Dr. Omekongo Dibinga-Lies About Black People & Affirmative Action

Show Transcript

Lies about Black People & Affirmative Action

[00:00:00] Bob Gatty: The US Supreme Court has effectively ended affirmative action at universities, an action that ends a decades old policy aimed at increasing diversity and addressing the underrepresentation of minority students. We will look at that far reaching action today with our guest, Dr. Omekongo Dibinga, author of a new book, Lies about Black People, How to Combat Racist Stereotypes and Why it Matters..

[00:00:27] So stay with us. 

[00:00:29] Dr. Dibinga is the founding director of Upstander International, a professor at American University, motivational, TV talk show host, and he's a rapper too. He studied at Harvard, MIT, Princeton, Georgetown, Morehouse, and the Fletcher School where he earned his MA in law and diplomacy.

[00:00:50] He earned his PhD in education from the University of Maryland where his dissertation focused on Jay-Z and Global Hip Hop. Dibingo's book, From the Limbs of My Poetree, was described by Essence Magazine as a remarkable and insightful collection of exquisite poetry that touches sacred places within our spirit, within your spirit.

[00:01:15] You can find more information@upstanderinternational.com. Dr. Dominga, thanks so much for joining us on Lean To the Left. I really appreciate it. 

[00:01:26] Dr. Omekongo Dibinga: Thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here. 

[00:01:30] Bob Gatty: We're excited too because the Supreme Court last week did its thing with affirmative action. And while we scheduled this interview sometime back it turns out to be pretty timely.

[00:01:46] Can you talk a little bit about that decision and your thoughts about its implications? 

[00:01:51] Dr. Omekongo Dibinga: It was expected, but nevertheless it's still unfortunate and upsetting when you look at it. We have to remember that when we're talking about not only Harvard, but we're talking about UNC.

[00:02:01] So in the UNC case, you have a situation where this is a state school. Black and white people playing their taxes at equal proportions. But now you're going to see numbers dip as it relates to black students based on their admission standards. We saw this happen in California when they ended affirmative action for their universities and black and latino enrollment dropped by about 50% and many of those schools have been playing catch up to try to get there.

[00:02:25] When you look at a place like to, make those numbers up in terms of its diversity, when you look at the Harvard situation it's, Frustrating on many levels, and one of the first things that came to mind was that this country has already always had affirmative action policies for white people.

[00:02:41] As the book, when affirmative action was white, talks about when you look at westward expansion and white people being able to get plots of land. When you look at the whole system that was set up with Jim Crow and access that, that black people did not have, that white people did, there's always been some form of affirmative action for white people.

[00:02:57] And then when it comes to Harvard, You took a look at the ultimate affirmative action with legacy admissions. Fact of the matter is both my parents got PhDs from Harvard University. They taught there, they helped build institutions there. They helped the, theology school there improve itself on many levels.

[00:03:14] I did not get into Harvard when I applied. So the fact of the matter was 

[00:03:17] Bob Gatty: you didn't? 

[00:03:18] Dr. Omekongo Dibinga: I did not get into Harvard when I applied. Okay. The legacy emissions build on the complexion of connection and look at the legacy admissions versus affirmative action, there's also a false narrative that developed that I develops, that I talk in my book, Lies about Black People, and that is that the idea of affirmative action has always been about some underqualified black student getting into a school or a job, and so on and so forth. But affirmative action number one has primarily benefited white women historically. And number two, it has always been about qualified individuals, but that is not necessarily the case for legacy admission students. George Bush Jr. Talked about him being a C student at Yale. Look at Jared Kushner, for example, who many said was an average student at best. So when people make, the last point I'll make on this part is when people make this debate about legacy admissions, versus affirmative action, it's like comparing the qualifications of jared Kushner to Justice Brown Jackson and then we're, equating something that should not be equated. 

[00:04:23] Bob Gatty: Okay. Understand. Now that affirmative action is no longer actually a requirement, what should colleges and universities do to uphold diversity and inclusiveness?

