery, wasintact. And so what we have is a
a set of institutions and a setof institutional, actions, which
will always reproduce it.
So for instance, the SupremeCourt can now gut the final few
ailing elements of the VotingRights Act of 1965 by partly
(26:57):
claiming an anti racist languagearound it. Right? They can deny
the possibility of a fullfranchise just using the
constitution and federalism. Inthe words of chief justice John
Roberts, the best way to stopdiscrimination is to stop
discriminating by race. And andthere there you have it.
And it leaves us with very fewtools, you know, if we if we
(27:18):
accept the ground of Americaninstitutions, if we accept the
constitution, if we accept therole of the supreme court, and
we accept the American nation.So that's, I think, partly what
I think you and I were trying toget at in our earlier
conversations of, like, whatthis means to actually ask
questions about, you know, whatkind of critique and then what
kind of politics are required.And it's partly what we saw on
(27:38):
the streets all summer withBlack Lives Matter. Right? It
was the, you know, the theemergent radical demands around
abolition of police, around anew politics of mutual aid and
care, around decentralizedstruggles, local struggles,
militant struggles, directdemocratic spontaneous
struggles, which which give usa, you know, a a very different
(28:01):
valence on how to defeat theracists in a way.
Daniel Martinez HoSang (28:06):
Yeah. Absolutely. And and the kind of
that the larger imperative isabout building institutions and
structures and relations outsideof the, you know, all the
dominant forms that it's notsimply about being incorporated
into the dominant forms becausethose dominant forms are always
gonna cause people harm, alwaysgonna, be rooted in
(28:26):
incarceration and violence. Andso, as you said, there were
these kind of moments, you know,that were especially alert and
alive and kind of generatedthrough the protests that, new
conditions, new structures werepossible. I mean, the one other,
you know, example I wanna add tothis is, in Connecticut where I
am, as in many states, there'sbeen discussions about the need
to diversify the k through 12curriculum in general and in
(28:50):
high school level, kind of thehigh school history and social
studies curriculum inparticular.
So, we have a law that's callingfor a new that's gonna require a
new elective in black and Latinostudies. And the interesting
debate over that here hasn'treally been as much like, is it
acceptable or not to teach it,but it's what the contours and
politics of a course like thatwould entail. On the one hand,
(29:13):
there's a set of folks thatreally want it to be a course
about contributions to thenation that's kind of group
based. So, African Americanswould be kind of, like, set off
as a group, and then we wouldchart across history their
contributions, and then Latinosas a kind of separate population
group and talk about theircontributions. And in contrast
to that, you know, there's beenstudent organizers, educators,
(29:36):
and others that say, no.
Really, what we need is a courseabout racism and the harms and
violence associated with it andits ongoing legacies in ways
that actually wouldn't separate,African Americans and Latinos
into discrete groups becausethose histories are constantly
converging and co constitutive.And it would actually be a
course about structure.
Joseph Lowndes (29:54):
Mhmm. It would
Daniel Martinez HoSang (29:55):
be a course about the structural
inheritances and everydaypractices of these forms of
inequality. So I I think thatthe, you know, the kind of
debates that you're chartingout, kind of nationally are
actually touching the ground inin in pretty localized ways
around things like curriculumand and what kind of curriculum
allows us to get our headsaround the current conditions
(30:17):
and what space we have actuallyto offer some critique of the
dominant liberal narrative ofkind of steady, multicultural
inclusion.
Joseph Lowndes (30:25):
That's so interesting and such a perfect
example because what you youpoint to is that if students
demand instead of a a curriculumabout forms of inclusion and
forms of kind of, collectivegroup heroism in the building of
the American story, by startingwith and anchoring it in harms,
in forms of oppression, inracism. What that allows is
(30:48):
actually, as as you just said, astructural critique, you know, a
a a way in to having a muchclearer picture of of how
institutions and structuresreproduce forms of racial
violence. And so it's it'sreally it's the most,
intellectually responsible wayto go about it, not not as a
(31:09):
form of of moralizing or, youknow, baiting or or guilting,
but to say that, like, yes, wehave to start with harms racial
oppression because that actuallygenerates and opens up the
possibility of really thinkingthrough what these problems are.
It's really interesting becauseI yeah. Think about, you know,
pulling that the lens backlarger from, the Connecticut
(31:29):
example you just gave.
It's as if, you know, on the oneside, 1776 offers a vision that
says, look. The founding was hadembedded within it brilliant
visions of future democracy andegalitarianism and freedom.
Black and brown people can beincorporated into that great
story from that was, you know,that was started by our
(31:52):
visionary founders, and we moveforward with that in, a
redemptive vision of thecountry. The conclusion of the
our book, yours and my book, wasto really invert that and say,
if we start on the other sideand look at the struggles by
people of color in The UnitedStates, what you get is a
(32:13):
possibility of including whitepeople into that project, but
into a project that is asbroadly visionary, that is that
it comes from the insights fromHarriet Tubman, from Frederick
Douglass, from Du Bois, from theCombahee River Collective, from
Audre Lorde. The the strugglesof people of color, the,
(32:33):
politics of queer blackfeminism, offer us a vision that
other people can be incorporatedinto as well, that really give
us rich and egalitarianpossibilities and visions and
ways forward.
So it's kinda like 1776 says,let's start with the founding
and incorporate people of colorinto it, and it's all good. A
black radical analysis or other,adjacent analysis would be to
(32:57):
say, let's start with forms ofoppression, exploitation,
violence, and exclusion, andbuild out a, a visionary
politics from there. The problemwith liberal critics of 1776 is
they're a little bit closer tothe 1776 side. They they are
they are offering a softerversion of seventeen seventy six
without going all the way intothe critique, I think.
Daniel Martinez HoSang (33:20):
I I I think that's right. And and the
effects of some of these recentdebates about that is actually
to if if we can think about, youknow, both the body of work, you
describe as critical race theoryand 1619 as having a kind of a
range, right, of politics. Somethat are more structural and
kind of radical in theiraspirations, other that are more
(33:41):
use the idiom of civicnationalism, that the effect of
this fight has actually been tobring many, many people much
more into the kind of civicnationals liberal fold, where
what's at stake seems to be, youknow, pretty bland milk toast,
right? Principles of liberalism,freedom of speech, inclusion,
belonging, that kind of dropsout the far more radical
(34:03):
critiques you're describingabout militarism, how it harms,
you know, all of us, the formsof predation that are connected
with market economies. So inthis kind of strange way, as
the, seventeen seventy sixprojects kind of, announced
their defense of, Americanliberalism and exceptionalism.
