S7E13 – The Debrief: Carol Anderson on White Rage

S7E13 - The Debrief: Carol Anderson on White Rage

Andrew: Welcome to the Integrated Schools podcast. I'm Andrew, a White dad from Denver.

Val: And I'm Dr. Val, a Black mom from North Carolina.

Andrew: Dr. Val! Woo! It's official. Congratulations. I'm not at all surprised that you did it and very proud and excited for you. Nice work.

Val: I appreciate you. And, you know, I was thinking back to when you asked me to join the podcast. I was like, look, I have this dissertation to write. I don't know how much time I have for you. You're like, it's all good, Val. We’ll make it work.

Andrew: Yup. It’s just gonna be a little bit-

Val: Lies!

Andrew: …how about just a little more? Just a tiny bit more? Maybe just a little more time, maybe just a little more.

Val: It all worked out and this has been a joy and I appreciate you. And thank you for having me.

Andrew: Absolutely. Well, congratulations. It's well-earned and I will gladly call you Dr. Brown from now on.

Val: Oh, you only have to do it on Tuesdays. Only on Tuesdays.

Andrew: Alright. That's fair. Well, this episode is not about how you became a doctor, but it is “The Debrief: Carol Anderson on White Rage.”

Val: Yes.

Andrew: And we're just going to take a whole episode to kind of unpack what we heard last time, because that was a monster.

Val: Yeah. I think it's fair to unpack it.

Andrew: Yeah. There was so much in there. I think at the end of nearly an hour long episode, I feel like we would have been abusing people to try to reflect on all that we learned right in that moment. So…

Val: Yeah.

Andrew: …take a little pause and come back. And now we'll sort of stretch out a little bit and talk about what we heard.

Val: So if you haven't listened to it, go back and listen to it. And then come back and process with us.

Andrew: Yes. So where should we start? We talked to her a couple of weeks ago now. What's been sitting with you from the conversation? What are, kind of, the big takeaways you had?

Val: Yeah. After the conversation, we had the State of the Union Address and we also had the response to the State of the Union Address. And all I could hear in that response were many of the dog whistles that Carol had mentioned. And I think it feels haunting in some ways to know these things exist and then to see them happen and then to not be able to stop it, right?

Like, as you know, from reading the book and talking to Carol about it, it's impossible not to see the patterns. And it's happening again. If we think about the confirmation hearings for who could be the first Black woman Supreme Court Justice, Justice Brown Jackson. So, I don't know! It's wild. It's wild. And I don't know how to stop this train.

Andrew: Yeah. How do we, like, make the train stop going on this same loop over and over and over again? Because yeah, there are some ways, I think prior to reading White Rage, prior to that conversation with Dr. Anderson, felt like everything is unprecedented. This is all so new and so crazy. And like, how did we get here?

And on the one hand, the clarity that, you know, she says, like, the making the illegible legible that she is so gifted at. It's like, oh, okay. There's some, like, kind of, sense of relief of like, okay, we're not just dropped in the middle of some totally unknown land where this has never happened before.

Val: We're not.

Andrew: We're still here. So, you know, maybe there's some comfort to be taken from that. But then it's also like, well, why do we have to keep doing this? Why can't we learn? You know, the, like, if we don't know our history, we're doomed to repeat it. I think I'm feeling the realness of that more now than I have in the past.

Val: I agree.

Andrew: We're living that. We are repeating the past.

Val: Absolutely. Yeah, because I think in school it just feels kind of, like, fake. Like, okay, how can I repeat the past? I have electricity, you know?

Andrew: Yeah. Yeah.

Val: But these patterns that we are seeing now definitely are repeating themselves.

One of my good friends, Rebecca, she mentioned, when they were sitting at the table. And she’s a White Jewish woman. And she was like, you know, maybe it's just our turn to repeat the cycle of fighting and going and moving, you know, and trying to push the needle. And when she first said that, I was like, no! That seems really unfair.

Andrew: Right. I don't want a turn. I pass! I skip. Yeah.