[00:04:36] Dr. Omekongo Dibinga: First of all, they have to continue to do what many of them have already been doing. For example, we all know that colleges know who lives in certain zip codes, and so coming from an area like Washington, DC if somebody puts a 2 0 0 20 on their zip code they know that's southeast dc, one of the most impoverished cities in dc. And so colleges have been doing their demographic work for a very long period of time.

[00:05:02] Also, the Supreme Court said that people can talk about their backgrounds on essays. So you can assume that if somebody says they go to Ebenezer Baptist Church, and most likely they are a black person, right? And so we also have to remember that so that there are other ways when you look at the leadership roles that students had in high schools depending on the clubs that they lead, the African student group or Asian American Student Association or something like that.

[00:05:27] That's also, that's something they can do. They also need to do what some of the California school systems did, start going out into the communities and recruiting and speaking about your schools and speaking about the beauty of it. Because the other challenge that we have here, Bob, is that. In addition to the affirmative action decision, we also have the student loan decision.

[00:05:49] And so many students that come from underserved communities have basically been told in their minds that they are not able to apply to these schools because they don't have the financial resources and they're not white. And that's just wrong on both fronts. And so the universities need to recruit. I'm already talking to high school students, literally, and who are saying, I can't go here now.

[00:06:11] I can't apply here now. And that's not the case. And so many of these universities made statements about their commitment to diversity. They need to go out to these schools. Some of these schools have one college counselor for 400 students, so they need to up their partnerships with these schools to show that they are still worthy of consideration for these students.

[00:06:29] Those are some of the things they can do.

[00:06:31] Bob Gatty: You mentioned a minute ago that, that black people are not the only beneficiaries of, affirmative action. And I think your book addresses that, right? Yep. Talk about how white women actually are. 

[00:06:46] Dr. Omekongo Dibinga: Yep, absolutely.

[00:06:46] So what, we saw was that when affirmative action started to become more of a popular thing, Kennedy was the first person to actually say the term, and then LBJ started speaking on some things that Nixon started to really embrace it. Let's take contracting for example. When it was mentioned that you need to have more quote unquote minorities on your teams, what a lot of white business owners did was they started to say My wife is a minority. She's not a business owner, so let me add her to the contract, for example. And we started to see a lot of that. Sure. We started to see, for example, there were no commercial female white airline pilots before affirmative action happened, and that started to soar.

[00:07:24] So what happened was that in many ways, organizations and schools, they did everything possible to not add a black face. But to add anybody else who they can call a minority, and that's something I also talk about in the book is that we have to look at our racialized vocabulary because just saying you're helping minorities doesn't mean that you're, that black people are going to be the focus.

[00:07:47] And to be quite honest, Bob, it goes so deep with this that some companies would rather hire black people who are not African-American. To increase their black numbers, then hire actual African Americans. They'll take people from the West Indies, from African countries and the like, because there's so much history there that people feel like black Americans carry too much baggage.

[00:08:10] And that's what we've seen affirmative action over the years. 

[00:08:13] Bob Gatty: Do you really think that companies make that distinction between the heritage of a black person that they might hire, whether they're actually African-American or come from some other area of the world. 

[00:08:28] Dr. Omekongo Dibinga: Oh, absolutely.

[00:08:29] It's happened. It's been be reporting on it, and I'll leave an ad that African-Americans have done it themselves. Take the movie Selma, for example. That was made by a black director who hired David Oyelowo to play Dr. King, and it was Lee Daniels who hired him. And one of the things that he said in the interview is that African Americans come with too much baggage.

[00:08:50] Okay. And if, and one of the things I talk about in the book, if you look at Hollywood, we're seeing so many historical black characters who are being played by non-black American actors. Now, for me, I'm not saying that it's for me I, wanna see black representation, period.

[00:09:06] But when you see Whitney Houston or you see the movie Harriet, when you see the movie Selma. One night in the movie that was about the Jim Brown, Malcolm X and so on and so forth, conversation one night in Miami the person played, Malcolm X was played by a British person. Like all of the characters I just mentioned were played by non-Black American people.

[00:09:26] And so even in Hollywood, were seeing that happen and people don't realize that it's a bigger issue that needs consideration and needs a deeper conversation about why they're doing that. 

