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The seventh episode of the Broadening the Narrative podcast is out now! You can listen to the episode "The Importance of History with Lettie Gore" for the Broadening the Narrative podcast by clicking on any of the hyperlinked platforms below. A transcript of the episode is included below as well.
In this episode of Broadening the Narrative, I talked with historian, antiracism educator, and podcast host Lettie Gore. Lettie has a master’s degree in history and a master’s degree in conflict management and resolution. We discussed Lettie’s journey toward loving history, her passion for connecting the dots, and why history is important. Follow Lettie on IG (@sincerely.lettie) and on Facebook (facebook.com/sincerelylettie). Join her Patreon community by visiting patreon.com/lettieshumate to support her work. I hope that if you know and love me you can engage with the Broadening the Narrative blog, social media accounts, and podcast, as well as any recommended resources. Then, you can share with people who know and love you, and little by little, person by person, we can broaden the narrative.
Transcript
4 clock ticks
“It’s past time to broaden the narrative” (said by Sequana Murray)
Intro Music
Introduction: Hello and welcome to another episode of Broadening the Narrative. This is a podcast where I talk to some of my favorite people who have broadened the narrative for me. I'm your host, Nicki Pappas, and I'm so glad you're here.
Transition Music
First Segment
Nicki: On today's episode of Broadening the Narrative, I am joined by historian, antiracism educator, and podcast host Lettie Shumate. I connected with Lettie through Instagram, and I am so glad. We will be discussing Lettie’s journey toward loving history, her passion for connecting the dots, and why history is important. Before we begin, I just want to say that Lettie is one of my favorite people because she radiates the love and the justice of Christ as she teaches and cares, and I mean genuinely cares, about others, seeking to see them as people first. So, I’m glad to be talking to you, Lettie, and thank you for coming onto the podcast.
Lettie: Yeah, I’m super excited, Nicki. Thank you so much. I’m really glad that we connected last year because you’ve like been rooting me on since before I am where I am now, so yay. Thanks.
Nicki: Thank you. Well, in addition to this little background that I gave, could you tell us more about yourself and your background.
Lettie: Yeah. So, I’m Lettie Shumate, obviously. I’m a Black woman. I’m 32 years old. I am a historian, an antiracism educator, podcast host, like you were saying. I’m all those things. I’m also a facilitator. I just recently finished my second master’s degree, which is in conflict management and resolution. I just finished that May of this year, and I also got my master’s in history in 2015, both from University of North Carolina at Wilmington. And yeah, I absolutely love history. I actually didn’t like history growing up, though. I thought that it was boring because we learned about the same seven things it seemed like, and I was like, “Is all history just wars and battles because this is just not what I care about.” And I went to college, and I just really started learning and hearing history told in a way that was way beyond anything I learned in public school, and it was just mind blowing to be honest. And so yeah, I decided to get my master’s in history. That really was a rigorous process. It was extremely challenging. People want to say sometimes, “Oh, well, I also love history,” and I’m like, “Mmm, loving history and being a historian are not the same thing.” I love looking at law and history, but I’m not a lawyer, I’m not an attorney, right. So being in the grad program for history really taught me a lot about myself but also how to think, how to think in a way that I didn’t know how to think before, how to connect dots, how to just stand firm in who I am and in what I am saying and defending whenever it comes to history. Yeah, so there’s all that. That’s some academic stuff I guess about me, and then more personal things. I am a wife. I’ve been married for two years. I have three cats. They’re my fur babies. Yeah, there’s some stuff about me.
Nicki: Yes, well I can’t wait to dig into all of that and hear more of your journey, but as you mentioned, we first connected in September 2019 when I highlighted your Instagram account as an account for people to follow and support. And so I looked back at that post today and saw that at the time, you had 391 followers. As of the time of this recording, you have 35,000 followers, and I’m so excited for you as more people are exposed to history through your work. And I was wondering how it’s been for you to experience this type of growth and, like, if you’ve felt pressure in any way.
Lettie: Yeah, it’s honestly just been a huge blessing from God. That’s what I tell everybody first because I did not do any of this on my own. None of this. I am, I’m very rooted and grounded in God, in my faith, and there are things that I’ve prayed for that are finally happening, and it’s just really great to look back and see why certain doors were closed when I didn’t even know they were going to be closed, and so whenever this growth happened on social media, I was like, “Ok wow,” and I felt overwhelmed at first, and I was like “Wait,” I had to pause and say like, “This is what I prayed for. This is what I’ve been asking for. This is my purpose. This is what I’ve been doing. It’s just now it’s on, just more people are being exposed to the work that I’ve been doing.” So, yeah, it was great. Last summer, I started my podcast in July, and I was just like, “I’m gonna start a podcast. Maybe people will want to listen to it.” Because people always told me, “Lettie, you need to have a podcast. People listen to you whenever you talk. You have a way of connecting with people.” And to me sometimes, and maybe this is a bit of like imposter syndrome to be quite frank because I feel like many of us deal with imposter syndrome. I was just like, “Do they though, do I really say things?” Because I just don’t realize it sometimes, and l had to, even with that, we’re constantly growing, and even I’ve grown more into who I truly am as a person and what I’m able to do, and the fact that I know what I’m talking about and people do want to listen to me. And yeah, I mean really the growth happened in May and June of this year, like the most, so that was a lot to deal with, because, no, I don’t want to say deal with because that sounds like a negative connotation. That was a lot to take in, and really it’s because it was just like, wow, because we had just heard about Ahmaud Arbery being murdered, we had just also found out really about George Floyd like a month later, we heard about it, though Ahmaud Arbery his murder happened, you know, three months before, and so it was already heavy and then there’s this big awakening it seemed like with a lot of people wanting to pay attention to racism, like what it is, what white supremacy is, doing something about it. People were outraged, we’re in a pandemic so emotions are already heightened, people are at home, they’re looking at their phones more, so all these things factored in and before I knew it I was at, I think in June I was at like 22,000. I was like, “Woah, what?” And I started my Patreon at the end of May, and I got like 20 patrons, and I was up to 80, and I was going to set a goal on Patreon to just be like, “Oh, you know, if I reach 120 followers,” I mean patrons, “I’ll do this thing,” and before I could even do that, it was at like 200 patrons, so I was like, “Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh.” But I was grateful for it, so grateful for it because people were truly resonating with what I was saying and not because I’m out here being like, “Oh, look at me, look at me,” but I genuinely want people to see the urgency of now whenever it comes to dismantling racism, dismantling white supremacy, and it just really reaffirmed the fact that this is my purpose, and this is what God wants me to do, and that even though it all happened at once, it was a lesson as well for me to give Him control, like to not try to take it all on by myself. So, yeah.