Val: Or like, this should not be like, you know, some wheel that we just keep spinning on, but I'm thinking about those words now. Our version looks a little more modern, but it's still the same work as abolitionists, civil rights fighters. Like it's still the same work, right? And after listening to Dr. Anderson and knowing the next generations will have to continue this work. And it's not new, again, to have interracial coalitions. And this will, this work will continue.

Andrew: Yeah. I'm thinking of your question to her about, like, can this ever work? Maybe let’s hear the clip.

Val: Can we ever successfully use legislation to have justice or is it going to always be a fight like this, because White rage and White supremacy is so crafty?

Dr. Carol Anderson: We can use legislation. And, it will always be a fight. The answer to your question is yes. The price of liberty is eternal vigilance.

Andrew: I mean, that's it, right? We do all we can because it does actually meaningfully improve things. And we always have to keep fighting and always have to be vigilant.

Val: How do you feel about that? Because I will say, after January 6th, I just felt exhausted by all of the things, right? We made it safely through the inauguration. That was nerve wracking. Like, are we even going to make it to this?

And I think I took some time then to, like, disconnect from news sources in the same way because, definitely in 2016, every day in 2017, I am like ingesting the news cycle.

Andrew: Mainlining. Yeah.

Val: You know, and it was intense.Trying to stay alert, because I felt like if I took any time away, it was all gonna come crashing down.

And I am still aware now, but it’s hard to conjure up the same amount of energy that I had to engage in that same way. And so, I worry about, in some ways, my own vigilance.

Andrew: Yeah. ‘Cause, on the one hand, it feels like we need all the vigilance, right? Like every moment there is something going wrong.

Val: Like get those eyelids propped open.

Andrew: Right. But what degree of vigilance is possible and sustainable? Because we can't give the amount of vigilance that's required all the time or we'll burn out. Yeah.

Val: Do you think some of us are just taking on the burden of that vigilance more than others? And so that's why it feels so burdensome versus if more people were engaged?

Andrew: If we were, like, collectively sharing the burden.

Val: Yeah.

Andrew: I think there's certainly something to that.

Val: I can admit at times of being completely clueless, right? Like, I don’t know what’s going on, you know?

Andrew: Yeah. And I mean that is much more likely now, since the last inauguration, than it was in the four years prior to that, right?

Val: Yeah.

Andrew: This, like, need for vigilance and, kind of, who is sharing in that? I don't know. You know, some piece of that feels like, who holds out hope that their vigilance is worth anything?

Val: Mmmm.

Andrew: You know, I think a lot of people are like, yeah, I don't care, because like, what does my caring do? Too many times I have cared. I've been told that this is the thing, you know. Now if I just do this. Now if I just do that. And, like, my life stays the same. So why am I going to spend my energy being vigilant on that?

Val: Yeah. Do you think that is for marginalized folks? White folks? Who are those people…?

Andrew: I mean, in my mind, when I'm saying that, I'm thinking of marginalized folks.

Val: Yeah. Right. ‘Cause I'm thinking, like, specifically of, like, voter disenfranchisement, right? Like, I've tried everything I can, you know? So it's not like I don't want to vote. It's because there's so many barriers against me. And does my vote even matter when, you know, my district is drawn so it's so tiny, or you know…

Andrew: Or, like, I do vote and the person who I voted for gets elected and my life doesn't change in any meaningful way.

Val: Right. Right.

Andrew: So like what does? And, you know, nobody comes to my neighborhood until four years later when they're trying to get me to vote again.

Val: Right.

Andrew: But I think there’s probably a corollary amongst more privileged, certainly amongst White folks of, similarly, my vote doesn't matter because, like, basically America takes care of me anyway.

Val: Right. And I remember, like, crying out into the social media void, like, it matters who you vote for. Like it absolutely matters. To me! To my existence. So while it might not impact your existence, or you're only thinking about it from, you know, one issue area. Like I need you to look at this collectively. You'll be okay with the tax increase as long as I have the right to vote. Like, come on now, y’all! Let's think about this a little more broadly.

