Heffner: I'm Alexander Heffner, your host on The Open Mind.

I'm delighted to welcome our guest today, novelist, poet, critical thinker, Honorée Jeffers, author of the book, The Love Songs of W.E.B.

DuBois.

Thank you so much for joining me today, Honorée.

Jeffers: Thank you for having me.

Heffner: You teach a professor at the University of Oklahoma.

We had a little exchange off camera over email, and first things first I want to ask you about the state of freedom when it comes to literature today, and as we see governors in some states clamping down on the freedom to express oneself, whether that's in poetry or novel or non-fiction, if you are experiencing any of that chilling effect, if you will, at the University of Oklahoma or neighboring institutions?

Jeffers: Well, not as yet, of course I am deeply concerned about what's happening, particularly as an African American creative writer and public scholar, nontraditional scholar who does work in African American history going all the way back to the 18th century.

It is a bit disturbing, but right now we seem to have the support of our university president for diversity initiatives and what have you, but it is concerning because there always seems to be sort of a disconnect between what's happening on the university campus versus what's happening outside.

So my university town is pretty progressive, and of course the university is like a little Shangri-La in the middle, a lot of progressives, but it is deeply concerning because there are legislative initiatives.

I haven't been keeping up with the numbers HB, this HB that, but it is concerning.

Heffner: What do you make of the stigmatization of equity and inclusion by certain political forces or kind of counter movement, which is the kind of modern manifestation of the anti-affirmative action, the acknowledgement of a racism against white folks seems to be termed by some people, whitelash.

But what is your sense of how we should understand from a historical perspective, this stigmatization of equity and inclusion?

Jeffers: Well, I think that we've seen the way that powerful people, white people in America have used intellectual power to keep non-white people down.

This is not anything that is new.

You can go all the way back to anti literacy laws of the 18th century in the 19th century.

And so when people are free thinkers, then they view themselves as worthy of power where they live worthy of power in their households for their children.

And so what we're seeing now is it framed as if this is about parents' rights.

It's framed as if this is about not making white children uncomfortable, but the educational process is uncomfortable.

I'm learning, trying to get my college French back right now.

And it is very uncomfortable and very embarrassing to be a very, very learned person and be reading, hop on pop in French or whatever.

The educational process is always uncomfortable.

But I also think that if we think about what BIPOC children have gone through in this country going back, if we look at the boarding schools that indigenous children were forced into, if we look at what African-American children have gone through when they were integrating schools that was painful and uncomfortable for them, and now our children, every black parent has to have a talk with their children about how to talk to the police to try to keep themselves safe.

If BIPOC children have to go through this then and that makes them frightened and uncomfortable, then simply learning about it in a safe space should not be uncomfortable.

This is what this country is.

And this country was not founded upon freedom.

It was founded on land theft and it was founded on from the indigenous people and founded on chattel slavery.

But that does not mean that we can't try to move towards becoming a perfect union that's always striving for despite the difficulties.

Heffner: It seems in the vernacular and maybe in reality we're just in this very stubborn space where folks are using politics to advantage or disadvantage a different group or party.

If there were a debate stage with a candidate who was attacking woke and a candidate who is defending woke, that candidate, if it's a candidate of the Democratic Party might say to that candidate who's perhaps a candidate of the Republican Party, did you know that the founder, the founding Republican president Abraham Lincoln, was responsible for woke for the Wide Awakes, the young supporters of President Lincoln who were for saving the union and in many cases against the atrocities of slavery, but we don't even know the history, and no one is prepared to defend the history that I find that so problematic?

Jeffers: Well, I think one of the things, if I may sure I always say this, whenever I get ready to say something difficult, I'll say I, most of the people who are talking about woke, don't even know the history of this country.

And one of the reasons that they don't is because we no longer teach civics.

I didn't take civics when I was in high school.

I had to learn the history of the American Revolution and all of that when I became an adult and I became a non-traditional scholar.

So they don't really understand that every generation of young people, whatever their racial or cultural background, are pushing against the status quo.

And so when we look at, for example, the American Revolution, these were people pushing against the status quo of the British Empire, but you have a lot of people where they are white people, white supremacists, who were claiming the American Revolution as their purview because they are so ignorant that they do not understand that indigenous people fought in the American Revolution, and that over 5,000 black men fought in the American Revolution on the revolutionary side.

So this country belongs to all of us, and the history belongs to all of us.

And so what's happening is what you have when people are saying, woke, what they're trying to do is reclaim the history as only belonging to cisgender heterosexual white men who own property.

