Speaker 1: Hello everyone, and welcome to Talk Nerdy. Today is Monday,
April sixth, twenty twenty six, and I'm the host of
the show, Doctor Kara Santa Maria, and as always, I
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so so very much. All right, let's dive into it.
So this week I had the opportunity to have just
a wonderful and illuminating chat with doctor Candace Watt Smith.
She's a professor of political science at Duke University and
she's written several really interesting books and co written them.
She wrote The History of Politics and Race in America
from nineteen sixty eight to the present. She co wrote
Racial Stasis and also Stay Woke, and recently she wrote
or I Guess. The most recent before this book, she
wrote Sorry, Black Mosaic, The Politics of Black pan ethnic Diversity,
which we will talk about a little bit on the show.
But she has a new book out. It's called Black Evidence,
A History and a Warning. And I think there's kind
of a great top line right as you dive into
the book. It says, a fierce expose of American resistance
to believing black people and it's devastating effects throughout history.
That is what we're going to get into today. So,
without any further ado, here she is doctor Candace Watt Smith. Well, Candace,
thank you so much for joining me today.
Speaker 2: It is a pleasure to be with you.
Speaker 1: I'm excited to talk about your new book, Black Evidence,
A History and a Warning. And before we get into
that history and that warning, I, as I often do,
would like to ask you a little bit more just
about yourself, about your career about what brought you to
this book. So you're a professor of political science at Duke.
But I'm curious, did you study polyci all the way
up through? Did you do any like African American studies
or other kind of degree paths and then combine that
multidisciplinary view. How did you get to that place?
Speaker 3: Yeah, so it's probably a series of non decisions. So
I started undergrad as a first GIN student, and I
think I accidentally took a bunch of policide classes and
then you're like, oh, I guess I should do this.
And along the way I studied international comparative studies in
Arabic and then I learned that I was Someone told
me that I was good at poly size. So I
just kept going and I stayed in State. I mean,
I've been to other departments. I've been to departments of
public policy, African American studies, Black studies.
Speaker 2: I'm trying to think, are there others? You know?
Speaker 1: No?
Speaker 3: So those and mostly because you know, faculty, professors get
to study what they want, and some people will just
kind of focus on one issue, one question and dive
deeply on that question for their whole career. I just
don't have the attention span for that. So most of
the research that I do are around questions of inequality.
But I mostly just kind of choose to go in
directions that interest me at the moment, things that stand
out to me, contradictions that keep arising that kind of
not me, and polyci allows me to do that.
Speaker 1: I love that. And I mean when we think about
political science, it is sort of a broad brush like,
how would we even I mean, gosh, I think to
somebody who maybe is not very academic or who never
took any policide courses, how would you define poly side?
Because it can kind of been things like public policy,
even international relations. There's some sociology involved, maybe even some
economics and government. Like what kind of aspect of political side? Well,
I know you just said you jump around a lot,
but kind of what components of political science I guess
attracted you and where within that world do you tend
to operate?
Speaker 3: Well, I mostly focus on individual behavior and identity and
how that intersects with people's political preferences. I'm mostly interested
in why people have such a high tolerance for inequality,
and so I spend a lot of time in that space. So,
like you said, political science has lots of different components, philosophy,
international relations, comparative analysis across governments and institutions. And then
many of us study kind of individual behavior and identity.
And that's where I sit, mostly because people are just
so weird. And for a long time I said, you know,
make this joke like, oh, as long as people are
acting crazy, I'll have a job. But now I'm just
I'm like, everyone just sit down and be quiet, Okay
if I don't have a job studying you know, the
rise of inequality and the rise of white nationalism and
Christian nationalism. And I wish, I wish I didn't have
to study those things. I wish none of us did.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know previously you you co authored two books,
Stay Woken, Racial Stasis, but you also authored Black Mosaic,
The Politics of Black pan Ethnic Diversity. And you know,
it's interesting I'm reading a little bit about it, this
kind of not just intersectionality, but diversity within sort of
Black America. I have one of my dearest friends. I
remember her always correcting people when they call her African
American because she's Afro Caribbean. She was born in Panama,
and she's like I live here now, but I'm not
African American, and so she obviously preferred not obviously, but
she prefers the term black. I found myself using the
term black more often as an umbrella term so as
not to kind of misidentify somebody. But I love this
idea of like, obviously we should be having conversations about
diversity within quote unquote racial groups. I mean, whatever that
even means. And I'm curious kind of what brought you
you wrote this book over a decade ago, what brought
you to Black Mosaic? And then maybe the difference between
between this new book Black Evidence, because there's a lot
of time in between the two.
Speaker 3: So Black most it came out of my dissertation work
and some of my undergrad work. I uh, and more
or less from North Carolina and where I lived, North Carolina,
the South for most of its history. I think people
would kind would would have characterized the demographics as black
and white and then maybe a little something else, you know.
