Black History Around the World

host of Make It Plain, another DCP entertainment podcast. And the reason why I'm excited about this month's conversation with Mark because he's doing something really exciting on his show, which is using the twenty eight days, you know, the shortest fucking month of the year for Black History Month, to bring listeners in for fifteen minutes a day on facts and history and interesting things that we can discuss

during Black History. I think that what often gets lost, particularly in America, is like white people have picked five Black people that you can talk about for twenty eight days and then that's about it. And what Mark and I get into in our conversation today is that Black history isn't just within the borders of the United States. Black history is rich. Black history is diasporic, right like

it is the world. And so we will talk about Egypt, we will talk about our history and first civilizations, things that are missing. Frankly from our regular history and discourse. Right, things that are being erased, even the small things that we have gained over many centuries as black people, and in the public school system, things are being erased. And so it's a really great time, folks. And I tell you that for me, Black History is three hundred and

sixty five days of the year. I'm always trying to read new things, watch new things, connect with the different people, and bring them to all of you all year around. If you notice, if you've been a long time you know, listener and watcher of woke f you know that a lot of the folks that I bring on from are from multiple disciplines, right from multiple industries, and they are people of color. And I am intentional about that because

I think that exposure is necessary. And you know what annoys me so much is the fact that you know, I will tell you this, My mother got a call the other day asking if she would go to a high school on Long Island that is predominantly a black high school to teach yoga for the students for Black History Month. She was asked that question on like February first, to do something on that Friday, and my mother opted out and it was just like, I'm not going to

be somebody's token. And if you're really intentional about wanting to create something for your students, then why would you wait at such a late date. And this is something that many black professionals, academics, thought leaders, activists have said, is that you have institutions, organizations, corporations that will reach out in the eleventh fucking hour every single Black History Month to see what they can scramble and do, as if it is not the same fucking month every goddamn year.

If you actually want to be intentional, if you want to be inclusive, then miss me with your symbolism around Black History Month. Reach out to people you know, I don't know, months in advance, like you would do for anything else, right, Like, we're not the fucking sloppy leftovers, right, the sloppy seconds of this country. And it is insulting one to be asked to do things at the last minute, and then also to have the audacity to ask us to do those things for free, as if this country

hasn't taken and stolen enough labor. Right. But you know, I say all this, folks to say that we are no longer and probably we Honestly, we've never been able to just rely on institutions to provide us with the information that we actually need. We need to go out there and grab that information ourselves and spread it far

and wide. And so I encourage each and every single one of you who are dedicated listeners and watchers of this show to connect with buy the books of some of the folks that mark mentions in our segment together coming up in the next couple of weeks. We have conversations with so many incredible folks. Buy their books. Right particularly now, I think that it's going to be so important for us to begin to buy books for one another,

share them right by. You know, when you think about what should I get so and so and oh a holiday or a birthday or this is coming up, share knowledge. That is where our true power lies. And that is how we're going to be able to fight against the dark forces of misinformation. Right it is going to have We're going to have to be intentional about our learning and push away the malaise that these times are bringing onto us. Right this, you know, I don't want to

do anything. I feel languishy, I feel depressed, I feel all of these things We're going to have to be intentional about the ways in which we treat ourselves and the ways in which we want to expand our minds, our heart, our imaginations. Right, and so I really hope that you guys enjoy my one on one with Mark. I think we're referring to this as make It Woke. I think it is the best title or plain as Fuck. But I love this crossover. I love my conversation with him.

Please hit me up in the comments sections and let me know what you guys think about some of the information and history that Mark offers up in this special that we are doing monthly. Folks, it is the beginning of the month, which means that we are doing our crossover episode with our friend Mark Thompson of Make It Plaine, one of dcp's political shows. And when we crossover, we come up with random names like make It Woke, make

It Gourmet, make It Woke as Fuck, woken Plane. We have no idea, but it is a delightful time to be in conversation with my friend. Happy Black History Month to you, Mark. How are you just a few days into this shortest month of the year. Well, I'm fine. I hope you will always a pleasure to do this with you. Happy Black History Month to you as well. So you are doing something really exciting on Naked Plane

for the twenty eight days of Black History Month. Now, you and I both celebrate Black History all year long. But for those folks that are looking to get more than the stale Martin Luther quotes, that Martin Luther King quotes that are rolled out by white conservatives, then the normal, Oh here's Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglas. Let us roll them out, but you know, contextualize them in any way or give them the fullness of character that they deserve.