It's kind of, created this kindof gravity that pulls in what
(34:26):
could be more radical critics ofthat project into actually
defending its very norms, andto, kind of asserting that
they're actually the true andauthentic and genuine
interpreters of those ideals.
Joseph Lowndes (34:40):
Mhmm. Mhmm. Mhmm. And that puts them on
strong footing, I think, aswe've seen. I mean, many people
thought when Chris Rufo firstgoes on, I guess it was Tucker
Carlson and and, you know, laysout this whole conspiracy theory
around critical race theorythat's kind of rich in the
tradition of American conspiracytheorizing and, you know, anti
(35:03):
communism and antisemitism andeverything else.
Trump soon signs executive orderbanning diversity trainings in
in the federal government andthen, creates the seventeen
seventy six project. It is amoment that, you know, I think a
lot of people thought, you know,this was not gonna last that
long. It was so kooky. And onceTrump left office, it was going
(35:26):
to, you know, surely die outbecause there was just it it
seemed so desperate and soextreme in his way. But then it
really had legs, and it reallyit it just caught on like
wildfire in fights at localschool boards and state
legislatures and all over thecountry.
And I think it's because this7076 project as, you know, as
(35:46):
idiotic as that report is whenyou read it, and there's, like,
not one historian involved inits development, it has a
certain kind of ideologicalpower, which also is appealing
to many white moderates orliberals as well. And that's the
thing. They they really have theupper hand in this because
they're calling for a kind ofthere's a like, what's, you
know, what's wrong with kind ofan inclusive, American civic
(36:09):
nationalism? What what's sowrong with that? Why do we, you
know, why would we have to, doany more than that?
And part of it, I think, is Ithink that mostly kind of, like,
their deep American racialresentments and fears and
desires for innocence as JamesBaldwin put it. They get they
got really triggered and firedup by this. But, also, they were
able to claim ground that is isnot just on the right, but
(36:32):
really, like, that most ofAmerica accepts.
Daniel Martinez HoSang (36:36):
Yeah. And and I think what's this is,
and and it relates to one last,you know, area I hope we can
discuss, which is, so on the onehand, this seems like part of a,
really a long standing projectto associate a kind of radical
democratic anti racism with akind of revenge fantasy in which
(36:57):
these kind of newly energized,political formations will take
out their anger and frustrationand resentment on the innocent
white populace. And in thatsense, really trades in a
certain kind of fear of, like,guilt, shame, and humiliation.
That if this radical projecttakes root, they're coming after
(37:18):
you and they're not just comingafter you materially, they wanna
humiliate you. So rather thanfollowing, you know, the
argument you said about a kindof, the way a black feminist
politics actually leads to, youknow, radical and unprecedented
forms of democratic inclusionthat their actually aspiration
is only to humiliate anddegrade.
(37:39):
And that's why people who thinkof themselves as white should be
on guard because at stake isyour humiliation. And I wanted
to, Joe, get your thoughts aboutI mean, we talked, you know, in
the book about how humiliationand shame was actually, at the
center of so much of Trump'sdiscourse, the way he addressed
supporters. We're not winning atanything anymore. This is the
(38:01):
kind of age of our humiliationas a way to fire people up. So,
what are your thoughts aboutthat and about the ways that,
this kind of right wing responseto anti racism as there's
nothing in it for you, and infact, the only outcome of this
is gonna be your degradation.
They wanna degrade you, as a wayto, again, kind of generate
(38:22):
profound anger and antipathyagainst these projects because
people so feel like their verybeing is what's gonna be come
under attack.
Joseph Lowndes (38:31):
Yeah. I mean, as you say it, you know, the the,
you know, Trump's whole projectbeing one of describing his base
as as one of humiliated losers,which he did over and over,
particularly in 02/2016. It italmost feels like the
extraordinary pleasure that, theright has in attacking, critical
(38:53):
race theory is it's almostsadomasochistic, right, if you
were to be psychoanalytic aboutit. That there's something about
the pleasure of this humiliationthat that's that's going on here
at the at the heart of this,that people are being told, yes
yes. You are going to be exposedand found guilty, and you're
going to be humiliated throughshame for what you've done.
(39:15):
You know, so many people,particularly on the on the right
are so, you know, saturated inthis kind of, I would say,
discourse, but it's really likean affective environment of
humiliation that they're justthey're just ready for that. And
easy then to nurture fantasiesof, yes. They're as you said,
they're coming for you too. Thisis going to be every school
board is going to put thingsinto place that are gonna make
(39:37):
it so that your child feelshumiliated and your child feels,
shame and and and self hatred. Imean, there's different things
going on here in terms of, likethe the attack on critical race
theory is is so broad and has somany different elements that
work, but that certainly is isis one of them.
What's being played on here and,yes, it is this the worst fears
and the worst sense of of peoplewho already feel hammered and
(40:01):
humiliated by neoliberalism,hammered and humiliated by the
state. They don't want any moreof that, and they see themselves
often, I think white people seethemselves in the visions of the
humiliations that they seepeople of color experiencing.
So, you know, that's gotta bepart of in this sense, as
opposed to the idea that, like,actually, maybe trying to work
(40:21):
out or critique of how kind ofthe origins of white supremacy
and class rule can open up newarticulations and new
possibilities and newexpressions of freedom and new
forms of resistance and newforms of solidarity and
coalition building and newvisions of alternative polities
(40:42):
for white folks as well. It'skinda like what I think they
they hope to put in place in thefact that if we think of the
Black Lives Matter movement ashaving brought millions of white
people into the streets as wellin a black led movement in every
little town in Hamlet as well asevery major city in the country
to respond by saying, don'tfollow that vision.
(41:05):
That vision's only gonnahumiliate you. I know you see
freedom there. There. I know yousee solidarity there. I know you
see other possibilities there.
But if you go there, thesepeople are only gonna destroy
you. And think about, you know,the eighteen eighties and
eighteen nineties that, youknow, a biracial, you know,
populist movement in the Southresults in the institution of
Jim Crow. There are elites whodo not wanna see whites joining
(41:29):
the struggles of people of coloror abandoning elements of their
whiteness there. And so thatit's it's a key to making sure
that that, a more radical visiondoesn't happen.
