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[Roger Ross Williams] Can you please tell me,
what is wrong with Black people?
What is wrong with Black people?
[laughs]
What is wrong with Black people?
Okay, what do you mean by that?
What is wrong with Black people?
[bell tolls at intervals]
-[explosion crackling] -[distant screaming]
-[chains clanking] -[panting]
[gavel banging]
[Kendi] In 1860,
Mississippi Senator Jefferson Davis,
on the floor of the US Senate,
opposed a bill funding education for Black people.
To justify this,
he made up this story he said was from the Bible.
[wind blowing]
[Kendi] In this made-up fairy tale,
when Cain was exiled from the Garden of Eden,
he comes across the Land of Nod.
[insects chirping]
[Kendi] And in this Land of Nod, according to Senator Davis,
were the animals and beasts
that were created before humans, before Adam and Eve.
[hissing]
[growling]
[tense music playing]
[Kendi] And among these beasts,
was a particular animal-like group, with darker skin.
[low growling]
[Kendi] Senator Davis was talking about Black people.
"Black inferiority is the will of God," he said, "as confirmed by history."
That's the story that Senator Davis told.
The same Senator Davis who would go on
to become the president of the Confederate States of America
to justify this idea that the inequality between the Black and white races
was "stamped from the beginning."
["On the Run" by Craig Craig playing]
[Dr. Carol Anderson] What happens when we tell these stories, these myths,
about who Black people are,
and what their role in American society is?
These stories that are all about what's wrong with Black people
become part of the background understandings
that help to then spread ideas, false ideas, about Black people.
[Dr. Imani Perry] We need to look at our history with a sober perspective.
There's a real battle,
and it's a meaningful battle over ideas.
[laughing]
[Brittany Packnett Cunningham] So the question is,
how are we intentionally questioning what is being given to us,
and what we are ingesting?
Because somebody is designing it.
Are they designing it for our benefit or for theirs?
["On the Run" continues playing]
[ocean waves lapping]
["Cold Little Heart" by Michael Kiwanuka playing]
[ship creaking]
[grunting]
[clamoring]
[screaming]
[splash]
[screaming continues]
["Cold Little Heart" continues playing]
[thunderclap]
[Honorée Fanonne Jeffers] When we look at race,
we have to look at the fact that race has not always been a given.
[evocative music playing]
[Jeffers] We came across that water, and we were Fula,
we were Igbo, we were Yoruba, Wolof.
We were Mandinka.
But somewhere across the Atlantic,
we became one community.
[evocative music continues]
Often times we assume that race is only about the color of one's skin,
the grade of one's hair, or whatever.
It is about slavery.
[somber music playing]
I think it's important for people to know that the original "slave,"
when people thought about that-- that original slave,
it wasn't people who look like me.
The Western European slave market
had been dominated for hundreds of years by Eastern European Slavs.
The root for the term slave is Slav.
So why suddenly,
are we primarily enslaving, you know, African people?
[introspective music playing]
[Dr. Jennifer L. Morgan] We need to remember that slavery,
it's a piece of human history.
Humans enslave each other.
They have for as long as there have been empires and states and war,
but something different happens in 1444.
It's the moment in which the first large cargo of captives,
who are captured by the Portuguese in Senegambia,
are brought to Portugal to be sold.
That, for me,
is the beginning of what becomes the transatlantic slave trade.
[rhythmic, tense music playing]
[Kendi] Prince Henry of Portugal
saw the value of African people in Western European slave markets.
They were more valuable than Eastern European Slavs
because it was harder for them to run away.
It was harder for them to blend in to the population.
And so he financed expeditions to the source.
[Lynae Vanee] When Prince Henry rode up on Africa,
there was an opportunity for him to take something.
There was a method that he used to get what he wanted,
and it worked.
[tense music continues]
[Kendi] Prince Henry didn't want to admit
that he was violently and brutally enslaving African people to make money.
And so he dispatched a royal chronicler by the name of Gomes Zurara,
to write his story.
[somber music playing]
[Kendi] Gomes Zurara justified his slave trading
by stating that Prince Henry was doing it to save souls,
and that these people in Africa were inferior, were beast-like.
[animal roar]
[Zurara] They have lived like beasts
without any custom of reasonable beings.
They have no understanding of good,
but only know how to live in a bestial sloth.
[tense music playing]
[Kendi] Gomes Zurara's book
wasn't just the first major text by a European written in Africa,
it also became a bestseller.
These racist ideas of African people as beastly
started circulating around Western Europe.
[Dr. Autumn Womack] The work is naturalizing these racial hierarchies.
They're indoctrinating us.
I mean, that's how popular culture works, and that's how power works, right?
We don't realize it's working until it's done its job.
[Jeffers] In order for you to do that and to make yourself feel good about it,
you've got to come up with a reason why it was okay.
Otherwise,
what you have is brutality, you have theft,
you have murder, you have rape.
Nobody wants to think of themselves that way.
Okay?
[Kendi] Gomes Zurara wrote
that people with different skin colors, and different languages,
and different cultures from different nations,
were one people.
One Black people.
One Black people worthy of enslavement.
[introspective music playing]
["Get Over Here" by Major Babe, feat. Jayy Starr playing]
[man 1] The Blackness.
-[man 2] What's wrong with them? -[man 1] The Blackness.
[screeching]
[man 3] Nobody in the town has any use for 'em.
Nobody likes 'em. Nobody wants 'em.
Some niggers are clean and some aren't.
I wished I had some chicken.
[man 4] The Negro in this country today stands for venereal disease,
prostitution,
the numbers racket,
and crime.
♪ Talk that talk ♪
♪ Back that up… ♪
[angry woman] Wetback, sand nigger, motherfucking cocksucking bitch!
Go back where you came from!
[man, offscreen] Look at what you're doing!
This is my neighborhood…
-[man, filming] Okay. Victims. -You brought these people who are crazy.
[man, offscreen] You're-- Look, look. Hey.
-[angry man] Get that fucking-- -[man, filming] Dude. Seriously?
[angry man] Get the fuck out of my building.
I'm calling the cops.
[woman] This is happening 'cause we're Black.
What are we, as people, going to do about our Blackness?
Hide it?
Somebody told a lie one day.
They made everything Black ugly and evil!
