Transcript for:
Historical Development of Race and Slavery

In the 18th century, in what we call the enlightenment, we get a new source and that's science. And science includes taxonomy, which is classification. And so in the middle of the 18th century, the father of taxonomy is Lanaeus. um well-educated westerners uh and in this case of human taxonomy uh primarily Germans or Germanspeaking people um decided how to classify people and where people fit in the overall taxonomy of the world and uh so there were many many different ways of doing that. So I focus on Gingen uh in the western part of Germany because um young Friedick Blumenba who was the man whose classification of five races uh emerged as the most persuasive for a very long time. But Blumenbach had a colleague uh named Kristoff Miners and he had a classification of people into two ugly and beautiful. So there are all these different ways of classifying people depending on what the what the criterion or criteria were of interest or importance to you. Hello everybody and welcome to I believe it's episode three of Down with the King. Now today I am joined by someone who I'm going to be totally honest with you. I'm amazed that I managed to get her on the channel partly because I'm a massive fan and I haven't really hidden that from this particular person. Today I'm joined by Dr. Nell Irving Painter. Now Dr. Painter's CV could be a novel in itself. So, I'm not going to do her the disservice of trying to summarize it anywhere near its entirety. She has a degree in anthropology, a masters in African history, and a PhD in American history from Harvard University. She has a background in literature, authorship, art education that is probably the longest I've ever seen. So, it's a real privilege to have her on the channel today. One of the things about when I reached out to Dr. painter is she got back to me straight away and that truly amazed me. And not only that, but she took quite a lot of time to familiarize herself with the work that I do, which is really a real privilege and just shows the kind of quality of character that she has and the amount of dedication she shows to her field. Amongst many other things, Dr. Painter is the author of many books. The book that I was introduced to her work from is called The History of White People, which happens to be a New York Times bestseller. A book that didn't receive any awards, unfortunately, because of the controversial nature of its contents. She's currently completing a new biographical study. Sona Truth was a New Yorker and she didn't say that and it is an absolute honor and a pleasure to have her on the channel. Welcome to Down with the King, Dr. Painter. I'm sitting here and to me this is a I don't know if you've heard the expression fanboying. This is a little bit of a fanboy for me. It is a bit of a fanboy moment for me because to me you are a you I mean you're you're a heavyweight scholar and I just want to be a little a little bit selfish right now in saying that I don't know if you've caught up with any of my content and it's fine if you haven't. Yes. But I've recently just done like a series, a whole series on slavery, the Black Sea slave trade. And um I've looked at British slavery as well. And I just want you to know that you were the catalyst for that entire series. Terrific. Um yeah, your your book um the history of white people and the subsequent lectures that you've done were a massive eye opener for me. Um, yeah, you know, as someone in preparation for talking to you, I went back to the book. It's really good. Um, can I say like and I I totally empathize with that feeling that you have there cuz sometimes I go back and obviously you're a, you know, a PhD in his, you know, you're a proper historian, graduated from Harvard, all of the accolades, fantastic. Um um what do you call a what do you call a disography of books? What do you call that? A library. Someone's a bibliography. Bibliography. That's it. Thank you. Uh fantastic bibliography. Um and obviously lectured at Princeton and you've got all of the accolades. Um so I'm not trying to compare what I do, but even me, I go back sometimes a couple of years and I'm like, "Hey, that was a good Yeah. So hearing you say going back to a piece that you've written, how how old is that now? Is it 15 years or 2010? Yeah. 15 years. Yeah. 15 years. And it to write it took 10 years. Okay. I I don't doubt that. So um I guess going back and I'm going to let you shoot in a second, but I just wanted you to kind of know a little bit of the backdrop. I always had, it's one of those things where you know something and then you put it to the back of your mind because no one ever speaks about it. Yeah. And I always knew that the term slavery came from the word Slav. I always knew there was a relation there, historical relation. And I think most people in fairness know that. But that's all they know. At least that's all I know. Yeah. All I knew, you know. All I knew was okay. There's there's a relationship there between the word slave and slav. But it's not that important because we're told throughout our education that slavery is this thing that's exclusive or at least heavily weighted towards Africans. Yeah. And it was your book that just I guess it was like pulling out a thread and just opened the door to so much that we're not told. And it's not that it's not known, it's that it's just not spoken about. And since reading your book, I've been able to find other resources. So, I'm going to let you shoot now. I just wanted to give you that thank you for opening my eyes to this cuz I think it's transformative knowledge. It really is. I think what what you've presented is transformative knowledge. And if people understand Yeah. how nuanced this topic is, it really does transform the way that you view the world. It was transforming for me. Mhm. So my first question is, and I'm going to allow you to to run now and stop rambling myself. What why did you think it was important for us to have this discussion? What motivated you to write that book, The History of White People? It was a question. Why are white people called Caucasian? And you know, my books generally start with a question. I Uh, I wrote my first book with a particular person in mind, a woman named Francil Rousan Wilson, who was my first graduate student at the University of Pennsylvania. But after that, I just wrote for myself and not all of the things I wanted to write for myself have turned into books. So for instance, I wanted to write a book on personal beauty and that never became a book. But by and large, what I wanted to do, other people thought, oh yeah, that's kind of interesting. We could do a book about that. So it started with a question and I have never written with the sense of I want people to uh understand this in the way that I put it out. It's more uh here's some things I find really interesting and here's how I found out and um let's hope that you enjoy the reading. The the book itself kind of presents some information that a lot of people aren't going to be aware about. Um, we can talk about the odor list, but you know, let's let's go from the very start actually, cuz sometimes even me, I get into my um my rabbit hole of things I want to concentrate on, but at the very start, you've just reminded me about something in the book that perhaps um we need to touch on, and that's the the origins of race itself. this kind of idea of taking mankind and classifying them into these groups. Can you just take us through a little bit of what you see as the development of the races as we know them now? Yes. So um the races as we know them now that's part of human knowledge and it's also part of scientific knowledge. Scientific meaning that you don't have to belong to that particular tribe to believe it that everybody could believe it because it's basically true. And before the enlightenment, before the 18th century, the way that people in the western world, I dare not generalize to the rest of the world, but I think it may also be true. That source was religion. It the so in um western society and Christian society, I'm writing about this right now actually about sjourner truth. The idea of truth comes from the Bible. That's the source. And for centuries for Westerners, that was the source of truth, the Bible. In the 18th century, in what we call the enlightenment, we get a new source, and that's science. And science includes taxonomy, which is classification. And so in the middle of the 18th century, the father of taxonomy is Lanaeus. um welleducated westerners uh and in this case of human taxonomy uh primarily Germans or Germanspeaking people um decided how to classify people and where people fit in the overall taxonomy of the world and uh so there were many many different ways of doing that. So I focus on Gingan uh in the western part of Germany because um Yanfred Bluminbach who was the man whose classification of five races uh emerged as the most persuasive for a very long time. But Bulumbach had a colleague uh named Kristoff Miners and he had a classification of people into two ugly and beautiful. So there all these different ways of classifying people depending on what the what the criterion or criteria were of interest or importance to you. So, for instance, I'm talking to you from northern New York State. And where are you? I'm in London. Okay. And you're in London. So, our classification of the races might be um geographical. So, the people in London are a certain sort of people. So, they're all bearded and wear hats. the people in northern New York State have stuff on their floors. So, it depends on, you know, people would ask me, well, you know, I know we know all this sort of stuff about classification, what's really race? How do you really decide on race? And I would always say it depends on who's talking to whom, for what purpose, when, and where. Yeah, that that's such an amazing answer cuz you know what? I had a little bit of an epiphany yesterday. I can't remember who I was speaking to, but they were from America and the subject of race came up and maybe it was a comment I was interacting with and they mentioned that the races to them are white, black, Asian, and Hispanic. And I was like, those four classifications are very American. Yeah. Yeah. We don't even have Hispanics over here in the UK. So it has no we call Hispanics, but you call them something else. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. But I but even like the that kind of unique makeup of these slightly African, slightly um European, you know, sometimes even slightly indigenous people who have made this group that's called Latino. That's a almost uniquely American classification. it it's situated in time because in the early mid 20th century there was no such classification and how recent is that let's see um Latino Hispanic I don't know when it enters the US census which is so many Americans think of as truth in racial classification when in In fact, it is uh a policy document that changes every 10 years. And uh in 2000 um we had a new classification called ethnicity. So there was Hispanic and there was um Hispanic was not a race, it was an ethnicity. And that has changed in subsequent um censuses. But the whole question about what is a race and what is an ethnicity that changes over time and nobody can really tell the difference. Wow. You know, it makes me think about how complex this subject of race is. I think particularly in America, across the world, but I think in America shifts so much. And it's almost like race like races race is an emergent thing. races can emerge like you said for a period of time but then you could come back in 50 to 100 years time that racial classification no longer exists and as a result of that you know you don't have to wait that long it changes every 10 years and one reason you know so much about American race is that Americans been been tracking race for 200 plus years whereas in France for instance I think it's still uh illegal to track people by race. So it depends on the society how do you how do you want to classify people? And u one of the things that always interested me about Britain is that it seemed that the weight of class was so much more important than in the United States where the weight falls on race. Of course, race in the United States is highly implicated with class. Different people have got different ideas because I want to just since we're talking about this subject of race, I want to just pick your brain as a PhD in history about the origins of and I'm going to say modern the origins of modern racism because there's lots of different theories that people have. Two different things. Two different things. Racism is real. Racism is about policies. It's about discrimination. It's about what affects people in class terms, geographically, and so forth. Race is a concept. It's at the concept at the basis of racism. But racism is material whereas race is conceptual. Absolutely. So yeah, I guess to build on that, I wanted to get your ideas about its origins because I've done a little bit of research and um I guess my mind's settling at the moment. A lot of people cite the um the event called Bacon's Rebellion as a kind of a starting point because then you see saw some of the first laws written in which gave the white race advantage over the other races at that point. The English the English. Yeah. No, that's So I'm gonna hand over to you. Yeah. What do you What do you think? Yeah. Sorry. Go on. um that is comes from a very influential book by a very influential uh historian whose name I'll have to go back and dig out of my memory. But um the that idea uh which as you say is very influential is rooted in a particular book at a particular time and I'm pretty sure that book came out in the 1960s. So before that time, the notion of Bacon's rebellion as racemaking didn't yet exist. It's been very influential because it makes a lot of sense. And it also points to um documents uh legal documents that we can look at and trace. um for I don't see a watershed in that clear sense but I am not a historian of the colonial period in North America. Um I see things uh happening in very many different ways in different times in different places. And so if you look, Bacon's Rebellion is in Virginia, but if you look in Massachusetts, for instance, you might see something different. Um, but I would not discredit the idea of Bacon's Rebellion as a watershed in racial classification in North America. Okay. Do you have any opposing views or maybe complimentary views in terms of additional development? Yeah, additional. There you go. Yeah. And so I would look at demography um you know how many people you have where and what they do and how long they live and what they produce and so forth. And um by the turn of the 18th century uh the demography changes so that in the 17th century the peopleing of British North America or what became British North America there would have been large numbers of native peoples still uh who usually don't figure in the classification but they were there. um the um workforce producing commodities which is what we look at and we're talking about uh tobacco that workforce was overwhelmingly European a lot of English people Irish people Scots people um by the turn of the 18th century the the the re the growth of the Atlantic slave trade tips the demography to the and now we're talking Virginia and the southern states tips the demography away from European workers and toward African workers. And so there we get the uh the need to classify people tipping also toward African descended people. I guess I'm I'm going to dig a little bit further before we move on from this topic because obviously your book touches on this and um I think one of the things you mention is about kind of these shitloads of European children. Yeah. Coming over and being coupled with the Africans to work in indentured servitude. Mhm. Um I guess I wanted to kind of understand what what do you feel was that tipping or turn I know you've already said it's kind of state by state but are there any notable events that stand out in your mind that could have shifted the Yeah. shifted kind of like the the sentiment the demographics. Yes. Exactly. Well, yeah. Oh, the demographics as you said. Yes. And that that was the in virtual industrialization of the Atlantic slave trade. Mhm. Um in there was an Atlantic slave trade in the 17th century. It got kicked up and rationalized in that awful um uh monetary sense in the 18th century. So the numbers the sheer numbers of people um I mean it was an industry and I've always I didn't always say but I say now and I have for some years said that the Atlantic slave trade belongs to business history not race history. For one thing we've talked about the concept of race. I mean you can monetize race in some ways but if you look at the Atlantic slave trade in business terms then you see suppliers, you see uh warehouses, you see finances, you see all kinds of of arrangements that we recognize as business. And it you can't separate the business participants by race. I mean you can because we do but there suppliers whom we would call black. There are commodities people whom we call black and there are shippers whom we would call white. So in a way you can racialize that but you get into trouble when you realize that the suppliers are African people just as the suppliers in uh the caucuses or Ukraine were what we now call European people. But suppliers work on what pays not what sounds good in terms of race. That's very interesting. Well, it's I find it very interesting because um in the United States um I understand the yearning for a larger identity than African for people of African descent because there has been so much injustice. There has been so much bloodshed, violence, terrorism. I call that American history. For black history, I look at people who were uh creating and my u narrative history of black Americans is called creating black Americans. So the business's history I think of not as black American history. The business history rooted in African suppliers I don't think of as black history. I think of it as business international business history around supply chains and uh financial arrangements. One of the things that I like I said I've recently put out a series um where we talk about some of these subjects and I get a lot of resistance and I know you touched on this as well and I definitely want to get some you know there's a lot of push back but I'm going to tell you one of the the push backs that I do get and I expected it which is why I guess I I've been reluctant in or being very reticent in the way that I've released this series is people really take ownership of this idea of slavery cuz we've been taught it from a very young age. So yes, black people feel like we own the we the real estate. Yeah. The real estate of slavery and they feel almost like saying other people were slaves is an attack something away. Exactly. for me which I I first of all I have to be empathetic and I I can't because I one of the things I always say is I'm I'm Nigerian and I'm of I'm Brit I'm a Brit I'm Nigerian and I one thing I don't do is I never try to appropriate what I see as the African-American or the black American experience. I think it's something unique. Um, and actually I get really irritated and it might not annoy you, but I do get very irritated when black people go into America from different places from the diaspora and they're labeled as black Americans or African-Americans. And I'm like, no, you can't really do that because there's a historical legacy here that you have to respect. You know, I don't just go to America and become a black American even if I have children there. like that, you know, I have to be a part of that historical legacy. Just the same way a black person can't just come to Nigeria and become a Euroba, you know, you have to surprise some, you know, you have to respect the legacy that goes before. So I'd never kind of undermine it, but there is this thing where there's this protectiveness over slavery and they feel like they're being attacked when you mention and it's like no we we at least in my mind we have to understand that this narrative which is a initially white let's say Caucasian well I won't say white let's say Caucasian which is an which seems to be initially heavily weighted in the Caucasian region. then became a bit more worldwide and then became very heavily concentrated in Africa. It's good for us to understand this evolution of this slave trade because it's not something disagree with you a little bit in chronology. Um for me um slavery is something that happens all over the world. M what makes a difference is are the business arrangements that affect the scale. So for instance in the Black Sea slave trade which we've been talking about the scale was pretty big. The merchants were Greek um and they were shipping people from um Crimea to the Eastern Mediterranean. And we're talking thousands, tens of thousands of people. By the time we get to the 18th century and we're talking about the Atlantic slave trade, the scale is so much greater. M and I think that's what makes the big difference. So um the business history is of enormous scale. We're talking millions of people now and I remember I lived in Ghana for two years uh in the 1960s and um there was some talk I was at the University of Ghana so you know we had very high level conversations and um so often I would hear from I can't say African colleagues because I was just a student that there either was no slave slavery um before the Atlantic slave trade in West Africa or it was very different. It was benign. It was household. And then um for a project that I may work on after I finish my current Sjourer Truth book, um it's about how living abroad changed how I talk about the world or write about the world. I went back to some AfricanAmericans who were in West Africa in the 19th century and they talk about slave markets and uh you know it's again um kind of a business. It's a smaller scale business, but there was slavery uh in West Africa during before and I don't want to talk about after, but certainly during and before the Atlantic slave trade. The dis the difference is the scale and the rationalization of the business. So whereas um before the 18th century um people who were on the periphery kind of like in Ukraine in the caucuses they were subject to raids. Sometimes they sold their children because the family was hungry. Um rather smaller scale and um people were basically household servants and wives. Uh I won't get into the distinction or