You're listening to Comedy Central.
America really needs good teachers, because without good teachers, you get college dropouts who say things like this.
Now, Kanye West is defending himself against really the indefensible.
He said slavery was a choice.
Here's the same you.
Hear about slavery for four hundred years, for four hundred years. That sound like a choice, just me, No, Kanye, slavery is not a choice.
Going blonde is a choice. Both are terrible, but one is easier to undo. Although, actually, you know what, when I think about it, slavery was a choice for white people. White people were like, Hey, should we keep doing stuff ourselves or make other people do it for us?
Yeah?
Other people?
Yeah, that sounds good.
That sounds good.
Good choice.
So Kanye West popped up at TMZ's offices and decided to freestyle some history lessons. Thankfully, TMZ Stuff of Van Lathen was there to call Kanye out in person.
Producer Van Lathan taking West to task about the slavery comments.
While you are making music and being an artist, the rest of us in society have to deal with these threats to our lives.
Frankly, I'm disappointed. I'm appalled, and brother, I am unbelievably hurt by the fact that you have morphed into something to me that's not real.
Wow, that was powerful. I was really really powerful. And you know there was one scared white person in that office who was like, hello, police, there's two black people arguing in the office right now. You know, normally I wouldn't really care what Kanye West said about slavery or black history. But what does suck is that now every member of the Tiki tourist club out there is going to use Kanye's words to justify their hates. Basically, the way Kanye samples old school soul music is how racists
are going to sample him. Now, I'm going to be like, well, black folks, that CHOI says like slavery. I know we've all been disappointed by Kanye West, but it turns out he's not the only one who doesn't seem to understand slavery in America. A recent online survey found that only eight percent of American high school seniors could identify slavery
as the central cause of the Civil War. Yeah, and even worse, ten percent say the winners of the Civil War was Captain America that's scary, and this seems like an insane statistic. But when you see how some schools try and teach slavery, you'll understand why.
A homework assignment out this week at a charter school in San Antonio has set off an uproar. The students were instructed to make a list of the negative and positive aspects of slavery.
This is the paper Robert Levar's eighth grade son was given to fill out in history class. You can see his son wrote not applicable on the side, labeled positive aspects, and wrote a long list of negative aspects. Robert says, there's no excuse for this assignment.
Okay, First of all, that kid gets an A for life. That was amazing, because that assignment is horrible. Like that assignment is so bad, it almost seems like a trap to find the racist kids in class. It's like, okay, kids, what were the positive aspects of slavery? I know, cheap labor trick question, Go to detention a little grand wizard, and.
It gets worse.
It gets worse because these insane lessons on slavery have spread into other subjects somehow.
Gonette County parents are outraged tonight over third grade math homework.
It referenced slaves picking fruit and violent.
One problem said each tree had fifty six oranges. If eight slaves pick them equally, then how much would each slave pick? Then there was another if Frederick got two beatings per day, how many beatings did he get in one week?
Okay, okay, first of all, two beatings time seven, that's fourteen beatings. But secondly, slavery is too serious to just casually drop into math problems. And by the way, I'm not just worried about how inappropriate those questions are. I'm worried about how it's escalating. Like first it's just picking oranges, next it's beatings. You know, if the next question starts out with eight men in white robes show up to Frederick's house rob So look, obviously, these assignments aren't treating
slavery with the weights it deserves. But it turns out some teachers go too far in the opposite direction. A Bronx teacher blanding in hot water for what he allegedly did to children during an assignment on the slave trade.
She singled all black students, told them to lie on the floor, and stepped on their backs to show them quote how it is to be a slave.
A controversial lesson about slavery has been pulled from a to Rito's High school. A mother complained recently after getting this email, staff would act as slave ship captains. The email described and the children's slaves. They use masking tape to tie their wrists together, make them lay on the ground and in a dark room, have them watch a clip from the film Roots.
What the people.
Imagine how confusing that is for a child, because on the one hand, getting tied up is terrifying, on the other hand, getting to watch a movie in school as sweet as hell. Like if you asked eight year old Trevor to get an ass whipping to watch Jurassic Park and Science Clouds. I'm taking that beating. It's all right, and you have to admit that lesson was historically accurate. I guess you know. Slave captives did tie up Africans, load them on boats, and then had a movie nights.