You were doing something what I think is really informative and interesting on Naked Plane. Tell folks what you're up to this month. Well, we're doing, and thank you for that. We're doing precisely the opposite of that, Danielle, in the sense that even when it comes to Black History Month observances, our history begins and ends on these shores in America. If we're gonna talk about black history, we've got to talk about world history. We've got to talk about the

many aspects of it throughout the diaspora. Black history includes Africa. Black history includes the Caribbean, Black history includes South America, Black history includes Europe. Over the years that I have been on the air at different points, I've kind of tried to have a university of airways when it comes to Black history and talk. We've had an opportunity of the asatuks to some of the most iconic scholars in

Black history. Unfortunately many of them have passed on, but the likes of doctor John Henry Clark, doctor Josef been Yakin, and doctor Francis chris Wellsing, doctor Ivan van Serdam and doctor Charshi McIntyre and most recently doctor Ronoco Rashidi, who passed away last year his expertise and I would encourage people to read all of these authors and scholars even

now and that now that they are ancestors. Reinocco spent his life studying the African presence throughout the world, and so we have a footprint as African people all over the world because we were, after all, the first civilization, so everything flows from us. Now. I know some people are offended when you say that, but that is just

a biological, genealogical human fact. Also in that same vein what we're focusing on, this, this Black History Month is actually the role of Egypt in Black history and African history and African American history. Um, many of us know about the civil rights movement. I mean, that's the history most talked about, slavery, that's the history most talked about, Civil War, all of that. But a lot of us still have not embraced the reality that the first civilization

on Earth was an African civilization. It was in Egypt, which is what the Greeks called it, but we called it kimmitt in the indigenous language of the meta nature. And so we're exploring that, and it's really been um profound. Uh. Tony Browderum is leading that conversation. Who is really become the heir of parents to all these other scholars who transition to the ancestry. He leads right now the most popular tour of Egypt, historical tour of Egypt. I encourage

everyone to go on in. He has discovered you know, white folks told us that they discovered everything in Egypt, right, But they're discovered everything period to the right, right and but but he has discovered even more tombs of ancient dynasties in antiquity in Egypt and it's the only African American doing so to lead these types of excavations, and so it's really exciting. Um, and so we're learning about it. One thing I'll say, and I think you particularly will

find this interesting. Um. You know, social media has become so ubiquitous in our lives and so many things are defined on social media. I'm not real comfortable with that because social media alone not making one credible. Okay, just you know, scholarship in history, and so they're those who use social media to exaggerate their knowledge and credentials, and they have invited scrutiny when it comes to issues of history and black progress, black thought, black movement, and they've

even inspired a pejority. I'm sure you've heard people who are called hoteps. People like and many of these hoteps. This term is often assigned to men who purport to be in our freedom movement, but who oftentimes women accused of even being sexist. What is unfortunate. We talked about this this month. Hotep is a meta natural word. It comes from our culture. It means peace, just like Aslama licam.

It was the name of a great African multi genius, the first world multi genius m Hotep, who was the father of surgery and medicine in ancient Egypt, in ancient Kimmitt. It's really sad that a term indigenous to our people in our history, hoteps, has become a pejorative and we have made the inn word endearing. So we say when we speak with someone neighbors, so that's a hotel. But then when we see a friend, oh, that's my nigga.

