Is It About Race, or Racism?

and racism. And in this book he debunks twenty five of the most top sick racist arguments, breaking them down one by one, everything from critical race theory to affirmative action and other issues, and gives the logic behind how we should respond. And one of the questions that I ask Keith in this interview is, well, if we're never going to get back you know, the thirty percent, like, who is this book for and how how should it

be used? Because I think that what we know is that when we have issues of racism, right, whether it's the killing, you know, murder of a black person, the rhetoric around immigration, people either shut down or they go into their corners right coming out ready to swing, And so I think that Keith's new book gives a lot of great perspective as well as tools to add to your toolkit. The book is why does Everything have to be about Race? That conversation with Keith Boykin is coming

up next, folks. I am very happy to welcome TOKF Daily national political commentator, author, executive producer, all around bad ass Keith Boykin, whose latest book, Why Does Everything Have to Be About Race? Twenty five Arguments that Won't Go Away? Is out this week. Keith, first of all, wonderful, Like that is the question, that is the question on top of questions. I think that people on the left pose it as why does everything have to be about race?

Like why can't you know, people on the right have a conversation that doesn't come back to racism, that doesn't come back to white supremacy. Then you have people on the right that say, why does everything have to be about race? Because I think any conversation that you have that is about equity and justice for them. Why can't we just have these neutral, you know, non racial conversations. Why was it important for you to write this book right now?

was built on race. It was built on racism, to be honest, and it's important to acknowledge that it's becoming increasingly important because we were living in an era where there is a great deal of denial about that racial history, where presidential candidates and people in political prominence and positions of power and influence are trying to erase black history, trying to deny the existence of continued black oppression, trying to center a white victimhood, and trying to gaslight us

all about what's really taking place. So the reason why everybody everything is about racist is because white society made everything about race. They created a society where we had no choice but to uh to see ourselves because of our of our race. And I, you know, I do this test in the book. I won't call it test. Maybe it's a question. I guess it's probably a better way to say it. Where I ask people, I tell

them to do a Google search. Look for Just do a simple Google Google search, look for the history of racism in fill in the blank. Whatever topic you're interested in. It could be hockey, it could be homemaking, it could be chemistry, it could be whatever it is you're interested in. Just do look up that the history of racism in that field that you're interested in, and you will find that racism has had an impact on every single element

of our lives, of our lives. And that's really the sad state of affairs that black people and other people of color have been dealing with for centuries without acknowledgement.

more aligned with the poor black and brown people who were in a similar boat that they were. But by creating this thing called whiteness, they were able to allow white people, even who don't have anything, you know, a pot to pissen or a window throw it out of, to make them feel like they have this sort of

investment in whiteness too. I've talked about this sort of property right in whiteness that people have written about, including my former law professor Derek Bell at Harvard Law School, this idea that even poor white people get some benefits of benefit or privileged because of their whiteness. And part of that privilege means that they don't have to talk about it or acknowledge it, because once you acknowledge it,

then it becomes this zort of burden. But if you can just sort of carry on throughout your life and pretend that it doesn't exist, and you put the burden on everyone else and make them prove that they're the ones who are being oppressed when you're actually the one doing theress pressing, or you're the one who benefits from it.

and I forget the name. You probably remember the white professor many many decades ago who asked the question as she's explaining racism in our class, and says, to the white people in the class, raise your hand if you would want to be black, m right, just raise your hand if you would want to be black in this country, given everything that you've seen, you've heard, and blah blah.

Not one person, right, and so not one white person raised their hand and so there is this thing where they absolutely know that racism exists because when asked basic questions, the contortionism that they do to have it be that we're making this up in our heads. And I'm like, how could every group be making this up? And the reason why I say that your book is necessary is because absent curriculum right that is being gutted in places

like Florida and Texas and other places. What do you believe happens, Keith if Republicans and the MAGA supremists are successful in their race a black history, black contribution, diversity, equity, and inclusion, and the list goes on.

why did you do that? And he says, because the truth is that I'm black and being black is problematic in the society. And then he asked Charles w He says, would you rather be black and live to be one hundred or white and live to be fifty? And we all know they answer that question, and Charles Ingles doesn't answer the questions, just kind of walks out, you know,

Michael Landing's character just kind of walks out. But you know, the reality is that most people who are white wouldn't want to trade places with us because even though they gas light us and pretend like racism doesn't exist. They wouldn't want to be black when they're pulled over by the police. They love that white privilege. They wouldn't want to be black when they try to get a taxicab in New York City or a major city and they know that it would be harder for them to do so.

