(guest laughing) - No, no, you're not finna do that to me on television.

(upbeat music) (attendees laughing) "A Slice of the Community" is made possible by the support of the Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee.

(audience cheering and clapping) Welcome to another episode of "A Slice of the Community."

I'm your host, Jerome Moore.

And today we're live in the studio, joined by audience, we have the great Dr.

Jemar Tisby, Tim Wise and Jasmine Woodson.

How y'all doing?

- I'm good.

- Doing good?

Jasmine told me not to start with her.

(Jasmine laughing) So I definitely have to start with her.

(audience laughing) (laughing) Nah.

Because we're talking about anti-Blackness today, and this is part two, of course I'm gonna start with the white man in the middle, Tim Wise.

- Of course, yeah.

- Why not?

Why not?

- 'Cause I'm the white person whisperer for a conversation about anti-Blackness.

- Well, you know, we made a Oreo specifically for you.

(audience laughing) - You did, you did.

(Jerome laughing) - But I wanna start off, I wanna get right into it just because of time.

When you hear the term anti-Blackness, what comes to mind and who you think is being maybe represented, accused, talked about, mentioned in that terminology?

- Well, first lemme just define it.

I mean, I think, for me, anti-Blackness refers to the systematic denigration, dehumanization and targeting of Black people, communities and history, both on an interpersonal level and a systemic level across all kinds of institutions, schools, housing, criminal justice, healthcare, all of that.

So the denigration and dehumanization of Black people in communities.

And it's, you know, it's rooted in the history of this country.

It is woven into the fabric of the country.

It is the sort of necessary flip side to white supremacy, which has been here since the beginning too.

Keeping in mind, you know, the very first law that Congress passed of any substance after the Constitution was ratified, before they did anything, was pass the Naturalization Act of 1790.

And it said one thing, and it said it very clearly, all free white persons and only free white persons could be citizens of the country.

So when you say, "This is the most important piece of business we got, we're not gonna worry about taxes, we're not gonna worry about the military, we're gonna tell y'all who this is for and who it's not for, and it's for us and not y'all," what you are telling me is that anti-Blackness is the fulcrum around which America rotates, and has from the beginning.

Now, as far as who's being implicated, you know, it could be a bit of a trick question, 'cause I could say white people are being implicated, but I wanna distinguish between white people and whiteness as a political project.

Whiteness as a political project, white supremacy as a political project is what's being implicated.

And of course, white folks have been essential to that process, but it's also important to remember that non-white persons can uphold white supremacy and anti-Blackness, and white persons can turn against it and resist it.

So I don't think any one is being implicated, but I think a system is being implicated.

And our history, if we're being honest about it, which I know is a luxury apparently in this country right now, but it is something that is also very much implicated.

- Jasmine, do you have a particular terminology or understanding of when you hear the phrase anti-Blackness?

- Yeah, so I appreciate what you just shared.

I feel like you gave a very scholarly answer to (laughing) the term anti-Blackness.

For me, I feel like, when I hear, "Anti-Blackness," I think a lot of the TikTok generation, social media.

I feel like it's a word that is very serious and is very powerful.

But with the climate now, I feel like with the overuse of it, it kind of waters down the meaning and the importance of the word, or of the phrase.

And when it comes to who's being accused, I do think in most cases it is white people, institutions, businesses, typical, kind of what he answered.

But not saying that all white people, and there are people of other races, but just in general, nine times outta 10, it has something to do with someone white.

- Dr.

Tisby?

- Yeah, I think what's important to add to the conversation is that anti-Blackness doesn't necessarily require personal animus.

So a lot of times when people talk about racism or anti-Blackness, what they're meaning is someone using a racial slur, or someone being intentionally discriminatory toward another individual, but as Tim mentioned, like this is baked into the fabric of the nation, such that it doesn't actually take someone saying, "I don't like you because of your skin color," in order for anti-Blackness to occur and to continue to perpetuate.

Emerson and Smith wrote a book called "Divided by Faith," and they talk about being in a racialized society.

A racialized society is one in which any major quality-of-life factor, how long you live, your level of education, your level of wealth or income falls predictably along racial lines.

And I think we have this misunderstanding of something like anti-Blackness, where we think it's some like old-time villain twirling their mustache and saying, (laughing) "How can I get Black people?"