The Africans were like movie or chains. I can't see this screen. This is my favorite part. Nobody puts baby in a.
Gunna ha.
And look, I know I know some people say, Trevor, no, these teachers are just they're just trying to be creative and how they teach. And I get that, I get them. But here's my question. How come teachers only seem to get creative like this with slavery, right, It doesn't happen with any other historical subject. Like they're never like, hey, Connor, because you're Irish, I'm gonna take away your lunch so you can learn about the potato famine. They never say that.
And then also this thing of like justifying bad things in history. You know, you never hear of teachers asking kids to write an essay on why the iceberg was good for the Titanic, or asking for three reasons why those people deserve to be eaten by Jeffrey Dahmer. Like, all I'm saying is, if you're gonna teach slavery that way, teach it all the way, or at the very least, if you're gonna teach slavery this way, and the lesson
on a high note. You know, if you tie the kids up and make them watch roots, then afterwards they get to watch Jango unchained and with the teachers ass right back. According to the Internet, Winston Churchill once said history will be kind to me. I know this because
I intend to write it now. I'm not sure that he should have been so confident about how history would work, because it turns out that he never actually said that, but he did say something very similar to it, which makes it more accurate than most quotes on the internet. You know, And to be honest, I guess there's just something very powerful about having a person having some italicized texts next to their face. But the point about history being written by the winners is true. I mean, just
look at the American Revolution. America won that war, so history teaches it as a fight for freedom against the tyranny of England. But best believe if England had won the war, well, history would be about how they put down a riot by a bunch of cheating thugs. They's domestic terrorists, threw our chay into Boston Harbor. While trust as Native Americans, which aside from being criminal, is very problematic.
And if history is taught by the winners, nobody in America is winning more than white people, which is why so much of what's in schools has been from their point of view.
African American history is not taught adequately. What we learned, essentially, is of whitewashed history.
Studies have found less than ten percent of class time is devoted to black history. Only eight percent of seniors can identify slavery as a central cause of the Civil War.
There is no national standard for what history is taught. Each state said standards, which outlines what students are expected to learn. Seven states do not directly mention slavery, and a do not mention the Civil Rights movement. Only two states mentioned white supremacy.
The kids learned that slavery was bad, but we ended it. Some stuff happened, but Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks kind of fixed that. And now look, Barack Obama, we had a black president. Racism is over. We're done.
Yeah, it's pretty crazy that most students in America are only taught about a handful of important black Americans, because can you imagine if it were the other way around? Welcome everybody to white history. One oh one. We start off with Thomas Jefferson where it all began, and then well, nothing really happened until Tom Hanks. Class just missed. But yeah, basically, America treats history the way most people treat their browser history just delete all the embarrassing stuff and hope no
one notices. But the good news is that as society changes, they re examine their posts and ask themselves, should we keep telling ourselves what we wish happened, or should we understand what actually happened. And that's what's happening in American schools right now. Students are asking their school administrators to incorporate anti racist education into their curriculum.
They aim to have books written by a person of color and their life struggles are required part of the curriculum.
In North Carolina, a committee of social studies educators proposed that the term systemic racism should be included in the state's curriculum standard.
California State Board of Education has created the nation's first statewide model for ethnic studies curriculum at the high school level.
Education officials say that kids do need to learn about discrimination and oppression, that textbooks often overlook a lot.
Of times in school, you don't see a big representation of black history.
I see comments all the time saying I learn more on TikTok than I do for my own school.
Yeah, that's how much education is lacking in America. Kids are going to TikTok to learn, which is insane. Social media isn't supposed to be a school. It's supposed to be where you post stuff that gets you suspended from school. And I'm not saying you call it learn about history on TikTok. Please don't get me wrong. I'm just saying you gotta be careful not to mix up history with everything else happening on TikTok. Wait, So Harriet Tubman started
the Underground Railroad and the weight loss Dance pretty dope. Now, look, re examining your history is not easy to do, especially if it requires some self criticism. You know, in many ways, writing history is like a breakup. Each person wants to tell the story about how they were the one who was right and the other person was an asshole. You know, it feels better to say she wasn't nice to my family as opposed to she found out about my secret
second wife. And in the same way as American schools are starting to change what they teach about America's history with racism, it's causing a strong reaction from people who aren't comfortable with what their kids are learning.