Look in your dictionary and see the synonyms of the word "black."
♪ Grab the mirror Look at you, ooh, ooh ♪
[music stops]
[Kendi] Gomes Zurara invented Blackness.
But he didn't necessarily create whiteness.
And whiteness as a construct
really didn't start to emerge until the 1500s,
and certainly the 1600s.
[distant music playing]
[Dr. Brittney Cooper] In the early days of the slave trade here in the US,
Black people weren't the only enslaved people.
We had indentured servants from Europe, who were trying to make their way,
and they lived in conditions that were just one step above slavery.
[whip crack]
[unsettling music playing]
[man chuckles]
[Dr. Dorothy Roberts] One of the greatest fears of white landowners
was that white indentured servants and Black enslaved people
would come together in their common interest
to fight against the white elite.
And it became clear that this was a real possibility
during an incident called Bacon's Rebellion,
when Black people and white people joined together
to revolt against white landowners.
[tense music playing]
[percussive music echoing]
-[music stops] -[fire roars]
["Welcome to the Terrordome" by Public Enemy plays]
[in unison] War!
♪ This is a journey ♪
♪ Journey ♪
♪ Journey into sound ♪
[James Baldwin] But it's not a matter of my liberation.
It's also a matter of yours.
If you're working-- we're working together,
it's not because we're gonna do something for poor Black people.
We're gonna do something for each other.
♪ I got so much trouble on my mind, Refuse to lose ♪
♪ Here's your ticket, Hear the drummer get wicked ♪
♪ The crew to you To push the back… ♪
[protester] It's really sad to see that
there's people who are hindering the development and the progress
that this country can find if we just unite together
and utilize diversity as our-- as our instrumental key.
Whether you're from the south, north, east or west,
whether you're a Negro, hillbilly or a Yankee,
we're gonna stand here and fight together.
♪ …X on the flex, hit me now ♪
["Fight the Power" by Public Enemy plays]
♪ Fight the power! Fight the power! ♪
[William Bouie Haden] Is it too much to ask you to grant us human dignity?
What the hell do you think we care about dying
if you're going to deny us the right to live?
[Kendi] Bacon's Rebellion was able at one point
to topple the capital of Virginia,
It scared wealthy white enslavers to death.
[unsettling music playing]
[Kendi] They saw that unity
between white indentured servants and enslaved Africans,
you know, as their Armageddon.
[Roberts] That made it very clear to white landowners
that they needed to invest more
in separating indentured servants and enslaved people.
They created a whole legal apparatus
to give indentured servants privileges
by the fact that they were white,
that Black people couldn't have.
[Kendi] Ultimately, some of those white indentured servants
were able to work out their indenture.
And then they were able to receive land
and to make money.
And then the money they were able to acquire,
allowed them to buy one of the very people
that were involved, side-by-side with them,
for Bacon's Rebellion.
And then they could turn around and say to their former comrade,
"You're in your position and I'm in my position,
not because of racist policies."
"You're in your position because you're inferior."
[ominous music playing]
They want to throw white children and colored children
into the melting pot of integration,
out of which will come a conglomerated, mulatto, mongrel class of people!
Both races will be destroyed in such a movement.
America was built by and for
the white Christian people of this nation!
[chanting]
[chanting continues] USA! USA!
[Donald Trump] This is not just a matter of values,
it's also a matter of national survival.
We have no choice.
If we teach our children to hate America,
there will be no one left to defend our flag,
or to protect our great country or its freedom.
[audience cheers]
[Roberts] This is the beginning of the idea
that whiteness itself is a benefit, is a privilege,
is a status that white people should want to have
to the disadvantage of Black people.
[tense music playing]
-[woman 1] White people. -[man 1] The white people.
[man 2] Equal rights for whites.
[woman 2] They'd all belong to the white man.
[man 3] The white man, who else?
[man 4] White majority.
[man 5] We are white and we are proud of being white.
[woman 3] I'm white!
[tense music continues]
[Roberts] Whiteness is an idea
of who is entitled to certain privileges in a society.
[inaudible]
[Perry] Whiteness keeps you from being at the bottom,
even when you're poor, even when you're broke,
even when you're dispossessed.
It's something that has been really a core part
of what I think white American identity is.
There's something that you always know you have over other people.
[Cunningham] Once upon a time, if you were Polish and you came here,
you weren't white, you were Polish.
If you were Italian and you came here, you weren't white, you were Italian.
But somewhere along the line, folks figured out,
"Hey, if we link arms under this umbrella of whiteness,
then we can protect our collective interest
and make sure nobody has access to our power."
[Kendi] What whiteness does, is it blinds them
to see who the real robbers are.
[Roberts] The people who actually benefit
are a small group of wealthy, white elite
that continues to accumulate its wealth and power
on the backs of everybody else.
[chanting] Hear our voice! Hear our voice!
[Kendi] You have white folks who are struggling economically,
and they think the source of their pain
is people who don't look like them.
[chanting] Niggers go to hell!
Niggers go to hell!
[protester] We don't need outsiders helping us with our problems.
We've been doing good all these years we've been here,
and we'll keep doing good enough.
And we'll stay white, period.
[chanting] You will not replace us!
You will not replace us!
[Vanee] Race is not a thing. Race is not scientifically proven.
You cannot trace somebody's race in their DNA,
but it has so many real social ramifications
because of the amount of people who have bought into the myth.
[atmospheric music playing]
[interviewer] Do you think a Negro family moving here will affect the community?
Some of them, they're real dirty.
But I wouldn't mind it if, you know, they kept the neighborhood clean.
Well, it just depends upon that type of Negro.
If they were like the, uh, Negro that works for me,
a fine, upstanding woman who is proud of being a nigger,
proud of her race, clean and industrious,
no, I would not mind.
[Cunningham] There is…
a temporary prize
that whiteness loves to dangle in front of the rest of us.
Temporary prize of acceptance, of upliftment.
If you go to the right schools and you speak the King's English,
and you never step out of line and you tell the truth,
but never too much truth to make whiteness uncomfortable.
If you are just the right kind of Negro.
[propulsive music playing]
Let me put it to you this way.
We are proud of being Black
and of our Black Heritage.
But white America does not accept the concept
that this is a multiracial society.
They've always looked upon America as being white,
and hence, all of its propaganda is directed at us, to convince us
that somehow we must become white before they will accept us.
