Birthing a Cruel Nation

live free in a democracy that is backsliding? What does it mean to have patriotism towards a country that has done everything and anything that it can to ensure your subjugation if you are black, indigenous, or a person of color or from a marginalized community, and so on today's episode, I am so grateful to be in conversation once again with my friend, doctor Christina Greer, who is a political scientist and associate professor at Fordham University here in New

York City. She is also the author of Black Ethnics and the co host of faqn YC and host of the Blackest Questions on the Grio. In this conversation with Christina, and you know, if you've been listening to WOKF that Christina joins the show. Ever so often, you know, we talk about the complications of being a black woman in

these United States. How do we keep our sanity, let alone have some semblance of freedom in a country that wants to right on all of its marble buildings and statues and plaques, use quotes and messages about justice and equity,

and we know that those things are false advertising. Because when you just begin to slowly peel back the layers right, or just slowly begin to open up your eyes to the real America, you know, the the activation that is happening behind the curtain, behind the smoke and mirrors, you realize that this country, boy, you know, is kind of

the master at gaslighting. And you know, for those of us who have built careers around wanting to perfect our union, wanting to educate those to believe that they have the power and the ability to shape the future of this country, some days, folks are better than others. Some days feel a lot better than others. And there are times when we're just like, you know what, fuck it, y'all can have this mess right, you can burn it down if

you want to, just leave me the fuck alone. And the reality is is that Unfortunately, white Evangelical Christians, the far right, the you know, Republican cult party, They refuse to leave people alone. We do not live in a live and let live society. It's live and let me oppress you and contort you into the ideas of who you should be, who I think you should be, and

not who you tell me that you are. And so this conversation with my friend, doctor Christina Greer, we talk about, you know, her work as a professor in trying to shape the minds or open the minds and expand the minds of the next generation of political scientists. We talk about her ideas around freedom and liberty and equity and how we keep our shit together when some days we just want to walk out of our front door and

just you know, give a primal scream. I wish we could all just decide on the time of day that we would do that and just do it. I think it would do us all a great deal of good. I hope that you enjoy this conversation between myself and Christina. Folks, you know, whenever I have the opportunity to rope in my friend doctor Christina Greer, Political se Scientists Associate Professor at fordom University, an author of Black Ethnics, and co hosts of f BAC NYC, and the host of the

Blackest Questions on the Grio pod. I am overwhelmed with joy because we get into so many conversations and Christine, I will tell you this, a lot of people will tweet me and be like, I love when you have a Christina Greer on It's the best conversation. So so welcome back to wok F. It is fourth of July week and on the pod, we are doing our cookout where we are bringing on our favorites and you are

definitely always at the top of that list. But we also want to talk about and have conversations around what does it mean to celebrate this country's independence. I have a very complicated relationship as well as many people know.

And you know, the fourth of July, you know, it is a bunch of flags waving and people putting out their flags and going to old Navy and purchasing flag gear, and that he is supposed to identify their patriotism, right, but us, you know, black folk in particular, you know, just marching in the streets and actually wanting this country to live up to this creed. We are not seen as patriots. We are seen as antagonists to America's legacy. So in this season of America.

them tell it. It's like we're a bunch of like criminal derelicts that ran across the ocean and rereak taboc. So our origin story has never been correct, Like we've just created these false narratives and origins stories. I mean, the same way we talk about like Kim Jong il and Kim Jong un just created these like fake narratives of North Korea. So do we I mean, that's just that's just what countries do. Sadly, and we have this independence in the shadow of genocide and chattel slavery and

just real brutality and exclusion. And now fast forward to twenty twenty three, we're supposed to stand outside in line for fireworks and celebrate this great nation. Now that being said, I do think that, you know, there is a lot of potential in this country, but it's because of the people who are most abused, who actually have invested in this nation to try and make it into the thing that it's supposed to be. It's far from the ideals, but we have to be realistic to say that we

have come a very long way. I mean the fact that the two of us are not enslaved and we're sitting here chopping it up on a podcast. So the issue with America is that we have never answered the question as to like, who really gets to be a citizen. Deep down, we're still kind of grappling with that because you know, as I write about black ethnics, as you mentioned, you know, black people, it's like we always get to

be American with a prefix. We don't just have to be American, yeah, you know, and lots of other people get to be Americans based on phenotype, and we see a lot of people are trying their hardest and their damned is to try and just be American without whatever

their ethnic preface prefix will be. But I think we still have not really grappled with specifically for black people, because there's a there's a definitive dichotomous relationship between black people and white people, largely because black people are the only immigrant group, migrant group that is a non voluntary immigrant. Everyone else came here looking for something. You know, Nikki Haley,

