Kindling

Homework

Page 3: Do some research in your home state to learn how public and private officials have handled the “separate but equal” issue of Brown vs Board of Education since 1954.

Page 4: List five current outcomes of weakened Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments.

Page 5: List three examples of white authorities being willing to undermine national security in order to ensure that Blacks did not advance.

Transcription

00:10

Hello. I want to take a moment to give you a reason why I chose this book at this time, because I was not planning on doing another book club selection, because "How to be an Antiracist" took so much out of me for... I was gonna take some time off. But the reason I chose to do this book at this time is a direct result of Super Tuesday election that happened in the U.S. this past week. And I am... I was disgusted. I was pissed a lot of the time. I was just fed up with hearing the narrative that Black Southern voters—who literally Joe Biden must owe his survival to—only voted for him because they are low information voters.

And I found myself for several days challenging that narrative. There are a lot of reasons why people voted for Biden that are their own. But collectively, as a community, older Black voters—and this is what pissed me off—is you were disrespecting people who have lived lives that your punk asses can never fathom or let alone survive.

And no one wants to talk about the white part of this equation. You're very comfortable with trying to dissect and understand the Black voter. Well, the Black voter didn't get us where we are with this president or anything else. It was not the Black voter. It is overwhelmingly the white voter. And these Black voters who have a history of—white people: understand!—and are very pragmatic and strategic in their voting. They sit back and watch white people go back and forth, talk about how progressive, talk about how conservative, talk about how liberal, talk about everything that centers whiteness. Because that is how we have to make decisions. They're not doing it. They did not vote out of fear. They voted out of understanding that you white people, you white people will not vote for any ideology, process, platform that means that other people benefit.

02:56

Let me say that again. We're reading this book because I need you to understand: your trying to dissect the Black vote is a waste of your fucking time. I need you to spend your time understanding that white people and white people alone got us where we are. White supremacy is why we're here. These Black voters made their choice based on understanding, fundamentally, although white people do not evaluate, investigate whiteness, everybody else does. Because we've learned, we know that our actions, what happens to us, are a direct result of the decisions that white people make.

So although you've never investigated, studied, evaluated whiteness, that's what we have learned to live with. And so we know you better than you know yourselves. And that's what pisses you off. We know you better than you know yourselves. I often tell the community, I should be a fortune teller, because something will happen and I will make a prediction—it's not even a prediction to me; it is just the obvious thing—and down the road you come to me and like, "Oh my god, Kim! You knew it."

Yeah, because I have the privilege, the benefit, the unfortunate benefit, of understanding whiteness better than you know yourselves. So this is why we're reading "White Rage". Because I need you to understand that I'm not buying—and many are not buying—the narrative of whiteness is always the hero or victim and never the villain. In this reading, you are the villain. And I need you to embrace, get uncomfortable with, in understanding and unpacking whiteness in such a way that...