There's growing backlash tonight against what critics call the indoctrination of public school students in an anti white curriculum. It has to do with the teaching of what is called critical race theory.
Critical race theory teaches people and our children to judge one another not based on the content of their character, but solely on the color of their skin. It would have our children growing up hating this country and hating one another.
It teaches more or.
Less that America is inherently racist, stating more or less that if you're born white, you are necessarily racist.
Essentially, every white person should apologize for being white and what happened two hundred plus years ago.
We are tired of the continual drum beat of our educational system as used the program for kids to program our kids into thinking that America is a country of hate and division.
Just because I do not want critical race theory tak to my children in school does not mean that I'm a racist.
Dammit, bravo. Tearing up is like a white woman's go to move for getting out of it any sticky situation. Well, if it got me out of a speeding ticket, I'd see if.
It works on a historical reckoning.
Look, I get why these parents are upset. I mean, they don't want their children learning that white people are inherently racist. But that's not necessarily what teaching about racism does. For example, a big reason why American neighborhoods are segregated today is because historically the government made it almost impossible for black people who tried to move into white neighborhoods.
It was called redlining, and it was a societal structure that still has racist effects, even if no white people in those neighborhoods now are personally bigots. The point is that you can look at your history critically without believing that you are personally to blame for it. And a good example of this is Germany. Right, they teach the Holocaust in the schools, but little Klaus isn't walking home from class like, oh mama, it should been a Nancy. This says that I was hitner I did the same
thing as him, even I'm five. Yes old, No, that doesn't happen because Germans understand that we learn from history to grow from it, not to wallow in it. But you see what's happening right now is that in America some people don't understand that, and their hysteria is spilling into actual laws.
Several states, including Florida, Idaho, and Iowa, have worked to ban the sixteen to nineteen Project and critical race theory from their core education plans.
Arkansas became the latest state where state agencies are barred from teaching any concept that the United States is an inherently racist nation. In Louisiana, a Republican lawmaker is now under fire for comments he made on the House floor when proposing the theory's elimination from academic curriculum.
If you're having a discussion on whatever the case may be on slavery, then you can talk about everything dealing with slavery, the good, the bad, the ugly.
There's no good to slavery, though, Well.
Then whatever the case may be, you're right, You're right. I did mean to imply that.
Wow, guys, Wow, it's almost like this guy wasn't properly taught about America's history with racism. Huh. Although I am glad that he recognized how wrong he was, you know, but part of me does wish that he had just kept on digging in. Oh, really, you think that no good came from slavery?
What?
I'm the only one who likes the blows. None of you like the blows. Who's the real racist now?
Hmm?
Still me? I guess it is still me. And you know what's really weird about this whole thing is how the same people who freak out about cancel culture now want to use the power of the government to stop bad ideas from getting into schools. But I guess the solution is if anyone rarely wants to get anti racism education in schools, well they should put the curriculum and mister potato Head's penis and that way, Conservatives will defend
that shit to the death. Now, look, don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that systemic racism is behind all of America's problems. In my opinion, I think a lot more laws are written to protect the upper class from the lower classes. I mean, that's why a lot of laws that screw over black people also screw over poor white people. Like a lot of counties in America pull poor people over and ticket them for random things like tail lights or whatever they want to just to meet their quotas.