Andrew: Yeah. It's interesting because Dr. Anderson's first book at least kind of starts off at this, kind of, idea of, what do we all need? And let's maybe take a listen to what she said about that.

Dr. Carol Anderson: My first book was called Eyes Off the Prize: The United Nations and the African American Struggle for Human Rights. It was looking at how African-Americans in the 1940s envisioned that it was going to take a human rights agenda in order to deal with the human rights violations that the Black community had faced for centuries. That civil rights, although important, weren't enough. You had to have human rights. So in addition to the right to vote, in addition to the right to a speedy and fair trial, in addition to the right not to be illegally searched and seized, you also needed the right to education, you also needed the right to healthcare, you also needed the right to employment, you also needed the right to housing. You needed this human rights platform in order to deal with the human rights violations that had just decimated the Black community.

And it was the power of McCarthyism. The Second Red Scare and the Cold War that defined those human rights as communistic, as socialistic. And that allowed the right wing in American politics to say, those who are advocating for the right to healthcare, those who are advocating for the right to education, they're communist, they're Soviet Stooges. And so it pushed the Black leadership, the Black community, off of that human rights platform and onto a civil rights platform, trying to handle all of these issues via civil rights.

Val: So, am I allowed to be in my feelings a little bit?

Andrew: Yeah.

Val: I'm in my feelings about how both true and ridiculous it is that Black people in America have had to lobby for human rights. It sounds ridiculous, being from the land that prides itself on freedom and justice and democracy. And yet it's true, right? We're talking about the right to an education, the right to have a school that I can attend versus let's just shut the whole district down and nobody gets school and you’re on your own, right? What were you thinking when you heard her talk about that?

Andrew: So what jumped to my mind actually was drawing back to the CARE framework actually, in this, like, idea of affirming the dignity of all people. That first principle, right? The push for human rights was saying, we need to affirm the dignity of all people, that all people are worthy of these things that we consider to be human rights, like healthcare, like a job, like a place to live.

And, I don’t know, I'm struck by the difficult decision that those civil rights leaders had to make in that moment of saying, if we keep pushing for human rights, we are going to get lumped in with the communists and we're never going to get anywhere. And so instead we are going to, like, scale back our vision of what we're demanding to civil rights, which are important and are necessary, but we're not gonna fight this battle. And I can't imagine what that choice is like. To try to give up on the humanity piece, because you recognize that it's a losing battle, but maybe there is hope in the civil rights piece. I don’t know.

Val: Right. The hope that we can use the country's laws to apply to us because our basic humanity is denied so significantly. There's absolutely no question that these Black leaders recognize their own humanity.

Andrew: Right.

Val: It was the fight to get other people to recognize it. And I think that also takes a toll on you?

So when we think about racially isolated schools. And I went to several. I had no problem knowing I was a human. I had no problem knowing I was valuable. I had no problem having a good time, having friends, being loved, you know? There was humanity all in the place and yet to still feel the need to fight for that recognition from others. I think I'm just left with feeling like how unfair that is.

And I can understand, I can empathize with people who are like, you know what? I'm not going to fight to prove my humanity to you. ‘Cause I already know that. So I'm a tap out of this game. Please leave me alone.

Andrew: Yeah, I think about this, you know, this idea, and Dr. Anderson says here. And I want to play this clip.

Dr. Carol Anderson: And the thing was, “NAACP, back off of this case, get rid of this case. And you, too, can have high schools for Black children.” And the NAACP called them gilded cages of segregation. They said, no, we're not doing that. We're not doing that.

Andrew: You know, it was like White supremacy saw that first opportunity, like, if you're willing to give up human rights and just settle for civil rights, maybe you're willing to give up “separate,” if we actually give you “equal.”

Val: Right.

Andrew: And the NAACP saying, like, we're not going to do that again. We're not going to give up on our vision.