They wouldn't want to be black when they walk into a department store and would have to be fouled. They wouldn't want to be black or even have a black sounding name when they apply for a job and know that that might have a negative impact on their ability to get hired. They wouldn't want to be black when they go to a doctor, and the doctor is white and is likely to see them differently and likely not to offer them the same pain medicine that a white

patient would receive. You know, they wouldn't want to be black, certainly when they go to sell their home, because we know from all the documented evidence that black people who try to sell their homes find their home praise at lower values than when white people try to sell the exact same home. There is a privilege, a benefit, a financial benefit, and a property right in their whiteness, and they don't want to They don't want to give that up.

So to answer your question, you know, is that they're trying to turn back the clock, Daniel. They want us to go back to that point in the past where we had no rights, not just African Americans, but people of color in general, LGBTQOA people and women who are already losing their rights in terms of reproductive rights. They want to go back to that time in the past.

That's what MAGA means. Make America great again means that there were some point in the past when they think that America was great and for those of us who were black are people who are a part of marginalized communities. There was never a time that America is better for

us because we didn't have any rights. You know, they want to go back to the nineteen fifties when when women couldn't could Yes, women could vote technically, but they couldn't even open a credit card without without their husband's consent. You know, people couldn't vote in a number of cities and number of states across the country, even though they

legally had their right to do so. There are all kinds of restrictions against them where LGBTQA people were forced to live in the closets and couldn't be open about who they were and their identities, and immigrants were unwelcome unless they were white European. So that's the America they love, that they cherish and they want to restore, and that's what they're trying to do. So the result of that shift is they want to erase all the people who've come in the past few decades and tried to change

America into a better place that's more welcoming. They wanted to go back to that unwelcoming place where they can say racist, sex is homophobic, vow bigoted things all the time without consequences. They don't have to be challenged on it by somebody in their in their office or one of their classmates or co workers.

always people who aligned themselves with their oppressors. There are always sheep who like the wolves because they somehow, somehow feel like the wolves will protect them and they feel like they're going to be a part of that group, and it's never been a productive, safe strategy for any

group of people. So if you look back at you know, I've been for the past few months, I've been looking at this documentary on BBC called The History of Africa was you Know Badali, And it's fascinating story about how African cultures evolved over centuries. And the reality is that a lot of the way that European colonists were able to take over parts of Africa is because black people were paid to sell out other black people. And we're

seeing the same thing now. There are some people who don't necessarily align themselves with the interests of black people in general. That's one category. Second category of people who feel like they don't really want everyone to be free. They just want some people to be free. They want black men to be free in particular, and they're not usually interested in liberating black women or black lgbt q A people or black people who come from different backgrounds

and experiences. They're not interested in any of that. They're interested in replicating a form of white male privilege, but putting it into black contexts so that they have the same privilege that white men have over their white women. Why can't we as black men, assistant and heterosexual black men have the same privileges that assistants or heterosexual white men do. I mean, you know, that's really popular in some cultures. You know, it's interesting because a lot of

people talk about rap and hip hop. Funny to me is that Donald Trump is the embodiment of everything that rap and hip hop uh is as well, and they and they all the negative aspects. I should say that that people ascribe to rap and hip hop and and and nobody ever knows and nobody ever really talks about that. You know, Donald Trump lives in this gold plated penthouse in Manhattan on Fifth Avenue. He's got this model wife who's been a who's post Newton magazines before. He's got

all these charges against him. Uh, he's reckless about the law and completely uh law not law abiding, but law breaking.