If they were not so ignorant, they would understand that indentured white male servants who did not own property, did not have the same rights.

So when you get a lot of these people who are poor, who I just read this article in The New York Times about they're cutting the food stamps down to pre pandemic levels and people are in line waiting on food, those people wouldn't have had any rights in the 18th century because they were not wealthy.

They didn't own land or what have you.

So people really need to go back and read the history.

But the problem is, is that if you are banning books, then people aren't going to have access and not just black people, not just BIPOC people, not just LG BTQIA people, but also poor white people who don't have great schools.

No one's going to be able to understand the real history of this country.

They're only going to be fed a line that someone who wants to remain in power and doesn't have to worry about food stamps.

Heffner: Right, and you allude to the inconsistency or hypocrisy in the freedom, if you will, of that ideology.

That said, during the pandemic, we're going to protest platforms that do not give us alternative theories about masks and vaccination, and yet we're going to ban books about people that mystify us or scare us.

So I would understand more the people who were opposed to vaccinations and wanted to express that or oppose mask wearing and wanted to express that if in the same breath they were not banning or threatening to ban books or say, in the case of Virginia legislation recently, you can only learn about Dr. King in high school, but not middle school or elementary school.

But, professor, what interests me is how we let this cultural moment seem to slip away from us.

The majority may well live wokely, even if they're not using that term, believe in equity and inclusion and practice equity and inclusion.

But I know that this is a controversial contention, especially in non-academic, non-traditional academic circles.

But I feel like the name of critical race theory that I know that Professor Bell and others designed at NYU and Harvard years ago, that seemed to be the Trojan Horse that could exploit this feeling that you are designing a discipline that is basically inherently critical of one race over another when we know throughout history races, all races, when a lot of races and ethnicities and people from a lot of different heritages have committed genocide or atrocity.

And so I heard you in your conversation with Oprah make the important point that black history is American history and the stories of the love songs and the young women, you chronicle that and older women ultimately that is American history.

And so I feel like the way that the anti-wokists really laser focused on this critical race theory idea is why we're in a position- Jeffers: Well, I don't really think that I'm going to go out on a limb here, but I think I'm safe in assuming this.

Most people don't even know what critical race theory is.

Okay?

Critical race theory is a really complicated legal framework that started with lawyers and legal scholars.

It was really funny because I, last year, I have a little reading group on Instagram with the book Instagrammers called The Nerdy Circle, and we read selections from the critical race theory reader.

It was deeply complicated and very confusing, and I have been flabbergasted that people would think that somebody would be trying to teach this incredibly- Heffner: I know, right?

Jeffers: Complicated, to kids in kindergarten.

But just to sort of boil it down or break it down, it's really simply saying that there have been legal structures, in place that have discriminated against people of color that is not an opinion.

Right?

Heffner: Absolutely.

Jeffers: That's not an opinion.

That is the, I mean, native Americans did not get citizenship on their own land until 1924.

This is not some sort of opinion where people can go back and forth, but I think that politicians always come up with ways that they can get people to vote for them.

I think one of the deeply distressing things happening now, however, is that we are seeing a attacks on young folks who are gay, who are lesbians.

We are seeing attacks on teachers in public schools who are not even being paid well.

K through 12 teachers are not paid very well.

And there was just a video that went around on Twitter yesterday where a public school teacher was in a conversation.

He had recorded it with his superintendent, and his superintendent had told him, when he asked, can I say that slavery was wrong?

And she could not tell him, yes, you can say slavery is wrong.

So we are getting into a moment where it's deeply troubling and for me, terrifying, where people are moving from issues about whether they can wear a mask, whether people get vaccinated.

This was a year or two ago, and now we're moving into, can we talk about slavery was wrong?

Can we talk about Jim Crow was wrong, segregation was wrong.

And we have people who are either advocating or diminishing violence who have been elected into public office.

But if I may get into my little artistic moment here, I think that whenever people are frightened they, I always tell my students this, everyone has a road within that can go left or can go right.

And I think that there are some people, because we all were afraid of dying, that, and people were economically frightened about whether they were going to be able to put food on the table and so on and so forth, that sometimes brings out the worst in people.

And so I am not convinced at all that this is about politics or who's woke or who's not woke or whatever that means.

And I don't even think it's about critical race theory.

I think it's about whenever people are terrified, they try to find, they grasp for ways to control that which cannot be controlled.

And I think that's what's happening now.