And when I came to college, I've started meeting all
these black people that were not from the States, or
that their parents weren't from the States. And I remember
this one woman saying to me like, oh, wait, where
are you from? And then you ask where are you
from from? And so I'm from North Carolina. My parents
are from Chicago, their people are from Mississippi. And she said, Oh,
it's really fascinating that you've accomplished all that you have
and you're like just an American, You're just an American
black person. And her idea was like black immigrants are exceptional,
or that my achievements must have been from a particular culture,
and she just could not have imagined that, you know,
that my family were many generations American, and so that
was one of those moments where you're like, oh, this
is there's a whole thing going on here. And so
that's how I ended up writing Black Mosaic was from
that conversation. And over the years we've heard more and
more about, you know, when you go to Harvard and
Princeton and Yale that when you walk on campus and
you meet the black students there, they are largely of
immigrant stock, that their parents are immigrants or that they're immigrants,
and so you know, there's all these questions about why
is that and what's going on? And so those kinds
of questions those you know, like oh, that's interesting. What's
happening here? What are the dynamics here? Interest me in?
Speaker 2: Now?
Speaker 3: You know, people are looking at, you know, the twenty
twenty four election and they're saying, well, why did so
many black men in particular vote for Trump? And that
I think that question actually tells us more about the
question asker than about black folks, which the question asker
is assuming that black folks should behave a certain way,
should think a certain way, and should have a certain
set of priorities, when in fact, the demographics that kind
of characteristics of black folks have changed significantly over the
past twenty thirty forty years. And if we don't keep
up with the complexity of any group. I mean, same
with Latinos, right, Oh, why did so many Latinos vote
for Trump?
Speaker 1: Well?
Speaker 3: Who are you talking about? Which groups are you talking about?
We have this kind of very flat way of talking
about these groups, and then we get surprised when it
turns out that there is more to any particular group
than anyone assumed in the first place.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I mean it's it's such a tough thing
when we think about assumptions about individuals who are always
obviously intersectional and who always have different life experiences, different priorities.
I remember kind of having an insight into this early
on in my career as a public science communicator when
I went to a women's psychom like symposium, and you know,
one of the first things that was said was kind
of like, we are not monolithic. We're not going to
agree about everything just by virtue of our gender. And
at the same time, you know, I believe, and I'm
curious your take on this, that there is some validity
to the I guess maybe concern or the surprise when
individuals vote for people who appear to fundamentally I guess
the right word would be hmm. I'm struggling with the
right word here, who fundamentally deny their existence and their value,
you know what I mean? Like, like it is I
think of somewhat valid question to say, like why would
black men vote for Trump? Or like why would women
vote for Trump? Because Trump is racist, He is a
white supremacist, he is a misogynist.
Speaker 3: Mm hmm. But he's also anti immigrant, and so are
some black people. And he's also he's anti black, and
so are some women. And he's also you know, so.
Speaker 1: There is a priority exactly right, Yeah, Oh, it's it's
it's fascinating. But of course, now kind of moving a
decade later, I mean, obviously that's like more relevant than ever,
but even I would say, maybe I shouldn't say more relevant,
but incredibly prescient and apropos of our time? Is black
evidence a history and a warning because of course what
we're talking about here the idea of black evidence, of
black truth, of black existence, of black voices, and the
cultural tendency, the civic tendency, the policy and government tendency,
but even the personal tendency to deny black existence to say, no,
I know what is really happening here. I don't actually
need to listen to your experience to understand that is
so pervasive in our culture.
Speaker 3: Yes, And you know, when I just was having a
conversation with my friend Blair about just watching the twenty
twenty protests after George Floyd's murder, I was like, why
are people so up in arms?
Speaker 2: Now?
Speaker 3: This is not anything new.
Speaker 1: Right, this is how does that at a point?
Speaker 3: Yeah, Like, I'm you know, I am at a loss
for how on some level I'm at a loss for
an understanding of why we cannot get our minds around
the fact that black people have been saying that this
is a real possibility every day, all of the time.
And I study. One of the other things that I
study is policy, and there's a there's a theory in
policy that says that policy shapes politics, and it shapes
our behavior, and it shapes what we think, and we
tend to historically believe and trust our policymakers. So if
a policymaker makes a policy that says people in prison
can't vote over time, people say, oh, okay, yeah, that
makes sense, like a person, you know, they're doing their time,
they get these rights revoked.
Speaker 2: That makes sense.
Speaker 1: I mean it does.
Speaker 3: It doesn't make sense, but we've made it make sense.
And so just upon reflection of our history, it's like, oh, well,
what are the policies that would have shaped these habits
of disbelief, of dismissal, of evasion, of gas lighting. That's
the only thing that can help me make sense is
that we just have a habit of ignoring the insights
that our fellow citizens give to us on a regular basis.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's sort of like I think about the way,
you know, as a psychologist, I guess I approach this,
you know, through obviously the lens and the perspective of
of of my training and my area of interest, and
and it kind of makes you wonder, how do human
beings choose which voices to say, well, that's an authority
on this issue, that is somebody who I do believe,
versus oh, that's anecdotal, or that is an exception to
the rule, or that's weak evidence, or that you know,
story there is is not as valid. And it does
seem to be the case that phenomenal logic data right.