So it just goes to show you how we have in this culture on these shores which are ours, and how we were brought here, how we have managed in that assimilation to turn everything upside down on his head. We need to figure out a way in Black History Month to turn the right side up, you know, Marky brop So, I mean so many things. One, I have always wanted to go to Egypt. I have always wanted

to go on an excavation. I don't know, maybe it's like that the inner crusade uh in me from growing up in you know, in the eighties with all the movies that uh that used to come on. But I've always wanted to do that because you know, everything that you stated is fact, right, like we the birth of civilization comes uh comes from from Egypt, from blackness, right, and I mean we have always been been taught the opposite.

But it is through that whitewashing, through that brainwashing, um, that we have been removed, displaced, disassociated, disembodied from this history. And this is what pains me too about Black History Month is at one, it's the shortest month of the year, which I just find insulting on its face. But then also, you know, we in America have the have the ability to just keep having the same cyclical conversations with the same characters, as if as if it isn't a global

as if we aren't a global people, right um. And I and I think that too. You know, these these uh iterations into different conversations about our ancestry are necessary, and especially at a time when we're battling against radical right wingers who are doing what they've always done, which is whitewash history, which is a remove anything um that was discovered, innovated, changed, you know, build upon, or created

by black indigenous people of color. And so, you know, at a time when book banning is now back in vogue, where now you're you're seeing curriculums and teachers be threatened you know, how how do people engage or how should they attempt to engage with this level of understanding? What kind of intentionality do you think is necessary in order for us not to be swept up in the latest

white erasure. Well, you know, it's funny. I had a friend in the movement called me late last night to really raise that question, and he said to me, he said, you know, we're fighting on all these fronts voting rights. Now we're about to have a big fight around the first black woman's Spreme Court nominee, which really shouldn't be a fight. And I'll come back to that in a minute. And he said, Mark, who is fighting against all of

the education banning that is going on? And I think about it, said, no, you know, no one there is right now, not really any organized movement unless it's happening on a super local level. And I'm not even aware of those to stop the banning of books and knowledge and education. It is mostly some thing that is being covered by the media, but there's not necessarily a movement

to do anything about it. So we all understand that we've got to figure out how not to be so overwhelmed, how not to how to walk and chew gum at the same time. But see, I think this is the point, and this is why our history is kept from us. This is why I was kept from us during the period of enslavement. This is why the true meaning of the Bible was distorted the Bible. We were taught that

we were supposed to be enslaved. Knowledge and information is power, and that's what they have been trying to keep from us. So if we but knew that we are descendants of the first civilization, the first scientists, the first doctors, the first language speakers, the first even interpret human kind's relationship with God, the first women to be rulers, equal rulers

with men in dynasties. If we knew and understand that we could believe in ourselves that we could tackle all of these things and not be so overwhelmed and not feel so besieged and marginalized. If our young people today knew that pursuing stem fields and stem education is in their DNA, because we come from a place where all of these sciences were created. If they knew that they could excel far greater than they ever could. But what's happening right now that's not being taught, and it's less

likely to be taught with all this banning. So an answer to your question, we ought to organize, We ought to fight on the level it is it is, you know, school and education policy is at the local level. I've always been an advocate, Danielle, of local organizing and local mobilization because that's ultimately where decisions are made. I've said that about the police departments. There's no national panacea or no national policy that can cure all police. Police departments

are government locally. We can't tweet away police violence. Okay, Come on voting rights, All that's controlled in the states on a local level. That's what election boards are, the election commissioners and the secretaries of of of of state. We can't tweet that away either. We've got to get our hands dirty. And if we really want to know the history of Dot's king not the stale versions. As you mentioned, he organized locally. He went from Montgomery to Birmingham,

to Sealman all Beny, Georgia to the Chicago housing projects. Now, if that King were around the day, people be telling him, hey man, you need to get you a national social media account and get a blue check, and you have a national organization. Everybody I got a nationally but but but not about going into the trenches that he tried. He went into those places. He said, we need you to come to Chicago. He went Chicago and moved into the projects and struggled around that issue. So that's the

true history of doctor King. All politics is local, all local politics is personal. We've got to do that. And so if we're going to combat this thing, and I really think we this is this is passing us back. We're missing an opportunity to engage in this fight, and we're going to look up and be sorry for it.