Val: We do see, in present day, people who, like, say are for abolition and some who are for reform, right? So I'm sure there are folks in both camps who are like, you're going too far, you're not going far enough. And I think folks who are, like, let's reform, they are pulled by folks who are, let's abolish, in a positive way. And I think folks who get reform enable folks who want abolition to, like, keep pushing.

Andrew: Yeah. And that's probably always been. There's always been people, sort of, across that spectrum and probably a need for both. Because right, on the one hand, you look around and I think, we're not going to get there without burning the whole thing down.

Val: Right.

Andrew: You’re not going to reform it. You just need to start from scratch.

Val: Right. And!

Andrew: And!

Val: Kids are still going to school. Kids are still going to school. What are we going to do? What are we going to do?

Andrew: Exactly. Exactly. And if that's a 20 year process, what happens in the meantime?

Val: Right. Because we've seen from history. We close the school and there is no option for Black kids. There is suffering. And the White folks who are well-resourced, they keep moving on.

Andrew: Either through their own resources or through government resources, right? I mean, like, this idea that, like, we're going to close all the schools and, “White kids, here are vouchers to go to private schools.” You don't even have to spend your own money, your own ill-gotten family wealth. You don't have to dip into that. Here's the state money saying, “Yeah, go to these private segregation academies.”

Val: Yup.

Andrew: And then even if you do have schools, you're going to have vastly different funding, like this clip here from Dr. Anderson.

Dr. Carol Anderson: So you had these dual school systems where you had funding for White children's education that was, like, exponentially higher than the funding for Black children. You had where there were no Black high schools sometimes and so that the schooling for Black children would end, like, at the eighth grade. By the time we were in the 1940s, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and South Carolina, all had more than 50% of their adult Black population having fewer than six years of Jim Crow education.

Andrew: Here we are, back in the forties, and you have this like exponentially higher funding for White kids’ schools than for Black kids’ schools. And, you know, then we have 80 years of quote, unquote progress. And then just two years ago or something, EdBuild put out the report showing that schools with predominantly Black students have $23 billion less per year than schools with predominantly White students. That's like, the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Val: How's that make you feel reading that or knowing that?

Andrew: It's, um, it makes me, it makes me uncomfortable. And it makes me try to reach for… I, like, try to find some silver linings. Because I'm like, oh God, that's really bad. Maybe it's not as bad as I think it is.

Val: Oh?

Andrew: You know like those were, like, all Black and all White schools in the forties. And now it's schools that predominantly serve Black and Brown kids versus predominantly White kids.

Val: Interesting.

Andrew: And so, you know, I, you know, I don't know that it really, like, helps that much, but, um, I do think it does sort of tie to this idea that, that Dr. Anderson talks about of White people who are collateral damage.

Val: Yeah.

Andrew: You know, because those schools with $23 billion less in funding have White kids in them. Not a lot, but there are White kids in them. And those, are those, sort of, you know, the collateral damage of this replication of the same structures just without the explicit racism.

Val: So shortly after recording the episode with Dr. Anderson, I saw a story about how many of these anti-CRT bills that are going through legislation would, they would cause schools to lose their advanced placement distinctions. Because they couldn't do the work required for the AP exam. And that made me think about this collateral damage, right? So, hey, you think you're just hurting me, when now your school won't be that high prestige school, because it's also hurting you. That is part of the impact of White rage. Like you're trying to hurt me, but you're not just hurting me. So we have so much energy spent withholding money from, you know, half the population. And for what?

Andrew: Right.

Val: So, I don't see the silver lining.

Andrew: No. Yeah, it's not, it's not, it's not really a silver lining. I mean, that's why it’s White rage. It's not White anger or like White displeasure or you know. Rage is wild. Rage is out of control. Rage ends up hurting everybody.

Val: Everybody.

Andrew: Yeah. There's all these ways that we're hurting ourselves. And it seems like the only time that we make progress, I mean—maybe this is like, sort of, Derrick Bell and interest convergence here—but like the only time we make progress is when it seems to be in, kind of, the White power structures’ interest for there to be progress. And this, this clip here from Dr. Anderson really gets at that.