But what they won't do is do that kind of thing on wall streets, right, They don't pull people over who have access to lawyers or access to power. No one's frisking down the guys from Wall Street to check if they have cocaine. They want to go after poor people. And it just so happens that the easiest way to find poor people in America is to look at the color of their skin, because if they're black, the chances are higher that they're poor. Or look at how it's
illegal to jump turnstiles in New York. I mean, that's targeted towards poor people, but it affects black people more because white men can't jump. But look, that's just me. Big issue that is being brought up with this controversy is what is the point of teaching history? Like, what is the actual point? Is it to make kids feel good that they live in a perfect country with no problems, or is it to give them an unsparing assessment of how society got where it is so that they have
the tools to change it in a better direction. And I say it should be the latter, because otherwise, as a wise person once said, those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it. My guest tonight is an award winning reporter for The New York Times, magazine and creator of the sixteen to nineteen Project, which commemorates the year the first enslaved Africans were brought to the colony of Virginia, and it examines the ways the four
hundred year legacy of slavery continues to shape America. Please welcome Nicole Hannah Jones. Thank you, welcome to The Daily Show. Thank you and congratulations on creating and working with a group of people on a project that has gone on to become more than just a moment, but rather a rethinking of America's history. Let's start with the why behind this. I mean, history seems like it has been written, so why try and write it again?
Well, history has been written, but it's been written to tell us a certain story, and the sixty nineteen Project is trying to reframe that story, and it's really about the ongoing legacy of slavery. We've been taught that slavery was a long time ago, get over it, which is something nearly every black person in this country here's at
some point. And the sixty nineteen Project is really saying that slavery was so foundational to America and institutions that we are still suffering from that legacy now and it's exploring the many ways that we still are.
It's interesting that you've chosen the year sixteen nineteen because many people would say, but this was before America existed. You know, why not start at America's founding and then not include the years before when this was a colony in Virginia and Britain were involved. So why do you choose that point and why do you argue more importantly that on the fourteenth you say, on the foreigner anniversary of this fateful moment, it is finally time to tell our story truthfully. Yes.
So it's funny because this year is also the Foreigner the anniversary of the Mayflower. No one argues that we shouldn't learn about the Mayflower because that predates the United States. We know that that was an important moment. I would argue that the White Lion, which was a ship that arrived a year earlier carrying enslaved Africans, was far more important to the American story than sixteen twenty than the Mayflower. So no, America hadn't get formed, but Virginia was the
first colony. Our institutions would come out of the thirteen colonies. Our legal system, our cultural system, our political system, and certainly the anti black racism that we still ruggle with is born at that moment.
When you start off in this magazine, there's a really beautiful passage in the beginning where you talk about your personal journey and how you struggled with your relationship with America as a country, and it's a really beautiful tale. You tell about growing up, you know, on the land where so many people had died and toiled as enslaved people.
You also talk about how your father was a proud American and how you didn't understand how he could be proud to be American when America seemed to be against him in spite of everything that he did. How did you reconcile that or did working through this project change your view on how to be American or how not to be American?
Yeah? Absolutely, working on the project changed my perspective on my father. I opened the piece talking about how my dad, who was born in apartheid in Mississippi, flew this flag in our front yard on this giant flag pole, and he was one of the only black people I knew who flew a flag in their yard. And I was deeply
embarrassed by that. But as I started researching for this project, and my essay is really about how black Americans have had this pivotal role of actually turning the United States into a democracy, I got that he understood something that I didn't, That no one has the right to take away our citizenship and our rights to think of ourselves as American because so much of what black people have done is what has built this very country that we get to live in today.
What do you what do you mean specifically when you say that, because that was that was an idea that I don't think I had fully thought about before I read this magazine, was the concept that America's foundation was a lie, in that it was a group of promises that weren't that weren't fulfilled, you know, to both people of color and to women in many respects. And and what you argue in this magazine is that black people basically have the job of making it a truth. What did you mean by that?
Absolutely so, when Thomas Jefferson writes those famous English words, we hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal. He owns one hundred and thirty human beings at that time, including some of his own family members, and he understands that one fifth of the population will enjoy none of those rights in liberties. So
we are founded on a hypocrisy, on a paradise. But black people read those words and said, oh, we're going to believe that these words are true and apply to us and fight again and again. We see them fighting at the Revolution. The first person to die for this country was a black man named Christmas Addics, who wasn't free. We see that happening with the abolitionist movement, largely led
by black Americans. We see that happening at the Civil War, with the reconstruction amendments, and of course the Civil rights movement, which brings the franchise to large segments of America for the first time. So we said we were founded as a democratic republic, but most Americans could not vote at the time of the Constitution. But thanks largely to black resistance and freedom struggles, we are as close to a multiracial democracy as we've ever been.