You know, I want to stay with this for a moment too, because I will tell you that as a former educator that when I was in the classroom teaching black and brown kids in Washington, DC, you know, I made it a point to try and develop curriculum, to try and develop units for first and second graders where they could see themselves, where they could get excited about what it was that they were learning, because it was

a reflection of them. It was it was you know what we consistently hear that if you see it, you

can believe it. And so that makes me Mark think to myself, this isn't just it isn't It's like the tentacles of white supremacy are so many and so deep because they know that to be true that if if black people let's just talk about black people for a moment, if black people on new their true history, their true power, their true connection to source, right, then they would assert themselves right in a way that is about power and

ownership and voice. And so part of the grand experiment right of chattel slavery, was to see what happens to generations of a people right over centuries when we disconnect them from their source and then feed them right the lines from our Bible, our interpretations of why whiteness is superior, right, and just give them a steady diet of that. And now you know, when I was a public school teacher,

I was saying, you know, here's the thing. Public school and I say it all the time on woke f is the biggest proponent of white supremacy because by virtue of the peep white folks sitting up in a room and being able to design curriculum for millions of kids across the country, they get to tell you what should be digested who is important, who should be celebrated, and who shouldn't be right, who should be ignored. And so when you continue with that prophecy right, it becomes a

self fulfilling one. And you know, and then you want to give us, give us right, these symbols of equity

without actually providing equity, right, without actually providing culture. And so the question that I have for you, because this is something that I did think about a lot, is you know, as and maybe there is and I'm just unaware, but as Black folk who are very diverse right in our in our origination, whether it be from the Caribbean like my people hail from, whether it be from you know, from um, you know, various parts of South America, African nations,

or what have you. Should we be developing much in the same way that you have Sunday school for Christians, you have you know, you have synagogue, you have this, that and the other thing for other religions and races and ethnicities. Should we have or is there right schooling that is about filling in these purposeful gaps for K through twelve and on. Well, that's a part of our history too. There has always been at different points in our history a freedom school movement at different points along

the way. Probably hasn't been anything like that since the late sixties and early seventies when the Black Panther Party and other organizations did that. The All African People's Revolutionary Party used to have something called work study where people would come together even as adults, see because some of us got to go back to school too, because we don't know and understand our history and our culture. But

that is not what it used to be. I think the places where that is mostly housed now are in private and independent African Senate schools, And when you look at it, you know, you would go back to the eighties and nineties. And I was involved in that struggle, the African Senate education movement, where we looked at all of these K through twelve public school systems in the country, many of them predominantly black, and we wanted to insert

African Senate curricula into these schools. There was there were big fights about that and then eventu really um they managed to manipulate other cultures, our enemies into watering it down to multicultural education, and then that was taken away. That never really even got off the ground. So so you know, we've gone from that to this now where they don't they want to ban books, even books having to do with the oppression of other people like Jewish

people from from the school system. But yeah, we do need that, Danielle, But we keep we have these fits and starts. We will start and then we won't finish. That is a part of the oppression that we deal with. Um, we've got to get beyond that. We've got to stop behaving as if wm IC the white Man's ice is colder. Um, we've got to go back to our HBCUs. I think the generation behind you and me, well, I'm a little older than you, but but they these kids need to

go back to some of our HBCUs. And I'm glad to see more parents doing that. I'm glad to see more professional athletes kids. Yeah, yep, normally go to a Division one right school, say well, I'm gonna go to HBCU. I think what coach Prime is doing in Jackson State is a good thing, and coach to Georgia Tennessee State. But you're right, we have to get back to that because the other cultures do it. They understand their culture where they came from. But they have not been for

four centuries, right right? You hate themselves right like we have. Yeah, you know, I think that that is an important thing to note too because I often, you know, we used to really piss me off back in the day, is when you know, black folks would be like, well, why can't we be like Jewish people? Why can't we be like this group? Why can't we be like that group? See how they're together, see how they built community bahba.

