The Elmont Online Podcast
The Elmont Online Podcast
Strange Fruit - How Willful Ignorance Perpetuates White Supremacy in America
This podcast pulls together three elegant Black voices to tell the story of how white supremacy and willful ignorance continue to feed racism in America. The story begins with a question from American novelist, playwright, essayist, poet, and activist James Baldwin.
Eleanora Fagan, more famously know as Billy Holiday was an American jazz singer. Here her rendition of "Strange Fruit" serves as foundation for the recitation of the names of some of the recent victims of police murders of black men and women in America.
The podcast concludes with the words of Dr. Eddie Glaude Jr. as he invites us to shed the tattered vale of inherent goodness and recognize "the ugliness that's in us".
Welcome to the Elmont Online Podcast. I'm Aubrey Phillips. It's day 67 of New York on pause. Physical distancing has worked and New Yorkers are beginning to spread their wings again. The Long Island region is at day two of phase one. I continue to hope that New Yorkers don't drift into a false sense of security or worse, revert to a selfishness that puts others at risk. Wearing a mask is more about protecting others than about protecting ourselves. Governor Cuomo's easing off of the New York on pause button is not an invitation for you to hit fast forward. Like many of you, I'm disheartened by the state of the nation, the state of the state, the state of the county, the state of the town. Damn it! I'm even disheartened by the lack of transparency demonstrated by the Elmont Union Free School District. More on that to come. I'm flabbergasted! I have no words. No Insight. I'm overcome with sadness, fatigue, and an age old question. When? James Baldwin was nearly 60 years old, when in the mid 1980s, he asked the same question. He, more eloquently than I can ever ask it: When? Hear James Baldwin: [James Baldwin: "What is it you want to meet reconcile myself to? I was born here almost 60 years ago. I'm not gonna live another 60 years. You always told me it takes time. It's taken my father's time, my mother's time, my uncle's time, my brothers' and my sisters' time, my nieces' and nephews' time. How much time do you want for your progress?"]
Station Identification :You're listening to the Elmont Online Podcast. I'm Aubrey Phillips.
Aubrey Phillips :Eric Garner...Michael Brown...Tamir Rice...Walter Scott...Alton Sterling...Philando Castile...George Floyd. {♫♫...Billie Holiday-'Strange Fruit'..♫♫} [James Baldwin: "How much time do you want, for your Progress?] We'll be right back with the conversation.
Station Identification :You're listening to the Elmont Online Podcast. I'm Aubrey Phillips.
Aubrey Phillips :Today's conversation is different. It's not even a conversation really...more part lecture, part spiritual healing. I'm a fan of Nicole Wallace, yes, the Nicole Wallace of the George Bush administration. I know. Go figure. She has interviewed Eddie Glaude Jr. on a number of occasions. Her post El Paso Mall shooting interview, and her post George Floyd's on camera murder interview, elicited about nine minutes of the most riveting, thought provoking, television on the subject of whiteness, and the two Americas we find ourselves confronted by. Let's listen, first to Mr. Glaude after El Paso, and then after Mr. Floyd's murder.
Eddie Glaude - Interview with Nicole Wallace :"It's a very difficult question, Nicole. I mean, you know, America is not unique in its sins. As a country, we're not unique in our evils, to be honest with you. I think where we, where we may be singular, is our refusal to acknowledge them and the legends and myths we tell about our inherent, you know, goodness to hide and cover and conceal so that we can maintain a kind of willful ignorance that protects our innocence. See, the thing is that when the Tea Party was happening, we use people where we were saying pundits, oh, it's just about economic populism. It's not about race. When people knew, people, knew social scientists were already writing, that what was driving the Tea Party were anxieties about demographic shifts; that the country was changing; that they were seeing these racially ambiguous babies on on Cheerios commercials; that the country wasn't quite feeling like it was a white nation anymore. And people were screaming from the top of their lungs. You know, this is not just simply economic populism. This is the ugly underbelly of the country. See, the thing is is this, and I'll say this, and I'll take the hit on it. There are communities that have had to bear the brunt of America confronting, white Americans, confronting the danger of their innocence. And it happens every generation. So somehow we have to kind of, oh my God, is this who we are? And just again, another, here's another generation of babies. Think about it, a two year old, had his bones broken by two parents trying to shield him from being killed. A woman who has been married to this man for as long as I've been on the planet, almost lost her, lost her husband. For what? And so what we know is that the country's been playing politics for a long time on this hatred. We know this. So it's easy for us to place it all on Donald Trump's shoulders. It's easy for us to place Pittsburgh on his shoulders; it's easy for me to place Charlottesville on his shoulders; it's easy for us to place El Paso on his shoulders. This Is Us! And if we're going to get past this, we can't blame it on him. He's a manifestation of the ugliness that's in us. I've had the privilege of growing up in a tradition that didn't believe in the myths and the legends because we had to bear the brunt of them. Either we're going to change Nicole, or we're going to do this again and again, and babies are going to have to grow up without mothers and fathers, uncles and aunts, friends, while we're trying to convince white folk to finally leave behind a history that will maybe, maybe or embrace a history that might set them free from being white. Finally!" "We have to finally be honest with ourselves. We talked about this when this happened with El Paso. We have to understand how profoundly racist our country is and how it shapes the very ways in which communities are policed. Now that doesn't lead to an indictment of each individual, but it gets us to the systemic nature of inequality. Think about this, Nicole. You have a community that is experiencing trauma and terror simultaneously. Minnesota just hit its peak with COVID-19 yesterday in terms of the number of hospitalizations and the number of dead. And African Americans in Minnesota are disproportionately impacted by Coronavirus. And so we're dealing with the devastation of this pandemic, and we're seeing Ahmaud Arbery; we're seeing Briana Taylor; we're seeing George Floyd; so COVID has changed in some ways, arrested so much of what the country has been doing about the business as usual except killing black folk - except the devaluation of black folk. And, you know, I'm reminded it's been echoing in my head over and over again a character in Toni Morrison's novel 'Beloved', Stamp Paid and I'm paraphrasing: how much are we supposed to take? How much are we supposed to take? And then when you see the police response to white protesters clamoring to open up the economy, coming into the state capitol in Michigan, spitting and getting in the face of police having a gun on their side, refusing to have their arms, you know, locked into handcuffs, and they're so patient and restrained, and here we are responding to the fact that this man treated George Floyd like an animal, and then what do we get rubber bullets, tear gas, and the like. More than two Americans Nicole, this is the ugly underside of who we are."
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Aubrey Phillips :Thank you for listening. Between now and the next time we meet, be safe. I'm Aubrey Phillips. Transcribed by https://otter.ai