I did a dissertation was a was a existential hermeneutic
phenomenological exploration of medical aid and dying, where I interview
people who are choosing to die with medical aid, and
I really dug deep into their personal experience and tried
to do what I could to see their choices through
their eyes and to strip away as much bias as
I could. Or actually I didn't strip it away. I
identified it, highlighted it, and became aware of the bias
that was present. And that's a really interesting practice that
I had never done before my dissertation, and it gave
me a lot of insight into the fact that we
just don't do that very often. In society, we don't
look at individual experience as a valid form of evidence.
Speaker 3: I think that's true, and for some people more than
other people. So to your point that we have stereotypes
and ideas about who is a figure of authority, who
is likely to tell the truth, whose testimonies are worthy
of considering, and vice versa, I think it's really fascinating
this work that you did. It was also probably really
hard for you to do it, right. I mean, it's
hard to listen. It's hard to to get into someone
else's shoes and say, oh, I see where you're coming from.
And it's especially hard if that the person that you are,
the person's testimony who you know you're listening to, implicates
you or implicates your group in some shapewear or form,
and that makes it even more difficult. And so I'm not,
you know, trying to get anyone off the hook here,
But what I am noting here is that I'm not
saying that it's easy to hear black folks say here
the reasons why we have why we have a democracy
in crisis, that these are the things that we've done
to ourselves and each other, and you've earned these privileges
because of those things. That's hard to hear, but it,
you know, it doesn't mean that we shouldn't listen for it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, I think I think you make an
important point here that bears digging into a little bit more,
which is sort of like the how do I even
word this? The two sides of the perspective mirror. So
you've got the person who is making the determinations, who
is thinking, and you've got the person whose experience is
being shared. And we live in a culture that, even
though demographically is not necessarily white majority, at least in
many you know, parts of the country, it from a
power perspective. It's a white supremacist, white majority culture. And
you know what I'm cure about is that sort of
experience of the other, the experience of the how do
I put myself in somebody's shoes if I don't have
their lived experience? Like I am a white American CIS woman.
I'm Puerto Rican. That's my ethnicity, but my race, you know,
I'm putting in air quotes, but that is how we
often define demographics on census data. I work in a hospital,
you know, we race and ethnicity. My race is white.
I present as white. That affords me all the privileges
that come with my with my white skin. I do
not know what it is like to be black in
America except by talking to my black friends and colleagues
and reading books and having conversations. You know, I cannot
exist as a black person in America, but I can
listen to black experience. And my concern is that very often,
as you mentioned before, this is the point that I
want to dig deeper into when I talk to, you know,
a black American and they say to me, your whiteness
is contributing to this problem. It is my role to
sit with that, to figure out how I feel about that,
and to continue on in spite of that, maybe because
of that, to reckon with my own racial identity development,
see where I am in that process, and to integrate it.
And so that's a big part of the work that
I try to do in you know, anti racist conversation
and anti racist identity. But for a lot of people,
their immediate reaction is defensiveness, and so how like do
you think that is really the crux and at the
core of why black lines are so often minimized and
undermined is that because the people in a position of power,
they hear, oh it's my fault, Well, f you, I'm
not going to accept that.
Speaker 3: I think it's multi dimensional. I think there is some
of that. It is hard to hear. You know, there's
these you know, we're having a conversation about meritocracy. Nobody
who has gotten their college degree from a fancy college
wants to believe that they didn't deserve that degree, or
that something else other than their own hard work got
them into their you know, their college.
Speaker 2: As an example.
Speaker 3: So so you know, if you're hearing things that say
to you that turns out that the story that you've
been telling yourself is a lie. I mean, that's that's
hard to hear. But I do think that there's also
on the other side is that there's just a habit.
There are certain things that we do that we don't
even think about the when we're doing them, someone starts
singing the or says the pledge of allegiance. Your hand
goes straight to your heart. It's not even a thought,
you just do it. There are certain you see a
red light, you stop. You know, there are all these
kinds of everyday habits that we have built over the
course of our lifetime, over the course of history. And
I think this is one of them. That you see
a group of folks that, I mean, can give you
a lot of inconvenient truths. And we have habits, and
I say we Americans generally speaking of dismissing some groups readily,
but I would say almost by habit.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and like it, I guess we can't really ignore
that there is a intentionality, a nefarious hand, his historical
agenda that's been very policy driven behind some of those habits,
right that like they're reenforced because somebody and many people
want them to be, But that doesn't necessarily mean that
in that moment, it's part of the calculus at all.