since eternity. But I also think it's important to put it in context because the overwhelming majority of black men do not support Donald Trump. It's maybe it ends up being eighty percent or eighty five percent instead of ninety five percent as it is with black women, but that's still larger than it is in any other group of people. You know, my mom lives in Texas. Whenever I go

to Texas, I'm always suspicious of people in Texas. You know, my mom is very friendly with everybody, and I get that because she lives there and all that, But I'm not as friendly and trusting of white people in the South, and white people, you know, who I feel like would take away my rights in a moment's notice. And people who voted for Donald Trump and both of his elections

and didn't vote for Barack Obama. So yeah, there's a lot of people who want that privilege for themselves and don't want it for any other people.

all are about. And I'm just like, how could you be like even more insulting, even more demeaning, right even to the people who quote unquote support you and want to wear the Blacks for Trump t shirt, right, Like, you know, whatever that is about, I want to pivot to another piece of your book where you are talking about, you know, the biggest boogeyman that we I don't think as Democrats actually faced in the way that it should

have been faced, which is critical race theory. I think that when critical race theory was made up by the republic plins use very successfully to turn Virginia blue right couched in this idea of parental choice, that Democrats went on the defensive and said, well, we don't teach that.

That's not what we're doing, right, And it was always about negating as opposed to posing better questions, right, talk to us about that piece in your book and why it's something that we actually need to be pulling the wool from our eyes about.

explained what critical race theory is. I was there, and I studied critical race theory in law school back in the nineteen eighties and nineties, so I'm very familiar with it, and I know the scholars who started it. But I also know that what is being taught in classrooms is not critical race theories. For the most part, it's American history. And people are so afraid of American history that they've managed to anything that they think is negative about American history.

They've managed to construct some sort of other category called critical race theory. No, this is true. Yes, America was founded on racism. Yes, slavery was a part, not just a part, It was a critical component of the success of America. Yes, the Constitution did count black people as three fifths of a citizen. Yes, the Supreme Court did say that black people, even if they weren't slaves, don't

have the right to be citizens in this country. Yes, even after the Civil War, the Supreme Court came back and said that black people could be segregated racially by their government, and that was okay because it was separate and and and separate but equal. Yes, our country has had thousands and thousands of extra judicial murders of lynchings of black people after the Civil War in order to try to keep us in line. Yes, our government policies

were created with the purpose of excluding black people. That history. That history wasn't something that black people just made up. It's not something that you know that that people are just kind of constructing the whole thin cloth. It's it's the reality. You know. I heard Donald Trump the other day talking about how we want to preserve Confederate monuments and why are they trying to change the names of these mind of these forts and all this stuff because

the World Wars were fought out of these forts. First of all, the world wars.

It's perpetuating the antithesis of Lincoln. Because this whole part of this whole this shift, that Southern strategy and then the shift from the parties in the nineteen sixties and seventies that Republicans hate to acknowledge, but there's a long history that needs to be discussed. Thomas Jefferson, Yes, he deserves the memorial because he wrote the Declaration of Independence, but we also need to acknowledge it he was enslaver with hundreds of slaves, and he raped his black slaves.

You also need you acknoweds that Thomas Jefferson wasn't in that George Washington wasn't enslaver and literally used the teeth of his slaves, enslaved people to put in his own mouth. You know, there's a whole history. Even Abraham Lincoln was a white supremacist. Yes, he signed the Emancipation Proclamation and pushed to the thirtie Amendment, but he made it very clear in his remarks repeatedly that he believed that there was a superior race, and that was the white race.

There's a whole, long history. They don't want to talk about that, even a lot of the Democratic heroes of the twentieth century. You know, until we get to the nineteen sixties, what both parties had in common, in my opinion, was that they were both racist, overtly racist. You know, they made appeals every now and then to try to be less racist, to be more inclusive, but they were

both overtly racist. When the Social Security Act was signed in nineteen thirty five, it did not include most black people because most black people were agriculture and domestic workers, and they were purposely excluded because the southern Dixiecrats didn't want them included. You know, when Lyndenhnsen was a notorious racist who used the N word repeatedly until he had a change of heart and he became this civil rights champion,

his hero in the nineteen sixties. Even people who Republicans love to talk about, you know, the who is the West Virginia Senator I can't think of right now Robert Byrd, who's a former Klansman. They always say he was a grand Wizard of the Klan. Well, first of all, he was a klansman, but he apologized for that, recanted his beliefs and moved on. And unlike some of the other people in the Republican Party, the Storm Thurman's of the

world who never really apologized. And yet Trent Lott in the two thousands, the former Republican Senate majority leader, was praising strom Thurman's nineteen forty eight segregationist campaign. That's American history.

is left to go. The last question that I want to ask you, Keith, is this for all of the things that you've laid out, and the point that I want to pull on is that you know, up until the nineteen sixties, up until more so in the modern era of our body politic, both parties harbored, celebrated, created monuments for racists. Right that that is the thing that these two parties have in common, and I've had in common.