non-distinction between wives and slaves, but um so there was slavery, but the difference in the Atlantic slavery is the rationalization of the business of the trade. And I remember in the 90s uh when the Balkans were on fire and I remember saying to myself and to others that if there had been a market, there would have been um a very active slave trade uh in the Aian Sea uh in the Adriatic because there was so much disruption and so much warfare. that produces I hate to say this but that produces slavery. M so um there was not at that time a market a big market in the 18th and 19th centuries particularly the 18th century there was a market in the Caribbean and in the American south and so that spurred the rationalization of the supply chain. Let me ask you another question. And I think this one is going to uh perhaps be a bit more actually you might answer really straight or might be a bit more challenging. Have you ever felt the or had push back in terms of the scale? Cuz I think one thing that you you're communicating quite clearly is that the scale was very large. And I guess me as a Nigerian, a West African, um I've we've always had trouble and I particularly have had trouble um consolidating the published numbers with the oral local oral history and also with the local ethnicities. Tell me tell me more. What do the local oral histories say in regards to the numbers? Yeah. That they are a lot less. So, we can't find I guess I've found it hard to to locate these missing millions in terms of cuz people like everyone like there's a lot of people who think they descend from Euroba and I'm like well that's great but sure why not you could do I'm Euroba by the way and I'm like well you could you could descend from Euroba you know and I think that's a vast majority a lot of people I think they either Euroba and Igbo but then being present amongst Euroba and Igbo I'm looking for that large depopulation event that probably needed to have taken place to support the kind of numbers that we're seeing in the Americas and I'm finding it very hard to find these events. Yes. Yes. And that's because the vulnerable people who got shipped didn't come from the coast. They came from the hinterland of people who didn't have kings to protect them. Um they were also, you know, people make a lot of people. So only now are we worrying about depopulation and women not having enough children and so forth. Um women can have 10 15 children. So you can lose a lot of people and still not have a demographic collapse. But I remember I'm going to tell you a story about my own life and my own mother. I had wonderful parents and um I went with them to Ghana and um so u my mother had a house boy named we thought Adongo and my mother wrote a marvelous it was her second book a memoir called I hope I look that good when I'm that old. My mother was a gorgeous woman who looked great forever. Uh, and people told me, "Can I just pause you there really quickly? You said you had a house boy." Is that in Wait a minute. I'm coming back to that. Okay. Sorry. I have to tell you about my mother and her memoir because what we found out came when my mother was writing her book. Okay. So, my mother was talking about being in Ghana. My parents loved it. Uh I loved it too. Um but Kwami and Kruma got deposed and all us uh Amies had to leave. But at any rate, so my mother had a house boy named Adong and um he was a northerner and most of the real, you know, the house boy kind of people, domestic servants and so forth were northerners. It was a much poorer area than southern Ghana. And it turned out as we were researching him and his name that adongo means slave. So we had to change his name obviously in the memoir. But that that key that's excuse me that keyed us into where the people came from or some of the people came from who got caught in the m of slavery whether domestic or international. These are people from the hinterland. They don't have armies. They don't have protection. and the armies of the kings because I mean what are kings but big powerful warlords. They would go up and round up hless peasants in um in Europe in the caucuses in Ukraine in Russia in that area which did not have kings. um the Casacs who were the suppliers uh around the suppliers in the 18th 17th century of the Black Sea Strait. These were people who were armed and they would go every now and then. They called it harvesting the step. The step being this agricultural area of poor peasants. They would harvest the step. They would just round up poor peasants and ship them off. The same system worked in Africa. I mean, it probably worked in Asia. I know it worked in Asia. It is not a racebound system. It's a political economic system in which the warriors and the warlords collect people and sell them. Thank you. That that brings a lot of clarity to that question. I guess before we move on just to give just to expand on that answer you given me there. What then has been the major difference? Because in my mind, you've got one major slave trade which perhaps didn't have the concentration of numbers um in that in that small amount of time cuz rel it's a relatively short amount of time, the the Atlantic slave trade in comparison to the Caucasian one. But what we have with the Caucasian slave trade is we have a very let's call it the very consistent because it was it was more than the caucuses. Okay. It was also into what we call uh Ukraine and uh southern Russia. So yeah, it was the Black Sea slave trade. Yes. Black Sea slave trade. We have what seems to be a much longerlasting one. I think you you you said that it goes back at least 2 and a half thousand years. Yeah. Um, and a lot of that slavery has resulted in a lot of those people ending up in and around the North African region in and around the Mediterranean essentially. Yeah. Yeah. What's what do you think has been the big difference in that looking at I guess the the political situation that we find the not political economic economic economic the business situation market the market the post yeah go on to produce sugar and if I mean there was sugar production in um the eastern Mediterranean you speak about and yeah and in the workers included enslaved workers. There were enslaved workers, there were surfs, there were free workers. It was a very mixed uh workforce. But the the market for labor was of an entirely different magnitude in the 18th century, 17th and 18th, particularly the 18th century for sugar in the Caribbean. the sugar production in the Caribbean um eventually was going to be outperformed by the European beet sugar production. Yes. Which I guess was a catalyst to what ended up being the abolition at least at least at least in the case of Britain um amongst other things. It's true. Uh Germany, France. Yeah. Yes, it's true. What you're saying is true. Okay, that's good. So in in that being the case we I look at the period and uh the timeline that's that's something or at least that experiment that business experiment is something that's closed not quite a long time ago you know in terms of few you know we're talking about over a hundred years ago that actual trade the the the human trafficking that's come to a close and Yet we see a residual that particular one has come to that particular one. But I guess we see a residual impact in our modern dynamics that perhap the black sea slaves or the people the descendants of the black sea slaves aren't seeing that in North Africa perhaps what we're experiencing in the diaspora and different places. Yes, that's what I was getting at when I said what what's the major difference there? Why is there this hangover, so to speak, of the effects of the slave trade? Why isn't it just okay, it's over now and can't we move on? So, as you're talking, I'm thinking of um I'm thinking about history and for the um Atlantic slave trade was such a human atrocity that it caused um political change and it got outlawed. So, that's the big difference. Now, also I'm thinking about the MRA for instance. you mentioned the uh Mediterranean and because of French colonialism, people of I was going to say European descent or people who looked like they were of European descent um got made into a class above the local people, the um Muslim population. So French colonialism created a group of people. They were called panoa uh black feet. They were people of um indeterminate background. A lot of um Italian background, Jewish background. um uh and people who were Jewish say from the Middle East got slotted into the class above the indigenous people. So you know we have the two tier system in which the indigenous people are uh subjugated and then there's this heterogeneous group of people who function as French. So it's history, it's politics, it's even it's even ethics because it was the ethics, not the business of the Atlantic slave trade. It was the ethics, it was the inhumanity of it that got it outlawed. That's so interesting. Is it an oversimplification to call it a global system of white supremacy? Yes. I mean, if you It depends on why you're doing that. That is not for me useful, but there are other people who have other rhetorical ends and might find it useful. Um, I would stumble over who you calling white. Okay. So, I'm going to take us back a little bit now. Thank you, by the way. All excellent answers as I'd expect. Um, I'm going to take us back a little bit because I think you're currently doing art now. You've had you've had a little bit of a shift. So, how much Let me know if this becomes daunting because I'm I'm getting you to go back to maybe something you haven't touched on for such a long time, but I love the fact that I've just done obviously it's just a bit of brief research. I love the fact that you've done um your it's like you've brought some of that history into your artwork and I actually did manage to find one of your pieces online, your odelisk map, which I found I found very interesting. Yeah. So, um you know the my art is on my website. You you know you can find tons of it there. You don't have to go looking. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Brilliant. Um, I hope you don't mind if I display some of these during when I when I post this up. Not at all. Oh, great. Thank you. Thank you. So, I've got a question to ask you about the odelisk map. So, I think first of all, how is it received? And I know it's art, so I'm not going to ask for an over explanation. I'm more going to ask for more of your perspective. How is it received perhaps from people who don't appreciate the historical relevance or even know about who the odelisk are? What? Well, that was a piece I made when I was in art school. So, it has never been exhibited. Okay. Uh the only people who see it are people who go to my website or find find it in ways that you found it. So it doesn't have a reception history. Um and with my art actually with my historical writing as well um reception is not in my mind. Okay. So for instance right now I'm writing a new book on sjournal truth. I published a book on a biography of Sjourer Truth in the um 1990s and Sjourner Truth has changed since then. For one thing um when I published there were no statues for Sjourer Truth. There were no monuments. There are probably at least six or eight now. The first one came up after I published it. It's in um Sacramento, California by the distinguished artist Elizabeth Catlin. But so Sjourer Truth has changed and the way I can write history has changed. So I'm writing a new book on Sjourer Truth called Sojourer Truth was a New Yorker and she didn't say that. So, I'm I'm do I will include my own artwork, but I'm writing this book and I'm spending a lot of time with Adventism. Uh, do you know what I'm talking about? The idea that the world is going to come to an end pretty soon. Okay, this was really important for Serner Truth at one point. And so I'm, you know, I'm getting all involved in this and uh her religion in the 1830s and 1840s for me riveting. I'm not a religious person, but you know, I just find it absolutely fascinating. So I've said to my husband, you know, I'm the only person who's probably going to like this book. I write this book for me because I find it so important and fascinating. Luckily, it's already contracted, so it's going to appear. Uh, we'll see if anybody else likes it but me. But, um, that's kind of how I've always operated. Um, I told you that I had these wonderful parents and they never drove me to do this, that, or the other or made me feel that I would be impoverished if I didn't do this, that, or the other. So, I have been not completely free. Nobody's completely free. And especially as a black American woman of a certain age, no, of an old age. Uh, I have not been completely free. But I have been free of the obvious impediments related to money. uh and so I have been free to pursue my own interest and write as I wish. I am so grateful for that. I think that's an amazing gift and I think it reflects it is it is a gift and I think it reflects in the fact that you've um you know I I was going to use the word bravery but I didn't want to sound condescending but the fact people say that all the time. Oh, you're so brave. Yeah. you know, self-indulgent, but it's it's yeah, it's kind of two sides of the same coin because in in some ways obviously I look at it so you know the fact that you've got someone who you know very esteemed um graduate from Harvard, professor um teaches in Princeton and then to make a complete and utter career pivot into arts. Yeah. Yeah. That's, you know, I find I find stuff like that just mind-bogglingly brave. I just I I can't I don't like to use the word brave, but it's I understand. Yeah, I understand when people say brave and that I've heard it so often and I hear from so many people who say, "How can I do good also?" So, um in 2018, I published my own memoir called Old in Art School. Yeah. and uh a memoir of starting over. And just recently um I put on my Instagram page a photograph. I can you see behind me? You see the books on the table? Yeah. I just set that up. Uh and so I took a picture of it and put it on Instagram. A better picture than what you've got here because you see all the mess around it. and I said, uh, I've I've set up my Aderondac writing space. And one of the comments that came back was a woman who said she was so glad to know that I was writing uh more about Sjourner Truth. She was reading the first Sjourer Truth and finding it very interesting. And uh she said that the first book of mine that she read was old in art school and she called it a gateway drug to the work of an old painter. You were talking about art school. Yeah. And um so people who say you know I'm really interested in art how should I go about it and if you're really a neoight I say start by pursuing in community colleges. There are community colleges all over the United States and most of them are either free or very cheap. So you know you can pursue um your interest without uh going into bankruptcy. Whereas if you want to go to art school you will either go into bankruptcy or um spend up your your patrimony. Um, art school is insanely expensive and the the degree you get uh will not make any money. Um, so it's it's pretty much self-indulgent. Um, but I was fortunate enough to have the money and to have uh a husband who supported me 100%. Not my I mean my parents were still alive then and I owed a lot of time and um uh emotional labor to them which which I did. Yeah. But they did not need me financially. I did not have any little children who needed me financially. And so I was in a very fortunate position. Um, and I knew that people say, "Why did you go to art school?" And I say, "Because I wanted to when I could." Very inspiring for me. Personally, I I do like to make a lot of pivots. Um, so I think we're we're kind of kindred in that regard. But yeah, just it's just it's just inspiring to watch. Yeah. Someone like you just move to a new field. I did actually watch a a lecture you gave at Bodin College, which is really Yeah. Bod and that was a really amazing um discussion that you had there. I I want to touch on one of the things that you raised because you you said that um African studies were the playground of white men and when you said it I laughed. African studies what was the playground of white men. Oh yes. Yes. Yes. And when you said it, I laughed. And I laughed because um my wife graduated from um SOAS School of Oriental and African Studies. Famous college as you know. Oh yeah. So when I was growing up or at least when I was kind of like around university age and everyone had the same outlook. SOAS is like this liberal uh place where you get all of the you know different very ethnically blended and lots of different culture going on and you can do a degree which is you know computer science and Euroba and something like that. So it's got all of that really nice cultural blend. Yeah. But then you realize that it was set up to train colonists an imperialist like that was its purpose. So we've got this thing that is you know in in the modern day it's it's it's a good it's good that it's there. It's a University of London. It spreads culture. But then when you look at its origins, its origins were part of the British Empire's expansion policies. Yes. Yes. Um and I thought of that that just came to my mind when you made that statement about the ownership of African studies by in academia, so to speak. Yeah. um being something that's very much their domain that they've been able to say what they like about and talk about from their perspective for the longest and how how to administer the empire. But um the histories are different in the US and the UK. Um and when I talked about African history as uh the purview of white men, I was talking academic politics. And so um AfricanAmerican studies uh as you know came out of struggle and came out of political history and the people it's younger than African studies. So African studies was supposedly the intellectual side uh untainted by the politics of American life. And so there were real struggles in the 70s and 80s uh over turf, over academic turf um in American universities between the older subject and its people and the younger subject and its peoples. But I should also tell you about soas. I spent probably about a month as a graduate student at SOAS. Wow. Uh, this was in the 60s and and I left because I was in love. You know, I'm going to ask you to carry on. You can't just stop there. No, I'll just leave it right there. left us on a cliffhanger there. So, did you want to say anything else about the the I guess the cuz in that lecture I think you were talking about obviously you know Africana studies and African-American studies and African studies one being the older the one the African-American studies being the newer. Do you feel like there's a kind Do you feel like there's like a a I guess I'm going to say this from my perspective and it might help yeah contextualize it. Mhm. As a black scholar, if I decide to study any um African civilization outside of the Euroentric framework and offer a more, you know, yeah, a more kind of like nuanced approach, I would say, where I kind of like take into account all of the other areas of kind of history that have been ignored. I will because I'm black, I will instantly get labeled an afroentric. Yeah. So that label will instantly get placed upon me. It's nothing I can't do anything that I've realized. It's just it's got to be applied to me. Um and it's almost like an automatic application, right? Is there a do you feel there's like a similar guess pigeon hauling that is experienced in your field of study where it's you know maybe you're even maybe you're maybe you're a black person studying or in the study of African studies but it's called African-American studies because you're a black person in America and you're studying Africa. Yeah. Does that is that is that a thing? Yes. Yes. Yes. I recognize what you're talking about. Um and I would add to that that um we started talking about my book, The History of White People. Um, and when I was working on that book and uh, for many many years later, people didn't understand why a scholar who was black would write a book about white people. And the um reservations came not just from white people but also from black people who felt that as a black scholar the there was so much that needed to be written about black people that that's where I should have been putting my efforts. Now, I have written several books about black people, but the demand doesn't have a quot on it. It's not like, oh, you could write three books about black people and then you you've done your time and you can write about anything else. No, it's like everything you write has to be about black people. And so if I uh recognize that from many sides. However, one of the great things about being old is no longer giving a That's wonderful. I I do get the sneaky suspicion because obviously I've seen your lectures from like 15 years ago and I do get the sneaky suspicion that you've never given a though. I feel like you've always done what what you felt was right at the time. Yeah. Uh uh from the beginning uh and this is goes back to my parents you know I I did not feel um bound. I felt that there were that there there were intellectual um that I wanted to contribute to black history. So for instance um I did junior year abroad in Bordeaux in France and I loved medieval history and my teacher um maybe she was my uh uh TA because she was my age. I mean she's still alive. She's still my age. um Carolyn Bham um uh we got along very well and she loved the way I thought and I loved the way she thought and I loved her field and um I said if I hadn't been a black American I would be in her field and then we joked that after 25 years we would switch fields which of course we did not do but um so I felt that I wanted to make a contribution, an intellectual contribution to what we think of as black studies, black history, African-American studies, and so forth. because um not because it had been neglected. Many many people had contributed but the fruits of their labor were often hidden away because the journals they published in were not widely circulated like the Journal of Negro History which still exists as Journal of African-American History. they um their scholarship was not known and there was so much more to say. I mean the more research we do the more research there is to do so it never ends but I feel I I said earlier that sour of truth has changed and that's true about black history in general or black studies in general that there's a much wider recognition now than there was in the 20th century. And so even if um some um ungenerous people lump you in a way that you know is not doing you a favor uh as a black writer or black intellectual. Um there will be a publisher out there to publish your stuff. So you know you can tell them you don't give a and go on and publish your stuff. And that was not the case in the 20th century. It's I mean I'm not surprised that you that you've had resistance I guess from people saying as a black person you shouldn't be writing this book. Um, but surely as time's gone on, how how much is the history of white people? Is it because to me this is an important part and this is going to sound weird, but I think this this this book should formulate part of curriculums around Africana studies. I think we have I don't know. I think we have to understand this to understand our you know our position in history better. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I always hoped that black people would read this as about blackness because the intellectual processes are about race. They're not just about whiteness. Uh and I don't think that has happened. The first people who widely took it up were black readers who made who recognized that who recognized that thinking um in um a less highbound way about race was a good thing and that a book about white people belongs in black studies. That happened. Um there was a lot of embarrassment about the book when it came out. So it didn't win any prizes for instance um which is just atrocious. Um, and it is it's kind of still both an under and overground classic in the sense that it is been um a New York Times bestseller and it it still sells um ve very robustly, but it is not in the cannon. And I think it's because I am a black writer, a black woman writer. Um, I'll give you an example, not about this book, but about Sjourer Truth. Um, and about a book that has gotten me in trouble because I say Sjourer Truth did not say, "Aren't I a woman or ain't I a woman?" And I will I mean that's in the title of the new book that I'm writing now. Um, but you know who I'm talking about when I say Sjourer Truth. No, I was literally going to ask you to layman. Give a bit of a background. Layman being me. No, if you were in the United States, you would at least recognize the name. maybe for the wrong reasons, but you would recognize the name of great 19th century American u an abolitionist, a feminist, um and someone who was um um was uh talking about it for 30 years. So um a great American um a great American who is known for saying ain't I woman uh which is a corruption of aren't I woman which is the um invention of a white woman uh journalist. So I said Sjournaler Truth didn't say anti or aren't I a woman and all hell broke loose because it was like I was taking away Sader Truth. You know people who knew nothing about this woman except this slogan. I mean people assume that Sjer Truth was a Southerner because she had been enslaved. So my new book is Sader Truth was a New Yorker. So, um, but people got really angry with me about that and the premier, um, book review for books by women, the women's book review, refused to review it. Wow. So, I've made a lot of people I've annoyed a lot of people, but I'm still here. Well, you know, I'm glad you are, first of all, but I think you've got I think you've got a knack for, and this isn't me being sick of thank, by the way, but I do think you've got a knack for you, I I made this compliment to you when I was on the phone with you a couple of days ago when we first spoke. And I said, you've it's hard to contextualize it, but it's basically you've got this message, underlying message that I feel you want to convey, and you'll convey it, but you'll do it in the most um agreeable and objective and factual way that one hopes that it's it's got it has to be received. But at the same time, I know that the um message that you're bringing here is very contentious. This isn't there's no way they're going to open arms just accept this revision to the narrative that slavery is the domain of the black race. This is something that I feel Europeans find great comfort in your book as we've been saying. Yeah. And black people as well. But I think it's more trauma comfort. Yeah. Sorry. Yeah. It's this but it's this historical narrative that everyone is just okay with now which is kind of like okay I don't think so. I mean I have a lot of trouble with everyone. Um, and I've said to people over and over again, I cannot go along with any generalization about uh, black American experience that starts with 'the' because we are millions of people. And as you point out, since um the last quarter century, a large percentage of what we call black people or who we call black people in America are either themselves immigrants or the children of immigrants and their experience is very different. Their historical experience is very different. So there is not a the black America and there's not a the American. So yeah, there are a lot of people I piss off, but there are a lot of people I don't piss off. And I have 500 5,000 followers on Instagram, so I get I get my word out. I'm mega fan. So yeah, I think you should have a lot more. Um yeah, no, that's that's great. Let's um rewind a little bit actually because the the um topic of odor list is one that I think you kind of Yes. Yes. brought to the brought to the floor quite well um and made it a really massive talking point and we got to expand on that. I do want to pick out something and I felt like it was a repeating theme in your book was when whenever these kind of I don't know what you call these people if you call them you know you know original anthropologists or the first race scientists whatever you want to call them there always seem to be this kind of intrinsic link to their lust for one of a better word um you spoke about I think it was Bernie Bernier. Bernier. Yeah. Yeah. Bernier and all even Bloombing. There always was this underlying sexual narrative. Absolutely. When it came to the classifications of race, like what is that all about? Um well we're talking about men who were writing for one thing and we're talking about a classification in science their classification and their science which was beauty. Uh so you know this science is rooted in the cultures the culture that they came out of and it was they were men writing in a intensely misogynistic era. I mean one would hope that they it would cause people to revise our perspectives on these things. You're always hoping that there's it's like we we live in a time now and then excellent researchers like you will uncover stuff like this. And I guess my hope, which is overly optimistic, is that then this will cause us to revise some of our viewpoints, our positions on these things, seeing that they It has people don't write about Odalis in the same way now, but we're talking about a handful of people who were writing about these issues. I mean, I wasn't the only person who discovered this. And so art history now is very different from art history a generation ago. Partly because of my work, but also because of hundreds of other art historians who are are now women. In terms of the once going back to the history of white people now, can you give us a bit of a a timeline? We I touched on it a little bit earlier in terms of the origins of this Black Sea slave trade. Um what are the very earliest sources that give us an indication that this existed and in your mind how old a tradition is this based on the evidence that you have amassed? Yeah. um Heroditus uh in the 4th century BC and he doesn't know when it started. So it's very old and the Black Sea slave trade didn't come to an end until the Ottomans outlawed it around 1900. So, we're talking about something uh engraved in the history of the Black Sea. Because the Black Sea is so far from the United States, it isn't part of what large numbers of Americans think of as important world history. So for um Americans in higher education um they may have now have a sense of the importance of China and East Asia and Japan um but they probably don't study say the history of South Asia or the history of the Middle East as part of relevant background for understanding the United States. it's just too far away. So for instance um one of the difficulties of getting um Americans to understand the second world war is that for the Nazis the uh inferior peoples to be um to be exterminated and their land taken over for Germans were to the east to the the Slavic um areas. So for the Nazis, Slavs were kind of the equivalent um for Americans of black people or Native Americans. But because Slavs and Eastern Europe and Central Europe are are so foreign to the way many Americans think about history, it's hard to understand the Second World War. that is to say to understand the passions of the second world. I mean that is very complex and that brings it into very recent history. Mhm. I mean, strictly speaking, if if the um Black Sea slave trade wasn't officially abolished until around 1900, and that's around the same date that I that I got as well from other sources. Um wouldn't does that make it the last slave trade to be officially abolished? Depends on what you mean by officially. And it depends on how big trafficking has to be to be a slave trade. So for instance, we know that human trafficking still occurs. Uh the United States Congress outlawed it in the '9s and then um reinforced that. So um human trafficking still exists and I have read reports and this is anecdotal of people being sold into servitude that is enslaved um around the areas like in Libya or um the Spanish Sahara or places where masses of poor people bump up into each other trying to get uh to Europe or the United States. And so there are tons of people who are in want and who need some way of feeding themselves. And I mentioned several times before um very poor people who sell their children because that's the only source of exchange they they can. And if you are hundreds and thousands of people um sort of warehoused in these areas, people can come in and scoop up people and sell them. So I wouldn't be surprised if you see uh an alarm over slave trades uh related to refugees. M on that subject of people selling their children there is it does seem that there's when it comes to the Black Sea regions we have quite a lot of textual support for that practice being quite common. Yeah. Yeah. Um, we don't, well, at least I'll ask you, is there evidence that that was happening in Africa at any stage that people actually selling their children as a part of um, impoverished, you know, being impoverished? cuz I I just want to know if there's any kind of contextual I mentioned um black American travelers in the 19th and early 20th century and um I think I'm remembering a report from northern Nigeria um which not only had slave markets in town but it was understood slavery served servitude of children being put into the households of people who were better off and the children couldn't leave. Were they slaves? Were, you know, where's the line? So there's um it's clearly unfreedom. Okay. It's it's interesting because I um in one of just in in a bit of research I've done I and this is a view that I've always had actually I always kind of looked at slavery as something that exists on a spectrum so to