I think that's why you have this sort of new
group of quote anti woke, very often sort of manna
sphere white men who are overtly racist and overtly misogynistic,
trying to sort of minimize the argument of historic disenfranchisement,
trying to minimize the argument of people living in in
you know, certain parts of cities today, people you know,
experiencing systemic racism, systemic disenfranchisement. This is the culmination of
these historical wrongs. You have these sort of loud, outspoken
people who are basically saying like, Nope, shit was hard
in the past for everybody, get over it. We're all
kind of in in egalitarian society now. And if you're
struggling to get into college, that's your own fault. It
has nothing to do with where you grew up or
what you look like.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so that's exactly right. So but even in this case,
we have a policy that now makes the kinds of
behaviors to exclude, okay, and that you know, attitudes will
justify your behavior. So, you know, I think sometimes about
you know, like, okay, we had slavery in the United States,
which was a really horrific era, and there's a lot
of things that we know that, I mean, just the abuse,
the violence, the terror. And I thought to myself, like,
how that is not like a thing that people are
born They don't wake up, you know, they're not born
into wanting to abuse other people, and not in that
kind of gruesome way. And in writing this book, what
I learned is that there was a policy that said,
you know, white folks or soon to be white folks,
you all don't understand that this system of slavery that
we're having is for profit driven motives, and you all
do not know how to be good masters. And so
we are going to make a policy that not only
constrains the behavior and movement of enslaved Africans, but it
will also dictate to you what your behavior should be in.
Speaker 2: Via those people.
Speaker 3: So if you don't keep your enslaved person under control,
we will punish you. Right and over time that becomes
you know, you're doing it because the policy says to
do it, but now you have to have a series
of attitudes that justifies your behavior, and then that can
go on and on all by itself. I think it's
similar to what we're seeing now. We have a president
that comes in and says that DEI policies are illegal,
discriminatory policies, which justifies a behavior to I don't know,
fire three hundred thousand black women, and now you have
to have an attitude that justifies this. They didn't deserve
it in the.
Speaker 1: First place, right, right. It's this sort of post talk
that happens once you are deep in something that you
don't even realize is happening as it's happening. And I think,
what's so kind of, you know, it's it's Nuremberg, right,
It's like I was just doing what I was told. Uh,
it's It's such a perfect example of the cognitive gymnastics
that I think we all have to go through in
effort to, uh, to minimize our own cognitive dissonance in
this life, because cognitive dissonance is uncomfortable. Right if I'm
thinking two things at the same time, and one is
that I'm justified and I'm doing the right thing, and
the other is that this is unethical and I'm gonna,
you know, uh, rotten hell for this, or like somehow
downstream this is gonna you know, get me karmically, or
even just it doesn't feel good to do this thing
that feels cruel. We will often go with the justification
and the psychological explanation that is the most palatable to us.
And I am, you know, obviously concerned that this negative
feedback loop as you described it, right, because it begets
itself and it starts to run away from itself. That's
how we end up with authoritarianism. That's how we end
up in the crisis, you know of kind of democracy
that we're in right now.
Speaker 3: Right that and the fact that we I don't want
to say that we don't value critical thinking. Well, we
also have a series of policies that suggest that critical
thinking expertise is not the way to go. So cognitive
dissonance in this case, right is like, Ooh, I'm doing
this thing and I believe myself to be a good person,
but this thing is the wrong thing. It sounds like
it's unethical. I'm going to solve my cognitive dissonance by
just saying that I'm a good person. A critical thinker
would say, well, how did we get into this spot
in the first place? And then that's a different set
of questions that we would try to answer, which is,
maybe you are a good person and maybe you didn't
know better, but this is the system that we have
and it's unfair. Now what are we going to do
about it?
Speaker 1: And that's an important place that I think a lot
of people are sort of waking up to right now.
You know, sort of this I gosh, I mentioned this
at least like once a month on the show, But
I think about the Beverly Tatum quote in why are
all the Black kids sitting together at the cafeteria? This
idea that you know, white supremacy, white identity, well, supremacy.
I mean, I can't think of a better way to
put it. It really is this moving sidewalk that we
see at the airport, right, And if you are just
kind of standing still, you're still moving in the direction
of those policies. You have to turn around, you have
to walk backward, and you have to walk faster than
the sidewalk is moving forward in order to actually break
that chain. And I think a lot of people right
now have been standing still on the sidewalk and they're
waking up to Trump's reality and they're going, oh shit,
what can I do? I've just been being pulled along,
not realizing how their own sort of actions have perpetuated
because the systems are in place, because those policies exist.
Speaker 3: I think in this case, I am in agreement with you.
I think that one of the things that people are
seeing now is that the thing that's on the other
side of the walkway doesn't is going to eat them
alive as well.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, they themselves are also subject to it. You're right,
until it matters to me, it doesn't actually matter, and
that's gross, but it's also the reality, right, Like it's
one thing to watch my fellow person, and that fellow
person being of a different ilk, a different race, a
different color, a different whatever. It's another thing to see
that oh wait, these policies. Wait now I'm included in
that minority standing. Oh oh, now my left wing you know,
ideology is being eaten alive. Now my womanhood or my
my social class, or my whatever the case may be.
That's I'm so glad you pointed that out, because I
do think that's really the impetus. It's an important point,
you know, it's we got to look ourselves in the
mirror and see that. It's kind of you see it
all the time with like celebrities or with I mean,
I know this is not a great example, but you know,
somebody doesn't care about an issue until their kid has
the disease and then all of a sudden, the spokesperson
for the disease Like that's what we're talking about here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, the thing is is.
Speaker 3: Right, what is in fear creating is that it takes
so much when we've been told so if we cared
about democracy, democracy says that like everyone gets a say,
and so then you're like, oh, well, okay, maybe this
policy means that some of those people don't get a say,
but that same policy rule system can be used against you.