There's no other way to think. I can't think African. Can't think Irish.
I can't think Norwegian.
I have to think within the struct--
the society in which I live, which is a white society.
Does it bother you to be called African-American?
-It does because I'm a Cablinasian. -[Oprah] A Cablinasian.
[Dr. Kellie Carter Jackson] Assimilationist ideas are problematic
because it compels you to sort of shape-shift
into something that white people can approve of,
that white people won't feel threatened by,
that white people can feel, sort of safe in.
"Why can't you just be white?" You know? "Just assimilate."
If you are Black and living a contemporary Black experience,
you probably have code switched at some point in time.
Hey, youngblood, lemme give you a tip.
Use your white voice.
Man, I ain't got no white voice.
Come on, you know what I mean.
You have a white voice in there, you can use it.
I'm just trying to give you some game.
[Dr. Ruha Benjamin] An assimilationist still adheres to the idea
that a racialized group needs to change.
"They need to work harder, they need to value education,
they need to take care about their health more."
[Womack] It's a different iteration of inferiority,
that there's no value in what you have to offer.
You either have to assimilate into this way,
or we need to create something different, a different infrastructure,
to account for your problematic presence.
A high school senior was told he can't walk the stage for graduation
or even return to normal classes unless he cuts his dreadlocks.
There's an element of being a progressive in that,
because you believe people can change.
-Brothers should pull up their pants. -Just pull up their pants.
You're walking by your mother, your grandmother.
Have some sense and-- and respect for other people.
[Don Lemon] Pay attention,
and think about what has been presented in recent history as acceptable behavior.
[Benjamin] That's the refrain we hear, whether it's in 2021 or in 1821.
"There's something in you, either in your body or in your culture,
that is producing the difference we're looking at."
Who taught you to hate the texture of your hair?
Who taught you to hate the color of your skin to such extent
that you bleach to get like the white man?
[audience murmurs]
Who taught you to hate the shape of your nose
and the shape of your lips?
Who taught you to hate yourself
from the top of your head to the soles of your feet?
[tense music playing]
[Morgan] In the 18th century,
European and American philosophers are arguing
that Black people should only be working.
That Black bodies are only good for brute labor
because the highest form of human expression is European,
and the lowest form is African.
That the only place where good art and higher thinking is happening,
is in Europe or among people of European descent.
They are so accustomed to the stories they've been telling about Black people,
that they literally cannot imagine that a Black woman could produce art.
["Black Woman" by Emanuel playing]
♪ Cocoa-butter kisses ♪
♪ Wipe my tears away… ♪
[Phillis Wheatley] I, young in life, by seeming cruel fate
Was snatch'd from Afric's fancy'd happy seat
♪ …when you've got nothing To smile about ♪
[Wheatley] What pangs excruciating must molest
What sorrows labor in my parents' breast?
♪ Black woman ♪
♪ Sometimes ♪
♪ Sad woman ♪
[Jeffers] Phillis Wheatley was the first Black woman
to publish a book of poetry in North America.
♪ Why are you so displaced? ♪
It was a shock to everyone.
It shook up notions about Africans
and their intellectual capabilities.
There was something about poetry,
which was a fine art,
which meant Africans could experience emotions
beyond the trifling.
♪ Sing your praise without knowing… ♪
[Kendi] But, of course, you had some people that were like,
"Those poems couldn't have been written by this Black girl."
"That's-- that's crazy. That is just impossible."
And so as a result,
a group of prominent Boston white men
gathered together to investigate,
and they brought Phillis Wheatley before them
to really ascertain whether she actually was the one who wrote those poems.
[unsettling music playing]
-[bang on desk] -[bell tolling]
[coughing]
[indistinct chatter]
[Morgan] In that interrogation,
she's being asked to prove
that she is more than what these white men see her as,
which is as just a Black woman.
Just a slave.
[sinuous music playing]
[Morgan] It sets an example, both of the need for Black women
to constantly prove worth,
but it also sets this kind of presumption
that white men have the right to ask you to prove your worth.
[Jeffers] Every Black woman has a Phillis Wheatley moment.
[introspective music playing]
[Jeffers] The most painful moment
was a colleague of mine who said,
"I'm concerned sometimes about you, when you speak,
because you sound ignorant."
"And you're African-American,
so I just don't want people to make assumptions about you."
And I said,
"Let me tell you one…" insert expletive, "…thing."
"Any…" insert expletive, "…that wants to pull my card,
all I have to do is throw my resume at their feet."
["Rebel" by Kelsey Lu playing]
[indistinct chatter]
[man] We whose names are underwritten,
do assure the world that the poems specified on the following page,
were, as we verily believe, written by Phillis,
a young Negro girl, who was but a few years since,
brought an uncultivated barbarian from Africa.
♪ Rebel was your middle name ♪
♪ When you were a young girl ♪
[Jeffers] When we look at Phillis Wheatley's poetry,
she is pushing back
against this attitude that she is less than.
♪ Times have really, really changed ♪
♪ Changed ♪
She thought there was nothing wrong with her.
♪ You don't really get to walk away… ♪
[Morgan] What Phillis Wheatley is doing, is very dangerous.
I mean, what's at stake is the entire colonial economy.
It needs Black labor.
That's what it needs. It does not need or want Black art.
♪ Is it always gonna stay the same… ♪
[Morgan] "If we concede that Black women can produce art,
what else do we have to concede?"
♪ …do you? ♪
♪ Who will be the ones To walk away with you? ♪
♪ Time should really, really change ♪
♪ Change ♪
♪ Yet they always stay The same way to you ♪
♪ You don't really get To walk away, do you? ♪
♪ Who will be the ones To walk away with you? ♪
[music fades]
[Sonia Sanchez] You, enigmatic woman exploding
From clouds and intestines, riverbanks, kneecaps, veins and horizons
Tongues embroidered with eyelashes
You burn in my throat
I walk your footsteps Singing
You are here, you are there
You will never go away
["Away Away" by Ibeyi] ♪ Away, away… ♪
[Sanchez] I know you butterfly sweet
Your lips taste of the sea
The years dusty with herstory
Anticipate light
Your hands riot with pain
Collapse in new prayer
Touch this Western stained
Glass where ghosts commit themselves to military blood
If we merge mercy with might
And might with right
Then love becomes our legacy
And change our children's birthright
So let us leave behind a country
Better than the one we were left with
Every breath from my bronze-pounded chest
We will raise this wounded world into a wondrous one
We will rise from the gold-limbed hills of the west
We will rise from the windswept northeast
Where our forefathers first realized revolution
We will rise from the lake-rimmed cities of the Midwestern states
We will rise from the sun-baked south
We will rebuild
Seventy years in these folks' world
The child I works for calls me "girl"
I say "Ha! Ha! Ha! Yes ma'am!"