Daniel Martinez HoSang (41:39):
Yeah. I I was thinking precisely that
that it's precisely the wayReconstruction and its most,
radical and kind of inclusivemultiracial commitments get
stigmatized and ultimatelydefeated such that, you know,
ultimately the white populace ora large section of it is told
that it's like it actually isyour whiteness that will offer
(42:01):
you, some kind of currency andstatus and these other visions
have nothing to offer you. Andto represent them, therefore, is
radical, destructive, beyond thepale, you know, has been so
central into populist movementsin the early twentieth century,
to the most radical forms ofmultiracial organizing, labor
organizing during the New Deal,to the, you know, upsurge in
(42:23):
kind of civil and human rightswork and international work in
the 1960s. So in that sense, itfeels very much a piece of that
genealogy of how to stigmatize acertain kind of, anti racist,
multiracial tradition and toundermine, in particular, white
support for it. And, you know,we think about, you know, the
attacks on voting rights butalso on union rights that we
(42:46):
absolutely label as raciallytargeted and discriminatory.
Think of all the, you know, newwave of voting rights happening.
It's true. You know, theirprofound impact will be on Black
and Brown voters. You know, thatalso obviously despoils any
sense of democraticparticipation for large numbers
of people. Yes.
Right? Imagining that an excessof democracy and popular
(43:09):
participation is somehow bad forour, you know, shared kind of
democratic aspirations. I mean,that has profoundly devastating
effects on everyone's, like,sense of what's possible. So, I,
you know, I I think, again, whatwe're seeing here is, like, how
does do folks on the right kindof build support for projects
that continually violate andalienate, you know, large
(43:32):
numbers of their own, base andconstituency and that that's
part of the complex politicswe're seeing here?
Joseph Lowndes (43:38):
Dan, thanks. This is so fun talking to you,
and I I love exploring theseissues with you as usual.
Daniel Martinez HoSang (43:43):
Thanks, Joe. Yeah. I lots of insights
I'm kind of getting my headaround from this conversation
and, you know, like, always as areminder about the kind of need
to face the hard stuff, thecomplexities, the things we
don't quite, know andunderstand. If we're to develop
a kind of politics and, anapproach that really has the
(44:05):
capacity to respond to theprofound, profound challenges,
we're facing at the moment. Soreally appreciate being in
conversation with you, Joe.
It's not enough to say that people who have an
authoritarian right wing visionof the American nation are
simply racist.
Daniel Martinez HoSang (00:21):
So I I think the kind of debates that
you're charting out, kind ofnationally are actually touching
the ground in pretty localizedways around things like
curriculum and what kind ofcurriculum allows us to get our
heads around the currentconditions and what space we
have actually to offer somecritique of the dominant liberal
narrative of kind of steady,multicultural inclusion.
Narrator (00:49):
Race plays a fundamental role in naturalizing
social, political, and economicinequalities in The United
States. As Dan Martinez Hosseinand Joe Lowndes note in their
book Producers, Parasites,Patriots, Race and the New Right
Wing Politics of Precarity,racial subordination is an
enduring feature of US politicalhistory, and it continually
(01:09):
changes in response to shiftingeconomic and political
conditions. In the countrytoday, there is an
intensification of racializedaggression against people of
color not seen since a massiveresistance to the civil rights
movement in the mid twentiethcentury. While these conditions
would seem to provide anextraordinary opportunity for
those committed to a vision ofeconomic redistribution and anti
(01:30):
racism, in our politics and inour thinking, it seems we
inevitably collapse back into aclass race divide when engaging
with the politics of precaritywith which we are faced. Dan and
Joe are here today with a primeron and insightful analyses of
the 1619 project launched by theNew York Times in August 2019,
the 1776 report commissioned byDonald Trump and released in
(01:52):
January 2021, and recent andongoing attacks on critical race
theory in The United States.
This conversation was recordedin July 2021.
Daniel Martinez HoSang (02:03):
Alright. Hi, Joe.
Joseph Lowndes (02:05):
Good morning, Dan.
Daniel Martinez HoSang (02:06):
I know you well. I've known you for a
long time, but, the folkslistening to this podcast, may
not. So, tell us about yourself,Joe.
Joseph Lowndes (02:17):
I am a, professor of political science
at the University of Oregon. Mywork over time has addressed
mainly US politics, but notonly. I've studied the rise of
the, political right. I alsostudy and write about
institutional and party politicsas well as racial politics.
Daniel Martinez HoSang (02:39):
I'll just say quickly to introduce
myself. I teach in theethnicity, race, and migration
program at Yale. I write about,social movements, anti racism,
anti racism in, education inparticular. Joe and I were
formerly colleagues at theUniversity of Oregon in ethnic
studies and political science,and that's where we started
working on this book, Producers,Parasites, and Patriots. Today,
(03:03):
we're gonna talk about, the 1776report, the attacks on critical
race theory, how that has to dowith a kind of this question of
a dynamic and really veryrapidly changing sense of how
conservatism operates.
Joe, I wonder if we could start,like, maybe talking about the
book and the kinds of questionsyou were interested in and we
(03:23):
were interested in bringing to,Producers, Parasites and
Patriots, and and what we werenoticing at the time in the last
ten years about the ways thatracial politics seem to be
shifting.
Joseph Lowndes (03:34):
Mhmm. Mhmm. Yeah. In some ways, there were
there were two kinds ofquestions. One of them was kind
of a always complicated andalways kind of shifting politics
of race and class in The UnitedStates and the ways in which
these two phenomena, I guess,interact, interrelate, are
(03:55):
coconstituted, and yet arealways, having to be renovated
and reshaped to meet newpolitical realities.
On the left, particularly in TheUS Left, I think also among
scholars of race, there are verylively questions about how to
think about class in the contextof a, a settler and white
(04:15):
supremacist country. And, youknow, and I think those are many
fruitful debates and discussionsand many not fruitful debates
and discussions. But I think wewere trying to get a little bit
of a handle on that forourselves. And the other thing
is that related to that weresome surprising things that we
were noticing on the landscape.Now in this moment when we, you
know, when The US is in its ageof most kind of economic
(04:39):
inequality, really ever.
Right? The the scholars call thesecond gilded age, but it's
really something more than athan the second gilded age
insofar as the gap in wealthbetween the richest Americans
and everyone else is bigger thanit ever has been. And we're
partly concerned about how thatdisrupts, destabilizes, and
shifts, political groundinstitutionally, discursively
(05:02):
from movements to parties toindividual identifications. And
so, within that, with with thekind of the understanding that
destabilized class politics andalways reshifting race politics,
you're going to see some,movement and change over time.
One of the things we noticed wasthat the white workers in public
(05:25):
sector unions, on the one handand kind of the the the white
poor, particularly in largeswaths of exurban and rural
America that were no longerflourishing, were no longer
protected, were no longer hadtheir whiteness as a form of
indemnification.