Nicki: Yeah. Well, as we were talking before, the circumstances leading up to the growth are tragic and traumatizing, but for there to be a voice like yours at the forefront that people can point others to knowing that you’re not gonna to sugarcoat things, you’re gonna to tell the truth, and having your Patreon community, people can financially support you to keep doing that work. And through your work, the narrative around history is broadened, so I was wondering if you could speak about the narrative you were taught about history when you were younger?
Lettie: Yeah. So really the narrative was, “Ok look, here are all these white people and here’s more white people and they fought in wars and then there were a few Black people sprinkled here and there, and that was for the Civil Rights Movement,” and that was it. That was the extent of history, and I did though, so I did love social studies. So in middle school, and I remember in seventh and eighth grade, I remember seventh grade was like social studies but world history or world social studies I guess it would be, maybe, and so it wasn’t world history, it was just like a social studies class, and I remember we were studying Africa, like African history, but really it was more like projects and pick a country and write about a country or do a poster board about the country. And I remember I did mine on Botswana, and I was just like so amazed to research about Black people, like Black African people, and it was just really cool, you know, the pictures were just so colorful, and there was culture everywhere, and it was just really neat. I also really always loved animals. I still love animals, and I definitely always loved like cheetahs, elephants, still love cheetahs and elephants, they’re my favorite animals, and I loved seeing the pictures in the books when I was doing the research because I was in seventh grade, so this was the late 90s, early, early, early 2000s, and oh gosh it was, yeah it was. Wow. Time goes by so fast. But I remember being intrigued by this research I was doing on library computers and stuff like that. And yeah, then high school it was like American history, but I was just like, ok, it was more wars and battles. And I went to college, and that’s really whenever I started learning actual history. And I mean, as far as growing up, in our home, with my parents and my younger brother, there was, of course there was Black culture. Black culture doesn’t look a certain way, it does and it doesn’t because we’re not a monolith, but there were certain things in history that were talked about, like Civil Rights Movement and stuff like that, but that was really it, and yeah, so that was the extent really of my childhood with history.
Nicki: Yeah. Sorry, so you mentioned loving cheetahs, and my oldest son, that’s his favorite animal, so he’s gonna be listening to this when it comes out, and he’s gonna be like, “I love cheetahs, too, like Ms. Lettie.”
(laughter)
Lettie: Yeah.
Nicki: But, yeah, so it’s really interesting to hear that progression up until college, and you sent out in your Patreon community a link for the Encore magazine article that you are featured in, and it’s titled “Healing a Nation.” And so I remember reading about how you had a professor at Brunswick Community College who taught history through storytelling, and you said that’s when your “passion for history gained footing.” So why do you think storytelling has the power to fuel passion for history, as opposed to the other modalities that were mentioned, like the textbooks or PowerPoint even?
Lettie: Yeah because there’s something that happens with our brains whenever we’re being told something that doesn’t feel like it’s something for a test, right. Really, with him, oh man, yeah he - first of all, here I am 18 years old at a community college because I went to a community college my first two years of college, and I walk into this room, professor comes in, and he does not use PowerPoint, and we did not have a textbook. And so I was just like, “What, I have to write all this stuff all the time? I have to write everything he says?” And he told us, “Yeah, you have to write all the notes that I say. This is what the test is gonna be on, what I say.” And I was fascinated at how much history he knew without looking at a book. I was fascinated. I was like, “This is amazing.” And just that in itself was like, wow, because I can remember so many things; I have a wonderful memory. I’m extremely observant along with having a wonderful memory, and that’s also what I feel is an advantage with me being a historian. I was able to see through him, like wow, if he can do that, I can do that. And he would tell the stories, and he would begin his stories with something personable, with something like a story about him going to the store one day or about his children or something, and he would immediately tie it into history. It was kind of like a synonymous story with what he was going to be talking about that day, and it was always so cool. And he just had so many more details, he had so much more context. If he was talking about the Civil War, and he was talking about Abraham Lincoln, he was also going to be talking about what was happening in different states at the time, right. So he didn’t just look at it as, “Ok, it was all the same everywhere across the United States.” No. And so that helped me see, start to see, the depth of history, and I remember I did take him for American History I and also American History II, and I think it was maybe American History II, I did a, we had to do a research paper project, and I did it on, or we had to do a book review, it was something, and I remember getting the book Buried in Bitter Waters: The Hidden History of Racial Cleansing in America. I got it from the library, and I read that book and it was about race massacres that happened. This is, me getting this book, this is 2006, maybe 2007 at this point, and I was blown away. I was just like, “What?” And that, I believe, is whenever I really started to look at racial injustice, and I say that because I always think about that book, the cover, matter of fact, I have a copy of it. And that’s really whenever I started to see just how deep and dark our history in this country is. And yeah I just really, I went from there. I thought I wanted to teach history in high school at one point. I knew that I wanted to educate. I’ve always, I knew that I wanted to. I won’t say I always knew because I used to want to be a doctor, and then I met chemistry, and I was like, “That’s a joke.” But I’ve always wanted to help people learn or be better, be better than what they are, and I, yeah, I ended up being where I am now, doing what I want, and I really can connect all the dots with all the things that have happened since my community college days.