Speaker 2: And so we.
Speaker 3: We we chip away at the foundations by allowing some
groups to be sacrificed, to be excluded, to be you know,
left out. But we need everyone to be involved in
order to have a you know, strong community, a strong society,
a strong democracy, to stay away from authoritarianism.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: And so the thing is is that I guess I
would argue that we have been on the decline for
a long time. It's just now that people are seeing
where they sit in the in the in this disaster
dumpster fire that we find ourselves in now.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, and I think that's why it's so freaking important
that we study our own history. Like I can't help
but think about books that I've read about suffrage and
how you know, really, when you dig into suffrage, you
see that suffrage was not just about the right for
women to vote, but that the front line individuals in
this fight were black and queer women, and that there
was a lot of infighting. There was a lot of
sort of white gatekeeping saying no, no, no, no, uh,
you guys are not going to be good for our cause.
We don't want to have anything to do with you.
Please let the white you know kind of ladies, uh
take take up. And it's like, what are you even
talking about? The whole point is that if we don't
all fight for these rights, eventually they will be eroded,
like they you know, every punk rock song. First they
came for the queers, then they came for the blacks,
and they can soon they're gonna come for you. Like
this is how you have to think, and it's how
all of history has told us this works. I mean
even the Holocaust, right, Like, it wasn't just the Jews,
and it wasn't just the Romani, and it wasn't just
the individual you know, and the and the LGBTQI. We
look at like Weimar, Germany like, but a lot of
people they have a very oversimplified view of their of
their own history. And of course, how would you not
if that is what is being taught in your schools
because of these policies.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I mean it's we practice on smaller groups,
but those tools can be used, can be scaled up
very easily if if they're lett led to be so.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and Trump is such a kind of almost overt
and obvious example in some ways a beautiful metaphor for
what we're talking about, because even within his own ranks,
I mean, we had a whole administration of his to
learn from. And of course now it's uh, I mean
it's always been off the rails, but now it's like
all the quiet parts are being said out loud. But
not just in terms of like American you know, interest
groups or like demographic groups are you know, just intersectional identities.
But look at his own inner circle. It's like he
does it to the people who thought that they were
Trump's team. Yes, and the and the circle just gets
smaller and smaller and smaller.
Speaker 3: It's it's really fascinating to watch, isn't it. I mean,
to insult you know, someone who you selected to be
in your inner circle.
Speaker 1: I yeah, someone who stumped for you, like somebody, you know,
it's insane. He will turn on Vans, just like he
turned on Pence. He will turn on everybody the minute that,
narcissistically they insult him. And that's that's really what supremacy
and you know, power grab is about, right, yes, And
that's why this black evidence. I mean, obviously, like you mentioned,
it's always multifaceted, but I can't help but feel like
as you strip away and strip away and strip away,
it's always gets down to capitalism, to money to power. Yes,
I mean, I mean even the roots of slavery, right,
and the and the systems and the policies that you
said were in place to kind of uh punish or
or get you know, white enslavers into line. It's sort
of this idea of like, nope, this is what is
economically viable for the rule in class, So we need
to we need to shape up and make sure that
we stay the course.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, yes, I think my pause there, I
was thinking about the white folks who actually only benefit psychologically,
and so it's you know, oh.
Speaker 1: Right, yeah, the.
Speaker 2: H entry.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, it's like okay, that's not going to feed
your family, but sure.
Speaker 1: But I think sometimes when you really dig into it
and you get down to it and you hear them
defending billionaires, it's because they truly believe that one day
they could be written.
Speaker 3: That's correct, You're like correct, yeah, yes, oh it's not
happening for you, bro.
Speaker 1: Sorry, But of course it kind of makes sense that
somebody who denies that there isn't an even playing field.
Somebody who denies systemic discrimination and racism is obviously going
to believe that the American dream applies to them and
that the it is a will issue. It is a
pull yourself up by your bootstraps issue, and like their
time is coming. It's funny. There's a theme that's been
coming up for me in the other podcast I work
on The Skeptics Guide to the Universe, and in therapy
with my patients lately. So I work in a in
a cancer center at like a big hospital and work
with patients who are going through you know, treatment and beyond.
And a theme that I've been seeing over and over
is the fundamental attribution error, right, this cognitive bias that
tells all of us when something good happens to me,
it's because I'm a good person, and when something good
happens to you, it's because you happened upon it. And
really that's the opposite of it. The real one is
when somebody's like an asshole when I'm driving, it's because
they are just an asshole. But when I'm an asshole
when I'm driving, it's because I'm late. And it's situational. Yes,
we all have that right, like, that's a that's a
human way of thinking that we have to actually actively break.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I'm just trying to think about that on
the aggregate level. So I think the way that plays
out is kind of around this this knee jerk reaction
to the idea of white privilege, which.
Speaker 2: Is right, like, that's what that is. Is.
Speaker 1: I sometimes wonder if I should be using that word,
because people often stop listening the second I say.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, yes, yes, yeah. I think that's in that category.