So two things we noticed. One,the conservatives were beginning
(05:47):
to attack these poor whites asif they were no longer part of
the club of whiteness. And in inusing new racial language to
talk about poor whites either inAppalachia or elsewhere, which
was interesting to us to seewhat happens when white people
are falling off the bottom. Dotheir their former allies seek
to keep them in, or do they letthem drop out and then accuse
(06:10):
them and blame them for theirown inability to flourish? And
the other one with with publicsector unions, it was a a moment
when there were real attacks onpublic sector unions across the
board.
Many of these racialized attackson, government workers, but
these were attacks that hit alot of white workers as as well
as black and Latino workers. Sowe were kind of interested and
(06:30):
see how that the the curiousnessof and the it's kind of
scrambling of both political andracial codes that allow these
new kinds of attacks to, becausethat was that was one part of
the book. The other half of itwas to look at the ways in which
the right from the RepublicanParty on rightward to the far
right, militia movement, altright, etcetera, was oddly
recruiting people of color andusing anti racist discourse and
(06:55):
using, black and brown identityas generative forms of far right
articulation.
Daniel Martinez HoSang (07:02):
So, you know, it was really on the one
hand trying to keep these, youknow, somewhat contradictory
ideas that there continues to bea dominant racial order,
absolutely marked by whitesupremacy, by the exploitation
of Black and Brown workers, thatthat has not changed. And at the
same time, because of theseintense forms of economic
(07:23):
inequality and precarity, wewere seeing new justifications,
regimes, descriptions, andaccounts that help to kind of
shore up that inequality. Thismight be a way for us to start
talking about the 1776 report,which came out, as, most folks
will remember, in early January,Trump's last days in office. All
(07:46):
of its kind of credited authorswere pretty, unapologetic self
identified conservatives, folkson the right. It was meant to be
a kind of response in some ways,a rhetorical response at least,
to the 1619 project produced bythe New York Times, a few years
earlier, which argued that tounderstand The United States'
(08:07):
national formation, we couldn'tjust go back to the nation's
founding in 1776, we had to lookto 1619 and the start of a
system of race based slavery andanti blackness to really
understand the nation'sformation.
This took on kind of newpolitical significance in the
fall when a kind of journalistnamed Christopher Rufo, launched
(08:29):
the first in a salvo of attacksagainst, critical race theory,
arguing that critical racetheory had somehow now come to
define and capture governmenttrainings, all kinds of
indoctrinations, diversity work,etcetera. So, Joe, I thought we
could work through a little bitabout what's the kind of
dominant account you've beenhearing to explain this recent
(08:51):
explosion in both kind ofconservative panics and
political spectacles over antiracist education in general,
perhaps critical race theory inparticular. What's the kind of
dominant interpretation thatyou've been hearing about this?
Joseph Lowndes (09:06):
Well, the dominant liberal interpretation,
let's say, is that it's anattempt at, you know, censorship
of, a more full education forAmericans, be they school
children or people in highereducation of the the real roots
of, the American politicalsystem forged in in slavery. And
I think, you know, part of it isthis is this is an idea that's
(09:29):
reactionary. It comes from theright that, of course, every
good liberal knows that you musttalk about slavery, and every
good liberal knows that you musttalk about forms of disparity
and discrimination and, youknow, should embrace new modes
of of thinking of a pluralistAmerica, a diverse America. And
I think so it's it's almost asif from the from the liberal
(09:50):
side, what you get is a desirefor a fuller origin story and a
fuller sense of both Americanoriginal sin and American,
redemptive promise. I think thatthat's those are the kind of the
two sides of it.
Daniel Martinez HoSang (10:04):
Yeah. And and there's some truths to
this. Right? That the both theattack and the 1776 report, you
know, should just be understood,you know, primarily through a
lens of kind of like censorship.That really what's at stake is
to kind of prohibit, outlaw, orstigmatize all discussions about
race, about racism and racialsubordination, and to kind of
(10:26):
rob critics of racial inequalityand segregation of any kind of
language in which to address it.
But part of what you're sayingis it's not quite as simple as
that because there's actually anadmission of kind of some
language to talk about race. Andit's the language of, you know,
what others have called civicnationalism, which is to
(10:47):
acknowledge that indeed therehave been some, episodes of
racial domination. Theyacknowledge slavery. They may
acknowledge even examples ofcolonialism. But the argument is
that the civic bonds that kindof hold the nation together have
withstood that and indeed thekind of anti racist mover
sensibility should be to upholdthose civic bonds.
(11:10):
So and to have the discussionsabout racism and slavery and
abolition within the acceptableboundaries of civic nationalism.
It's what we read. It's almostwhat every school kid reads in
their US History book today. Sorather than a kind of full out
prohibition, it's instead a akind of insistence that these
discussions can only take placewithin the boundaries of, civic
(11:33):
nationalism and Americanexceptionalism.
Joseph Lowndes (11:36):
Yeah. I think that's that's right. And so I
guess for us, really, in someways, the question is what that
kind of response or reaction tothe attack on the 1619 project
or more broadly the attack oncritical race theory or
education around race andslavery, or as you said, or at
the boundaries of settlercolonialism. What does that
(11:56):
limit, or what does that leaveout, or how are we constrained
by that kind of language? Who isleft uncriticized in, you know,
in in the couching it that way?
Daniel Martinez HoSang (12:06):
Yeah. I mean, I think part of what this
seeks to render as, illegitimateor I mean, this is where the I
think the language of patriotismreally courses through all of it
is that any kind of structuralcritiques, I mean and really,
here's the interesting thing forme, Joe, is that it's a critique
of liberalism that actuallyseems to most outrage and
(12:30):
liberal institutions and liberalnorms and laws that is actually
what's the kind of greatestoffense to if you, you know,
kind of unpack the seventeenseventy six project, which is
that the kind of dominant laws,kind of legal infrastructure,
the sets of anti discriminationlaws that have been put into
place. I mean, that's what'svenerated in the 1776 report.
(12:52):
It's the, capacity of theseprevailing institutions to
actually deal with theseconflicts. So I think there's
just a really interesting kindof genealogy here because, I I
mean, as you know, critical racetheory emerges in the legal
academy in the eighties andnineties actually as a critique,
less about racial conservatismand really more about liberal
(13:12):
institutions and the prevailingset of anti discrimination laws
and why twenty years after theirpassage, they proved so limited
in addressing underlyingpatterns of segregation and
inequality.
