White Supremacy: The Rise and Spread in America | The Daily Show

[Music] one of the main questions many people may have and you see this unfortunately all so often is people saying why do you have to keep drudging this up can't we just move on it's been 400 years now can't we just move on what do you hope would be sparked by the conversations that come from a magazine that delves into slavery like this what do you what do you want someone who sits at home and says they go nicole i'm i'm white and i i have nothing to do with this and i don't know what you want me to do what would you hope people take away that's a great question let me just say for the record nobody wants to get over slavery more than black folks it's not to our benefit right so the fact that our nation can't get over slavery has not benefited black people for a single day but that's the problem we've never dealt with the harm that was done i'm 43 years old and my father was born into a mississippi where black people couldn't vote black people couldn't use public facilities that was all perfectly legal we're not far removed from this past at all and there's never been any effort to redress that harm so what i hope that people will take from the magazine every single story in the magazine starts with america today and shows how these things about american life that you think are unrelated to slavery actually are and i hope by confronting that truth maybe we can finally start to repair the harm that was done and then finally start to live up to be the country of our ideals there's been so much talk about history and heritage people talking about monuments in america people talking about the history of america but in many ways brian you would argue that the history people wish to america is not or wish to remember of america is not really the full story what is your project about well it's about confronting the fact that we're not really free in america i think we're burdened by a history of racial inequality that we have not addressed and it's become like smog in the air we all breathe it in and it doesn't take much to expose these conflicts and tensions and so we're trying to change that we want to talk about some things that haven't been talked about i think we need to talk about the fact that we're a post-genocide society before white settlers came to this continent there were millions of native people who were slaughtered through famine and war and disease but we didn't call it a genocide we said those people are savages and we created this narrative of racial difference this ideology of white supremacy and that's what ushered in centuries of enslavement and for me the great evil of american slavery wasn't involuntary servitude it wasn't forced labor it was this ideology of white supremacy this idea that black people aren't like white people and we never really addressed that if you read the 13th amendment it talks about dealing with involuntary servitude and forced labor but it doesn't talk about ending this ideology of white supremacy and because of that i don't think slavery ended in 1865 i think it evolved and it turned into decades of terrorism and violence and we don't understand that history and that's why we started this project between the end of the civil war in world war ii thousands of african-americans were pulled out of their homes they were burned alive they were hanged they were brutalized we're not interested in talking about this history because we want to punish america i think we want to liberate america we want to get us to the place where we can actually look at one another without this narrative of racial difference this ideology of white supremacy limiting who we are and what we can be in many ways you argue that obama's presidency and black leadership in any way shape or form is in some way contributing to white supremacy which is very complicated argument what what do you mean when you say that i wouldn't quite put i would say it's not you know like i don't think obama did anything but be a human being and you know go into the office and just happen to be somebody to check black on the sentence form it's the reaction to that right it's always the reaction to the ordinariness to the bourgeoisness to the middle classness of you know normal everyday black people and how well that accords with what this country claims of value that's always a threat because it automatically undermines the suppositions of white supremacy which says that black people you know don't take care of kids black people are you know uh you know always you know killing each other ending up in jail like there's a kind of moral judgment that can always be made on black people this goes back to you know justifications to slavery and black folks who present themselves you know in a particular way as undermining that you know it's always a threat to the thinking about white supremacy i think that's why folks were so offended by obama and i think that contributed to the birtherism you know all the sort of weird conspiracy theories that you know sprung up around them the kkk grand wizard emeritus uh david duke he told his followers to vote for donald trump and uh donald trump was coy about disavowing duke's support right so by the way this uh this is david duke over here this guy here yeah this is him sporting his casual look see that's yeah it's just like no hood please please mr wizard was my father my friends call me grand now obviously a grand wizard of the kkk praising the republican frontrunner is going to stir up a lot of emotion and we saw that on cnn as a trump supporter and a democrat faced off as the super tuesday results were coming in racial tensions front and center in this year's race two of our commentators get into a fiery debate on the issue commentators jeffrey lord and van jones got into this heated debate over donald trump and the kkk when he is playing funny with the clan that is not cool this is what liberals do you were dividing people by race the clan division you have to you have to divide by race and kill people by race and he had the opportunity and he did they did it they did it to further the progressive agenda what why were you so afraid of what he was saying and why why are you so afraid of the rhetoric that's being that's being perpetuated well i think that america needs to wake the hell up wake the hell up this is real this is the real thing i think you've had people everybody says you know republicans or the establishment like why didn't they take trump trump more seriously yeah the whole society is making the same exact mistake i think we have the rise of a right-wing authoritarian movement and i think this guy is likely to