[00:09:38] Bob Gatty: Wow. That's, really that's certainly remarkable because I just had not even thought about that. And I guess maybe that's cuz I'm a white guy and it's doesn't affect me personally.

[00:09:50] Dr. Omekongo Dibinga: Yeah. When we look at even these global implications of racism, which I talk about, we has situations where people from the African continent, people from the West Indian islands, Have negative perceptions of black Americans. Just like Black Americans may have negative perceptions of them.

[00:10:03] Because we're all schooled by the same media. Somebody whose parents were Congolese, but grew up in the United States. I experienced all of this firsthand. Yeah. You 

[00:10:11] Bob Gatty: know what, I saw a piece today in the Washington Post. It was written by a senior political reporter, his name is Aaron Blake, you've, I don't know if you had a chance to see this or not.

[00:10:22] It just came out yet this morning. Not yet. Yeah. It cites an Economist/ YouGov poll that shows Americans approving the decision of the Supreme Court on a affirmative action by more than two to one and, it cited other polls showing similar support. Why do you think that is? Dr. Dibinga? 

[00:10:43] Dr. Omekongo Dibinga: I think the main reason is that whenever you attach something as a black, something that helps black people first, you can find the most liberal people who will find ways to oppose it.

[00:10:56] Dr. King talked about how white liberals want freedom for black people on an installment plan. Derek Bell talked about this as well. We'll, let it go to certain level. Yeah, so a certain level and then we'll stop with this mentality of we've done enough for you.

[00:11:12] You could even go way back to Frederick Douglass when he was freed himself from slavery, became a leader and speaker. He would go to abolitionist meetings and they would say things like we'll speak for You . If they hear you speak, people might think you're too smart and not really wanna believe what we're saying.

[00:11:27] That's why he started his own newspaper. So this is also why Dr. King said, That sometimes he feels like the white liberals are more dangerous than white racists. So this idea that as long as things are helping black people more than anybody else, yeah, you are always going to find people across the political spectrum that are gonna have a problem with that.

[00:11:46] Even though affirmative action has done more to help more than just black people, and as we've already established Sure. They haven't even been the primary beneficiaries. Yeah. 

[00:11:55] Bob Gatty: All right. So that Economist/YouGov Poll showed, now this surprised me. That more than four in 10 black Americans approved the decision and 31% strongly approved.

[00:12:10] In addition, just 11% of black Americans felt that affirmative action had impacted them positively. Now, does that surprise you? 

[00:12:22] Dr. Omekongo Dibinga: It does not surprise me and, I'm not comparing, there are many people within the black community that have this mentality. Like when people are talking about the student loans and people had this mindset I paid mine off, why should we help other people? There are many of us, yeah. Many of us off in the community that kind of have this idea I worked hard, I didn't get help, I didn't get a leg up, and so why should anybody else, that kind of, crabs in a barrel mentality. Even though it's not the natural state for crabs to be in a barrel.

[00:12:50] And so I, believe that. And so when you're talking about the 11% who say that affirmative action didn't help them many people who are around today, Were not around when affirmative action policy started to be implemented. Yeah. So they can't necessarily see if they have already benefited from it by the schools that they've been able to go to.

[00:13:09] Look, I don't all of the schools that I studied at, I don't know whether affirmative action was the reason or not, but if it was, then I don't have a problem with it because, No matter how you get in, you gotta take the same test to get out. But I think that many, but I'm not gonna be so arrogant as to say I did this all by myself.

[00:13:27] I pulled myself up by my bootstraps. I am experiencing rights. Oh I don't know how long than the Supreme Court, but I'm, experiencing a lot of rights that I didn't fight to earn. My ancestor did. My parents' generation and, people in between that time did. So they're we're walking around experiencing a lot of things that we don't know that people fought for, and affirmative action was part of that.

[00:13:50] And so that 11%, I feel like many of them are maybe misguided. But having said that, there are definitely many of our communities that are still suffering and struggling because of the policies that exist in this country that have existed for centuries that have placed us where we are today.