(Jerome laughing) You don't have to do that anymore because the system is operating as it was designed.

- I have a particular question for you that we all decided, (Jemar laughing) "This is for you."

(Jerome laughing) - I wasn't in that conversation.

- This is for you.

A lot of your work is done in the religious sphere, Christianity specifically.

I see a lot of church folks in here tonight as well.

You know, we in the South, we in Nashville, in Tennessee, a lot of church folks.

When we think about institutions that may perpetuate anti-Blackness, many people might not think about the church being one of those institutions, or religion in general.

Could you maybe break that down and maybe think about church as an institution being one that does maybe perpetuate anti-Blackness or anti-Blackness exists in that environment?

- One of the things I say in my first book, "The Color of Compromise," is there would be no Black church without racism in the white church.

Which is to say, it wasn't some like big doctrinal theological dispute that led to the separation of churches along racial lines.

It was simply the fact that Black Christians didn't wanna be treated as second-class citizens in the household of God.

So if we think of the longest continually operating Black denomination, the African Methodist Episcopal Church started in Philadelphia, Richard Allen was a member of St.

George's Episcopal, which is a white church.

And that is where they told him and a group of Black worshipers, "You're sitting in the wrong section," because it was segregated seating in the church, "and you have to get up," during prayer, mind you.

And Allen writes in his diary that once they finished praying, he said they left, walked down the street, "And they were never troubled with us again," and they started another church.

So I think one of the things that we have to pay attention to is religious spheres, particularly the church, as vectors, unfortunately, of anti-Blackness a lot of times.

And it's in contradiction to stated beliefs like the image of God in Genesis chapter 1, all the way to Revelation 7:9, where, "People of every tribe, tongue and nation are gathered around the throne."

It is an absolute contradiction of the tenets of the faith, and that's why it stings so much.

- I'm pretty sure you're gonna have some questions- - All right.

(Jerome laughing) - from my church folks in here when it gets into that.

(Jemar and Jasmine laughing) Tim, I'm gonna come back to you with this question.

When we think about anti-Blackness, we're in Nashville, we are considered like a blue dot in a red state, very liberal or progressive, some might say, but maybe, when we think about being liberal, when we think about being progressive, many people might not think that also equates to anti-Blackness or anti-Blackness can exist in those type of environments or those type of ideologies.

Can we expound on that?

- Well, anti-Blackness is no respecter of ideology or political party.

We understand that if we just look at the history of not just Nashville, not just Tennessee, but the history of this country, anti-Blackness has played a greater or lesser role in one party or another at various times in the country's history.

And the idea that liberal and progressive folks can't be incredibly anti-Black is obviously untrue.

You know, I grew up here in Nashville, and it always was that blue dot, you know, always was very proud of not being Birmingham, you know?

But if all you gotta say is, "We're not Birmingham, we're not Selma, our police chief is not Bull Connor, you know, or Jim Clark," you know, if that's what you have going for you, then you're ignoring what?

Well, you're ignoring the bombing of Hattie Cotton Elementary on the week that the schools were supposed to integrate, you are ignoring the way in which, I went to public schools in this city, you're ignoring the way that Black children, irrespective of their ability, were routinely tracked into lower tracks, while white kids, like me, who had not been tested, and if we had, would not have tested all that highly, I assure you, were placed in the honors and advanced track regardless of our ability.

You had Black kids that were being punished disproportionately.

Now, that you might say, "Well, that's the '70s and that's the '80s."

No, no, today, Black children, 2 1/2 to three times more likely than white children to be suspended or expelled.

Even though when you look at the most serious offenses that normally result in expulsion or suspension, there is no statistically significant difference between the rates at which white people and Black people commit those offenses.

You have children, Black children in kindergarten being suspended or expelled at three times the rate of white children.

Who expels Black kindergarten children for being five?

Because that's really all you did was you were five, and you acted a fool as five-year-olds are want to do.

- Precisely.

- That happens in blue cities, that happens in blue states, that happens all over.

And most teachers, if you think about it, I mean, most educated, I don't know a lot of educators that are highly reactionary, right?

Most of the teachers I know would say, "Oh, I'm liberal, I'm a Democrat, I vote."

You know, I mean, most educators tend to be, and people in the so-called helping professions are probably disproportionately would consider themselves liberal.

But who's suspending those Black children?

Who's expelling those Black children?