Dr. Carol Anderson: You also have the Cold War and the Cold War is where the U.S. is doing its strut on the international stages. We are the leader of the free world. We are against those really bad communists over there. That Soviet Union that denies their people their freedom.

And when you're reading through Pravda and Izvestia, which are the government communication ordinances for the Soviet Union, they harp on every lynching, they harp on every Black diplomat who comes to the U.S. and is hit with Jim Crow where they can't get a hotel room, where they're thrown out of a restaurant, they're thrown out of a theater, because they weren't sitting in the colored section. Right? And the Soviets are like, “Mmm. So this is the democracy that they're trying to give to you? This is what they're bringing?”

This is why Chief Justice Earl Warren was lobbying so hard to make it a 9-0 decision. Because it was so important for U.S. foreign policy that this be a unanimous decision.

Val: So, it still wasn't about the rights of the citizens who built the country, you know with blood, sweat, and tears. It was about, hey, we don't want to look bad…

Andrew: To the Russians.

Val: Right. On the international stage. And I think the fear of folks who are trying to ban an accurate teaching of history is for these realities to come up, right? Like, how do you justify these actions? How do you deal with the anger that might come from learning about these things?

I think as challenging as it is to learn these things, what it gives us, you and I, the opportunity to do, is to process what happened, so that we can do better and that we can be better. I think that is a healthy way to start reconciliation. I think it's necessary.

And, to learn that we are doing this for our international reputation and not because we value the people of this country and their contributions, that hurts. It's painful. I don't even know what to say about it, other than, “shame on you.” Not you. Shame on them.

And I think it's fair for the listeners to know that I'm just at a loss for words sometimes with this. This is when you throw the book. This is when you’re like I don’t know. This is when you're like, I'm just frustrated. These are real feelings that it is hard to grapple with.

Andrew: If we're in a place where we actually do start educating all our kids, I feel like that's the kind of vision, that's this thing that Dr. Anderson holds out, that keeps her going, right? This imagination, this like, imagine what we could be? And I think we should play this clip here of her talking about that.

Dr. Carol Anderson: Imagine what this nation could be if we educated all of our children. Wow. Imagine what this nation could be if the billions that we funnel into a carceral state were actually deployed to support families and communities so that they could fly. Imagine what we could be if we had elected representatives who were actually representative of the populations, right?

And so, what they were responding to was climate change. What they were responding to was a vastly unequal criminal justice system. What they were responding to was the need for real safety and real security in this nation, so our babies wouldn't have to have shooter drills in their schools. Imagine. Because if you can't imagine it, you can't even fight for it.

I think about how the enslaved had to imagine freedom when there was nothing around them that told them they could be free. How they imagined what being able to hold onto their babies looked like. Having their families together and not being sold on the auction block. They had to imagine that. When around them, there was so much that told them, oh, that's not what you do. That's not who you are. The power of that imagining led to incredible resistance.

Andrew: It feels like, if you think all the way back to the idea of the enslaved imagining freedom, that we have made progress, that that is not still where we are, you know? So maybe the hamster wheel is, like, slowly moving in some sort of positive direction? But I don't know, maybe that doesn't. Does that feel real to you?

Val: I think, I'm thinking back to your answer about the silver lining thing. And no, we're not like in the same place, but are we free?

Andrew: Mmm.

Val: But imagining. I could not do this work with you and my full-time job without being able to imagine it being better. Like I just, I couldn't. And that vision of it being better for us having these interracial coalitions and schools, all of that feels like right in my heart of hearts and possible. And I think people are willing. And so what's hard to imagine is why people don't want to get on board!

Andrew: Right. Yeah. Why we aren't there yet?

Val: Yeah. That's what's hard to imagine. And I think that type of hope is necessary for all of us, you know? As honest and painful, the words coming from Dr. Anderson, are, she exudes a hope that it doesn't feel like it's possible knowing all she knows. Right?