Nicki: Yeah, you really are so much like your professor in that you are really gifted at engaging people, connecting it to their lives, your memory, like you said, you can, and then yeah, just the way you teach, and you’re so passionate about it. And could you talk more about why you’re so passionate about connecting those dots from the past to the present?
Lettie: Yeah because like it’s right there. It’s there, and people want to make a change and all this stuff, and I’m like, “Yeah, but you can’t do that if you’re not seeing the truth about what happened before today.” And also, I’m Black in America, and I’ve experienced racism every single day of my life from as far back as I can remember. My parents tried to “shield” us from some of it, but that was the overt stuff, that wasn’t the covert stuff that we still experienced. And I just really, I just really want people to see the truth because I get really frustrated, even outside of history, I get frustrated whenever people tell half of a story. I don’t like that. I don’t, that’s not even effective communication, and I don’t like things being left out, and so whenever people want to talk about what’s happening in our country right now, and they have this one-sided, white-supremacist-laced view, I’m like “That is wrong. No.” And so, I just really think it’s because I just know that if people see, want to actually see, what the truth really is, that’s going to change something. If it doesn't convict you, then you need help. Because you honestly can't look at history, the true history, consciously, and not see the importance of making a change, and I just, I just don’t see, and also, I think because both of my parents, my dad was born in 1945, my mom was born in 1951, and so whenever my dad turned 18, it was only 1963. Whenever my dad turned 18, Dr. King hadn’t even given his “I Have a Dream” speech yet. Yeah. My dad turned 18 in May of 1963, and “I Have a Dream” speech was given in August of 1963, so I tell people that and they’re like, “What?” And I’m like, “Yeah.” Because whenever you put it that way, it translates from, “Oh, I learned about Civil Rights Movement in four pages in a history book.” It translates to, “Wow, that wasn’t a long time ago, and it’s much more extensive than what I ever thought that I knew.” And so I believe, too, for me, it’s like my parents are, my parents lived during the time that I, things that I research extensively, they were living during that time.
(laughter)
Lettie: And a lot of things they didn’t even know were happening because you know people think because today we have phones and internet and we’re so connected, but also we’re also very disconnected, but yeah, they think that, “Oh, this is how it was back then, too.” No, it wasn't. No, it wasn’t. And so, yeah that’s really where my passion stems from is just, it’s just this, I also just feel this drive and this, it’s just always this pull, like to want to do more, to want to change someone’s conscience, even if it’s like one person. If it's one person out of twenty, that one person’s gonna go and tell somebody, and they’re gonna go and tell somebody, and it’s just, yeah, I just really want people to see the need to really learn the truth about history.
Nicki: And yeah, for sure in your work as you connect the dots for people, you point to the better way, you pave a way that shows this is how you can change, how you should change, and how to truly help usher in a more just and truly equitable society in the work that you do as you connect those dots for people, and it spills over. Like you said, one person talks to another person. And yeah, well in addition to that professor that you had, was there anyone else who inspired you to love history and what has this journey toward loving history been like for you?
Lettie: Yeah, so Dr. Glen Harris, he was a professor of mine at UNCW, so he was my professor in undergrad and in grad school. So undergrad, I got my BA in history, and so I had Dr. Harris then. And he’s a tall Black man. He was always just, I mean, he's the kind of man who floats through the hallways. He’s so tall. He has a presence about him. Like the first time I had a class with him, I was like, “Wow, he’s unapologetic.” And it was just like that inspired me off the jump, I was like, “Wow, that’s really awesome.” The first class I had with him was in 2009, and at this point, I’m a junior, well, technically I would have been a junior, but I was a sophomore because I was a fifth year senior. Anyway, he introduced me to James Baldwin. And James Baldwin is my absolute favorite Black intellectual in history. Period. Dr. Harris, though, challenged me in so many ways, in undergrad for sure because in undergrad we all know how we were in undergrad, even in those years of our lives, I mean we’re not as mature as we think we are, and so he really ignited in me this path of intellectual maturity, and then whenever I went to graduate school at UNCW, I had him along with other professors I had in undergrad. But the difference was they didn’t care about that. They didn’t care that they knew you. It was, “Oh yeah, I definitely know you, but I’m also gonna be 10 times harder on you because now you’re a graduate student.” And so I worked closely with him in grad school. I took classes, I took 3 classes, 3 graduate seminars with Dr. Harris, and that’s really whenever I learned more about myself and how to be the historian that I am, and not just the historian that I am but the Black woman that I am, too, because Dr. Harris told me and he always made it clear that first of all that I’m always going to have to work five times harder to get half of what white people have, but in that I also learned how to stand firm in defending myself with history, like defending what I’m saying because the thing that people don’t talk about with graduate school with history, and not all programs are the same because I later learned that the grad program in history at UNCW is one of the hardest ones in our state, and I was like, “Oh, that explains a lot,” but he just really pushed me, he pushed me in ways that really would make me mad, and I’d get really frustrated. Like I would be in his office talking to him, I usually was in his office almost every day just talking to him about things and talking through history things, just that kind of stuff, and he would ask me, “What did you read in that book?” And I would tell him, and I would show him a paper that I wrote, which was like a 25 page paper, which was a casual paper for grad school, and he’d be like, “Alright, so what did you read?” I’d be like, “I just told you.” He’d be like, “No, what did you read? What did you read in that?” “Like, I just told you.” But what he was doing was like making me talk and defend and connect the dots with him because he already knows it all because I focused on American history in grad school but specifically Black history and race studies, and that’s what he got his PhD in, so here I am just this grad student going toe to toe a lot of times with my professor, and not in a devil’s advocate way, right, because that’s what people want to do now with arguing, and no, no, no, it wasn’t a devil’s advocate way. It was an “I’m gonna make you talk this through and make you become a better historian” kind of way. And yeah, he really influenced me. And then there are others. Dr. Berkeley, Dr. Fonvielle, those are two others who also had an integral role in who I am as a historian and just made me see beyond what I thought I knew, and it humbled me a lot. I have a lot of humility or like, yeah, because of them, because you go into grad school, well I went into grad school, thinking that I knew how to write and how to read and how to think, and then I was, whew, totally turned upside down, but I’m thankful for it. And so yeah, really Dr. Harris, and I still actually keep in contact with him. Matter fact, he just texted me the other day to say hey, so yeah.