And I was just like, because there wasn't a systematic, you know, strategic plan over centuries to break them down, to make them hate themselves. Right, There wasn't are there? You You have family trees that are going back generations, you know, centuries for some cultures, and ours was stopped dead in its tracks, right, given new names, new last names, moved around, broken apart, And so it can't be looked at as like, oh, well, black people just won't do

for themselves. It's like you have to understand too why there have been so many fits and starts over so many years, because it has it's been purposeful to have this kind of of of breakdown. Um, yeah, I agree, but but let me let me help you out here. You can't say that. Um We as African people are not allowed to comment on the Jewish experience without some punitive results. And I'll leave that there. I mean, that's just a fact that some folks might get upset about

hearing that. Um So, what I like to do is, instead of using your words and my words, I mean, someone who is universal, universally renowned in this Black History Month and beyond as a spokesperson for many people was

James Baldwin. And so before folks criticize anything that Danielle has said or I have said, this is what James Baldwin said in a seminal piece he wrote entitled Negroes in nineteen sixty seven, he wrote, Nigros and antimic because they are anti white, and in that he describes how growing up in Harlem, the Jewish shop owners and landlords weren't very kind to us, and in our experience, we didn't distinguish between jew and white because you don't necessarily

know that just looking. And I'm saying this folks having been in conversations, especially coming out of the Women's March experience, which was destroyed by false anti Semitic charges. If we're gonna have dialog with each other. We have to acknowledge black people our issues, but the Jewish people have to also acknowledge and call out those in their culture who hide behind white privilege. Because you can be Jewish, but you can also hide your Jewishness behind white privilege. And

so what. And I know folks don't want to hear that and deal with it, but that's a fact. See if if, if who, people would probably still be suspended for saying what I just said. Because people do not. We are still so infantalized, still so much oppressed subjects of this country. We cannot have intellectual thought or analysis

or critiquities matters. But here's what James Bondoul says. Just for one thing, the American Jews endeavor, whatever it is, has managed to purchase a relative safety for his children and a relative future for them. This is more than your father's endeavor was able to do for you, and more than your endeavor has been able to do for your children. The Jews suffering is recognized as part of the moral history of the world, and the jew is recognized as a contributed to the world's history. This is

not true for the Blacks Jewish history. Whether or not. One can say it is honored is certainly known. The Black history has been blasted, maligned, and despised. The Jew is a white man. And when white men rise up against depression and they are heroes. When black men rise, they have reverted to their native savagery. The uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto was not described as a ride, nor

were the participants maligned as hoodlums. The boys and girls and Watson Harlem are thoroughly aware of this, and it certainly contributes to their attitudes. So that's James Barwin. That's not me. As April nine, nineteen sixty seven, and we're still fighting those some of those battles, looking for our history to be respected, looking for our uprisings and our liberations to be respected, and it has not happened yet unfortunately.

You know, I appreciate you so much for uplifting James Baldwin, particularly in this moment, because I think that it's not I think the goal of white supremacy has always been to pit marginalized groups against one another right for their victory. And you know, I wrote a piece that will you know, hopefully be up tomorrow on this entire endeavor around Whippie Goldberg, and it goes back to what you had said earlier.

We don't have discourse, right, And what I said is that there was an opportunity and there still is an opportunity for us to be able to model how we have difficult conversations about difficult topics. Right, that we just don't deny them, we just don't erase them, we just don't purposefully omit them, right, but that we challenge them and we ask questions, and that we come to the table with good faith actors. And whether or not you know, I said, did Whoopee make a misstep? Absolutely she did.