I see you. So you know, everyone's families, you know, chose this country for a reason because they wanted something. They believed in the ideals. Black Americans we have a different narrative, We have a different relationship with this country.

So when we think about our citizenship and our quest to be included, as we fight for this country, and we've been in every single war since the beginning of this nation, right so as we celebrate seventeen seventy six, you know, we're going to have this big two hundred and fifty year anniversary coming up in three years. You know, we've fought and died and bled for this country. We've been lynched in our uniforms in this country. You know,

after we came back. We survived atrocities abroad, only to come back and you know, be caught up in the hand of you know, white domestic terrorism. So on the fourth of July, I'm reflecting on all that this country has been, all that it could be, and to be very honest, And this is one of my bosses told me when I worked for the High Commissioner of the Gambia in London many years ago, and I was like, oh, America, and I was talking crap about America and he was like,

but it's your country, Chrissy. He's like, why do you let them sort of make you believe that it's not your country. He's like, you've been there longer than most people. I mean, you know your people. He's like, your people have built X, Y and Z, your people have toiled, your people have actually helped the country move forward, So

why would you abandon something that is rightfully yours? And so I always remember that conversation from nineteen ninety eight, and I really try and remember, like, yeah, this is my country, and like my ancestors actually have contributed more than most and sacrificed more than most. Right, so I actually am allowed to celebrate how I feel like it. And part of being an American without a prefix, all with the prefix, is that I get to celebrate the fourth of July however I see fit and however my

spirit moves me that day. And so if I feel like going to a cookout, sure, if I feel like, you know, hanging out with friends and seeing fireworks, sure if I feel like reading you know, sol on ice and sitting at home and you know, reading black literature and not acknowledging the jolly forth other than the fact that I can't go to the post office. That's my

prerogative too. So I think I'm just sitting in my feelings as to where this country has gone and all the beautiful things that it has produced, and all the ways that it still has to live up to its ideals. You know.

people knowing that you exist. And you know, one of the things that I have done, and I talk about this, uh with with my friend the wherever Mark Thompson because he has done it on his show is reread right Frederick Douglas is you know what to the slave is the fourth of July And every year for the last couple of years that I have reread that and sometimes I've recited it with my sister on Instagram lives, I

have recited it on this show. It takes me to a place where I realize, you know, if not for right, if not for the enslaved, right, if not for their forced labor, if not for their blood, if not for their tears, if not for the ripping away of family, if not for all of their sacrifices, where the fuck would America have been America would never have been able to fight off the British. America would have never have been able to claim its independence because it would not

have had the economic capability to fucking do so. And so I get so enraged because I feel like there has been a entire industry that has been created to make us believe that we do not belong, and all we have ever done in this country post our enslavement is be that square that is trying to fit into this circle, right that it rejects us at every which way.

And so there is a part of me that I remember really being like, you know, my family's Jamaican, right, Like my family came to this country in the nineteen seventies, Like y'all can have your fucking Fourth of July, Like I really don't care, right, but then recognize it, but I am American. They came to the United States, so that right being something right, And so there is just this conflict of I don't want to own this pile of shit, right because it's fraudulent and its depiction of

what democracy and what patriotism is. I feel like the Fourth of July to me is a charade, right, It is very much a charade, and even after now the Congress had wanted to make Juneteenth the federal holiday, while we have twenty three states in this country that have outlawed thought it is. It's an aggressive insult to our intellect and to our ancestors sacrifice.

so we have to sort of say, hey, problematic, here's why. Right. And again I said this all the time to white allies who were just like what should I be doing? And I always say, it's like, remember when you're about to have a party at the house or cook out or whatever, and your mom is running around trying to get everything together, right, you have people coming and I love it, and it's like, what should I be doing?