That would be the group version of the fundamental attribution error,
which is we don't you know, I'm a low income
white person, don't I don't have privilege. But that's not
what that means anyway, And so m hm. And so
then people are you're like, Okay, I won't use that word,
even though it is the word to use to describe
the situation.
Speaker 1: Absolutely. So you know, I think about we.
Speaker 3: End up boxing ourselves in in some kinds of ways
in response to people's and you know, you want people
to listen, like you want to craft your communication for
your audience. But we also, I think, are finding ourselves
in this situation where we can't we can no longer
use the words that do the best describing, because the
people whose feelings are hurt matter more than telling the
truth of the matter.
Speaker 1: Okay, I have to share, like an experience that I had.
I would say it would be about three years ago now,
because I really want your take on the I wish
I knew you then and could have called you and said,
please help me in this moment, because you know, based
on all of your expertise, I'm at a loss. So obviously.
I live in la I grew up in Texas. I
did my internship for my psychology PhD in Florida at
a private university in an outpatient gerontology center, and I
had an incredible supervisor who was very existential and who
is anti racist and probably the most liberal person within
the whole department that I was privileged to work with.
The students that we worked with came from all different
walks of life. Right it was Florida, and they were
who they were, and they were training to be psychologists.
And I had a group of graduate students that I
was overseeing as the intern and we read for our
book club, how to Be Anti Racist. And I remember
the initial reaction of one of the students who was
a white woman saying this is not how to get
through to me. I do not want to be insulted.
I do not want somebody to yell at me. If
you want me to hear this perspective, you shouldn't sound
so angry about it. I felt myself being very defensive
the whole time I read this. Now, I respected the
fact that she shared her honest experience that she felt defensive,
and she was sort of able to find it inside
herself to say that. But I struggled, and I kind
of was at odds with my supervisor of how to
handle it. Because my supervisor was very patient and would ask,
you know, open ended questions and would really kind of
hold the hands of some of these students and bring
them along for the ride. And my perspective was, these
students are seeing patients. Now, I do not feel comfortable
allowing somebody who has that perspective to see a patient
like catch up. You need to catch up. If this
is the work you want to do, it is unsafe
for you to be this behind in your understanding of
sort of racial identity. And we were at odds with that,
and part of it was probably my California perspective I
don't know, but I'm curious your take on that, because
I think we see this in academic institutions a lot.
We see this sort of white as you mentioned before,
I don't know, not denial, yes, but almost like reactivity
to being told that they have privilege. But we see
it in academia, we see it in medicine, we see
it in places where it can do real harm.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: You know, the thing is is that I'm not sure
that I would have disagreed with your mentor mm hm
in a.
Speaker 1: Better woman than I.
Speaker 2: Well, because what I'm thinking about is strategy.
Speaker 1: Mm hmm. Yeah, you are being actually logistic in your approach,
which is which is a smart way to be.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, and I'm with you, Like, if someone's like,
I don't like this, it's it makes me feel defensive.
I mean, in my mind, I'm picking like, so the
fuck what exactly?
Speaker 1: Yeah, get past it.
Speaker 2: But I have also.
Speaker 3: Been trained, as a black woman living in the society
that there are folks that you have to deal with
with kid gloves, right, if you want to get the
thing out of them, you have to know the language.
And and you know, actually I was going to mention
this earlier when we were talking about, you know, how
difficult it is to be in someone else's shoes.
Speaker 2: But I think.
Speaker 3: That is what black folks do in order to buy right.
Speaker 1: You exist in white spaces all the.
Speaker 3: Time, so so so I think it's it would be
hard for me to jolt out of that. I mean,
I know what, my my inner dialogue would be screaming
on one side, But uh, as a as a as
a person who is trying to bring people in, I
think I would end up going the long what makes
you say that? Can you let's talk about values. Let's
see if we can untangle the contradictions here? Can I
get you to think more critically about what you're saying
and what that means. But that's my strategy, because that's
the strategy that has allowed me to live in the
way that I live now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think a lot of it, it sounds like,
has to do with role Right. At the time, I
was still a student, but I was an advanced student,
and they were students who were not as advanced in
their education. But I wasn't in that sort of supervisory
professor position, and I didn't have the insight and the
wisdom and the knowledge and there was a part of
me that felt angry, like I'm doing the work, why
aren't you doing the work? You know? And I think
I see that a lot in my everyday experiences with
loved ones from a feminist perspective, like I don't want
to have to teach men to be better to women.
It's exhausting and I feel like that's not my job.
And I hear this all the time from my black friends, right,
like I don't want to be patient with white racist people,
like it is the most insulting, infantilizing, exhausting thing to
be asked. But of course, a sometimes you just have to,
as you mentioned, like that is the position you have
been put in. B you are a professor, you are
a political scientist, and you get to see it from
both sides. And it's such a curious thing to me,
just the burden what we ask of people to where
the onus falls when it comes to teaching. And that's
why I think, getting back to the whole point of
this book, right, Black Evidence, a History and a Warning,
is you know, why is it the job of black
Americans to go above and beyond to try to prove
that their simple existence is valid?