But if you would to have asked, if you would have done one of those late night television on the street reporting and asked people passing by black, white Latin acts Asian Pacific Island, what have you whether or not they knew or understood Jewish people to also be a race as we understand it can have been taught to contextualize race in the United States, They would have said no, right. And so to me, that goes back to and hearkens back to my initial point around education, around this banning,

around this silencing and censoring. That doesn't allow us to explore these conversations and have and unpack narratives that we've been fed. Race isn't just you know, this black and white construct that has been created to place the white man in America at the top of the pyramid with us at the bottom, right, it is it is a lot broader than that. Particularly if you have traveled right and you and you see how people are are battled against each other and from the outside looking and you say,

but they look exactly altic. But it's it is how we in the United States have been taught to despise difference, but based on just what we can see, you know, and not also what we can hear, what we understand, what we touch, and how people orient themselves around their faith. And so I think it's important right to have these really difficult conversations and model them. And my question mark is that are we so far passed and removed right right now from even being able to say, America, let's talk.

We need we need public discourse again. We need to show how we can exchange ideas. I think about Baldwin and the shows that he went on and the conversations that he had, and the recordings and the writings and all of these things, and I say, where is that now? Well, James Baldwin obviously was extraordinary, but we still live in a society where other cultures able to choose their spokespersons, and we are not, as black people, and so I

think that unfortunately, we're locked out of those conversations. You're right, you know, Whippy was wrong. She really made one mistake on the issue of race. But I don't think she should have been suspended. It's a question of understanding. Yeah, whoopee was speaking of what she saw was two groups

of white people at war with each other. Where she what she did not get is that under those circumstances, Hitler had declared his group of people, the Arians, the perfect race, right, and and that's where she missed it. But I think everybody understood what she was trying to say in a modern context, because race is today and racism is today maintained and sustained when it comes to people of color. And that's not to say anti Semitism it doesn't still exist. That's not to say the Ku

Klux Klan does not still exist. But I you know, it was a misorientation, a misunderstanding on her part, but it still shows how low we are on a totem quote because she, like a child, had to be disciplined for that. Even though she apologized, she still, as a black woman and a black queen, had to be set down, and it was said, you need to take some time to reflect on this. Now, who decides what adult can order that upon another adult unless they see that adult.

Because of the color of her skin. As a child, we were called boy and nigga geo. We weren't call men and women. And so for those who might think that sitting her down and making her reflect, he serves them what it says to all of us once again, we are infantilized and we cannot even when we make mistakes, we cannot amend for those mistakes. While this country still has not amended for its crimes against us. We still

have no reparations. But Ruopie Goldberg has to provide reparations in the form of a suspension for just words that came out of her mouth that were misspoken. So in that environment, I don't know that the opportunity for those

types of dialogue exists. I know I've been involved in some of those dialogues you know, people are doing them in pockets, I guess on their own volition, But in terms of a larger national dialogue, no, because we live in a country where you literally have people right not trying to promote another civil war, trying to promote another insurrection,

and they're not prepared to do that. They're not prepared to lay down their swords and shields, and we're still fighting just for our basic freedoms of nineteen sixty five Voting Rights Act, for which John Lewis almost gave his life and others and Jimmy Lee Jackson did give his life, and Voodeluzo, a white woman, and the Reverend James Reid, a white Unitarian minister. They gave their lives the Night five Voter Rights Act, and they've gutted it. We're going backwards.

So I'm not sure, Daniel, honestly, how we can talk about having a collective dialogue or building the beloved community that can call for if everyone in the beloved community is not speaking the same language that we need to restore all of these rights, and these rights need to be in place, and they must also everyone also cannot. In this Black History Month, in particular, marginalize the ongoing

oppression of our people every day. Yeah, Mark Thompson, as always, you really do, really make things plain, and when you're here with me, you make it woken plain. I appreciate it. Folks, make sure that you check out Make It Plains wonderful Black History Month, giving you fifteen minutes each day of history of conversation of interest that has not been mainstreamed and should be. Mark, as always, dear friend, thank you so much for your time, for your voice, for your work,

for your activism. I appreciate you. I appreciate you, and always always wonderful to get to do this together. That is it for me today. Folks here on woke f as always. Power to the people and to all the people. Power, get woke and stay woke as fuck.