And she gives you that look like, girl, if you don't look around and start lifting some things like why do I need to tell you to empty these trash cans? Right, to cut these vegetables, to make these beds? Like So, I just think that in our quest to have these hard conversations, continuously hard conversations, right, just about police brutality, not just about inequities in school and housing, not just about the way that you know, black women get ignored

in all facets of politics and policy. But in this conversation, even in this larger like, while we celebrate this seemingly benign thing, it's like, well, why do you think X percent of you know, your fellow countrymen think that it's a bullshit holiday? Dot dot dot? Look around, answer some questions for yourself. Right, read a book. We've got the interweb. Like I tell my students all the time, I'm like, hey, y'all, I didn't have college. I didn't have internet in the college.

What I'm like, Right, I did not have the Internet in college.

It's like you just got here. So but we see sometimes the newest newcomers are the cruelest, and they're the ones that want to cut the latter out from from anyone who wants to come right, you know, talking to people who used to be undocumented and they're immigrants themselves. You know, I'm thinking about Latinos in Arizona right now, and it's like, wow, you are really anti immigrant. Job.

Why don't you ever read like five minutes ago. So like we're not having these complicated conversations about how all these all these different angles of what it means to be in America, what it means to be a citizen, are wrapped up or should be wrapped up in conversations that we should have on the fourth of July about what does it mean to birth the nation from another

cruel nation? The differences they did all their other nastiness on other people's soil, so they didn't have to look at it at the kitchen table, whereas America was like, ooh, let's try something new, let's do it in our own house, right, so that I can get my wife and my kids in on the project. The British didn't do that. They were like, let's go to the four corners of the

earth and do horrific things. But then we can, you know, take shower, change our clothes, come back, come back to England, sit in front of our families and pretend that, you know, we're civilized people. In America they were like, no, I got to get Missan in on it. And by the time my child's four, they fully know how to be an enslabor right, they fully understand race and racism and the power dynamics they're in and how they can control a grown as black man, right as a child a

white child. So there are different ways that America adopted British cruelty. I mean, they're just British people with soil and changed their names the same with like Australians. You know, it was like a whole bunch of British criminals. We

get it. So that history as to like the husk that we come from, you know, the the nation that birthed this nation, it's like, was highly problematic with how they treated people in Jamaica for example, right, or people in India, or you name said country across the Caribbean, across you know the yeah, you name it. When you go to the British Virgin Islands. I mean, I told you.

I was just in Saint Martin. I was like, Wow, the French and the Dutch just came up here, couldn't get it together, split up a whole island and it was just like oughay like and we still run things, still rent it. Like you can barely even get property on the French side because it's like unless you your grandfather ad it your sol And I was like, so we think about all these European nations that did this stuff and how America's emulated this horrendous behavior. The difference is, yes,

we have done it. Listen, ask people from Puerto Rico and Guam, right, and Saint Croix how America does it. But we also have done it on our own terra pharma. And for me, July fourth is the time to reflect on all the amazing things that this country has produced. There was a great play called Ain't No Mo that was off Broadway and then it got to Broadway. Unfortunately it didn't do very well, but I mean you did okay,

I guess, but it ended early. But one of the beautiful things about this play was they had to, like when they were going to Africa, all them on an airplane together, everybody, Barack Obama was flaningplane. They couldn't take anything that we birthed in America. So it's like, what

do you mean. We can't take our music, we can't take our literature, we can't take our art, Like and you realize we've created the cultural schema of the United States, right, so many art forms, so many forms of everything, political, thought, whatever it may be. It's like it comes from us. So for me to turn my back on a country that you know, the vast majority of all the great things come from people who are you know, I'm descendant of,

I can't. I can't turn my back on that. So like I am kind of proud to a certain extent to be part of this really great lineage. It just happens to be, you know.

as heroes every time that they return. Look what we have, we what we are bringing to your people, and we can we can tell this tall tale, this fucking lie, not about the raping and the pillaging and the murder and the scalping and all of these horrendous things that you were doing, the brutalization that you were doing. You're just coming back with the goods, and the people are like, look at our explorers, and that's the story that they tell.