So here you have, you know,primarily scholars on the left,
scholars of color, critiquingliberal institutions. And now we
(13:33):
have these folks on the rightrallying to actually defend the
liberal institutions, you know,from this more kind of radical
critique. And so that's partpart of what I think is, you
know, disorienting at least forme is, you know, the the
critique from the right here isactually not about, like,
western chauvinism orexceptionalism. That's not the
language we're hearing this.It's a it's a critique of
(13:54):
liberal institutions, and Ithink that's where some
interesting politics seem to beunfolding.
Joseph Lowndes (14:00):
Mhmm. Mhmm. Wait. So when you say that the
seventeen seventy six projectseeks to criticize liberal that
it they themselves arecriticizing liberal
institutions.
Daniel Martinez HoSang (14:09):
Well well, I think that it's the
seventeen six project and thecritics of critical race theory
that actually are defending thisproject of, you know, what we
you know, what others havecalled civic nationalism, which
is that the prevailing sets oflegal institutions, anti
discrimination laws, etcetera,are kind of most capable of
addressing the, you know,continued effects and endurance
(14:33):
of racial inequality. So it'snot that they're all together
saying no discussion should takeplace about race, about
segregation, about legacies ofslavery, etcetera. They're
arguing that those discussionsshould only happen within the
norms of kind of USexceptionalism and, liberal
rulemaking. And I think the thereaction is in part to to to
(14:54):
critics of those liberalinstitutions, which is what
critical race theory and broadlya a more kind of foundational
approach to anti racist work.It's a skepticism about those
laws, about anti discriminationlaws, about the markets, about
these other liberal norms foractually being able to address
racial inequality.
Joseph Lowndes (15:14):
That's actually kind of an interesting territory
here. So on the one hand, the,seventeen seventy six project
seeks to I mean, I it's as Iread it, the sixteen nineteen
project sought to say, look.There are stained origins of the
of The United States founding,and that there are problematic
elements that we would find inthe American Revolution, that we
(15:36):
would find in the constitution,that we would find in the early
developmental years of therepublic, which both were found
partly on or built and extendedforms of white supremacy in ways
that are, now still within theAmerican political system.
Daniel Martinez HoSang (15:52):
Yeah. And I'll just just to add to
that. That's right. And endurein all of these ways, right, in
the structure of housing marketsand transportation systems, in
popular culture, in educationand the curriculum, that they're
kind of not just they're bothbaked in, but, constantly
evolving and saturate all ofthese institutions. They're not,
you know, and as critical racetheorists would say, they're not
(16:13):
aberrational.
They're not irregular orexceptional. They're kind of,
central and constitutive of theway these institutions are
organized.
Joseph Lowndes (16:22):
Mhmm. Mhmm. That's exactly right. And the
seventy seventy six projectwants to say, look. The
possibilities of, a moreexpansive project of
egalitarianism and of, aninclusive civic nationalism are
what's really, in the so calledDNA of our of our founding and
(16:43):
constitution.
And that this that the systemitself is capacious enough to
render these and attacks on,American origins. I guess what
it feels like to me a little bitis that you've got defenders of
the sixteen nineteen projectsaying, look. We have to face
some real problematic originshere as a way of thinking
(17:06):
through ongoing and evolving,and as you say, new forms of,
racial inegalitarianism. Wecould say that the seventeen
seventy six project or reallykind of the right more broadly
these days want to say whatyou're saying what you're what
you're attacking is Americaninnocence. What you're attacking
is an idea that America wassomething else besides having,
(17:30):
at its moment of founding,visions of freedom and
egalitarianism and democracy, inits sights.
That and this is the thing. Forthe right, it feels like what
they are unable to bear is thisattack on American innocence and
attack on the founding. Fordefenders of 1619, what it seems
like is it is kind of a sense ofwe're not calling to for guilt
(17:55):
and blame. We're calling for, aresponsible politics going
forward to forge some otherpath. But I it feels like that
is kind of like a debate withincivic nationalism, a debate
within kind of Americanidentity, a debate within and
among people who themselves wantto claim different visions of
(18:16):
American identity.
Right? That may leave out a lotof things altogether. I mean, it
might be if you were to push,you know, some of the logic of
critical race theory and some ofthe logic of 1619 further, it
might be to say, what is left todefend, or what do we wanna say
about, this this Americanproject that we seek to to
(18:37):
recover. Right? I mean, theproblem is on the one hand,
there's a question aboutinstitutions and public
policies.
On the other hand, there'ssomething about nation and
culture. Right? I mean, what ifthere had been imagine a 1492
project. Right? Just say that,like, the the very the very
foundings of The US nation, thatis itself such an extraordinary
(19:00):
genocidal crime that what are weseeking to defend, or what are
we seeking to redeem, or whatkind of set of promises?
Would you hear often fromdefenders of 1619 is to say, we
want to have America not as anot not as something that was
perfect at the founding, but asa promise at the founding.
Right? So those are the twosides. Whether it was whether it
(19:21):
was immaculate conception or,whether it was original sin, but
there's ways in which the thetwo sides of that, that's kinda,
like, two rival origin stories,you know, might limit our
ability to think more deeplyabout, the ways in which
liberals are themselvescontinually reproducing and
(19:42):
enlisted in the reproducing ofof ongoing racial projects.
Daniel Martinez HoSang (19:47):
Yeah. So I I think you're you're kind of
suggesting this is actually adiffering accounts of
redemption, right, and ofAmerican redemption and, like,
which one will prevail. And it'strue that, you know, the essays
Nicole Hannah Jones, the kind oflead essay in the sixteen
nineteen project. The argumentis that African Americans have,
(20:07):
you know, long nurtured andpracticed and articulated the
most robust forms of democracy,but as you're suggesting,
American democracy. So one thatit still imagines that the
nation is the ideal and mostkind of effective container to
harbor, right, all of our bestdreams about care and life and
(20:28):
survival and kinship.
Mhmm. And then, of course, thatcomes at the expense. It just
comes to the expense of longstanding black political
critiques of the nation also asa site of militarism, of
violence, of imperialism, andthat it's kind of, you know, the
the forms of inequality andviolence and exploitation even
internally are also baked in.That's not redeemable in any
(20:50):
kind of sense. So, there's a waythat they're both kind of
competing for that same senseof, like, who is the, like,
ethical and moral interpreter ofthe, you know, a certain kind
of, like, redemptive vision ofthe nation.