Nicki: I love that story so much, and for you to have someone like Dr. Harris to help shape you and cultivate that love for history in you is just really beautiful, and you mentioned James Baldwin, and at your recommendation I got The Fire Next Time.
Transition Music
Second Segment
Nicki: I was curious if you could now talk about the narrative you believe and teach about history now, kind of after coming out of grad school and living into your role as a historian?
Lettie: Yeah, I mean there are just automatic questions that I ask, and this is from grad school and just even since then, just automatic questions that I ask whenever I read things. In grad school, I had to do a lot of primary source research, so it’s research from the actual time that something happened and that requires a lot of archival digging, it requires a lot of reading secondary sources like things written today and looking at the footnotes, a lot of all of this tedious work that people don’t know I do to get the facts. But I really teach history from a viewpoint of, “Who’s writing the story?” first of all. And people really need to pay attention to that. Who’s writing what you’re reading? Because history is always, the whitewashed history that we learned growing up, was always written from the viewpoint of the victor and white America. So, if you understand the history of white America and America, it’s laced with racism and white supremacy, and so of course the truth is not going to be told about what really happened to allow white supremacy to be upheld. And so really I approach it in a way of, “Ok, this is what really happened. I’m gonna connect the dots for you, and I’m gonna answer the questions that you’re already wondering in your head.” So that’s also what I do. I’ll usually, I’ll look at something, and I’ll be like, alright, so if I’m reading about the, I’m trying to think of something, ok, if I’m reading about the Great Depression, that’s a very like, that’s something that’s not, people would think, because of how we’re taught about it, we’re not taught about the Black version and the white version and the version of Indigenous people, like we’re not told all of these stories of things that were happening, so I look at the Great Depression, and I’m like, “Alright, so this happened. What else was happening in America at the time? What happened before that? What happened after that? What was happening in the world at that time? What are these books focused on? Is it just focused on certain areas of the country? What happened to” - there’s just all these other questions that I automatically think of. So usually my brain is on m, and I like am typing on b, like I’m just trying to keep up with how fast my brain is moving, but I really try to also just show the hypocrisy of history, like the hypocrisy of the narrative that we’ve always been told. So, for example, when we’re talking about capitalism in our country, right, when we talk about that and we talk about history and the great people who were wealthy in America, what I was taught growing up were names like J.P. Morgan, Andrew Carnegie, these white men. Ok. So now what I do, well what I’ve done for some time now is now I’ll just be like, “Ok, well how did they get that wealth?” I’ll ask people questions, and I want people to answer them because, and this is kind of off branch for just a second, but this is why I got my second master’s in conflict management and resolution, to learn how to communicate in different ways, because I already know how to do that but we always have to have another sheet of paper to do something else, as many of us know, but I, when I was I need to understand more about how the brain works, like how emotions work, and that’s what I learned in my conflict management and resolution program. And so, but even before that, again, I was already doing this stuff, so I’m sitting in my program the past two years like, “Oh hey, this is what I’ve been doing, just didn’t know that I was.” But, so yeah, so if I’m talking about J.P. Morgan and Andrew Carnegie and people are like, “Oh, yeah, well they worked hard for their wealth.” Did they though? Because actually you can trace every bit of money that they made back to labor of enslaved Black people in this country, first and foremost, number 1, because you look at the wealth of the country and where the wealth was going. You look at racism and you look at the fact and you accept the fact that racism was not just in the south, racism was a national, a national thing, it wasn’t just relegated to below the Mason-Dixon line, but also, you look particularly at like, just particularly at tracing back the wealth, and I don’t mean, “Oh, I have to go search through deeds and find all this.” No, you actually don’t have to do that. You can look and say, “Oh, ok, here was this company that owned a railroad in 1885, but they were directly tied to convict leasing,” which was, if people don’t know convict leasing, I want them to go Google it, but convict leasing and then slave trading, and I’m going to use that word slave instead of enslaved because that’s what we use as historians because that’s what actually really was happening. You had Black people who were prisoners, for things that they didn’t do, let me make that very clear, and then these companies are profiting off of it, and you look at it and you’re like, “Ok, so this railroad had convict labor. Black labor. So then you’re not having to pay anybody to build this railroad. You’re making all the money.” So then you look at where the money goes and then you look and you’re like, “Oh wait, hey, it went to J.P. Morgan’s like father and then all that went to J.P. Morgan.” So whenever you look and you want to say, “Oh, well he worked for everything,” no he didn’t. No he didn’t. He got what he has because of racism, well he got what he had because of racism and white supremacy. That makes a lot of people feel very uncomfortable because it challenges what you’ve been told your whole life, and especially for white people it challenges them because there’s an ingrained white supremacy ideal. Period. And I approach history this way with people because I want them to talk through things, so that’s something else I do is I want people to hear what they’re saying. It doesn’t work all the time. It absolutely doesn’t. People have yelled at me, screamed at me, cussed me out, called me all kinds of things, and they still are going to. This doesn’t mean, just because I’m a historian and just because I want people to learn does not mean I’m gonna coddle white feelings. I’m not gonna sit here and take crap. I’m not. But what I am going to do is do it in a way where I want you to receive it as best as I can, and matter of fact this happened recently. I commented on something on social media, and I don't comment on many things that are controversial anymore. It’s just to maintain my energy and my peace cause, whew, my God. And this person was just like, “Yeah, I mean it’s really just like southern heritage for the flag, and so I can understand why people would want to fly the Confederate flag,” and then I asked the person, I was just like, “Do you know what treason is?” I just asked them. And they were like ,”Yeah,” and I was just like, “You do know that what happened though was treasonous technically if you look at the definition and you look at the history of our country because that’s why after the war was over Confederate traitors were gonna be hung, because they committed treason. They seceded from the country.” And so I said, “So technically, flying that flag is actually an act of treason, especially flying it next to the American flag.” And moments like that, instead of me saying, “No, that’s just wrong. It’s a racist flag.” Oh, it’s absolutely a racist flag. And then when people want to say that it’s not, I’m like, “Well, actually in southern states, in their actual constitutions per state after they seceded from the Union, most of them actually have written in there that the reason why they’re fighting the Civil War was to allow enslavement to continue. And so then you also have this Confederate flag come about and it’s flying in its different forms, and even after the Civil War was over, you have, I don’t know, Confederate flags being hung over Black bodies that are being lynched, you have the Confederate flag being hung, or being carried by the klan as they’re burning houses, burning Black peoples’ houses, burning their crops, burning them.” And so that’s how I do history. I just go right in for the hard stuff. Because there’s no time for, there isn’t any time for niceties with that because history doesn’t make room for that. White-supremacy-laced history does, but not the real history, not the history that literally continues to affect my well-being as a Black person in this country, not the history that affects my parents and what they had to go through, stories I know that they’ve told me things that they went through in the Jim Crow south. I don’t have time to paint it as this pretty little picture for you because that’s a lie. That’s a lie. That’s a lie. And I, being rooted and grounded in faith and in God, know that Jesus was also a radical, and I have this conversation with people sometimes because there’s this pretty image of Jesus, “Oh, well he would’ve gone about it a nice way,” and I’m like, “Have you read the Bible at all? Because that’s not what He did. It’s literally like not what He did.” So that’s a long way to answer your question, but.