speak you know was it just a spectrum of labor really where one end you got people who are well paid have good rights have freedom exactly and then at the top end no freedom and it's really interesting Interesting that you raised the subject of house boys cuz that's the very um illustration that I gave. Yeah. I was that's something that's very vivid to me because I've I've been in that environment. I've seen that. And I've seen house boys or house girls who are very well treated, have good freedoms, are well paid. But I've seen ones on the other end of the spectrum who are extremely poorly treated, abused. I've seen them abused in front of me. and the way they're treated resembles slavery. That that to me that's a strong if this person has no freedom and you're allowed to abuse them and that's starting to sound like slavery and I've even seen similar systems in the Middle East etc when I've spent some time at least lived there. Yes. So you've got this and I think Ehood Toidano speaks about a continuum as well. So this idea that it's not this kind of like hard cut off line right between you know this is slavery and this isn't it's a continuum would you Yeah. So the you know you're absolutely right about the continuum and you know we can put it this way like you definitely cannot leave and you can leave and go get a better job. the and then there's the other way in which this the economics of the society. So for instance in the American South in the 19th century um and in New York state actually also in the 19th century before 1827 we're talking about cattle slavery in which people functioned as property. So, for instance, if you owned a person and you went out and you had a good time and you um played the slots and you lost money, you could sell a person to settle your debts. I mean, this is the reason that Thomas Jefferson didn't free his people except for his wife and her children. No, her children, not his wife. that is um Sally Himmings. Um because he was so deep in debt, he needed them as collateral. And uh one of my former students um his first book was about people as financial instruments. So that's another way of of seeing a a financial system in which people play a part. So um for instance, could you buy your freedom? In some states you could and in some states you couldn't. Um was your unfreedom uh term limited? And that was most of the unfreedom in the 17th century. Uh indentured. So you worked for a certain amount of time and then you could go live your life. Um if you were enslaved, could you hire out your own time? Sometimes you could and sometimes. So there are all these different ways of parsing on freedom. So I agree with you entirely that to think of slavery as kind of a toggle on and off switch is is not enough. You in one of your lectures um I kind of want you to expand on this a bit actually cuz this is a really import um interesting point for me. you spoke about the um the position you I think you was talking about African-American studies and African studies and the recency of scholarship for one of the better word in the black community. And so essentially, I might be phrasing this wrong, but the the settled kind of white Europeans had a a period of time where their scholarship was largely kind of like only them doing any writing. And by the time a yeah, by the time African-American studies was set up, obviously they they've been doing it for a long time. And so seemed seems smaller so to speak and more recent. Could you expand a little bit on that phenomena because when you said it that was like oh that's a of course that's why we don't have a massive you know library so to speak um or at least one that's comparable um in the 20th century um in the world of letters um ruled by um elite white men um they could write about anything and they could write nonsense about anything and it would circulate. Um, one of the the shakings up of African-American studies and the rise of African-American scholars is um adding to those who have who have permission to say what is truth. There's I mean white scholars in African-American studies there's still plenty of white scholars in African-American studies plenty of white scholars winning prizes and getting professorships and so forth but they're not the only thing now just as there's a field of women's studies which didn't exist and um there are men writing um not let me take that back I'm not But certainly uh the rise of women's studies meant opening up the intellectual arena for women writing women being published which in the mid 20th century was it happened of course but it was rare compared to the later 20th century in the current time. Okay. So, it means that more more of us get time at the microphone, which is Yeah. Which is great. Um, what what would you say has been, and I know you're probably I might not get an answer for from you for this, but I'm going to ask anyway. What would you say has been your seinal work to this point? Oh gosh. Uh, it depends on which market you're talking about. And I use market because when you talk about books, you're talking about who buys what and how many. So, um, my narrative history, creating black Americans, is a very steady seller. Um, the book I published last year, I just keep talking, which you see is a good title, I just keep talking, landed on lists of the best books of 2024, for the New York Times, the Boston Globe, and for the Kirkus reviews. So, that book um has done very well. It's it's um it's out and around in the world. The people the book that people tell me they love is Golden Art School. Um the book that is now in its third edition is Standing in Armageddon. It's the United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. And that book is a fixture in um AP high history high school classes. So it depends on who you're talking to um and what goes. Um my favorite book I've always said is uh the narrative of Hosea Hudson his life as a negro communist in the south. It's my second book. I thought for many many years that my first book exodesters um black migration to Kansas after reconstruction had uh disappeared. But from time to time people tell me that it's been very important for them because it's about um post reconstruction. So when I wrote it, it was my dissertation. I thought I was writing about long ago history. But what has happened in the United States um with right-wing terrorism and backlash against um black civil rights um that book being postreonstruction about people fleeing terrorism now seems timely unfortunately seems very timely. So people come up to me and tell me they cherish that book as well. Um, Sjurner Truth is, uh, now in its second edition, so it's a perennial. Um, the only one of my books that's been a New York Times bestseller is The History of White People, and that's the one that didn't get any prizes, unfortunately. Yes. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Obviously, and that's obviously the book that introduced me to your work. Um, have you is is do you do do you get that a lot from that book? Because it sounds like it's I mean a New York Times bestseller. It's very farreaching book. Who Yeah. What does the market cuz I'm interested to know what does the market for that book look like since you spoke about markets. Yeah. I don't know because um that is a Norton book and I am no longer a WW Norton author. If we ever do a second edition, which I would like to do actually, um then um the sales figures and uh its market reach would would be something we'd have to look into. But since I mentioned the word market, I want to keep that in mind and I want you to keep that in mind as you make generalizations about who is reading, what is the reach, u where can your um your work um find its readers. It's a question of market because uh well I am a trade book writer and the first question for trade is what is the market? So it could be a book that walks on water but if it doesn't seem as if there would be thousands of people putting down money for it, it will not um be published by a trade publisher. We have academic publishers that is university publishers and they have traditionally done solid scholarship that will not reach a large audience. Uh something that has happened in the last quarter century is that as trade publishers concentrate more on bestsellers you know blockbusters that so I am uh not a blockbuster writer um I'm a middleist writer um and so well actually um I just keep talking is a trade book um uh olden arts school came from an independent publisher in Berkeley, not a New York publisher. And then the books before that, uh, New York trade publishing, but um, academic presses have been moving into that sort of neglected niche now. So you will find books reaching a trade market uh published by university presses like the Princeton University Press for instance. Um so the the market has changed in the last quarter century. there's much more openness for um books by black writers, by writers of color, by women writers, by gay, lesbian, and trans writers. So the the reach um so the market is more open than it was um h quarter century or half a century ago. So there's no um anybody can write anything and anybody can publish anything. You may have to self-publish it, but self-publishing is a timehonored tradition. It is indeed. Um Timbuktu comes to mind. Fantastic. Speaking of self-publishing, my book is now available for pre-sale on Kickstarter. Link in the description. Stay tuned to the end to view the full pitch. I'm actually really happy um with what we've discussed so far. Was there anything that you want to talk about? Um, well, the I think you've done a really good job of getting to the things that are on my mind and of issues around the history of white people. I will add one thing. Yeah. The hardest thing for American audiences has been to understand the concept of more than one white race. Mhm. Over and over and over again, I found people who had read the history of white people still wanting to talk about one right white race from antiquity to the present. They want the ancient Greeks to be one to belong to one big white race. They want the Anglo-Saxons and the southern eur uh Italians to belong to the one big white race. And so I've had to say over and over again that the concepts are riveted in time. One of my webcams overheated and I've had to switch over to this horrible one. Yeah, it looks like a different outside in front of a nightclub. Oh. Oh no. The the idea of one big white race uh comes after the Nazis to say that no, there is not a Jewish race. uh is one big white race is partly a response to anti-semitism, murderous anti-semitism. Uh and um so that's one thing to understand that say the Irishameans or the Italian Americans or the Jewish Americans, they didn't become white. They were always white. The adult men could vote. Um but um they were thought to belong to inferior white races. That's really interesting because um in my field I'm one of the things that I've had to contend with and this is more I I um study quite ancient Egypt quite a lot and Yes. very interested. Okay. Good. Good. One of the things that I've had to contend with and I think everyone in our field shand the being the original is the problem of the ever expanding white race. Oh. Um, and it's it's so Yeah. And it's so interesting when I read