And unfortunately, you cannot legislate people's fear away.

So we are in a very difficult moment.

And that moment started in 2016 with the 45th president, and it's sort of unleashed a lot of ugliness, and I remain, always have to remain hopeful that there are enough kind people who are going to be able to see what's happening and that they will begin together.

But I do think difficult, even more difficult times are coming.

Heffner: Well, thank you for those words.

It is disheartening that we have this ahistoricism, if you will, a historical state combined with the viciousness having a vicious historical moment in America is, like you said, deeply troubling, hearkening back to disunity and civil war and in that era.

And the problem is people, I think at this point in the culture, people think they know what critical race theory is, and they think, what?

Jeffers: They don't.

Heffner: Do they also not do they also not think that they know though, or at least they're getting a signal that it's a discipline that is bent on criticizing one race over another and guilt tripping one race over another when that's not it.

And like you said so beautifully, these are certain facts.

And when you said that to Oprah about the black story or the African American history in this country being fully integrated into US history, I think that these are just facts.

You stated one.

Another fact that dovetails with your comment about property is that the 13th and 14th and 15th amendments could not be realized until there was black ownership of the economy.

Jeffers: Yeah.

Heffner: And there was a righteous Republican, I don't call them radical Republicans, a righteous Republican by the name of Charles Sumner who advocated that in order to be annexed or reunified, the Confederate territories had to endow a certain land.

And we know that that was not the condition of reunification.

There were pledges and promises and proposals, but ultimately the Southern territories reunited with the United States without any kind of pre-condition that these formerly enslaved people could now practice their dignity in humanity.

How do you suggest we move, we embark on a new moment that can kind of shift us away from these pretty futile debates around sort of understand the politician's exploitation of us and just move past it?

How do we do that?

Jeffers: Well, whenever people ask me that, and I get asked that a lot, I always say to people, that's above my pay grade.

Heffner: No, it's not.

Jeffers: It really is.

All I can simply do is tell you what I do individually.

Heffner: Right.

Jeffers: First of all, I teach young people every once in a while.

I teach a non-traditional student who is of a particular age, maybe 60 or 70, but I'm in my fifties.

So most of my students, 99.9% of my students are younger than I am.

So one of the things is that I'm always aware of is that I'm teaching someone who is still growing and someone who is still forming, and this may sound silly or woo woo, but I lead with love in the classroom.

And most people who go into teaching know that you're not going to get rich as a teacher.

So you want to engage with young people.

That is very important.

You want to connect with them.

Because I was once a young person, and I was once someone who wanted to have conversations, and I didn't always agree with my teachers and my teachers.

This was a different time then.

But my teachers always, for the most part would say, as long as you're respectful in disagreeing, it's fine.

So I don't bring my politics into the classroom.

I do bring love and I do bring a knowledge that literacy, reading, thinking deeply not only empowers the individual, but empowers their community, whether that community is predominantly white, whether it's African American, whether it's indigenous, I always teach because I'm out here in Oklahoma.

So I think that there are many teachers, even those who considered themselves very conservative, who are now deeply troubled about the fact that they can't pick out books for their kids to read.

I'm talking about K through 12 teachers.

And I think that this has brought about a slow simmering intellectual revolution, if you will.

And so I think that anybody that goes into teaching with very rare exceptions comes in because they want to do something for the world.

When you teach a young person something, when you empower them, there are times where I'm explaining a concept about craft.

I teach creative writing, and then sometimes I teach literature and I'll see this young person struggling, and then all of a sudden I'll see the light bulb go off, and I'll say, do you feel empowered?

And they say, yes, professor Jeff, I do feel empowered.

And that's what it's about, empowering people.

That to me is the only path that I know to a better world, is to empower people, is to make them feel powerful without having to make someone else feel powerless.

And that's, for me, my individual charge.

I don't know about anybody else, but that's my individual charge.

I know when I was learning things, I became powerful, even though I didn't have a very happy childhood.

There were things that were happening, but there was a power that I felt in learning, and I didn't have to take power away from someone else to get power.

And that's what I have.

That's all I can offer as a teacher.

Heffner: Well, that's a beautiful way to close.

We're out of time, Professor Jeffers.

But thank you for those eloquent and cathartic words, and I know you have a collection of essays that you're working on.

We look forward to reading that.

And of course, for those who haven't checked out your book, please do.

Professor Jeffers, a pleasure to host you today.

Thank you so much for your insight and time.

Jeffers: Thank you.

It's been my honor.

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