Nicki: Yeah, I love two things you said, well a lot of things you said -
(laughter)
Nicki: but two things I’m thinking were the “hypocrisy of history” and asking the question, “Did they though?” Super interesting and good things to hold onto, and when you mentioned white people being uncomfortable and getting your conflict management degree, I thought back to the episode you did with Myisha and Weeze and how epigenetics was brought up in the “Girl You Betta Apologize” episode. And so I was thinking, like, if white people know that this is inherited in our bodies, then we can start to notice when we’re acting out of our discomfort and wanting to preserve our way of life and then change. Like it’s not a you, specific, it’s a, like when you say things, if I feel uncomfortable, it’s not because you’re saying, “You, Nicki, are a bad person,” but what you’re saying reveals something in me that I need to work through, so it’s like, do that, Nicki, just work through it.
Lettie: Yeah, and that’s the thing, right, there’s so much defensiveness whenever I talk to white people about this kind of stuff, there’s so much, and it’s like, you have to recognize the need to just stop and work through it because the amount, the number of fits people have thrown, right, with whether I’m telling them about true racism and white supremacy in our country and the hypocrisy of history, the amount of fits. Do you throw those whenever you’re at work and you get something wrong? Do you throw those fits? Do you just like pop off because you got a bad performance review? Or do you ask, “Ok, what do I need to do to improve?” Because what you’re worried about is a paycheck, you’re worried about still being at that job because you have bills to pay, you have a family to support, and if you don’t have a family, you have yourself to support. You need a job. You have bills, right? So, what you’re concerned about is you in that moment and you want to stay in your job and you want to be able to possibly be promoted, so whenever we call y’all out on your white nonsense, you get so defensive, right, white people get so defensive. So I’m just like, “Why don’t you just do the same thing you would do at your job? Just self-reflect. Acknowledge the wrong that you did and then say, ‘Alright, how can I be better?’” But see the difference is ain’t nobody paying you to do this out here, right? You don’t have to sacrifice anything. You think that you don’t, but really you do. Cause if people don’t start sacrificing things, their white privilege, their comfort, change isn’t gonna happen. Nothing just happened because you’re thinking, “Oh, well, stuff’s just gonna eventually get better.” That’s actually not how anything works. It’s literally not how anything works. The fact that people, white America, yeah, it gets so defensive, and you want to know something, whenever I was getting my recent master’s degree, there’s a book that I read called The Body Keeps the Score. That book is a book everyone needs to read because at the same time that I was reading that book, I was reading Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome, and so that was like a double whammy for me. It was super, it was just super heavy, all of it hit at once, and at the time also going through my own internal things with me unpacking some trauma that I’ve experienced, and so it was just everything was everywhere, right. And people just need to understand more about trauma and what trauma does to us intergenerationally, and that’s something that’s not discussed. The thing is, my great-great-great grandmother, who was enslaved, the eggs in her body, the eggs in her body, the trauma that she experienced, the eggs in her body also experienced that same trauma. And then her child, her children have the same, it’s the same way that we have inherited physical traits, right, like, “Oh, my mom has eyes like mine. Oh look at us. We have similar traits.” Y’all, that same stuff gets passed down through our DNA with how we react to things, and so people need to really start understanding that, like the depth of that cause that’s not discussed enough, and so I’m like you need to recognize the fact, white people, that some of your ancestors were out here, white mobs of people, lynching people, and they were happy about it. They were happy about it. They were rejoicing about it. They were eating lunch, they were going and, I’m gonna get real graphic, Nicki, if you don’t mind. They were going and they were dismembering Black bodies after they were burned and after, this is what they were doing, and they were doing it because of the immense amount of hatred they had for Black people, and that stings. That stings for white people because you don’t want to think that your family members could be that way because at that point it’s personal. Listen, you’re going to have to accept that. I’m not saying all white people did that, but a lot white people did. A lot of white people did. And that joy that they felt, cause they felt joy. Oh, they were excited. That joy, that gets passed down. That’s not an excuse, though, it’s not an excuse to say, “Well,” because then what excuse are you gonna use, “Well, I’m just racist because my grandparents were.” You don’t want to brag about that, but also, it’s like you don’t want to do anything about it. And I’m not saying everyone is how they are just because of what’s passed down through them, no, I’m not saying that at all. But, like, I have had to recognize things that maybe like my parents do that was because of their generational trauma, right, but I don’t use it as an excuse. I work through it. But it’s also because I have had to exercise the muscle internally of America’s not out here looking out for me. America’s not looking out for Black people. The system isn’t broken, either. The system was made this way. It was literally made this way. So people want to say, “Oh my gosh, our system is so broken.” No it’s not. I need people to stop saying that because by saying that, what you’re doing is you’re just seeing it as oh, all of this overt racism and overt white supremacy that’s “new” (only cause the cameras are showing it), this is why the system is broken. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. If y’all think that what’s happening, today, ok, so, and I want to paint this picture for people. George Floyd, George Floyd, if people watched the video, I did not watch the video of him being killed, people watch that, ok, and people are like, “Oh my gosh, how could anyone do that?” People need to realize that people would take Black people and drag them through the street on the back of a truck with a chain until their body was bloodied and battered and then they would take them and hang them from a tree and they would burn them. Thousands of people would do that. So, this is not a new thing. It’s not new. There’s nothing new about it. Racism’s not new because y’all decided to start praying attention. But what you can do is act like, “Well, things are just gonna get better.” No. What are you sacrificing? What are you actually doing? What work are you doing? What internal work are you doing? What are you choosing to confront? What are you not choosing to confront? And why aren’t you? Why aren’t you? And especially, especially Christians, and I know that’s a whole other thing we could get into, Nicki, but I didn’t grow up with a white supremacist evangelical Jesus Christianity. I didn’t grow up with that. I don’t know what people, I don’t get it, that’s not what I learned, that’s not it. I learned the true meaning of the stories in the Bible and what happened. I learned the true Jesus, right, the true God, the same God, God’s wrath that’s all in the Bible, these are not just stories, we can still see it happening today in many different ways, and I just get really frustrated whenever people try to say, “Oh, but you're supposed to love your neighbor.” Ok, but you’re taking that word love and you’re not seeing it in the way that you should be seeing it, and it’s a very easy way to just be like, “Ok, love your neighbor and everything will be fine.” It’s literally not how anything works. Again. I know I’ve said it like 5 times. It’s just not how it works. Yeah.
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Third Segment
Nicki: Well, a few days before we’re recording, Joe Biden announced that Kamala Harris is his VP running mate. And prior to this proclamation, 45 was already using recycled racist messaging, like “law and order,” and is now reviving other racist, dehumanizing language in light of Kamala Harris being named as the VP, and so it made me think of how you often say that nothing happens in a vacuum. So can you expound on how history doesn’t happen in a vacuum and speak about what we need to be listening for from 45 leading up to the election and what he’s going to be communicating with his messaging?
Lettie: Yeah. So, yeah history does not happen in a vacuum at all. It’s really important for people to understand the way that Black women have been portrayed in history, so Kamala Harris is no different. Automatically, Black women are seen as being angry, as being aggressive, there are so many stereotypes that go back to enslavement. I mean, I could talk about the Mammy stereotype, the stereotype of like the Jezebel, which was actually extremely, they’re all racist, but the one that is the Jezebel, that stereotype was the stereotype of Black women being promiscuous, Black enslaved women being promiscuous and this idea that they needed to be tamed when really what it was was a way for white men to justify raping Black women, and so then you also have this, just these continued stereotypes of Black women being angry and aggressive, like I was previously saying, and if a Black woman says something, then she’s not listened to or she’s degraded and all these things, so people need to first understand that foundational level, right. And it’s always interesting with politics because politicians are not perfect by any means, and 45, current occupant of the White House, he’s the furthest thing from what should be in there, but he’s going to say things about Kamala Harris to heighten the divide because not only is it an election year, but 45 is a racist, white supremacist man. And I just really think that people should be prepared for a lot of false narratives to be put out there, and I don’t mean things that are false about maybe past legislation that Kamala Harris has supported, I’m not saying that at all. I don't agree with everything that she’s done, no I don’t. But what I will say is that the racism and the white supremacy that we see in our country today is not because of 45. People give him enough credit, I mean people give him too much credit about him being the one for or the reason we are where we are, but what I will say is that it’s already at a time in our country when the Black Lives Matter movement is at its resurgence, really. You have protests continuing to happen all over the country screaming, “Black lives matter,” screaming about police brutality, screaming about abolishing the police and defunding the police and everything and that's a threat to white supremacy because the origin, right, and this is just one factor here, but the origin of police is rooted in white supremacy and them as slave patrols and that’s it, and protecting white America is literally why they became a thing in our country, and I need people to connect all these little dots to pay attention to what’s being said and when it’s being said and in what way the media is saying it, cause that’s another thing right. We look at the news, and we look at the headlines, and I believe that what’s also lacking is an understanding of how much the media influences what we think is happening and all that we think is happening. And so really, Nicki, to answer your question, just be ready for so much, for even more discrediting of Kamala Harris because she is a Black woman. She’s a Black woman who is the VP, well running VP, of a white man, and this is already going to make white women angry. And that’s something that people may be like, “Oh no, but Kamala Harris is a woman.” Ok, first of all, she’s a Black woman. She’s a Black woman. She’s a Black woman. Y’all, Kamala Harris, a Black woman, with a white man, Joe Biden? People are, white people are big mad, a lot of white people are, and so the same 53% of white women who voted for the current occupant of the White House back in 2016, as much as they’ve been out here talking about feminist movements and feminism and demanding our rights, you know what’s going to end up happening? A lot of them are going to go right back and vote for him again because white women, and I’m going to say white women, in this country historically continuously back white male patriarchy and white supremacy, because they benefit, they used to benefit from white supremacy. There’s a lot I can go into with history with that, but I know we don’t have time for that so I’m not going to go even a smidget more into it, but I will say that, and I will say that people just need to be ready for, just again, be ready for Kamala Harris’s reputation to be dragged through the mud five times more than Hillary Clinton’s ever was. Because this is what America is, this is what America does. And I’m also gonna say, if I may, while we’re here, that there is an urgency, and I do mean an urgency, to get out there, and if you’re against voting for 45, I need for you to understand, y’all who are listening, I need for y’all to understand that you’re not being noble by saying you don’t like anyone who’s a candidate so you’re not gonna vote. There’s nothing noble about that because then you’re forgetting the purpose of a democratic process in the beginning, and what’s happening is, and what I’ve already seen happening, is people are looking at Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, for example, as the people who are