For workin's sake
I’m too proud to bend and Too poor to break
So [chuckles]
I laugh!
Until my stomach ache
When I think about myself
My folks can make me split my side
I laugh so hard
[laughs]
I nearly died
The tales they tell sound just like lying
They grow the fruit but eat the rind
[soft chuckle]
I laugh
[laughs]
Until I start to cry
When I think about myself
It could and did derive From living on the ledge of death
They kept my race alive
By wearing the mask!
[laughs]
[gasps]
[mournful choral music playing]
[Jeffers] When we think about white supremacy,
when we think about racism,
when you pull back the curtain,
you see the filth.
[choral music continues]
There is a myth about the founding of this country.
People want to erase American history as it truly was.
White supremacy has been embedded
in this country since its founding.
[ominous music playing]
[sighs] You really want to talk about Thomas Jefferson?
Okay.
Thomas "Contradiction" Jefferson. [chuckles]
There are few people I despise more.
[chuckling] Thomas Je--
Thomas Jefferson…
[laughs]
Thomas Jefferson was full of shit.
He was someone who was very well aware of the atrocities that existed in slavery.
He wasn't willing to let go of that divide because of what slavery did for…
for him.
[Kendi] On the one hand, he opposed slavery.
But then on the other hand, he opposed abolition.
And so he would speak out against slavery, particularly earlier in his career.
He'd also speak out against people trying to bring the end of slavery!
[Anderson] That's the paradox that sits right at the core of America.
You say freedom, but you're an enslaver.
You see, I must write the Declaration of Independence.
[Vanee] As kids, we're taught to love Thomas Jefferson,
because of all he did for this country, but he's a villain to somebody.
Mr. Jefferson…
[Vanee] When we only talk about one side of it,
that villainhood is erased…
So Thomas Jefferson is still highly romanticized.
[Jefferson] What's the matter?
Master, I'm scared.
Of what?
[Jefferson] Interracial mixing
is a degradation to which no lover of his country,
no lover of excellence of the human character,
can innocently consent.
To this, I have a great aversion.
[unsettling music playing]
Thomas Jefferson spoke so poorly on Black women,
talking about how unattractive they were.
I think at one point he likened them to orangutans.
But he couldn't get enough of Sally Hemings.
How many children did he have by that woman?
He consistently…
raped
Sally Hemings, who was a teenage slave.
That's Thomas Jefferson.
Espousing the language of democracy,
while he is breeding
property for Monticello.
[unsettling music playing]
[Dr. Stephanie Jones-Rogers] These white men, like Jefferson,
rationalized sexual violence perpetrated against Black women
by saying that it wasn't sexual violence at all.
["Introvert" by Little Simz playing]
[Roberts] One of the most powerful myths about Black women
that came out of the slavery era,
was the icon of the Black Jezebel.
This was supposed to be a Black woman
who was completely controlled by her sexual appetites.
She was innately predisposed to always be hypersexual,
and want to engage with sex.
["Introvert" continues playing]
[Dr. Racquel Gates] If you take that as fact, who does it let off the hook?
What types of experiences does it allow us to overlook or to ignore?
[Roberts] This was an excuse for white men's rape of enslaved women.
[woman] Oh, stop it!
Oh!
[growls]
[Jones-Rogers] By constructing Black women as promiscuous, they can say,
"Well, they wanted it."
"Well, they came on to me, they seduced me."
♪ I see sinners in a church Sometimes I might be introvert ♪
[Gates] That is a trope in American popular culture,
that has become so part of the fabric,
that I'm not even sure creators realize that that's what they are invoking.
We see that even with the way that people talk about Black girls as being "fast."
[woman] If you feel you've been harassed, you cannot send mixed signals
and I think that's one of the problems in this area.
It's not just men's behavior, it's also women's behavior.
♪ …when your grandma died ♪
♪ I see the illness eat my aunt Laying in her bed ♪
♪ I see her soul rising As her body gets closer to death ♪
We have to understand that sexual violence was fundamental to violence of slavery.
The culture of slavery was a violent one.
And sexual violence was a part of that culture.
["Introvert" continues playing]
[Jackson] There is no consent, there's no ability to say no.
You are considered unrapeable in slavery, legally considered unrapeable.
[Vanee] There were so many different ways Black women were violated
that makes their experience as enslaved people different,
and makes the scholarship surrounding their struggles different.
[Kendi] White enslavers tried to cover up their sexual assaults of Black women,
but one woman refused to let her voice be silenced.
[Jackson] Harriet Jacobs was the first woman
to ever write her own slave narrative.
And she writes it in a way
in which she describes what Black enslaved mothers went through.
[evocative music playing]
[Harriet Jacobs] Reader,
I draw no imaginary pictures of Southern homes.
Slavery is terrible for men, but it is far more terrible for women.
Women have wrongs and sufferings and mortifications peculiarly their own.
[children talking indistinctly]
[tense music playing]
[Jacobs] My master met me at every turn, reminding me that I belong to him
and swearing by Heaven and Earth that he could compel me to submit to him.
[ominous music playing]
[Jacobs] He'd people my young mind with unclean images,
such as only a vile monster could think of.
[whispering] Do as I say.
[panting]
[Jacobs] I saw a man 40 years my senior
daily violating the most sacred commandments of nature.
[thunder rumbling]
[thunderclap]
[Jacobs] He told me I was his property.
That I must be subject to his will in all things.
[panting]
My soul revolted against the mean tyranny.
[breathing heavily]
But where could I turn for protection?
[Jacobs] They would hide me in Snaky Swamp
till my Uncle Phillip had prepared a place of concealment for me.
I was about to risk everything on the throw of a die.
And if I failed,
what would become of me and my poor children?