Who's putting those Black children in remedial-level classes when they can do more.

So anti-Black, and we have to really be clear about this, because when we allow it to become a partisan thing, and it's like, "Well, it's the Democrats," or, "It's the Republicans," or, "It's conservatives," or, "It's liberals," we lose sight of the fact that white supremacy is this overarching system under which Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives have often organized and failed to call out the problem.

So if you are a progressive, for instance, but you don't wanna talk about racism, you know, if you're Bernie Sanders and you don't wanna talk about racism, and I respect Bernie Sanders' opinions on a lot of issues, but when you say, "Well, it's not about race, we gotta talk about class because the key is the billionaires and the millionaires," all right, fine, great, lovely.

(audience member laughing) But the reality is, it isn't just about the millionaires and the billionaires, it is also about white working-class racism, white middle-class racism, institutions that are not simply about pandering to the rich, but are about replicating white supremacy as well as capitalism.

So I just think that we would all do well to break free from the partisan confines of the conversation and realize that anti-Blackness is a problem that reaches across politics.

- Jasmine, you wanna add on to that?

- Yeah, I'll add something short.

I feel like anti-Blackness can show up in more progressive and liberal spaces whenever you have to be a certain type of Black for your opinion to matter.

If you're a Black conservative, they might look at you as brainwashed, or, "Oh, you don't speak for the majority, you know, and that's anti-Black."

You're supposed to respect all Black voices, not just Black voices that you agree with.

So for me, that's something I'll add really quick and-- - Well, I think it's proper to take a little deeper dive on that, because you you do say, "Hey," you wear it, "I am a Black conservative," right?

Can you take us a little deeper into maybe how that anti-Blackness phrase may be used against you by Black people because of what you identify as politically?

- Yeah, I mean, I've had certain people call me anti-Black because I'm pro-life, and they're saying that I don't care about Black women, Black maternal health rates and things, and that's not the case at all.

I just feel like we kind of forget as Americans, as people in general, we're individuals, we can have our own thoughts when it comes to things.

I've been told I'm anti-Black because of who I voted for.

I'm anti-Black because, I mean, my certain thoughts on different topics, I'm anti-Black.

But at the end of the day, I have a Black husband, Black child, my family's Black, all my grandparents are Black.

You know, I'm as Black as you can be.

The only thing that separates me from the majority of other Black people, or I guess of what's respected nowadays, is just the way I vote, and that's it.

- Okay, I'm going right here with you to the next question, Dr.

Tisby.

Some would say that we're in a time where many people want to create these kind of race-neutral policies, "Let's ignore race and just make things that are just, you know, put that aside, let's forget about it."

Especially in America, how do we create these type of policies when race may be an issue (laughing) that we're trying to address in a policy without naming race?

- Right, I think a lot of people are well intentioned when they say they want to be colorblind.

What they mean is, "We don't want to treat people better or worse based on their racial or ethnic background.

But what happens is, when you have a group that has been victimized because they've been categorized as this particular race, what you're doing is ignoring the ways that race has shaped their experiences and their outcomes.

And you can't fix a problem by ignoring it.

So I think better than colorblind, we need to be color conscious, which actually King talked about this.

He was talking in his own way about the phrase affirmative action, but he's saying if something in particular was done against the Negro, then something in particular must be done for the Negro, not as a way to get over and be above anyone else, but to level the playing field which was unjustly stacked against Black people.

So I think if you ignore race, then you ignore the ways that it has been weaponized against people, and you can't actually work toward a solution.

- Yeah, anyone wanna add to that?

'Cause I have this really amazing question for Tim.

(audience laughing) This was one of my favorite questions I think I have.

(laughing) When you think about anti-Blackness, again, we kind of covered it earlier when it's like a lot of people would think of the accused of being, you know, in this country, white Americans.

But I think, you know, it's fair to say that Black Americans and white Americans both play a role in some way of anti-Blackness.

And I'm curious of how you break down those roles on what white Americans and Black Americans have done or can do to sustain it, but also dismantle it?

- Well, the way that anybody can sustain it is by not naming it.

So even the act of not naming, the act of denying it is a form of anti-Blackness.