supposed to save the country, but people are forgetting the reason why we even have presidential elections from the get-go, back whenever the racist Constitution was signed. We the people are supposed to hold them accountable, we’re supposed to hold them accountable, we’re supposed to push them to make changes, we’re supposed to push them to be better, we’re supposed to do that. That’s not, that’s how the democratic process works. People really want to talk about patriotism. That’s what patriotism is. It’s pushing them, it’s pushing them to be better, to own up to problems that they’ve had in the past, problematic things that they’ve said or maybe legislation. That’s what it is. That’s what we’re supposed to be doing. And so I’ve already in the last three days or two days, however long it's been since Kamala Harris was announced as his running mate, I’ve already seen the rhetoric changing, and it’s very disheartening. It’s very disheartening seeing it in all communities, white community, Black community, the brown community. And I want people to also remember that white supremacy makes room for Black people always. It will always make room for Black people to also uphold it. We don’t have, we don’t, I’m obviously not a white person, I don’t have white privilege, ok, I don’t benefit from white supremacy, but white supremacy makes room for us to uphold it, makes room for us to not see the hypocrisy, makes room for all of us because we’re all born into it. But yeah, so basically, get ready for Kamala Harris to be dragged through, and get ready for 45 to say more racist things, more sexist things about her, right, because it’s, not only is it an election year, but he’s already angry and so are all his followers because of the progress that’s being made in the country right now. And even though people aren’t seeing the collective progress at one time doesn’t mean that there are not victories that are happening, because there are, and that is a threat to white people who want to maintain white supremacy and the status quo. So.
Nicki: Yeah. I’m so glad you said, you shared about what to be looking out for but also the charge to go vote and vote for Biden because we can’t have 4 more years of Trump, and that’s the only way for it to happen is for people to not just sit back and say, “Well, I’m just not going to participate in this one,” and I know that’s, I’ve been a part of conversations where people are wanting to just sit it out, so I’m really glad that you said, “Don’t.”
Lettie: Don’t. Yeah. No, don’t. Because like then you’re, then it’s, then at that point you are being selfish. You’re being selfish and what’s happening is you’re looking at history and whatever else you may be looking at, and you’re like, “Oh, look at how they made changes.” Do y’all really think that people are out here so excited about President Johnson, Lyndon B. Johnson? No. But JFK was murdered, not murdered, killed, by the government, and then you have Johnson that gets in there. Johnson signs the Voting Rights Act, which was monumentous, right, but he didn’t want to sign it. He didn’t want to sign it, but people were so happy that he did that. And even after him, we can even look at President Nixon. My mother has told me she knew Nixon was not who she wanted to vote for. She absolutely did not. My parents are Democrats. They did not want to vote for him, but at the time, my mom’s brother, my uncle who has now passed away, he was in Vietnam. He was in Vietnam in a war that was slaughtering Black people, Black men, and what she heard Nixon say was, “I’m going to bring the soldiers home.” And so for her, she wanted her brother to come home, and so what she voted for was the collective good for the people. But that’s what Black people have always had to do. We’ve always had to be the ones to do what was right for the country, and white people need to stop being selfish and having this mentality of, “I’m not voting for him because he doesn’t do what I want.” Ok, get over it because what you’re choosing not to recognize is the immense, the immense, immense amount of damage that 45 has done to our country and the immense amount of racial terror he has allowed to continue in our country and affect people like me. That’s what people need to think about. This is not about you. This is not about you. No. How many times have I not been able to do what I want or get what I want in this country just because I wasn’t ok with it? That happens every day. That’s happening times when I’m at a job and I’ve had an idea, because I’m the Black woman, the white man gets the credit even though I am the one who gave him the idea. So whenever people talk to me about not getting what they want and they’re not doing something, yeah, you haven’t had to exercise that muscle enough in a country that literally doesn’t make room for you but you keep doing the stuff anyway. The same way people tell me to get over it about history, yeah, you can get over it about this. You can get out there and you can go vote because a vote for anything or nothing at all, oh no, sorry, a vote for anything besides Biden or a vote, like no vote at all, is a vote for Trump. That’s just where we are, and it’s just urgent, y’all. There’s so much urgency in this. I just really wanted to say that again.
Nicki: Yeah, well thank you. Thank you. Well, Lettie, we’ve already mentioned that you have a podcast. So it’s the Sincerely, Lettie podcast. If you had to choose one episode of Sincerely, Lettie for people to go listen to right now, which episode would it be and why?
Lettie: Ok, so, oh man, just one?
(laughter)
Lettie: I would honestly say the, in my Jim Crow series, there is an episode about “Racial Terror and Lynching,” it’s part 1, and there’s a part 2. I would tell people to listen to part 1, right now. Like right now. Jim Crow series “Racial Terror and Lynching (Part 1).” Right now. Today. Go listen to that.
Nicki: Ok, you heard her. Go listen.
(laughter)
Nicki: How can people financially invest in your work as an antiracism educator and historian?
Lettie: Yeah, so I have a Patreon. It’s patreon.com/lettieshumate. If you follow me on Instagram, my handle is @sincerely.lettie. There is a link in my bio where you can access my Patreon. I have 6 different tiers, and they range from $5 to $100, and I offer a plethora of different resources in different tiers. Nicki, you’re actually a patron, and I really appreciate you being a patron. Yay. And I, yeah, so that’s a huge way. I usually don’t mention this, but since you asked, I will. I also have Venmo. I have PayPal. I know people ask me that in my DMs a lot, and so I tell them I do have Venmo, I do have PayPal. Both are LettieShumate, and I soon will be having my website up and running. Should’ve been up and running last month, but life, y’all. Life happens. But I will soon have my website up. I’ll be offering webinars outside of my Patreon community, and some more things, so yeah, those are some ways people can support me.