A place of concealment had been provided for me at my grandmother's.
[breathing heavily]
A small shed never occupied by anything but rats and mice.
[wood creaking]
[Jacobs] I suffered for air even more than for light.
But I was not comfortless.
I heard the voices of my children.
There was joy,
and there was sadness in the sound.
It made my tears flow.
[sobs softly]
I lived in that little dismal hole for nearly seven years.
Reader, my story ends with freedom.
[haunting music playing]
[Jacobs] I have not written my experiences in order to attract attention to myself.
It would have been more pleasant to me to have been silent about my own history,
but I want to add my testimony.
I do earnestly desire to arouse the women of the North
to the condition of two million women at the South,
still in bondage,
suffering what I suffered.
And most of them far worse.
I want to convince the people of the free states
what slavery really is.
[haunting music continues]
[Jackson] The dominant slave narratives in the United States
was one that did not include women.
Harriet Jacobs is the first, and I don't think that you have
a wave of Black women telling their stories as enslaved women
without Harriet Jacobs opening up that door
and allowing for some of those conversations,
particularly those hard, difficult conversations, to take place.
[pensive music playing]
[Morgan] Jacobs telling her story is really important,
because if she didn't tell her story,
we wouldn't understand the way sexual predation was built in
to this system that was allegedly about work.
And ironically, historians, they assumed it was written by a white woman,
by an abolitionist, because they felt like it was too…
[sighs] …dramatic, the story of her life, that it couldn't have been real.
Women like Harriet Jacobs,
they know that the archive is trying to eliminate them.
They know that their stories are not supposed to be told.
So when they tell their story,
it is crucial that we pay attention to it.
[tense music playing]
[woman 1] The creation of a hostile environment,
with or without physical contact, is sexual harassment.
[woman 2] I can't even explain how I felt, even now.
There's no way of telling
whether I would have even been able to be sitting here now,
telling you what happened.
[Porsha Olayiwola] At any given time, and in any given space,
I, as a Black woman,
can suffer from racism, sexism, homophobia, classism!
I can be raped, beat, be burned alive,
and no one, not a single soul,
will look up to acknowledge my absence from this universe
because I am insignificant, because I am a Black woman!
[rapping] Try being a lady?
You mean you want me To act catty and shady
Play with me like a doll Degrade me, trade me
Use me as your trophy So that you can parade me
Use my vagina to only birth babies
[Tarana Burke] What started as a simple exchange of empathy between survivors,
has now become a rallying cry.
They were simply trying to be heard
and trying to be seen and believed.
[Anita Hill] We deserve better systems, we deserve better attention,
we deserve leadership that will call out and acknowledge this problem.
I stand here
as a survivor of sexual and domestic violence.
[Morgan] Harriet Jacobs, ultimately,
her freedom was purchased for her.
And Harriet Jacobs is really angered
that she has to be given her freedom
through the intervention of white abolitionists.
[robust music playing]
[Jackson] Most of the time, when I talk about abolitionists in my classroom,
they think of kind, white people that made this great sacrifice
and they're not completely wrong.
But when I think of the abolitionists,
I think of Black men and Black women that were courageous
and did incredible things.
I think of them as the center of the movement,
and really white allyship and white abolitionists as the periphery.
Unfortunately, people aren't going to listen to minorities
until they have a majority figure speak for them or alongside them.
So we needed white abolitionists.
However, it didn't stop them from being problematic.
[foreboding music playing]
[Vanee] There were white abolitionists who were in this school of thought where,
"Yes, slavery is morally wrong,
but I also don't feel like Black people are equal to me."
[Lincoln] Even when you cease to be slaves,
you're yet far removed from being placed on an equality with the white race.
Whether this is right or wrong,
I need not discuss.
We have this idea of Lincoln as the great emancipator.
-[announcer] Abraham Lincoln! -[crowd cheering]
[Jackson] Because he abolished the institution of slavery,
people hold him in very high regard.
[Chris Berman] Two African-American quarterbacks starting against each other
in the Superbowl for the first time.
Fittingly, February 12th is Abe Lincoln's birthday.
[Jackson] But if you were to have a conversation with Lincoln
in the 19th century,
you would probably be like, "This dude is low-key racist."
[Lincoln] I, as much as any other man,
am in favor of having the superior position
assigned to the white race.
[Vanee] He is painted often as a figure
who saw the moral wrongs of slavery, but let's be clear.
He was just anti-slavery
because of how he felt the economy could benefit
from moving away from slavery.
[Jones-Rogers] We need to look at all of what he said,
not just what he said in the Emancipation Proclamation.
If we do that, then we realize that Abraham Lincoln is a perplexing character,
and especially in the history of Black people in America.
Look, I'm half Abraham Lincoln, so…
So, I should get on my knees and kiss your ass?
Well, no, but, eh…
Most of history has centered white men, very much so,
and has made them sort of like the great white hope.
They are the deliverer or the emancipator.
It's problematic because it robs Black people of their agency,
it robs them of all the contributions that they gave to the movement.
["MASSA" by Tyler, the Creator playing]
♪ My legs longer than a bitch ♪
♪ Got too much self-respect I wash my hands 'fore I piss ♪
[woman] For the last 18 years,
I visited areas where the day-to-day living conditions are unthinkable,
and it's the children who always suffer the most.
[Trump] I've done more for Black Americans than anybody,
with the possible exception of Abraham Lincoln.
Nobody has even been close.
Tonight I saved your ass, so show a little appreciation, maybe.
[Jeffers] The notion of the white savior is really
a counterpart
to white supremacy.
If whiteness reigns supreme…
[inaudible]
…if all the power rests with white people,
then the power to save rests with white people.
[Janine Teagues] Look, you are a white teacher in a Black school.
I am not Hilary Swank in Freedom Writers.
You are Hilary Swank in Freedom Writers.
We see so many different manifestations of it.
[inaudible]
[Raquel Willis] You'll see people put up images of them
going to some majority Black country,
holding a Black kid, that's their moment to kind of put forth this idea that,
"Oh, see, I'm… nice to the Negros."
If you are really doing something in a truly altruistic manner,
you don't have to use me up as a receipt.
And it's so reductive… uh,
what they're willing to do,
not actually listen to you and figure out what really needs to be done.