And it's important because, as Jemar was saying, like you can talk about the overt racism, the racial slur, and everybody identifies that and says, "Oh yeah, that's racism, that's anti-Blackness," but the act of denying that it's a problem, the denial that it's happening is a way of saying to Black people, the vast majority of whom acknowledge that it's real and the vast majority of Black people, by the way, liberal or conservative, can acknowledge it's a thing, you're not denying it's a thing, but when you do, you are saying that Black folks have lost their damn minds, right?

That they are not smart enough to interpret their own lived reality.

And so, you know, if you go back and look at polling, 1963 Gallup Poll asked white folks, for instance, "Do you think Black people are treated equally?"

Now come on, y'all, it's 1963.

It's before the Civil Rights Act, before the Voting Rights Act, before the Fair Housing Act, it's the year of the March on Washington, it's the year that Medgar Evers gets shot down dead in his driveway in Jackson.

I think the answer is pretty obviously no, that they are not treated equally.

And yet, two outta three white people said, "Yes, everything's fine, nothing to see here."

So that's a form of anti-Blackness.

And if you were Black and went along with that denial, that's a form of anti-Blackness.

If you were somebody who was telling the enslaver about the rebellion that was coming from the folks working in the field, you were engaged in anti-Blackness.

If you were Stephen in "Django," you were involved in anti-Blackness.

If you were somebody who is intent on overturning 50 years of civil rights practice and diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives in the name of so-called equality, whether you are a liberal or a conservative, a Democrat or a Republican, or just someone who says, "Oh, well, can't we just move on?"

you are engaged in anti-Blackness.

Now, it may not be intentional, it may not be motivated by hatred.

In fact, often it is not, that's why it's so insidious.

If it's motivated by hatred, everybody sees it.

If it's motivated by bureaucratic imperatives, if it's motivated by cost cutting, then it's not.

But anyone engage in that, anyone can deny the problem and anyone can perpetuate it.

- Right, and so we talked about it a little bit earlier.

I waited, this is part two, and we did part one in 2022.

And for some reason, I just thought anti-Blackness would go away.

(audience laughing) You know, I just, you know, so we had to bring it back.

- Somehow I figure you know better than that.

- You know, for whatever reason, I said, "We just need to do this one time."

And then, you know, we're in 2026, four years later, here we are, part two.

- Here we are, right.

Jasmine, I wanna go to you with this next question.

When we talk about accountability as far as anti-Blackness, how can we move past like the social media posts, the hashtags, the diversity trainings, right?

What are some real solutions that you think can help dismantle it in a sustainable, long-term goal for people, and on different levels?

Everybody's not gonna be an organizer, everybody's not gonna be an author, everybody's not gonna be a Jasmine, a Tim, or a Dr.

Tisby.

Have you thought about that?

Have you thought about some tangible ways other than, you know, the hashtag and a post, you know, that's easy to do for many of us, but, you know, it may not have the most impact and really do the inner work that, you know, many of us, you know, continuously need to do, with implicit biases and all those as well that goes into anti-Blackness?

- Yeah, I'll be really short.

I think it's just letting Black people be individuals again, not making us, like I harped on earlier, liberal Black voices aren't the only voices that matter.

We should just come together with all of our different ideas, different opinions, and find things that work for us as a community.

And yeah, I mean, and that's just very simple, something in the short term, but something that we could do, like a system that could change would probably be the criminal justice system.

I feel like that's something that we all can agree on in the terms of being anti-Black.

I think there's a lot of things that we can all see.

There's numbers that we can look at, different cases we can look at and see where it's anti-Black.

But outside of that, I think just letting Black people be individuals again, and respecting everyone's voice.

- Dr.

Tisby, you have anything to add to that as far as accountability and dismantleship, what does that look like?

- So when I talk about fighting racism or anti-Blackness, I often say, "We don't have a how-to problem, we have a want-to problem."

So if I gave everyone five minutes to sort of brainstorm what we can do to resist anti-Blackness, we would all come up with something and we could probably all come up with stuff that actually would move the needle.

The solutions haven't changed over the course of time.

And so it's not a how-to problem, it's a want-to problem.

- So you're saying people don't want to combat anti-Blackness?

- I'm saying people, it's incomprehensible.

(Jerome laughing) Yeah, no, and there are of course the extremes who are actively anti-Black.

I focus more on the folks who are passively anti-Black.

What does that mean?

It means if the system is operating as it was intended and you don't do anything to resist that system, then you are passively going along with an anti-Black system.