Joseph Lowndes (21:06):
Yes. That's exactly right. And here's the
thing, I think where ouranalysis that we try to develop
in our book, I feel like,matters here in part because,
you you know, you'll see, thethe people who attack the 1619
project, people who areattacking critical race theory,
people who are attacking morebroadly a new and very open anti
racist moment over you know,say, you know, we give the the
(21:30):
mark the periods of it with thesixteen nineteen project, the
killings of George Floyd andBreonna Taylor, and the
development of, ChristopherRufo's attack on critical race
theory. You know, the people whoare, involved in the attack on
an emergent black politics areare accused of by liberals often
as being like, that's fascism.That's authoritarianism.
(21:51):
That's, you know, that's that'swhere we see it. Radical black
politics has always said, like,there was already it's always
been fascist or it's always beenauthoritarian. It's always been
built in. So then for I thinkfor the analysis in our book,
partly is what we noticed isthat it's not enough to say that
people who have an authoritarianright wing vision of the
American nation are simplyracist, and those who want, you
(22:16):
know, a more liberal version aresimply anti racist. What partly,
what we see is that the anti CRTpeople continually want to
enlist and put on the forefrontblack people and brown people
who are also critical ofcritical race theory, you know,
also critical of 1619, who whowant to redeem a vision of the
American nation and of thefounders and of the constitution
(22:39):
and of the American revolution.
You see it over and over again.And there's something that that
criticism has deep appeal to the1776 folks because they see that
as built in. They don't seethemselves as racist. They see
themselves as as, having a aversion of, like, 1776 anti
racism. And the thing is,liberals who wanna see
(23:02):
themselves on the other side,it's almost like a a mirrored
opposite.
Liberals who wanna seethemselves as as, you know,
fully anti racist may themselvesbe implicated in all forms of
racial exclusion, racialstratification, and everything
else. And so I I think partlywhat we're trying to analyze
this book is the ways in whichthe the codes that we wanna use,
(23:24):
the comfortable codes aroundrace and identity and politics
get scrambled, as we begin tothink about capitalism, the
authoritarian state, and thepolitical right. And I and that
puts us in different kind ofterritory and demands of us
maybe a a different kind of oror to recover a different kind
of critique.
Daniel Martinez HoSang (23:45):
Yeah. I think, you know and, certainly,
this has, like, very materialeffects. So, like, rhetorically,
you know, the kind of contentionthat the 1776 project and the
attacks on CRT are, exclusivelydone in the name of censorship
of a kind of, like, nineteenthcentury white revanchist, lost
(24:07):
cause narrative. I mean, thoughthose elements clearly are
coursing through all of this. Soit's it's not that it has
nothing to do with it.
The problem is, and I thinkyou're getting it, is if we only
understand it as that project,the this kind of effort to,
like, rebuild and defend, awhite Christian nation from any
forms of critique and attack, wemiss the ways actually that the
(24:27):
right is actually quiteconversant in the language of
liberal norms, civicnationalism, a certain kind of
pluralism and inclusion, thatit's not simply about an acting
a kind of like, white ethnostate. And in fact, that's
always been a kind of,relatively in The US minor note
of right wing racial projects,even white supremacist racial
(24:51):
projects. And if weunderestimate their kind of
capacity to work through thelanguage of racial liberalism,
of inclusion, of civic belongingand membership, you know, the
critique in response will justit won't be, like, sophisticated
enough to account for what's,you know, these developments on
the right.
Joseph Lowndes (25:09):
Yeah. I think that's exactly right. And I and
I think sometimes people whowanna defend sixteen nineteen or
critical race theory will claimonly the most modest ground for
it by saying, look. We're onlytrying to say that this must
also be part of the teaching ofAmerican history. We're only
trying to say that, we needdiversity, equity, and inclusion
(25:30):
in our corporate practices, inin in trainings of managers.
And the the the problem isclaiming that most modest ground
is almost to give the game awayentirely to the other side. It's
to say that, look. We're justcalling for a a form of American
civic nationalism that takesthese things into account. As
opposed to saying, going theother direction with it and
(25:53):
saying, yes. 1619 actually meansthat, you know, we we have to
rethink, and problematize theentire project of American
nation building and ofcapitalism and, you know, which
which goes, obviously, as weknow, hand in hand with with
both slavery and land theft andgenocide.
That that's all those are thingsthat are deeply wrapped up
(26:14):
together. So we actually, whatis demanded of this moment is
and what, you know, at itsheart, sixteen nineteen does is
push forward that and open upvery uncomfortable and very
radical questions. Same as yousaid with critical race theory
at its origins that it really isit was to say, like, look. The
American political system wasforged, you know, at a at a
(26:36):
moment of when slavery, wasintact. And so what we have is a
a set of institutions and a setof institutional, actions, which
will always reproduce it.
So for instance, the SupremeCourt can now gut the final few
ailing elements of the VotingRights Act of 1965 by partly
(26:57):
claiming an anti racist languagearound it. Right? They can deny
the possibility of a fullfranchise just using the
constitution and federalism. Inthe words of chief justice John
Roberts, the best way to stopdiscrimination is to stop
discriminating by race. And andthere there you have it.
And it leaves us with very fewtools, you know, if we if we
(27:18):
accept the ground of Americaninstitutions, if we accept the
constitution, if we accept therole of the supreme court, and
we accept the American nation.So that's, I think, partly what
I think you and I were trying toget at in our earlier
conversations of, like, whatthis means to actually ask
questions about, you know, whatkind of critique and then what
kind of politics are required.And it's partly what we saw on
(27:38):
the streets all summer withBlack Lives Matter. Right? It
was the, you know, the theemergent radical demands around
abolition of police, around anew politics of mutual aid and
care, around decentralizedstruggles, local struggles,
militant struggles, directdemocratic spontaneous
struggles, which which give usa, you know, a a very different
(28:01):
valence on how to defeat theracists in a way.
Daniel Martinez HoSang (28:06):
Yeah. Absolutely. And and the kind of
that the larger imperative isabout building institutions and
structures and relations outsideof the, you know, all the
dominant forms that it's notsimply about being incorporated
into the dominant forms becausethose dominant forms are always
gonna cause people harm, alwaysgonna, be rooted in
(28:26):
incarceration and violence. Andso, as you said, there were
these kind of moments, you know,that were especially alert and
alive and kind of generatedthrough the protests that, new
conditions, new structures werepossible. I mean, the one other,
you know, example I wanna add tothis is, in Connecticut where I
am, as in many states, there'sbeen discussions about the need
to diversify the k through 12curriculum in general and in
(28:50):
high school level, kind of thehigh school history and social
studies curriculum inparticular.