Nicki: Awesome. I’ll put all of that in the show notes, and when you have your website up and running, I can add that as well. So your Patreon, your Venmo, your PayPal, and your website, I can put all those there.
Lettie: Thanks.
Nicki: Yeah, so just a few more questions to wrap up here. What advice do you have for people listening who are ready to exchange the whitewashed narrative of history for a more accurate history?
Lettie: Yeah, I would definitely say to dive right in. There is no right way to do it. I will say listen to Black voices, follow educators like myself, because that’s where you’re really going to learn, and I mean especially with me, I’m very straightforward with history, and I really dive deeper, and I really help connect the dots and answer those questions that you may have. But again, don’t be afraid to start. Fight back the white guilt that you may have of, “Oh, you know, I’m just ashamed,” or even just the hesitancy because you don’t want to really learn the truth. Like fight past that. Know that the work that you’re doing, it’s part of being an antiracist. It’s part of being on this journey to just really unlearn and learn, not just the history and things like that, but about yourself, so yeah, and also know that you’re gonna mess up, and that’s ok because you’re supposed to. It’s gonna be uncomfortable, it’s gonna be frustrating, and you’re gonna be aggravated, but fight through those emotions. Yeah, because once you really start to see what systemic racism is and how it is weaved into the fabric of our society, you’re gonna really start coming to terms with how much you need to unpack, so yeah.
Nicki: Yes, thank you for that advice. Definitely great for people to be able to begin implementing if they’re at a point where they’re ready to forget the lies and let’s learn the truth. Well, what’s your hope for the United States as you broaden the narrative around race and history in your work?
Lettie: Yeah, my hope. Actually today I do have hope. There’s some days that I don’t have as much hope. But my hope is that more people decide to do the work and that whenever you’re doing the work and you do feel burnt out or you do try to have that hard conversation with, for example, your mom or your spouse or a friend about racism, and you get upset because they're choosing not to see the truth, I hope that you would not stop there. Don’t stop there. It’s very easy to. It’s very easy to think, “Ok, well, I tried, see, and it’s not working.” If I did that for every person that didn’t listen to me, I would not even be talking to you right now, Nicki. Like I just wouldn’t. But you have to keep going, and so that’s my hope. That’s my hope for people individually, and that they’ll want to continue, but really for our country is that we’ll start to see the underlying issues, like I mean right now we’re in a whole pandemic, and people are like, “Wow, there are all these disparities,” and I’m like, “Yeah, these are issues we’ve been screaming about before this year.” Healthcare issues, the fact that we do have so many essential workers right now who are Black people, who are brown people, and that’s why we are more susceptible to COVID. Like there are so many things, there are just so many things I would hope that people really start to see, and I hope people really start to stop thinking it’s just people trying to be divisive, because it’s not. I hope people stop saying, “Well, you’re just trying to start trouble,” and “Well, you’re not seeing it -” I hope that people would stop saying that because for me, that’s not what I’m doing. I don't wake up saying, “Well, I think I just want to start an argument today.” Who does that? I don’t, that’s not what I want to do. I want people to be changed, and I want people to try. I want people to make the first step. Like don’t look at all, “Oh, I have to read these 6 books.” No, no, no, no. Like, “I’m gonna listen to this one podcast episode. I’m gonna go,” for example, “subscribe to Lettie’s Patreon for $5 and look at her Reading and Resource List and other things she offers.” That’s small, right? There aren’t these grand gestures you have to make and if you don’t make them, then you’re not doing it right. Because at the end of the day, you’re still dealing with your own self with life. You have a job. You might have kids. You may have just lost your job. You may be sick. Like there’s other things going on, right, but just know that like I hope that people in our country really start to see the lies and really start to see the truth.
Nicki: Yeah, well what can white people commit to in order to bring your hope to fruition?
Lettie: Yeah, commit to learning. Commit to learning. Commit to listening. And commit to fighting white fragility whenever you feel it coming, because it’s gonna come. You’re gonna hear something that makes you feel uncomfortable, it’s gonna make you want to say, “I don’t have white privilege,” it’s gonna make you want to say, “Well, that’s not how I was raised. I don’t have to worry about -.” It’s gonna make you want to say those things. You have to fight it. You have to fight saying it because we’re not out here telling you you haven’t worked for what you have. We’re not out here telling you that you’re a terrible person, but what we are telling you is that you need to be quiet, you need to listen, read, and there’s no excuse anymore for not reading. There’s audiobooks out here, like, if you are near a library and you have access to your public library for free, you can get audiobooks. Like, y’all, there are ways. There are podcasts. I want white people to commit to doing the work and recognizing that the work isn’t just physically reading something. It’s also doing the internal heart work, too. Yeah.
Nicki: Well thank you so much for coming on the show Lettie. This was a delightful conversation. You’re such a delightful human being.
Lettie: Aw, thanks.
Nicki: Just thank you for everything you’ve taught me and for sharing about your journey with me today. I'm deeply grateful for you.
Lettie: Oh, yes, I’m grateful for you, too. Thank you so much. This has been so great. I feel like I could just talk to you forever, so yeah.
Nicki: I know.
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Closing: I want to thank Sequana Murray for the voice clip she sent to me for the episode intro. You can purchase her music on Bandcamp at bandy17.bandcamp.com. Her music is available on most streaming services under the name Bandy. I also want to thank Jordan Lukens for his help with editing and Danielle Bolin for creating the episode graphic. Please subscribe and review the show, but only if you’re planning on leaving a 5-star review. Otherwise, you can just skip this part. You can access the Broadening the Narrative blog by visiting broadeningthenarrative.blogspot.com, and you can find the Broadening the Narrative page on Instagram by searching for @broadeningthenarrative and on Twitter by searching for @broadnarrative. I hope that if you know and love me you can engage with the Broadening the Narrative blog, social media accounts, and podcast, as well as any recommended resources. Then, you can share with people who know and love you, and little by little, person by person, we can broaden the narrative. Grace and peace, friends.
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