And so what we need to do is become actively focused on pushing anti-Blackness back out whatever the term.

And so when I think of solutions, it's much more a question of will we, rather than how do we?

And that is essentially a virtue question, that is a question of courage.

That's the real question.

Because if we know what to do, then what is stopping us?

Some people it's actual hatred.

Most of us, "What's it gonna cost?

Is it gonna cost me a reputation, a relationship, a job, a paycheck, a donor?"

That is what is holding us back.

And can I add to that?

- Yeah, yeah, add to that, yeah, yeah, go ahead.

- I'll tell you what I think holds it back and keeps us from solving the problem is that the one thing that it requires us to lose, to challenge it, to undo it is our innocence.

And I don't mean innocence in the sense of not guilt, I mean innocence in the sense of naivete, right?

In other words, if we acknowledge anti-Blackness and actually resolve to undo it, we have to admit that we have lived in a lie for almost 250 years now as a country and 400 years going back to the colonial era, that we are not the nation we were told we were, that we were not the country that we have celebrated.

We could be that, but we will not be that until we let go of the naivete, of the innocence, of the lie, of the amnesia, and insist on speaking truth about the past, how it got us here and where we're headed in the future.

And I think we are very afraid to do that.

It's like a dialysis machine for a kidney patient.

You need a healthy kidney, but, you know, sometimes you'll make due with the dialysis.

Well, we make due with, and particularly for white folks in this country, we have made do with, you know, being better off than somebody, even if we're struggling, even, you know, for poor white people, "Not being Black is a psychological wage," as WEB Du Bois said, right?

Not being a Latino immigrant is a psychological wage, as WEB Du Bois (laughing) would've said.

So in that regard, we have to be courageous, as Jemar said, we have to actually be prepared to give up the thing that has defined us as a nation and a culture for so long, and it's hard to do.

- And so to kind of cap it off until we go into the Q&A, I want you all to answer one question for me personally.

You know, what are you doing now to combat and confront anti-Blackness personally?

And I can start with you, Dr.

Tisby.

- The focus of my study and my public work right now is on white Christian nationalism.

White Christian nationalism is the force behind much of what we are seeing in terms of anti-Blackness, but also in terms of authoritarianism and anti-democratic principles.

And so white Christian nationalism, as I define it, is an ideology that uses Christian symbolism as a permission structure for their true aim, which is the acquisition of political power and social control.

So what they wanna do is move us away from a multiracial, pluralistic, participatory democracy, to a much narrower definition of who is truly American and therefore who belongs and who has power.

And I want us to understand the religious and the racial dimensions behind those actions.

- Jasmine?

- Yeah, well, I wanna add something to the last question first.

I do wanna say, I don't think we will ever dismantle anti-Blackness in a way that makes everyone happy because it looks different to everyone.

What I might see as an injustice, someone might see as progress.

So I just wanted to put that out there.

But for me, it just looks like showing up in rooms and being myself, being able to speak up for myself, not just going along to get along.

Whether that's me at the White House or me in a room full of liberals who don't think like me, I am myself and I speak up for myself.

And I think that combats the anti-Blackness that you see on either side.

- And because this is talking about anti-Blackness, and you're the last one, Tim, you're getting a short amount of time, 'cause you're white.

- That's right, that's right.

- You know, why not?

You know, talking about anti-Blackness, you know, you know, you know.

- It's about time- - Gotta take away some of- - a white guy got the shortest amount of time.

- That white privilege, you know, you know?

(laughing) - You're doing internal time reparations, I like that.

- You got 30 seconds.

- Actually, I appreciate it.

- You know?

(laughing) - You know, I work for the African American Policy Forum in DC under the tutelage of Kimberle Crenshaw.

And we are primarily focused on putting anti-Blackness back into the framework, because even the mainstream civil rights orgs oftentimes do not name it.

So we are challenging not only the current presidential administration but the Democratic Party as well to name the problem, because unless we name it, we cannot undo it.

And unless we undo it, we leave in place the primary driver of American authoritarianism and the decline of democracy.

So that's the work that I'm doing now.

- All right, thank you, let's give it a of round applause for our guests.

(audience clapping) And thank you all for watching at home another episode of "A Slice of the Community."

We're not done with this conversation.

If you wanna hear the Q&A, please head over to our YouTube channel at youtube.com/@nashvillepbs.

See y'all next time, thank you.

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