your book that um or at least heard your lectures and read read your book, the Caucasian is has been this very catchall term. Yes. That has been the bane of people trying to get an honest outlook on history because like the Caucasian race is this all encompassing thing which sometimes includes black Africans when they want it to. Sure. Reaching well certainly reaching way up the Nile. Yeah. Yeah. Definitely. So this idea this ever expanding idea of the white race growing and shrinking where where appropriate. Yeah. these definitions that don't seem to have any fixed jurisdictions. Is this That's true. They don't, but because they serve a purpose. They're not there of sort of science uh free free reeling. They serve a purpose and the purpose was to prove white supremacy. Um I kind of it has led me down the line. I want to ask you some more questions just about cuz I do think there's such an interesting conversation to be had just around um the reception of challenging ideas and those different groups and how they respond to because this is something I contend with every day and obviously this is something because you don't hold your you you clearly contend with in the work that you do. Um, are you ever surprised by where the contention's coming from or is it always what you expect? Yeah, I am. I am surprised. I think how can such a smart person have such a dumb idea. You know, this this crosses my mind from time to time and sometimes about my very own self. Um so yeah and you you know you do I don't spend all my time going around thinking what do people think. Uh so you know people come you know you have conversations and sometimes uh the conversations reveal what seems to me astonishing ignorance or bigotry or bigotry. Um, I think one of the the greatest vexations I ran into recently with um well-intentioned black people is they're ringing their hands about why black people don't know X, Y, or Z. As if black people I mean, how many are we what 40 million people? And and I say, "Well, who do you mean?" And they say, "Well, black people." As if we all went in March step uh agreeing with one or another's um generalizations. the the readiness of very well-educated, thoughtful people to generalize about Americans, about black people, about Democrats, you know, that always puzzles me and I find it very tiresome um because we are millions of people were millions of people and time and place. I I split my time between um northern New York State, the Aderondex and New Jersey, which are very different places. The Aderondax is rural. It's the It's the oldest um uh state park uh maybe in the United States, but certainly in New York. It's big and it's mixed use. So part of it is like my house, my husband and I own it, but we are in um a larger park that's owned by the state of New York. Um and it's overwhelmingly white. Uh it's rural and it's overwhelmingly white. In New Jersey, we live in both places. We live in an Essex County. We live in Essex County, New York and Essex County, New Jersey. In New Jersey, we live in a tightly packed state. Um, the second or third most diverse uh state in the union. We got all kinds of people. I love New Jersey. Um, and my memoir, Olden Art School, was really a hymn to New Jersey. Um, so it's very different and for they they work in different ways. So in when I'm in New Jersey, I tear my hair because I can't find time to do my work. Um here um there's much less distraction and it's also cooler. I'm from the San Francisco Bay area, so I grew up in a cool place. I don't like heat and humidity. So I have always since the 70s since the 80s. Yeah. since the 80s spent my summers in the north in the cool north. Um, one of the things that I find uh tiresome uh about Americans is the imposition of identity tests. whether wanting to know where I taught or where my degree is from, uh, what kind of black person I am, how long have I been coming to Martha's Vineyard, you know, there it's all these tests that you're it's very tiresome and they're just fewer people up here to impose them. I mean, fewer people. Yeah. I thought of something else too. Um that um we both talked about our frustrations about the tyranny of Africa over um more recent uh identities and I think of myself as a Creole American. Um maybe it's because I actually have lived in Africa and I know how different a place and people they are and also as a historian the importance of history in making our identities. So um to make Africa a central part of my identity has never been important. And I think what I'm doing, I know what I'm doing in my new book on Sjourner Truth is concentrate on her as a New Yorker, not as an African descended person. In several parts of the book, I'm addressing the concern that my readers will have wanting her to be an African American. So I, you know, I talk about that. So for instance, in the 1830s, she started making her um public persona uh at camp meetings. She was a gifted speaker and singer and at camp meetings. So I say, "Is there something we can see that's African in her strength, in her popularity?" And I say, "Probably there was something, but I can't know." And what people talk about and what she talks about are her beliefs, not her Africanness. Um and then early um maybe it's in the first or second the first chapter it's just called birthing Isabella. It's about her being born. um you know where is Africa in this because I know that some of my readers will want me to address that and will want her to be an AfricanAmerican where I'm saying she's a New Yorker from Oster County. M. Uh, well, it's it's it's definitely on brand for you cuz it's going to challenge. We'll wait and see. We'll wait and see what people have to say. Yeah. I know there will be push back. I, you know, it's one of the things where we we touched on it a little bit earlier in our conversation and it's this pigeon holeing of what of what people's expectations are of what you're going to out. So for instance, obviously we've discussed the fact that I do the ancient Egypt content and I look at lots of different areas and because of that people instantly feel like I'm going to be a pan-Africanist, which I am. I'm also very respective of what you've just said there, the fact that there's a unique experience going on in all of the a all of the diasporas. Yeah, there's unique experiences going on that absolutely have to be respected. And when I've said previously that I totally understand if an American, for instance, a black American doesn't feel any connection to Africa because there has to be a point where you say, well, at what point does someone become indigenous to their land? You know, you know, we got we can't, you know, and and do you speak a language spoken in Africa? Yeah. English. It's like at what point do you acknowledge that perhaps this person ancestrally has been here longer than everybody else? So, why are they still attached to a separate land? Yeah. You know, because we know that identity is not about your genes. It's not about something that lasts physically over the generations. It's about the society you're circulating in. It's about culture and absolutely that's what makes us people. Culture is what makes us people. But also culture depends on the time and the place and the people, the demography. Uh, are you in a rural area? Are you in a city? Are you in a hot place or a cool place? Are you by the sea or on the mountain? Are there a whole bunch of people around you who say, "These are my people or are you there by yourself?" I mean, this is one reason why somebody like James Baldwin speaks to so many Americans because he had so many um experiences, demographic experiences, and that he thought of in terms of identity and was so um eloquent about voicing what so many of us do feel or have felt. And that makes him a classic writer. Um, if he had had all those experiences and hadn't put them into words and those words hadn't been published, he would not be the James Baldwin we know. Uh, so there are many steps and many of those steps involve publication, which is what you're doing. So um and what you're doing too. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. No, thank you. Um I always say that I'm you know it's a journey and I'm walking in very much the foundations that have been laid like just like you. Um and so I'm always very grateful. Um and I'm also very open about when something's been ground groundbreaking knowledge. I'm I'm a bit obsessive. So obviously since your book I've gone down a rabbit hole books you'll probably be familiar with Jles Milton White Gold that most precious merchandise by Hannah Barker. Have you seen that one before? Mhm. Um so I went down a bit of a rabbit hole and I just find that subject in particular just fascinating. Um, and it's weird cuz I I I thought everyone would feel, you know, you think that everyone's going to feel the same way as you. I found it, weirdly enough, empowering. Everybody's not going to feel the same as you. I want to give you an example. um uh you know, writing this book about Sjourer Truth. Uh before she became Sjourer Truth, she lived in Olter County upstate uh by the Hudson River and uh she was enslaved um her son was illegally trafficked into the South and she had to go she had to use the law to get him back. And um this was a big deal in 2022 when the actual documents, physical documents um were discovered in the New York State Archives. It was a big news story. Wow. Sad Truth used the law to get her son back. And I read people who said, "Oh, she was the first uh black woman to use the law. Oh, she was the first black person to use the law. She was the f first uh formally in you know off and on and then as you say you go down the rabbit hole you think well let me find out and it turns out there were thousands of enslaved people who used the law and once you know I I I still use the Princeton University library and the librarians have been very helpful and so you know they found all these sources or their books about this. Uh if you were going to if you were an enslaved person uh and you needed to use the law, you didn't say I am an enslaved person. I cannot use the law. I cannot read and write. I have no rights. I am chatt. I won't even try. No. Thousands of people said, "I need to get my kid back. I need to get my wife. I need to get my, you know, and so you needed to have an ally who was not a black person. You needed to have an ally who knew the law. So this could not be just a black person thing. But to start with, you needed to be an a person who thought that your family was important enough for you to put yourself out and make the attempt. It didn't always work. M but to think about this phenomenon of people using the law means that we have to know that some people tried it thousands and that they had to have allies who were not black and who were not enslaved. So we have to realize the importance also of a lie ship. So this becomes a much larger history both in terms of ordinary people's empowerment ordinary people saying I have human rights I mean even if I stop right there that's a really big deal massive deal and then and then add in I have allies and also also you have to be in a state in which the law had a place for that kind of uh it would be very hard to do that because the laws were so um repressive, you know. Yeah, that's