♪ …"It's not good" From your lunch break ♪
["Stand Up" by Tierra Whack playing]
♪ Yeah ♪
♪ Oh, will the real Negro Please stand up? ♪
[Jackson] Black abolitionists are the first abolitionists.
No one needed to tell enslaved people, "You know what, slavery is wrong."
"You know, this is bad for you." [laughs]
They knew that.
They knew that, and they're the first to speak out about their grievances
and about, you know, the evils of this institution.
And I think it's important to show that, like, Black people freed themselves.
But the white savior trope
allows white people to imagine Black people as children,
and to say, "We're uplifting you."
"We're developing you as any parent would a child."
But Black people are like, "We ain't children."
"We don't need you to lead us."
"We need you to support us, we need you to ally with us."
If your goal to help under-serviced, impoverished, Black communities
come from your own personal research,
and there's not a Black voice anywhere around you,
you need to check your inventory.
[Jackson] That's why it's so important for Lincoln
to have people like Frederick Douglass and Elizabeth Keckley,
and other Black people around him,
that give him an alternative vision of what Black people are capable of
and what freedom needs to look like for them.
[thunderclap]
♪ Oh, will the real Negro please stand up? ♪
♪ And all the fake sit down? ♪
[Kendi] Lincoln initially stated very clearly,
"This is not a war of abolition, this is a war to restore the union."
And because he issued the Emancipation Proclamation,
about 200,000 Black men
joined the Union Army during the last two years of the war
to fight what now became a war of freedom.
[cannonball explosion]
[soldiers shouting]
["Can't Tell It All" by Hulvey playing]
[soldiers screaming]
♪ Just can't tell it all ♪
♪ Just can't… ♪
As soon as we got free, we were like, "Go!"
♪ I'm 'bout to step in the ring For the fight of my… ♪
[Cooper] We were in Congress, we had senators.
We built Black colleges.
♪ …already covered in blood Walking in love ♪
[Cooper] We owned property.
We voted!
♪ …God came and threw me the rope ♪
The myth of Black inferiority is destroyed.
And you see all that Black people desire to do,
and what they're capable of,
when they are empowered to have autonomy and agency over their lives.
♪ We the new Israel, God when He lives here ♪
♪ Washes the sin here way more… ♪
[Cooper] It is this amazing ferment of Black excellence.
And we were so excellent, at such a large scale,
in such a short amount of time, that it shook the nation on its axis
and it simply could not handle it.
[gunshot]
[foreboding music playing]
[Vanee] Black progress is so terrifying
to white Americans, that they will do anything
to harness power they thought was lost.
[Jones-Rogers] White men saw Black men's exercise of citizenship rights
as a threat.
And so they immediately begin to construct
a very powerful mythology around the Black man,
who at all times had the ravishing and rape of white women on their minds.
[Gates] Racist ideas take root
if they can connect with something personal.
With something emotional.
By connecting that idea of protecting the women in your community,
to this alleged threat of Blackness,
you transform racist violence into virtue.
[screams]
And when you do that,
it justifies all kinds of horrific actions.
[somber music playing]
[Kendi] In the early 1890s,
lynchings were at their height,
and the justifications for why so many Black people were being lynched,
was because of what those Black people did wrong.
[Cunningham] It was not just about the person who was hanging on the tree
who was being punished for whatever crime, usually invented,
that they often did not do.
The act of lynching was also there to inflict terror,
lest any of us want to be hanging from a tree too.
That we were to all be able to look at that image and understand
that we should never cross the line and that we should stay in our place.
[police officer shouting]
Get on the ground!
[officer] What's wrong with you?
[panting]
[handcuffs rattling]
White supremacist powers created those stereotypes
as a way to put fear in people.
[somber music continues]
[Bush] If you make us the threat, then you remove our humanity.
These are intentional choices to hold us back.
♪ Your life, would you risk that? These kids never been bad ♪
♪ Sixteen, run around with a big strap ♪
♪ Gone, how many died…?
[Roberts] The criminalization of Black people
has been an essential part of white supremacy in America.
It is a very powerful way
for white people to explain why it's important for a white power elite
to control and contain Black communities.
[Sabonjian] These guys have been in and out of trouble so much you'd fill a book,
but unfortunately we have to handle these characters like daffodils,
instead of the bums that they are,
where we could throw them in a jail where they belong.
[chanting] Black lives matter!
[Rudy Giuliani] Why aren't they classified as a terrorist group?
Just because they're Black and nobody can say it?
Stop the nonsense. These are killers, people who hate white people.
Those ideas about "crime" and "Black" and "race,"
become ingrained in the American imagination.
Everybody that lives with the colored has to move.
[interviewer] Why?
Because you're not safe walking the streets at night.
You cannot leave the house.
When we think about how criminals are represented in the media,
they tend to be people of color and specifically Black men.
[man] Horton broke into our home.
For 12 hours, I was beaten, slashed and terrorized.
He was serving a life term without the possibility of a parole
when Governor Dukakis gave him a few days off.
[Dylann Roof] Black people are killing white people every day.
They rape white women-- 100 white women a day.
♪ He say it's a long story ♪
♪ Just know these youths Want a gunman ♪
♪ So tell me now… ♪
[Reagan] You're familiar enough with the statistics.
[officer] Police!
[Reagan] Crime is an American epidemic.
From these statistics, a portrait emerges.
The portrait is that of a stark, staring face.
A face that belongs to a frightening reality of our time.
The face of a human predator.
The face of the habitual criminal.
Nothing in nature is more cruel and more dangerous.
There are ways to criminalize people without it being in their face.
[Hillary Clinton] They are not just gangs of kids anymore.
They are often the kinds of kids that are called super predators.
No conscience, no empathy.
First we have to join together
to ensure the drug dealers are punished swiftly, surely and severely.
Crime becomes a code word
for Black, for race.
-[grunts] -[gunshot]
[Cunningham] The invention of Black criminality
is by such intentional design,
that it pervades all of culture.
Teenage killers
the homicide rate for juveniles
now has surpassed the rate for adults in this country…
[reporter] Kids that once stole hubcaps
now rape and murder.
[Jackson] Racist ideas get reinforced over and over again
by what we see on TV, what we see on the news.
Commercials, film, social media, you name it.
And a lot of those ideas are silent.