Speaker 2: It's not our.
Speaker 1: Job, yeah, exactly, But then you carry the burden, right,
you so often carry the burden.
Speaker 2: That's the part.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: My son is twelve, he's in seventh grade, and he
has already learned that he hates group work because there
are free riders and there are people who do not care.
And he is thinking, I want to do well on
this assignment. I want to earn whatever benefits, you know,
I want to do the learning, all of the things.
And so I am going to pick up the slack
here because I want to move you know, I want.
Speaker 2: Us to do well.
Speaker 3: And so it's not his job to carry his team
on his back, but that is the position that he's
put in. And it's similar right where you're in a group,
where you have a group assignment here, and it is
moving our society towards its better angels. It's bending the
long arc of history to justice, you know, all of
these things. And it's also about survival. And so that
means that some of us are going to pick up
the slack because our lives depend on it, because democracy
depends on it, because having nice things for everybody or
for as many possible people depends on it. So you know,
I think that's the answer. It's not our job, it's
everybody's job. It's just that some people show up for work.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And the truth of the matter is I think
I think it also, you know, I think in a
way it validates to the black folks who decide, I
don't want to do this. It isn't psychologically beneficial for me.
It isn't healthy, and it's actually slowly killing me to
have to constantly regulate my emotions in these situations so
that you know, it's white women's tears, right like, so
that other people can come to their to you know, slowly,
you know, come along for the ride. And I think
that you know, there's kind of there's no right way
to exist in your own body and in your own skin,
is there? Yeah?
Speaker 3: I mean this is why I write, is it hopes
that someone who wants to do better or no more.
Speaker 2: Has a resource.
Speaker 3: And I write to say that you can't say that
you didn't know where you couldn't find out, right, right,
That's so true.
Speaker 1: Right, It's like it's like you can't get a you
can't get pulled over when you're driving a car and
go I didn't know I couldn't run a stop sign.
It's like ignorance of the law is not an excuse
for breaking the law. Yes, it's the same thing here,
Like the evidence is in front of you, you are
choosing not to look at it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and you know, and some of it is hard
to see, and so I'm going to help you see it.
And there are you know, many many people who do that.
I mean, you can't walk into a bookstore or a
grocery store or wherever there's reading material or podcasts or television.
I mean, it's the information is there. And so just
the amount of room for claims of ignorance decreases every day.
Whether people are willing to admit that is a whole
other thing. But I've just I've I've made that my job.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, And gosh, do we all collectively thank you
for that? Because that is very often a thank list job,
and it's actually a job that can be detrimental to
your mental health, Like doing that kind of work can
take a lot out of you. So I'm curious what
the experience is like. Do you find it's fulfilling? Do
you find obviously there are times when you're you know,
promoting the book or you're, you know, doing lectures and
you have a receptive audience, but I can imagine that
you get hate online and you get you do butt
up against Sometimes those people who fully deny that the
evidence even exists, even if it's in front of their face,
they they devalue it or they use some sort of
mental gymnastics to say this evidence is not real evidence,
or you're fabricating it, or you're exaggerating it. I mean,
how do you take care of yourself in those moments.
Speaker 3: I'm not the model on that one.
Speaker 1: As I say, not as I do a situation. Yeah,
this is your mission.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know what's actually As you were asking me
that question, I was thinking about those kinds of reactions
and responses and maybe ten years ago I started this
folder in my inbox called fan.
Speaker 2: Mail, and.
Speaker 3: Oh no, it was when I did my TED talk
and because people would email me what they thought, you know,
about my TED talk and how much they hated it
and how like, you know, my go like find myself
in the middle of traffic and get hit by a
truck and stuff like that. But I have had fewer
of those emails, and I just started thinking like, oh,
is that because our algorithms like wouldn't send my material
the things that I write to a person that is
diametrically opposed to what I was saying anyway, and so
they're so siloed. Now, Yeah, I was like, I actually
haven't gotten that kind of response. But I can imagine
that it's because the folks who would not read a
book like this or care about issues like this whatever,
actually have but that it would never be put to
them as something that they would be interested in, and
so I haven't had to deal with that.
Speaker 2: I think.
Speaker 3: I mean, writing the book hurt me because it's, you know,
you think about looking at pictures of lynching and reading
about you know, Ida b Wells's you know, descriptions of
what's happening during that time, and rethinking about Rodney King
and kind of replaying these images in my mind. So
that was the thing that hurt more so than you know,
some person who is just diametrically opposed to my existence
emailing me. They don't I don't think they even know
I exist.
Speaker 1: That's interesting. Yeah, it's it's more of kind of like
a compassion fatigue, a component that just requires a lot
of breaks and a lot of self care and a
lot of engaging in the things that you love in
order to uh to take care of yourself in those
moments when you're you are feeling the suffering of others,
you know, others today, but also others from from generations past.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: I do worry though, that sometimes it just takes like
one blog, you know, or like one MANI sphere podcaster
to like get wind of an idea. But I think
in some ways also there is there is this interesting
thing where and I'm not saying, you know, obviously all
of your scholarship is beyond reproach, but but that like
when something is really well researched and communicated, that's not
the takedown that these kind of trolls want to be doing.