So, we have a law that's callingfor a new that's gonna require a
new elective in black and Latinostudies. And the interesting
debate over that here hasn'treally been as much like, is it
acceptable or not to teach it,but it's what the contours and
politics of a course like thatwould entail. On the one hand,
(29:13):
there's a set of folks thatreally want it to be a course
about contributions to thenation that's kind of group
based. So, African Americanswould be kind of, like, set off
as a group, and then we wouldchart across history their
contributions, and then Latinosas a kind of separate population
group and talk about theircontributions. And in contrast
to that, you know, there's beenstudent organizers, educators,
(29:36):
and others that say, no.
Really, what we need is a courseabout racism and the harms and
violence associated with it andits ongoing legacies in ways
that actually wouldn't separate,African Americans and Latinos
into discrete groups becausethose histories are constantly
converging and co constitutive.And it would actually be a
course about structure.
Joseph Lowndes (29:54):
Mhmm. It would
Daniel Martinez HoSang (29:55):
be a course about the structural
inheritances and everydaypractices of these forms of
inequality. So I I think thatthe, you know, the kind of
debates that you're chartingout, kind of nationally are
actually touching the ground inin in pretty localized ways
around things like curriculumand and what kind of curriculum
allows us to get our headsaround the current conditions
(30:17):
and what space we have actuallyto offer some critique of the
dominant liberal narrative ofkind of steady, multicultural
inclusion.
Joseph Lowndes (30:25):
That's so interesting and such a perfect
example because what you youpoint to is that if students
demand instead of a a curriculumabout forms of inclusion and
forms of kind of, collectivegroup heroism in the building of
the American story, by startingwith and anchoring it in harms,
in forms of oppression, inracism. What that allows is
(30:48):
actually, as as you just said, astructural critique, you know, a
a a way in to having a muchclearer picture of of how
institutions and structuresreproduce forms of racial
violence. And so it's it'sreally it's the most,
intellectually responsible wayto go about it, not not as a
(31:09):
form of of moralizing or, youknow, baiting or or guilting,
but to say that, like, yes, wehave to start with harms racial
oppression because that actuallygenerates and opens up the
possibility of really thinkingthrough what these problems are.
It's really interesting becauseI yeah. Think about, you know,
pulling that the lens backlarger from, the Connecticut
(31:29):
example you just gave.
It's as if, you know, on the oneside, 1776 offers a vision that
says, look. The founding was hadembedded within it brilliant
visions of future democracy andegalitarianism and freedom.
Black and brown people can beincorporated into that great
story from that was, you know,that was started by our
(31:52):
visionary founders, and we moveforward with that in, a
redemptive vision of thecountry. The conclusion of the
our book, yours and my book, wasto really invert that and say,
if we start on the other sideand look at the struggles by
people of color in The UnitedStates, what you get is a
(32:13):
possibility of including whitepeople into that project, but
into a project that is asbroadly visionary, that is that
it comes from the insights fromHarriet Tubman, from Frederick
Douglass, from Du Bois, from theCombahee River Collective, from
Audre Lorde. The the strugglesof people of color, the,
(32:33):
politics of queer blackfeminism, offer us a vision that
other people can be incorporatedinto as well, that really give
us rich and egalitarianpossibilities and visions and
ways forward.
So it's kinda like 1776 says,let's start with the founding
and incorporate people of colorinto it, and it's all good. A
black radical analysis or other,adjacent analysis would be to
(32:57):
say, let's start with forms ofoppression, exploitation,
violence, and exclusion, andbuild out a, a visionary
politics from there. The problemwith liberal critics of 1776 is
they're a little bit closer tothe 1776 side. They they are
they are offering a softerversion of seventeen seventy six
without going all the way intothe critique, I think.
Daniel Martinez HoSang (33:20):
I I I think that's right. And and the
effects of some of these recentdebates about that is actually
to if if we can think about, youknow, both the body of work, you
describe as critical race theoryand 1619 as having a kind of a
range, right, of politics. Somethat are more structural and
kind of radical in theiraspirations, other that are more
(33:41):
use the idiom of civicnationalism, that the effect of
this fight has actually been tobring many, many people much
more into the kind of civicnationals liberal fold, where
what's at stake seems to be, youknow, pretty bland milk toast,
right? Principles of liberalism,freedom of speech, inclusion,
belonging, that kind of dropsout the far more radical
(34:03):
critiques you're describingabout militarism, how it harms,
you know, all of us, the formsof predation that are connected
with market economies. So inthis kind of strange way, as
the, seventeen seventy sixprojects kind of, announced
their defense of, Americanliberalism and exceptionalism.
It's kind of, created this kindof gravity that pulls in what
(34:26):
could be more radical critics ofthat project into actually
defending its very norms, andto, kind of asserting that
they're actually the true andauthentic and genuine
interpreters of those ideals.
Joseph Lowndes (34:40):
Mhmm. Mhmm. Mhmm. And that puts them on
strong footing, I think, aswe've seen. I mean, many people
thought when Chris Rufo firstgoes on, I guess it was Tucker
Carlson and and, you know, laysout this whole conspiracy theory
around critical race theorythat's kind of rich in the
tradition of American conspiracytheorizing and, you know, anti
(35:03):
communism and antisemitism andeverything else.
Trump soon signs executive orderbanning diversity trainings in
in the federal government andthen, creates the seventeen
seventy six project. It is amoment that, you know, I think a
lot of people thought, you know,this was not gonna last that
long. It was so kooky. And onceTrump left office, it was going
(35:26):
to, you know, surely die outbecause there was just it it
seemed so desperate and soextreme in his way. But then it
really had legs, and it reallyit it just caught on like
wildfire in fights at localschool boards and state
legislatures and all over thecountry.
And I think it's because this7076 project as, you know, as
(35:46):
idiotic as that report is whenyou read it, and there's, like,
not one historian involved inits development, it has a
certain kind of ideologicalpower, which also is appealing
to many white moderates orliberals as well. And that's the
thing. They they really have theupper hand in this because
they're calling for a kind ofthere's a like, what's, you
know, what's wrong with kind ofan inclusive, American civic
(36:09):
nationalism? What what's sowrong with that? Why do we, you
know, why would we have to, doany more than that?
And part of it, I think, is Ithink that mostly kind of, like,
their deep American racialresentments and fears and
desires for innocence as JamesBaldwin put it. They get they
got really triggered and firedup by this. But, also, they were
able to claim ground that is isnot just on the right, but
(36:32):
really, like, that most ofAmerica accepts.