A really beautiful story in that told not through the lens of anger, but rather through the lens of collecting stories. You know, it's it's it's the fact that it's a little angry, doesn't It doesn't. It doesn't feel like so much as it feels like a truth. What what it has sparked, though, is a fight over history and how the history is told. You know, once this magazine came out, there were many historians who who you know, came after
you and said, no, this is this is incorrect. The primary reason that America sought its independence from Britain was not because they wanted to maintain slavery. It was because of taxation without representation. It wasn't the primary cause. Why do you think there's such a resistance to slavery being one of the primary causes of America breaking away from Britain.
Because we need to believe as a country that our founding was pure, that yes, you know, we had some troubles, including holding five hundred thousand people in bonded, but that largely we were a nation founded to be exceptional and these majestic ideas and that are found though complicated. Men were men who were righteous. But when you argue that our founders were many of them very hypocritical, and that you can't just simply overlook the fact that slavery was
a motivation. In some of the colonies, just taxation was a motivation, but also the ability to keep making a lot of money off of human bondage. That is very unsettling, not just to the average American but to historians who
have seen their job as protecting that founding narrative. The difference is, you know, when you're black in this country, you don't have the luxury of pretending that that history didn't exist, and what that history has done is really marginalized our story, when really the story of black people and slavery is central to the United States.
When you worked through this project, there are new pieces of information you discovered. There are stories that you find were never told that needs to be told. And I know you can't write about everything, but I was interested in whether or not you would think that other countries who are in in slavery get off easier than the United States, because the one thing they did differently to America as we know it is that they sort of
outsourced slavery. You know, if you think about whether it was the Americas or Spain or many of these other colonial nations, their slaves were in the countries and then they left those countries and were like, we're done with slavery, but they also don't have to deal with the people they enslaved, whereas America has an interesting relationship where you have to deal with the people because they're still here.
So not just not to feel sorry for America, but do you think there's also a reckoning that should happen in this way in Europe?
Maybe?
Oh, for sure, all the colonial powers need to have a reckoning, and reckoning also needs to happen on the continent of Africa. But I think the fundamental difference there's too Yes, slavery occurred in the bounds of the country that would become America, but also of those colonial powers, America is the only country that was founded on the idea of individual rights and liberty. Interesting, that was founded on the idea of God given inalienable rights. None of
those other European I mean, these were monarchies. They weren't founded on idea that every person had equal rights, but we were. So that hypocrisy really matters. And of course I argue that that hypocrisy is why we have struggled so much to get over and address the issue of slavery, because it forces us to acknowledge this lie at our founding.
Before you go. One of the main questions many people may have, and you see this unfortunately all too often is people saying, why do you have to keep trudging this up? Can't we just move on? It's been four hundred years now, can't we just move on? What do you hope would be sparked by the conversations that come
from a magazine that delves into slavery like this? What do you want someone who sits at home and says, they go, Nicole, I'm white and I have nothing to do with this, and I don't know what you want me to do. What would you hope people take away?
That's a great question. Let me just say for the record, nobody wants to get over slavery more than black folks. It's not it's not to our benefit. I say, the fact that our nation can't get over slavery is not benefited black people for a single day. But that's the problem. We've never dealt with the harm that was done. I'm forty three years old and my father was born into a Mississippi where black people could invote, Black people couldn't
use public facilities. That was all perfectly legal. We're not far removed from this past at all, and there's never been any effort to redress that harm. So what I hope that people will take from the magazine. Every single story in the magazine starts with America Today and shows how these things about American life that you think are
unrelated to slavery actually are. And I hope by confronting that truth, maybe we can finally start to repair the harm that was done and then finally start to live up to be the country of our ideals.
It's a fantastic job, fantastic magazine.
I really wonderful have any on the show.
Thank you so much.
Explore more shows from the Daily Show podcast universe by searching The Daily Show wherever you.
Get your podcasts.
Watch The Daily Show week nights at eleven ten Central on Comedy Central and stream full episode any time on Fairmount Pluff.
This has been a Comedy Central podcast