got me thinking about a lot cuz this is once again going back to this discussion around narratives. narratives that are allowed to perpetuate sometimes, and correct me if I'm wrong, but it feels like sometimes certain narratives are even inflated and fabricated. And maybe this goes back to that white man's playground that we were talking about where they could just say anything dynamics about Exactly. Yeah. So, you've got this inflation and kind of over, you know, overexaggeration of what's taking place that we've all inherited and said this is exactly how it happened, right? And then on the flip side of that, and this is something that I touched on, which I think some people got, some people didn't, and I'd love to get your view on it, but something I touched on is the postslavery narrative. Um, and this was um I was I've read a book. Well, I mean I haven't read it. When you say postslavery narrative, do you mean a narrative that arose after emancipation or a narrative about the period after emancipation? The latter. The latter. The latter. Thank you for asking. So, I'm in I haven't read it cover to cover yet, but I've got a lot from it and read a few of his lectures. I got a book called Sundown Towns by James Larry. Oh yes. Yes. Yes. I'm glad you're familiar. And to me, this is an example of a completely suppressed area of history, but that's had to in my view a substantial impact and needs to be talked about as much. Yes. as the that period of enslavement. These this this is really important because these are people who've created towns and cities, right, that have had it taken from them without any compensation and that been stricken from the historical record almost completely or at least not even recorded in many cases. Yes. Um Yes. And yeah, it just I I guess just on the back of what you were just saying then it just highlighted to me the fact that certain narratives they're you know everyone is okay with not saying black or white but I'm saying everyone is okay with certain narratives being inflated. We're okay with you know black people being enslaved having no rights just being a total object and just we're not okay with that. We're not okay. But I guess but we're we're we're accepting of it. You know, it's just the narrative that everyone is just, oh yeah, no, they were treated like animals and blah blah blah. They had no rights. But then there's this hidden narrative which you've just revealed of the fact that no, actually there were this is a little bit a little bit more nuanced than that. There there are people who are engaged in a legal system. what I use to to to find out what I just told you is not hidden because I'm using books that have been published. It is not widely circulated. Now, my book will probably reach more people than those books that I used. And so, that idea will circulate more widely. But how are you going to generalize about whether or not the phenomenon of enslaved people using the flaw is widely known or not or is known or not. It's known by some people. It's more generally known. Uh I'm I'm I'm uncomfortable with your generalization about what is known not known. So for instance, the Tulsa massacre of two of um uh 1921 used to not be very well known even in Oklahoma or even especially in Oklahoma, but uh in the early 2020s, a couple of books came out and the people there never ceased agitating about it. M and so in the last few years that particular massacre um became widely known widely known in the sense that it was covered in national newspapers and so I would like to hear in your generalization a criterion about what is known and what is not known. So, um, a handy, um, rule of thumb is, was it covered in the New York Times? You know, that's just a gross moto way of knowing whether or not something got out beyond the places involved. In the case of sundown towns, that is something that I was aware of for a long time. and my parents uh were uh southerners from Texas and I I read uh John Hope Franklin's from slavery to freedom you know in the 50s uh so I knew about that my parents knew about that my parents were educated people but how many other people knew I don't know certainly the number increased with the book you mentioned so publication is one way of gauging the circulation of the narrative, but I'm not comfortable with saying nobody knew or you know because that's just too I mean you could say it if we were sitting in a bar. Yeah. And you were your third martini or something. But we're Hey, we're having an intelligent conversation here. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Thank you for checking me on my hyperboly. Yeah, definitely. I think you're right. Um, no, no, no. I I agree. I agree. I agree. And I guess, yeah, just to I guess to wind that back then, just to I think to to answer your question about the definition. That's where I would probably once again lean on you because a lot of this is it is based on feeling about kind of like it's a I guess there's a difference between just like you just said there the stuff that you're going to put in your book um your book is probably going to reach more people than the sum total of people who know about it at the moment. And then my mind goes straight to how do people acquire knowledge? And I and when I say people, I'm not talking specifically about academics whose job is it is to research and to uncover these things. I'm talking about just the general population. Why do people have a general base level of understanding about certain headlines and narratives regarding slavery and not about other things that I guess that's what I'm getting at more than anything trying to understand and those are good questions and I agree with you about the um openness to a narrative of the importance of slavery in African-American history as opposed to the importance of Jim Crow in AfricanAmerican history. And um I uh have written I've not written about the civil preivil war area except for um a brown sederner truth. Um, but I agree with you that the narrative um of blackness equals enslavement equals black history, you know, it's very pervasive and um I agree with you about that. But to take a step beyond that um for me I mean I am a person of the 20th century. So I spent a whole lot of my life during the time of um Jim Crow and segregation. So that marked me and I think that that I mean I was not alive during the um early part of the 19th century. So, um that has marked me and I know that my um sort of unspoken assumptions about what people can do, what black people, what black women can do. You know, it was shaped by my own history. And I think, you know, just in terms of hair, okay, you can see that this is natural hair. It doesn't have color in it and it isn't straightened. Um, as I look at my phone and my laptop, I see black American women with And I see all these advertisements about how you can get to this. And I also see white women, how do I get this? Yeah. because the picture of women uh the acceptable the widely circulated pictures visuals of American women is much more this than it was pre-Trump. There's a Trumpy aesthetics that that I see all the time in ads on my Instagram feed for instance. So that has changed a lot. Um I straightened my hair briefly when I was in art school um around 2010 11 but then I went back but so basically I've worn natural hair since the 60s which makes me a person of a particular general uh generation. Mhm. Um, when you talk about how people know what we know, I just mention, well, this is what I see on my Instagram feed. And there's a big discussion going on now in the United States about how people know. And the phrase that comes up all the time is social media, uh, Tik Tok as the as the way of shaping the reality of younger people. Um so you know podcast uh uh YouTube you know all of this is very much as we talk and question about how we know what we know. And so one generalization about the MAGA universe you know the Trump people make America great again is that they are um low information. So you know that's a generalization about people whereas we democrats are people who know everything because we follow everything. So the question about how you know what you know that is very much in the air right now in the United States. you're you've got such a um breadth of subject matter for someone who's a quote unquote historian. Um, it feels like you peer into areas of I don't know just it's it's like your approach to the book. For instance, I've got I've shown you this this book, The Most Precious Merchandise, Mediterranean Slave. This is quite similar in terms of content to your book. Yeah. Yeah. But your book attempts well successfully to do much more, you know. So, do do you feel like that's like a um it's almost like that's a as a black scholar. Well, tell me. You almost had Who published the other book? Well, that's a good question. Never looked at that before. Pen. So, that's a university press, I think. So, it's a university press book. Yeah. And that tells you a lot about its reach. It tells you that it probably um is much more fine grained than mine because its audience, its market is scholarly. My market is a general readership market. So, if you were um someone in the university press marketplace, you would spend most of your time in my book back in the notes. You know, you'd be crawling through all the details. And that's what we we want those details in a scholarly book. So we're talking about two different roles in the books as they circulate in the world. Amazing. Uh it uh is also a question about is that the scholar's first book that makes a difference too. So let's see. History of white people was what my fifth or sixth book. So, you know, you're not comparing the same books, the same publishers, the same writers, the same readers. Brilliant. Well, you've answered that question really well. It's been such a pleasure to have you on. Thank you so much for first of all deciding that you're going to come on cuz um you didn't have to. So, thank you. You're very welcome. I've enjoyed talking to you. Um, it's not it's not every day that I get to talk at length with someone who's so well informed as you. That is a massive compliment. So, thank you again. Yeah, it's been an absolute pleasure. I like I said, I am um very much enamored with your work. Um I'll be getting your some of your latest books as well. Um, and yeah, um, that's a Jonah truth one sounds very interesting to me. So, um, I don't need much excuse to add new books. So, I'll definitely be diving in and get some more of your books. Um, I was writing I'm not sure if you saw I know I can go to your website, but I was writing down the books that sounded interesting when you were giving me your bibliography. They're all their website. They're on the website. Yeah. Yeah. No, I definitely um Yeah. No, it's been an absolute pleasure having you and once again, thank you for your time. Um what's your plans for the rest of the day? Uh I'm going to go back to um Sjourer Truth. She's still Isabella von Wagenan in New York City and uh she is making her way in the camp meetings and talking about the end of the world. Amazing. Amazing. Thank you. All right. Thank you so much. very privileged for your time. So once again, I just yeah want to thank you for doing that for me. Okay, take care. Bye-bye. Bye.