They're sort of subtle because they're cloaked in, you know,
fancy dressing and disguise.
[low growl]
[screaming]
[Gates] By the time that we start to get to like the 1930s,
it is sort of socially unacceptable to just, you know,
like be lynching Black folks on camera, right?
But what we get is still the invocation of aspects of Blackness
even when you don't have Black characters present.
-[growling] -[woman whimpers]
[Gates] In cinema, you're not bound in reality.
You can make the villain as big and black,
and powerful and horrible as you want them to be.
[screams in terror]
Shut up, you freak!
Julius, you--
I said shut up!
[Gates] The reason that it works,
the reason that it's legible to us as audiences,
is because we've already been trained in stereotypes about Blackness
that we may not even realize that we are bringing in our viewing practices.
[officer] You need to disperse immediately!
[reporter] Two things happened here last night.
One was the protest for that slain teenager,
the second was lawlessness on fire and out of control.
North of St. Louis, thieves ruled the night.
[chanting] Hands up, don't shoot! Hands up, don't shoot!
["Follow the Leader" by Devon Gilfillian playing]
Black people are no more violent or dangerous
than any other group of people.
But we are taught the face of violence is Black,
causing us to overlook the white individuals
who engage in violence,
because apparently, they don't have the face of violence.
He doesn't look like the type to kill somebody.
[Kendi] Widespread poverty and access to guns
better explain violence than race.
But we are taught that white violence is self-defense.
Deadly chokehold in the subway.
[reporter] Neely, a former Michael Jackson impersonator
had been acting erratically and shouting at passengers
but didn't physically harm anyone onboard.
[reporter 2] Lawyers for Penny say he acted in self-defense.
A Florida woman accused of shooting and killing her neighbor.
Police say she fired a gun through the front door of her home,
killing Ajike Owens, a mother of four.
Lorincz claims that she was acting in self-defense.
There is an African-American man. I am in Central Park.
He is recording me, and threatened myself and my dog.
I'm being threatened by a man in the Ramble!
Please send the cops immediately.
[Sean Noffke] Sanford police department. Line's being recorded, this is Sean.
[G. Zimmerman] We've had some break-ins in my neighborhood
and there's a real suspicious guy.
[Noffke] Okay, and this guy, is he white, Black or Hispanic?
[Zimmerman] He looks Black.
[static]
The potential violence that comes from propagating these ideas,
the potential violence is extraordinary.
They talked about George Floyd as under the influence,
and thus at any moment could potentially become a beast.
Ahmaud Arbery is running.
[solemn music playing]
And merely running,
he becomes bestial in the minds of these white men.
These so-called innocuous ideas,
they have this power to infect the minds of people,
who then use them and twist them
to justify the massacre of Black people.
[Benjamin] If we want to be fancy, we could call it "cultural narratives."
I call it just straight-up lies that people tell themselves
in order to justify the maintenance of these policies and these inequalities.
Lynching was a reaction, a racist reaction,
to Black folks doing well.
Ida B. Wells looked at the stories,
and the data that was being produced to justify lynching and said,
"No, I'm gonna collect my own data."
[Wells] If the Southern people, in defense of their lawlessness,
would tell the truth about lynching,
there would not be now the necessity for this defense.
But when they intentionally, maliciously, and constantly belie the record,
then the Negro must give to the world his side of the awful story.
[bell tolling]
[Wells] Everybody in town knew my friend Tommy.
He owned a little home and having saved his money,
he went into the grocery business.
One day, some colored and white boys quarreled over a game of marbles.
[children arguing]
[tense music playing]
Of course, the colored grocery keepers have been drawn into the dispute.
[clamoring]
[somber music playing]
[Wells] Sunday morning's paper came out
with lurid headlines about the grocery store.
The newspaper fanned the flames of racial prejudice,
calling the grocery store a resort of thieves and thugs.
[glass shatters]
-[man] Get him! -[grunting]
[ominous music continues]
[indistinct shouting]
[man] Whoo!
[gunshot]
[plaintive music playing]
[Wells, voice breaking] A finer, cleaner man than he,
never walked the streets of Memphis,
yet he was murdered with no more consideration
than if he had been a dog.
This is what opened my eyes to what lynching really was,
an excuse to get rid of Negroes who were acquiring wealth and property
and thus, keep the race terrorized.
[purposeful music playing]
[Wells] The more I studied the situation, the more I was convinced
that the Southerner had never gotten over his resentment
that the Negro was no longer his plaything, his servant,
and his source of income.
[purposeful music continues]
[Wells] During these years, more than 10 thousand Negroes
have been killed in cold blood,
without the formality of judicial trial and legal execution.
The same record shows that during all these years,
and for all these murders,
only three white men have been tried, convicted and executed.
[purposeful music continues]
[Wells] The very frequent inquiry made after my lectures
by interested friends is,
"What can I do to help the cause?"
The answer always is,
"Tell the world the facts."
[mournful music playing]
When it comes to telling our stories,
and forcing this country to take an unflinching look at itself,
she is the originator.
We can see those postcards of lynch mobs,
and their wives and children
standing underneath a Black body swinging from a tree,
and know that it's horrifying.
But we can only do that,
because Ida B. Wells took it upon herself, in the day and time when it was happening,
to make sure that we knew,
to make sure that we could not look away.
[dramatic music playing]
[clamoring]
[woman] You just opened my car door,
so you're threatening to drag me out of my own car.
Get out of the car!
-[woman] You gonna stun me? -I'll light you up. Get out!
-Get down, stay! On your face! -[screaming]
-One, two… -I am no threat to this officer.
I've been threatened.
-Watch the show, folks. -My life is in danger! My life…
For what? Every time you see me, you wanna mess with me.
I'm tired of it! This stops today.
[bystander] He's not responsive right now, bro.
Does he have a pulse?
No, bro! Look at him, he's not responsive right now, bro.
-Check for a pulse. -Bro, are you serious?
You gonna let him sit here with that on his neck?
[dramatic music continues]
[Cunningham] Police violence is modern day lynching.
State violence against Black bodies, inside and outside of prison cells,
is lynching.
It is a form of racial terror,
meant not only to punish the Black individual,
but to send a message to all Black people, to stay in our place.
Even as policing and their techniques have evolved,
there is a single common thread.