become president united states if we don't put screwing around white nationalists descending on charlottesville virginia to protest the removal of a statue of confederate leader robert e lee in charlottesville virginia where protests are turning violent at least one person is dead after a car plowed into a group of counter protesters president trump turns an infrastructure event into a rambling rant blaming both sides for the violence you had some very bad people in that group but you also had people that were very fine people on both sides i think there's blame on both sides you look at you look at both sides i think there's blame on both sides and i have no doubt about it and you don't have any doubt about it either first of all a racist neo-nazi killed a peacefully protesting woman with his car right then the president of the united states defended the neo-nazis who that dude was marching with and this is the thing it's not once but twice like donald trump said it then three days later he came back and said hey hey you know how i i said that nazi defending thing well i just realized that um i i messed up i didn't defend them enough yeah yeah my support was here and i was trying to get it here yeah and i'm not gonna lie i don't know about you but it seemed for a moment that okay this was it this was clearly not what presidents do you know after tragic national events a leader even a mediocre leader says the things to unite the country to calm the tensions not inflame them and especially not express sympathy for nazi sympathizers but today in america we're not even at that point seven months into his term 41 months to go by the way and the president of the united states has officially legitimized white supremacists basically saying we need to see things from the nazi's point of view you know march a mile in their boots are you willing tonight to condemn white supremacists and militia groups and to say that they need to stand down and not add to the violence in a number of these cities as we saw in kenosha and as we've seen in portland i'm willing to do anything i want to see peace say it do it say it do you want to call him what do you want to call him give me your name give me a white surprise you'd like me to continue proud stand back and stand by but i'll tell you what i'll tell you what somebody's got to do something about antifa and the left because this is not a right-wing problem wow there you have it folks trump had an opportunity to be like white supremacist i don't with you instead he's like stand by guys i never know when i'm gonna need you telling white supremacists to stand down and telling them to stand by are not the same thing right that one little word makes a huge difference like the difference between a blowout and a do not ask for the wrong one at supercuts again to the staff at supercuts i apologize i i hadn't slept and i didn't read the menu properly and even for that non-condemnation trump had to be dragged into it like no president should ever have to be pressured this hard into condemning white supremacists it's the easiest thing trump did it so grudgingly he was like one of those guys who refuses to make real apologies one i'm supposed to apologize for tailgating at your dad's funeral fine i'm sorry i'm sorry that you're unable to have a good time some of us are still living and by the way you know that you've truly botched your condemnation of a hate group when that hate group says thank you for the endorsement the proud boy is a far-right extremist group immediately celebrating the president's comments on social media they went nuts on social media celebrating they put out those words as a rallying cry stand back stand by within minutes the group's members were posting on private social media calling trump's comments quote historic the new york times reports that some group members labeled it as a tacit endorsement of their violent tactics while another posted the group was already seeing a spike in new recruits yes thanks to donald trump's failed condemnation this hate group is now seeing an increase in recruits which means in the history of television that might be one of the worst answers ever given the proud boys liked donald trump's answer so much that they're even adopting it as their new slogan and that actually might piss off trump because the one thing he definitely believes in is getting royalties nobody should be advocating the supremacy of the white man without giving danny his cut i don't know at this point people are still acting surprised when he refuses to denounce white supremacists because as you may remember this is not exactly a new thing for him i think there's blame on both sides you had some very bad people in that group but you also had people that were very fine people on both sides you see today white nationalism is a rising threat around the world i don't really there are white supremacist groups and individuals like that who support you some of whom you've even retweeted well that i know nothing about i mean i don't know about retweeting i mean you retweet somebody who turns out to be a white supremacist i know nothing about these groups that are supporting me will you unequivocally condemn david duke and say that you don't want his vote or that of other white supremacists in this election i don't know anything about david duke okay i don't know anything about what you're even talking about with white supremacy or white supremacist you wouldn't want me to condemn a group that i know nothing about i'd have to look if you would send me a list of the groups i will do research on them and certainly i would disavow if i thought there was something wrong but you may have quotes in there that are totally fine and it would be very unfair so give me a list of the groups and i'll let you know okay i mean i'm just talking about david duke and the ku klux klan here but i don't know any honestly i don't know david duke i don't believe i've ever met him i'm pretty sure i didn't meet him and i just don't know anything about him yeah it's actually hard to keep track of all the times that trump had the chance to be anti-racist and didn't the only thing he avoids more than condemning white supremacists is paying taxes so look i get why his supporters want to act like trump's proud boys moment last night was some kind of accidental or unintentional gaff but if you see someone making the same mistake over and over again well at some point you have to accept that it's not a mistake it's their belief let me ask you this you um you talk to some people who in in without your show i don't think you'd ever talk to you know like whether it's like people who are in the clan used to be