[00:14:07] And we have to do no less than fight harder to get out of those situations. 

[00:14:11] Bob Gatty: I guess Justice Thomas wasn't part of that 11% right. 

[00:14:15] Dr. Omekongo Dibinga: I saw a picture of justice cartoon animation of Justice Thomas pulling up the ladder and then other black people at the bottom trying to reach up and just pulling it up.

[00:14:26] Yeah. And for this guy who was like pretty much a Black Panther when he was a college student and benefited from affirmative action in terms of how he got to where he is to become who he has become, it goes to what Thurgood Marshall said that a black snake will bite you just as much as a white snake.

[00:14:43] I, it's not about the color. It's about do you support policies that help everybody get to that next level? And he clearly doesn't. 

[00:14:52] Bob Gatty: What do you think the case is now for continuing affirmative action policies? 

[00:14:58] Dr. Omekongo Dibinga: To me, this decision from the Supreme Court. At the end of the day, it is a real call to action.

[00:15:05] Okay. In my book, one of the things I have for is, I call it at the rule of seven, and it's really a, test of how committed you are to diversity, equity, and inclusion. We all say that we're about it, but what do your seven closest neighbors look like? What do your seven best friends look like? What do the seven authors of the books and podcasts that you listen to look like?

[00:15:22] What are the seven last toys you bought for your kids or grandkids look like? The reason I have that in there because right now, Is the time for corporations to show, Hey, we don't need to have a policy to increase numbers. Shrm, the Organization of Human Resources Management, the largest human resources organization, has documented research that companies that are more diverse are more profitable.

[00:15:44] So the research is out there that shows that people benefit from diversity. So now for colleges, they gotta step up corporations, they gotta step up. In our schools, parents have to step up, especially in this fake critical race theory debate, which I talk about in the book, where people are trying to get rid of teaching of anything relating to black and brown people.

[00:16:02] Parents who believe that diversity and learning about Rosa Parks and Malala and other people are important, they gotta step up and if Americans don't step up. Then it clearly shows that more people were in line with the Supreme Court decision than we thought as your survey showed that you cited. 

[00:16:19] Bob Gatty: Yeah.

[00:16:20] Do you feel obviously you just mentioned corporations a minute ago, so you must feel that this decision has much broader implications than just colleges and universities. Correct. 

[00:16:33] Dr. Omekongo Dibinga: Oh, absolutely. And the corporations have already been speaking out. That's why you saw statements from Apple and other places even while this whole case was going on relating to this case, because especially coming out of 2020 with George Floyd Murder and Black Lives Matter movement, you saw some corporations make some changes. Not enough. In terms of representation and the like. But there are some corporations that will look for any excuse to not have to do this work.

[00:16:57] And again, these companies, they need to step up and say, even without this, we are going to continue our commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion and belonging. 

[00:17:06] Bob Gatty: Okay. Let's talk a little bit about your your little bit more about your book and, what it covers. Who is the target audience for this piece that you wrote?

[00:17:17] Dr. Omekongo Dibinga: So the, when I first wrote this book that started writing it, the target was primarily white people who were. In kind of suburban spaces. Okay. Who were in inspired and influenced to take action after George Floyd was murdered in the summer of 2020. And they were at the rallies, they were doing this and doing that.

[00:17:42] But wanted to take what they were doing a little bit deeper. Okay. They wanted to go beyond the slogans. They wanted to go beyond the rallies. That was my first marketing for white educators and, so on and so forth. Okay. But, And 

[00:17:57] Bob Gatty: when was that? When was that? When did you start this book?

[00:18:00] Dr. Omekongo Dibinga: I started writing this book in early 2022. That's when I started writing it. And I completed the manuscript in November. But that was I would say fall of 2021 is when I started getting the concept and then going into 2022, I spent most of the year writing it. Okay. And, yeah. And so that, that was who I, and that's why when I was working with my agent and we were just talking, I said, I really wanna help them learn about the problems, lies about black people. And she was like, that's your title Lies about Black People. That's your title. Yeah. So it was my, booking agent Wendy Keller white woman who said, that's what you need to call it. And, it made a lot of sense. But here's what happened, Bob as I started, one of the things I did in the book is I have interviews with people everyday, people all races, backgrounds, genders, ages about their anti-racist journey.