[Cooper] Every time there's a huge, fan out, push forward, go…
[crowd cheering]
[loud cheering]
…there's a tidal wave back.
A wall of white supremacy that shows up and says, like,
"This far and no farther."
[dramatic music intensifies]
[loud rattling]
-[indistinct clamoring] -Back up!
-[shouting] -[glass shattering]
[clamoring]
[Perry] The response to Black progress
is punishment.
[siren blaring]
[Perry] It's not articulated like that.
It's articulated as problems of crime, problems of drugs.
But the reality is,
it's an effort to reassert racial domination through "order."
This nation must make an all-out effort to combat crime.
Our country's laws must be respected.
Order must be maintained.
[Nixon] My friends, let this message come through clear
from what I say tonight.
The wave of crime is not going to be the wave of the future
in the United States of America.
The first responsibility of government
is law and order.
I am the law and order candidate.
[crowd cheering and applauding]
[applause]
[Mike Wallace] When you read stories about difficulties,
riots in Omaha, or Cleveland, or Brooklyn, or Chicago, or wherever…
I call them rebellions.
-[Wallace] They're rebellions? -Right.
[Wallace] And you-- you see nothing wrong with them?
I think that it is people who are rebelling against a system
that has locked them inside, tight, of ghettos,
that exploits and oppresses them,
and they have no means of redress to break that system down.
You have moved to destroy and disrupt,
you have taken people away,
you have broken down their systems,
and you have called all that, "civilization."
And we who have suffered at this, are now saying to you,
"You are the killers of the dreams."
"You are the savages."
"Yes, it is you who have always been uncivilized."
Civilize yourself.
[gloomy music playing]
[Anderson] This nation is drawn to the spectacular.
Drawn to the flames.
But we don't pay attention to the kindling,
and the kindling are those policies that are predicated on anti-Blackness.
The denial of education, kindling.
Unequal housing and employment opportunities, kindling.
The hyper-policing of Black communities, kindling.
[Vanee] Stop-and-frisk…
[officer] Police, freeze!
[Benjamin] The war on drugs.
[Jeffers] Mass incarceration.
[Cunningham] When you have policies, structures, and institutions
that intentionally subjugate Black people,
you intentionally create communities that can be continuously criminalized.
And there's that thread again.
[plaintive music playing]
[music fades]
[heartbeat]
[Kendi] When we think of the history of racism in this country,
we're really thinking of the history of power.
[unsettling music playing]
[Bush] Everything in our society
that has been used to oppress Black people in this country,
it's so they can continue to keep power.
The white elite.
That's how they benefit.
They get to maintain their power.
[Cunningham] We are taught that power is some kind of finite resource,
that it is a pie.
The more I have, the less you have. The more you have, the less I have.
If your guiding principle is that,
whatever you have, keep it at all costs, then you will do whatever you have to do.
You will lie, you will cheat, you will steal, you will kill,
to make sure you hold on to it.
[evocative music playing]
[Dr. Angela Davis] The work that ought to have been done
in the immediate aftermath of slavery,
the work of reorganizing, retooling,
reconceptualizing the entire society,
so that it might be possible for previously enslaved individuals
to be free and equal,
that work was never done.
[clamoring]
[man] Watch out, watch out, watch out!
[explosives going off]
[Jones-Rogers] I think that white people are afraid of what will happen
if they put a mirror up to themselves.
They'll be able to see that for generations, for centuries,
they have tormented and repressed Black, brown and tan people.
They might not know what to do with that history.
There will be a "Then what?" question.
"Now that you know, then what?"
They'll have to think about whether they want to continue
to live in that legacy.
[Kendi] The heartbeat of being racist is denial,
is constantly looking for ways to deny the persistence of racism.
In order to address the way in which racism is-- is baked in,
actually requires an active disposition.
And that is anti-racism.
[gentle music playing]
[Kendi] People are constantly thinking about,
if we create an anti-racist society,
what are they going to lose,
as opposed to what they're going to gain.
[Perry] If you want an effective social network of human beings,
an effective society,
keeping your heel on the back of a portion of the community,
is probably not the best move.
[gentle music continues]
[Jones-Rogers] I don't know what it'll look like, but I know it's possible
because someone, some series of people,
put the system together in the first place.
And if they can put the system together in the first place,
then we can undo the system.
[inaudible]
[Cooper] It isn't about a better idea that allows you to love your neighbor.
That's not what we're talking about.
If all "anti-racist" means,
is that you personally don't dislike people of color,
how does that make my life any better because you personally don't dislike me?
But if, after you have reckoned with that, you then go out and say,
"But how has our structural dislike of these people,
our structural disregard of these people,
made it harder for them to actually live?"
Then, now we're talking. Now we're cooking with grease.
[evocative music playing]
[Jackson] Black people know what they want.
They have ideas about what freedom and liberation will look like.
And it doesn't look like this radical utopia.
It looks a lot like the world that white people live in.
[chuckling] The world that white people living in never question.
[percussive music playing]
I love being Black.
I thank God every day that He made me Black.
I love my Black husband.
I love the Black baby we're gonna have.
I love my Black family.
I love my Black neighbor, Miss Janet.
I love my Black church.
I love my Black music.
I love all of the things that Blackness has given America,
whether or not America acknowledges it.
♪ Alive ♪
♪ If the sun decide to rise I'm still alive ♪
[Williams] So tell me,
what is wrong with Black people?
Nothing.
Nothing is wrong with Black people.
There is nothing wrong with Black people.
You see how absolutely absurd it is.
The only thing wrong with Black people
is that we think something is wrong with Black people.
[rhythmic choral song plays]
♪ I'll rise ♪
♪ One breath at a time ♪
♪ Go down but still alive ♪
♪ The master of my mind ♪
♪ Still I rise ♪
♪ I'll rise ♪
♪ The sun decide to rise ♪
♪ I'm still alive ♪
♪ Alive ♪
♪ If the sun decide to rise ♪
♪ I'm still alive ♪
♪ If the sun decide to rise ♪
♪ I'm still alive ♪
[song fades to an evocative melody]
♪ Blind man, send him my way ♪
[syncopated rhythm begins]
[more rhythms layer]
[chorus vocalizes hauntingly]
[song ends]
[steady rhythm playing]
[piano playing robustly]
[song ends]