While one has tried to become more multiracial and try and right the wrongs of its past and look together to a more progressive future, their formation and their beliefs only began to deviate right part way through the twentieth century. And so when young people gen zers, a very important voting block, say I don't like neither of them and I'm not going to vote. And this spans race and spans ethnicity, and spans orientation and identity, what is your response to that.

working class. That's beloney Black people are mostly working class voters, and the black people have been the most loyal constituency of the Democratic Party. What they mean is they've lost a percentage of the white working class. And the truth is that no Democratic candidate for president has won the white vote since nineteen sixty four, when Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act. Ever since then, white voters have fled flocked to the Republican Party, abandoned the Democratic Party

because the Democratic Party broke the contract. The contract was that two parties could argue about tax cuts and power in foreign affairs and all those other issues for years and years as long as they were both basically pretty much racist. And even you know, a Republican Party of the of the nineteenth century that pushed the Civil Rights Amendments, the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth Amendments, and the Reconstruction era,

that party died. It died in the nineteenth century after when they made a deal in eighteen seventy seven to allow Rutherford B. Hayes to be president and in exchange for that, they withdrew federal protection for black people in the South, and that ended Reconstruction and the Republican Party of the eighteen sixties and seventies essentially began to die at that point. And so yes, there was there was lip service to civil rights, but nobody did anything about it,

and neither party cared about it for first centuries. But once once you get Lyndon Johnson New Sciences, Will Rights Act to sixty four, the Voting Rights Act to sixty five, the Fair Housing Act of nineteen sixty eight, and introduces Medicare Medicaid and changes the policies about the way we treat black people and endorses affirmative action that this is white people the hell off, yep, And that's when things

start to change. So I think it's you know, it's ahistorical for people to look today and say, oh, there's no difference between the two parties. I will grant you that the Democratic Party hasn't been able to achieve in recent years some of the many things that I would like to see it do, namely, and I pointed to the George Floyd Justice and Placing Act and the job is Voting Rights Act. But the Democrats are at least

trying to do that. I mean, there are some Democrats who are not on board with that, and I would be the first to criticize those people. But the president, the vice president, the leaders of both houses, and most of the people who I respect to the Democratic Party have been pushing for those things. If the Republicans who have been in opposition to it, and a lot of people say, well, the Democrats or relation, they shouldn't be claiming that they're going to do these things if they're

not able to deliver. But you have to understand the way our system works, and you understand it. You know, one king, the president is not a king, can't do anything on his own. That's also why I'm a little you know, I love Cornell west and I and I love what he represents, and that actually love Marian Williams since he's authored one of my favorite books, Returned to Love. But to be honest, I don't think either one of them would ever be uh. First of all, I don't

think it could be elected. But even if they were elected, I don't think either one of them would ever be an effective leader because you can't lead our country if you don't have people in your in your party who were who are supporting you, who are following you, and you know, running a third party is not an effective way to to run a country in this nation, because you can't get anything passed through Congress. If you don't have people in your in who represent your party in Congress,

you can't get any legislation passed. You can't sign executive orders because the courts will just overturn them. So people need to really study their history and understand the way the American civics works before they start talking about what they want to happen without figuring out how we're going to make this happen. So, yeah, I would love to see third parties. I don't think the Democrats Republicans are enough.

I think we need other parties. But I think in order to do that, we have to start by building the grassroots infrastructure. We have to elect city council members and mayors and state representatives that's so important, and school board members and governors and state legislators and others. You know, that's why you really start to build that momentum for change. It doesn't start by electing a president who can only serve for two terms eight years max. And then have

everything overturned by the following president. You have to have sustainable change, which means you have to have an expansive view of where that change takes place.