But what America did was just like, no, we're gonna show you our brutality right in your front yard, but then we're gonna spend two almost two hundred and fifty years lying about it. To what you saw in front of your what you saw with your own eyes. It's like, are like what it's like that.

to hang out with comedians. I just think that they're some of the smartest people on the planet when done correctly. But you know, the fact that black people can find the funny in almost anything, especially dealing in this country, comes from knowing who like we we are looking at y'all laughing because it's like you really think that, hey, you're pulling the wool over our eyes and right like you believe that this country is like, oh, she's perfect.

It's just you all of the end perfect ones. And we're like, if you don't get out of here with.

in our forties. What how right? I feel like sometimes that's like, collectively all like forty five million black people, we're looking around like these people are lo co like wps, Like what are they doing? And it's like we're all in on it. And you know, I talk about this in my book. It's like you win some, you lose some, you know, Like I think that's kind of our attitude, which is like we try our best, but we're very clear. You could end up in prison for the rest of

your life over some bullshit marijuana charge. You can also end up, you know, going an ivy League institution because someone saw you, you know, one time in a spelling bee and here you are right, and then you go on and do amazing things and you have amazing friendships and you give back and all the things. So I

you know, I'm cautiously optimistic, I'm pragmatically optimistic. I do think that as hard as the road has been for black people in this country and a lot of other people, but you know, I'm thinking about black people on this particular holiday. As hard as the road has been, it has been some really beautiful passages on the road and some really beautiful people on the road. And I try and think of America more as like not polishing a

turd in the middle of a shit storm. But I kind of feel like we're like if you think about like eighteen forty nine, you know, like gold Prospectors, it's like we're out here and some things in this country. Some days it's like, Wow, there's some really great things about people in the places in this country. You know, Listen, I've driven across country and to all my students, they must do that at some point in their lives. It's

a beautiful nation, like physically just absolutely stunning. And then you know, just like the people, there are some really really great people in this country who are doing some really fascinating work. And then you know, we got to kind of sift through all the other nonsense, of which there's plenty, sure, But I feel like I don't want to only focus on the terribleness that is this country. Granted,

not to devalue that. I know a lot of people are going through just seems like a terrible onslaught all day every day. But you know, on this reflection of July fourth, I really do think that there's been some really great work. There's been some great coalition building. There's been you know, like black immigrants troops kind of coming together from different countries. There's been people who sort of

identifying with our struggles. You know, we've seen sort of different cities, different groups coming together of different racial and ethnic and class backgrounds. So I'm inspired. You know, also, as your listeners know, I teach the youth of America, I can't help but be inspired. These people are doing great stuff. They're curious. You know.

think about America really as a mosaic. And why do I say that, Because I'm like, this place is shattered, right, you know, it is sht like every but you can either walk over or choose to walk up with that fucking broken glass, or you pick up some pieces and you make something better with it, or you make something more expansive and different every time because something breaks all the time. And that's you know, and that's pretty much

where we are. It's breaking open people's thought and expanding minds and just understanding is I think, is you know, is truly the goal of what it is at all of us, at least that are conscious, are trying to do. So for me, that's that's the perspective that I look at it, and it's you know, it's a wild place to be. It's a wild place, particularly on these holidays, but it is a wild country to to existence. So

final final question for you, just real quick. In three years it will be the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the founding of this nation or whatever we call it, the independence, whatever we call it. Do you think we will have a democracy? Then?

it's incumbent upon folks. You know, It's like, listen, black women can't be wielding this sword and this shield every day all day. No, I'm tired of this magic whatever you keep calling it, black giral magic. Yeah, Like I'm over it right to black throg rest Listen, you know I believe in rest. I mean, what's so fascinating is

you know, I take vacations. So on the one hand, people are like, you're always working, Christy, You've got twelve jobs, which I do, right, But then when I take a two week vacation, it's like, oh my god, two weeks what are you doing? Do you ever work? And I'm like, which one is? Which one is that?