Daniel Martinez HoSang (36:36):
Yeah. And and I think what's this is,
and and it relates to one last,you know, area I hope we can
discuss, which is, so on the onehand, this seems like part of a,
really a long standing projectto associate a kind of radical
democratic anti racism with akind of revenge fantasy in which
(36:57):
these kind of newly energized,political formations will take
out their anger and frustrationand resentment on the innocent
white populace. And in thatsense, really trades in a
certain kind of fear of, like,guilt, shame, and humiliation.
That if this radical projecttakes root, they're coming after
(37:18):
you and they're not just comingafter you materially, they wanna
humiliate you. So rather thanfollowing, you know, the
argument you said about a kindof, the way a black feminist
politics actually leads to, youknow, radical and unprecedented
forms of democratic inclusionthat their actually aspiration
is only to humiliate anddegrade.
(37:39):
And that's why people who thinkof themselves as white should be
on guard because at stake isyour humiliation. And I wanted
to, Joe, get your thoughts aboutI mean, we talked, you know, in
the book about how humiliationand shame was actually, at the
center of so much of Trump'sdiscourse, the way he addressed
supporters. We're not winning atanything anymore. This is the
(38:01):
kind of age of our humiliationas a way to fire people up. So,
what are your thoughts aboutthat and about the ways that,
this kind of right wing responseto anti racism as there's
nothing in it for you, and infact, the only outcome of this
is gonna be your degradation.
They wanna degrade you, as a wayto, again, kind of generate
(38:22):
profound anger and antipathyagainst these projects because
people so feel like their verybeing is what's gonna be come
under attack.
Joseph Lowndes (38:31):
Yeah. I mean, as you say it, you know, the the,
you know, Trump's whole projectbeing one of describing his base
as as one of humiliated losers,which he did over and over,
particularly in 02/2016. It italmost feels like the
extraordinary pleasure that, theright has in attacking, critical
(38:53):
race theory is it's almostsadomasochistic, right, if you
were to be psychoanalytic aboutit. That there's something about
the pleasure of this humiliationthat that's that's going on here
at the at the heart of this,that people are being told, yes
yes. You are going to be exposedand found guilty, and you're
going to be humiliated throughshame for what you've done.
(39:15):
You know, so many people,particularly on the on the right
are so, you know, saturated inthis kind of, I would say,
discourse, but it's really likean affective environment of
humiliation that they're justthey're just ready for that. And
easy then to nurture fantasiesof, yes. They're as you said,
they're coming for you too. Thisis going to be every school
board is going to put thingsinto place that are gonna make
(39:37):
it so that your child feelshumiliated and your child feels,
shame and and and self hatred. Imean, there's different things
going on here in terms of, likethe the attack on critical race
theory is is so broad and has somany different elements that
work, but that certainly is isis one of them.
What's being played on here and,yes, it is this the worst fears
and the worst sense of of peoplewho already feel hammered and
(40:01):
humiliated by neoliberalism,hammered and humiliated by the
state. They don't want any moreof that, and they see themselves
often, I think white people seethemselves in the visions of the
humiliations that they seepeople of color experiencing.
So, you know, that's gotta bepart of in this sense, as
opposed to the idea that, like,actually, maybe trying to work
(40:21):
out or critique of how kind ofthe origins of white supremacy
and class rule can open up newarticulations and new
possibilities and newexpressions of freedom and new
forms of resistance and newforms of solidarity and
coalition building and newvisions of alternative polities
(40:42):
for white folks as well. It'skinda like what I think they
they hope to put in place in thefact that if we think of the
Black Lives Matter movement ashaving brought millions of white
people into the streets as wellin a black led movement in every
little town in Hamlet as well asevery major city in the country
to respond by saying, don'tfollow that vision.
(41:05):
That vision's only gonnahumiliate you. I know you see
freedom there. There. I know yousee solidarity there. I know you
see other possibilities there.
But if you go there, thesepeople are only gonna destroy
you. And think about, you know,the eighteen eighties and
eighteen nineties that, youknow, a biracial, you know,
populist movement in the Southresults in the institution of
Jim Crow. There are elites whodo not wanna see whites joining
(41:29):
the struggles of people of coloror abandoning elements of their
whiteness there. And so thatit's it's a key to making sure
that that, a more radical visiondoesn't happen.
Daniel Martinez HoSang (41:39):
Yeah. I I was thinking precisely that
that it's precisely the wayReconstruction and its most,
radical and kind of inclusivemultiracial commitments get
stigmatized and ultimatelydefeated such that, you know,
ultimately the white populace ora large section of it is told
that it's like it actually isyour whiteness that will offer
(42:01):
you, some kind of currency andstatus and these other visions
have nothing to offer you. Andto represent them, therefore, is
radical, destructive, beyond thepale, you know, has been so
central into populist movementsin the early twentieth century,
to the most radical forms ofmultiracial organizing, labor
organizing during the New Deal,to the, you know, upsurge in
(42:23):
kind of civil and human rightswork and international work in
the 1960s. So in that sense, itfeels very much a piece of that
genealogy of how to stigmatize acertain kind of, anti racist,
multiracial tradition and toundermine, in particular, white
support for it. And, you know,we think about, you know, the
attacks on voting rights butalso on union rights that we
(42:46):
absolutely label as raciallytargeted and discriminatory.
Think of all the, you know, newwave of voting rights happening.
It's true. You know, theirprofound impact will be on Black
and Brown voters. You know, thatalso obviously despoils any
sense of democraticparticipation for large numbers
of people. Yes.
Right? Imagining that an excessof democracy and popular
(43:09):
participation is somehow bad forour, you know, shared kind of
democratic aspirations. I mean,that has profoundly devastating
effects on everyone's, like,sense of what's possible. So, I,
you know, I I think, again, whatwe're seeing here is, like, how
does do folks on the right kindof build support for projects
that continually violate andalienate, you know, large
(43:32):
numbers of their own, base andconstituency and that that's
part of the complex politicswe're seeing here?
Joseph Lowndes (43:38):
Dan, thanks. This is so fun talking to you,
and I I love exploring theseissues with you as usual.
Daniel Martinez HoSang (43:43):
Thanks, Joe. Yeah. I lots of insights
I'm kind of getting my headaround from this conversation
and, you know, like, always as areminder about the kind of need
to face the hard stuff, thecomplexities, the things we
don't quite, know andunderstand. If we're to develop
a kind of politics and, anapproach that really has the
(44:05):
capacity to respond to theprofound, profound challenges,
we're facing at the moment. Soreally appreciate being in
conversation with you, Joe.
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Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.