They want to straw man the argument, right, they want
to simplify it, and they want to take down aspects
of it that you're not even talking about. So so
this wouldn't be as much fodder for them because it's
just it's it's more work.
Speaker 2: They don't want to do that.
Speaker 1: I do think it's true, like you see these these whatever,
the Charlie Kirk's of the world, and these different individuals
who have these you know, clips on the Internet where
they're dismantling the argument of like a young black man
who's who's claiming uh, systemic racism, But they're not actually
dismantling their argument. They're just really good rhetoricians and make
it seem like they are.
Speaker 3: That's right, Yeah, I mean, and they often quote things
that never were said and that aren't real.
Speaker 1: So yeah, the world that we live in though, Like
I guess there's an interesting question as we're sort of
getting towards the end of the hour, how do you
not despair? And I'm not saying you don't despair. I'm
sure you do despair, but you still work, right, you
still wake up, you're publishing this book, you are doing
your scholarship, you're talking to us right now. How do
you stay motivated to do that against this background, which
it's not like we haven't been here before, but boy,
I think in our lifetime at least, this is a
big pendulum swing.
Speaker 3: So I on some level think it's my responsibility too.
And I think about moments in our history when there
was a thing that we thought was impossible and was
never gonna happen, and then it did. So I can
think about folks who were enslaved who thought probably thought like,
this system is going to last forever, and then it didn't,
and then there were black folks in Congress like.
Speaker 2: A few years later.
Speaker 3: I mean, that was just kind of a rapid scene,
you know, series of events that people thought were impossible
and then they became possible, in part because people fought
for it.
Speaker 2: People stood up for it.
Speaker 3: People talked about it, people got people, you know, brought
people in, they expanded the scope of conflict, they wrote
about it, they marched about it, all of those things.
Speaker 2: And so.
Speaker 3: I am I just I have to carry I carry
that legacy that there are things that we didn't think
were possible that did become possible because people made it so.
And it didn't happen the next day or the day
after that, but it did happen eventually.
Speaker 1: And kind of to that end, I have to ask,
because I've long argued for this, but I'm not sure
how much evidence I have to support it. It just
is a sort of global takeaway that I think, I see.
Do you think that what is happening right now? Yes,
I think that there are all of these systems in place,
as you argue so beautifully in your book, that actually
kind of in a lot of ways led to where
we are right now. Right that the perpetuating systems and
the entrenchment of these things. But do you think that
there's also an argument to be made that what is
happening right now is actually a backlash to progress, and
that very often when the pendulum starts to swing, like
that moral arc of history is bending towards justice, that
there will be powers that will start a desperate scramble
to prevent that bend. And so almost every time we
see progress, we see a big backlash to that progress,
and we have to kind of stumble backward before we
move forward again.
Speaker 3: I don't think that that path, that back and forth path,
is inevitable.
Speaker 2: I think that's a choice that we make.
Speaker 3: But yes, I agree that you know, people will people
have asked me like, oh, did the Black Lives Matter
movement work? And you know, it's like, well, work to
do what exactly? But I do think that it did.
Putting my air quotes work in that there was a
significant change in the discourse. There is a significant change
in the way that people thought about police brutality. There
is a significant change in the words that people were
using intersectionality, right, and so that is scary to people
who want to dominate others, and so yeah, that's a response.
I think Frederick Douglas said something like that, like, yeah,
when you see a rise in lynchings, it's because someone
has done something well that there has been success there
wasn't And so yeah, I would say that you can
only you know, what we're seeing is a response to
the seeds that had been planted and started to grow
from civil rights legislation and voting rights legislation, from affirmative action,
from you know, more people having access to education and
home loans, and you know, we can go on and
on and so yes, I think what we're seeing is
a is a response to what has been a trajectory
of success. And again to my point, I think that
there's enough people on the other side of the pendulum
to swing it back the other way.
Speaker 1: I agree. I think that if you were to pull
the majority of people, honestly the majority of people, they
would and give them all of the information, the real
evidence in front of them. I think that their opinions
and their ideologies would be justice oriented. But I think
that there's a massive machine in play, a propaganda machine,
a suppression machine, a lot of systems that make it
so that a vocal, wealthy, power hungry few are dramatically
influencing the voices of the many, and I worry about that.
But that's why we have to maintain our democracy, right
That's why this is so important to fight for right now,
because once authoritarianism has its full hooks, it doesn't mean
we won't be able to get out from under it,
but there's going to be a lot of suffering before
we do. And I think that that's part of the reason,
one of many of the reasons why this book and
this conversation is so incredibly timely. So I just I
can't thank you enough for joining us. Everybody. The book
is Black Evidence, A History and a Warning by doctor
Candace Watt Smith. Candace, thank you, Thank you so much.
This was a fascinating, emotional, but I think also kind
of motivating conversation to be had today.
Speaker 2: Kiera, thank you for being brave and having it with me.
Speaker 1: And everybody listening. The same goes to you. Thank you
for coming back week after week. I'm really looking forward
to the next time we all get together to talk.
Martie