Andrew: Right.

Val: How are you still smiling?

Andrew: If she can still be hopeful, if she can still have joy, then yeah.

Val: Right? And the joy part. Are you going to share that with the good people?

Dr. Carol Anderson: Black joy is just such a powerful tool of resistance.

Val: For Dr. Anderson to know all that she knows, to remain hopeful and to be able to connect to joy, I think it's an excellent model for all of us doing this work. And I didn't realize I was using anger so much as a tool to do some of my activism work, or like an energy source for my activism work, until very recently. And that just got heavy.

And I wasn't angry at folks that I was building with or, you know, people who were trying to learn. It was just, I was just angry at the situation. Like, why are we even here? And I think that is depleating.

And what I am shifting to is finding joy in these spaces and in spaces like this one, with my friend Andrew, where we can, although we're talking about really difficult things. I think we are working through. I think we’re trying to heal. We're trying to reconcile. We're trying to find a path.

And there's a little clearing here and a little clearing there and, you know, things we can celebrate and, I think that's also important. And we are making progress, even though it feels slow and we might be spinning our wheels and people need to know that something they're doing is working. That there's some joy somewhere because we are not recruiting a whole bunch of people to this effort if we’re mad all the time…

Andrew: Right.

Val: Do you want to hang with people who are mad all the time? I don’t!

Andrew: No, right. Yeah, no. Yeah. I mean, that's a great point. And I think anger is powerful. It burns fast and bright and it's hard not to get angry. I mean, you threw the wonderful Dr. Anderson's book across the room twice.

Val: I did. I did. I did. I did.

Andrew: It's legit to get angry. And, if we only ever live in the anger, then it's really hard to continue this. And I feel like she just embodies this so well, the joy. It was a joyful conversation. It was funny. I mean, you know, this clip here.

Dr. Carol Anderson: It's like Ernest Angley laying on hands. You are HEALED!

Andrew: You are healed. Like, come on. That's amazing!

Val: I mean, hilarious!

Andrew: Hilarious. And so, yeah, so we have to hold on to that. And I do think that holding out that vision of what we want to be. And recognizing that we have made progress. We have not made as much progress as we could have, as we should have, as we must.

And we're digging out from a real deep pit. I mean, that's the other thing I take away from all the things that she shared is just, like, how deep the hole is we're trying to dig out of. And we've got to keep digging and we've got to like, hold out the vision for what it looks like when we get up there, to keep us going, but we also have to find some joy in the digging, I think.

Val: What just made me, you know, catch my breath is imagining a whole 400-year-dug hole of enslavement and indigenous removal. Like, that's a deep hole.

Andrew: Yeah.

Val: That is a deep hole.

Andrew: And there's still some people down at the bottom digging. And I'm like, we got to fill this in, and they're like, no, no, no, we gotta keep digging. We gotta keep digging.

Val: Right. But I got you to get a Black Lives Matter sign for your house. How's that going?

Andrew: That's right. That's right. It's here! It arrived.

Val: Ok, good, good.

Andrew: I thought it was coming with a stand to hold it up, so I gotta order that too, but it's here. It's sitting on my dining room table. It's about to go up.

And now, we promised listeners, we would check in on your hobby, because you're supposed to be starting a hobby. Now you are a doctor. Dr. Val, what's the hobby going to be?

Val: So, um, right now it’s…

Andrew: Nintendo Switch?

Val: Yes! That's exactly it right now. That’s exactly it right now.

Andrew: That counts. Some people build model trains.

Val: That's right. We all have our things.

Andrew: You're playing Nintendo Switch.

Val: I’m a gamer. I'm now a gamer.

Andrew: Yup.

Val: Check back for an update folks. I am going to pull it together. I promise.

Andrew: Yeah. Well, congratulations on being a doctor. And yeah, thanks for finding some joy in all of this with me. It's always a pleasure to be in this with you as I try to know better and do better.

Val: Until next time everyone.