in the clan very racist very homophobic very anything and i i'm not gonna lie you you seem to get along well with them as human beings like you you you seem to like and you are very black as i mean like you you know what i'm saying it's not like you you're you're sneaking in you're a black person exactly you come in as a black man they see you as a black man and then you guys seem to have something tall 400 pounds so i wanted to know have you maintained any type of friendship with these people post the show or has it just like are you just like dude like do you get to know them as human beings or do are they just cordial to you as kamau bella as an individual and they're not now like cool with black people yeah i mean certainly it's not i always say it's not american history x where i do laundry with them for an hour and then they come out and go man i shouldn't be a racist anymore it's not quite that easy if only it was but i do think people go oh this is not what i expected i see this guy differently it's not going to happen in one day or one one conversation the thing i understand about this whole racism discussion is that in the whole ending of racism it's a long struggle and it takes time but do you think from your experience that some of it you know could be helped by the conversations or is that just like a that's just like a hopeful mythical world that we sometimes dream of i mean some of it can be helped by the conversation but if those people don't go into the voting booth and vote based on what they learned in the conversation then it's just a conversation so i think sometimes we over prioritize the conversation like me and that racist had a conversation that felt good but it's actually like about how people evolve over time and i think that's the conversation's part of that [Music] your writing has i mean made a lot of people feel uncomfortable a lot of white people a lot of white men in particular uncomfortable and that was before your current book mediocre which is about the dangers of white male mediocrity talk me through what that means absolutely so this was a book kind of written out of frustration if you write on issues of race and gender in america especially since 2016 you see all these think pieces you know why is chad so angry why is this white man so upset and what i wanted people to look at was the political structure behind the time that we're in i wanted people to understand that this rise in like you know hate filled racist violent white male political ideology is by design and so i want people to look at that because we have to change how we act and what we value as a society if we want to solve this problem so that's really what we're looking at is a history in america of how we have actually made it beneficial or at least seemed beneficial to white men to act like the only definition of success is power over women and people of color and really what it's cost us over multiple generations when you when you look at this conversation though i mean obviously there's so much resistance there are a lot of white men who are like i have nothing so how dare you say that i have any of this mediocrity or this power that comes with it how can you say i don't see any of this power i live in west virginia i have no no money i have barely any food where is this white power that you're speaking of how do you try and and and if you even do try explain that to white people in those situations because oftentimes i find that will be some of the base that is riled up where they're told you have this privilege and these positions and they go but i don't see it absolutely and i think it's important to recognize first and foremost privilege is relative right so if you're standing if you're an average everyday white man standing in a room with oprah winfrey chances are in many areas she has more privilege than you but if she is standing next to and a white millionaire or a billionaire chances are she has less privilege it's situational depending on where you're at but i think it's really important to recognize that white supremacy in this country is a pyramid scheme so it's really the idea you play along and you will have more you will have more than more than women often it doesn't work out that way and that's part of why we see the anger is that people bought into this system they're playing along they've been promised and they voted accordingly they've spent their money accordingly that their greatness is coming and when it doesn't who do they blame often people like me people like you because they've been told you're supposed to be better off and so a lot of that anger that says i don't have that i don't have it ignores the fact that you weren't probably ever going to get it but you were promised that and that becomes a political problem and it becomes part of the violence that often some white men end up supporting there's no denying as america becomes more and more diverse the group of white men that we are talking about are going to become more and more resistant because they're going oh i'm losing my grip on as you said that promise of my place in america so how do we get to a place where we invite people into the conversation without pandering but still invites people in and going like oh no hey this is for everybody's benefit it's not about you losing and me winning it's about everybody winning as opposed to buying into the permit scheme you know it's definitely something i talk about in a bit in the book right the real harm that this actually does to white men this system being told that you know your payouts coming in it never does and the sense of failure that often accompanies white men when they've bought into this but i think it's also really important to recognize that i personally am not writing to create kinder gentler white men i'm writing because i am a black woman being harmed by this system and the way it works but i do hear from white men who say you know you've named a thing i couldn't name you've named the disappointment a constant you know yearning for more that i couldn't name right but i don't expect that you know a white man who's angry and you know is completely a political opposite for me is going to pick up my book but what i do expect is that people who know something's wrong are going to start looking at our values and our systems and changing it and then the white men who come up in these systems come up differently right the way in which the power that this violence has is lessened and that's really what my goal is you

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Id: aXVwK3BtDT8

Length: 19min 43sec (1183 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 03 2021