[00:18:52] And I started hearing things from people who were black, brown, Asian Latino and so on and so forth. But I also started hearing stories from other black people about the lies they were told about black people that prevented them from being successful because they bought into it.

[00:19:12] And so the book became a larger part of a movement. To expose anybody to these lies about black people. Let me give you an example. I was doing a reading a couple of weeks ago at Busboys and Poets in the DC area, and I mentioned the idea that about black hair and stereotypes about black hair, and I talked about Chris Rock's movie, "Good Hair," and I did not know this, but Chris, Rock's mother-in-law, the mother of his former wife, I should say, was in the audience.

[00:19:45] Okay. And she came up to me and said, the reason that Chris Rock did that movie was because his daughter came up to him and said something to the effect of, why don't I have good hair? So as a toddler, She had already started to buy into the stereotypes that the way she looked her hair was not good.

[00:20:07] In our community, we talk about people who have good hair. That's hair that's more like white people. We talk about people who have fair skin, that's people who have lighter skin. Like these ideas that seep into our head. And, create this subconsciousness. We also need to debunk the lies that we were told as well.

[00:20:27] And and other groups have also experienced lies about black people as well. So any group who's been told about a lie about black people, this book is now for, 

[00:20:36] Bob Gatty: okay. So what are some of the other lies and racist stereotypes that you talk about? 

[00:20:42] Dr. Omekongo Dibinga: Oh man, there are so, many. So one of the ones that we talk about is swimming.

[00:20:46] I have a chapter on there called black People Can't, Swim The Great double entendre. Really? And black people are more likely to drown and, all these other types of things that, one of the things we don't understand. 

[00:20:57] Bob Gatty: I never heard that. I never heard that. I live in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.

[00:21:01] Dr. Omekongo Dibinga: Wow. But, and, but this is and, this goes to my point because this is some of the lies that other people who are interviewed in the book told me black and white, but there's a history there, right? So when you look at community pools that were developed, in across America, and that started to become a thing, white communities would rather let their community pools shut down and be covered with concrete than let black people swim in them.

[00:21:28] There's a history and legacy of black people being denied opportunities just to use community pools, which created a whole lack of opportunity for us to learn how to swim. So there was a segregation component that was in there. When we look at issues to housing, I have a chapter on black people just can't live here.

[00:21:44] And people say it's because they can't afford to. But no, because there were policies on the books that were sanctioned by the federal government that were allowed for black people to get discriminated against as it relates to loans. People who ran these Levittown communities and other places on their leases and documents had No problem saying black people cannot live here. And so that's when people got a leg up on housing. Black soldiers coming back from World War II did not get access to the GI bill that helped white soldiers get housing education and the like, which got them on a task or on a trajectory for creating wealth.

[00:22:20] Those types of issues matter. And those are some of the issues that, that we look at in the book. 

[00:22:26] Bob Gatty: No wonder African-American people are pissed off. It's just no fricking wonder. 

[00:22:33] Dr. Omekongo Dibinga: When you look at our history black people have been as loyal, if not more loyal to as any group in this country.

[00:22:39] We fought in every war. This country has had every right that black people have gained. Whether you look at the reconstruction amendments, 13, 14, 15 amendments, whether you look at the Civil Rights amendments of the 1960s, they never just benefited black people. When you look at Asians who fought for citizenship in the United States, they brought up things like the birthright, citizenship.

[00:23:01] Yeah. Which was granted to black people and they used that. Every right we've gained in this country has benefited everybody else. But as Doc Rivers NBA coach said, we've always loved this country, but America has just not loved us back the same way.

[00:23:14] Bob Gatty: In your book you say, the world we live in today is based on lies. Talk to me about that. 

[00:23:23] Dr. Omekongo Dibinga: I start off the book talking about just the lies about racism itself. The concept of race that we have in this country is about 600 years old. It was created during the mid 14 hundreds to justify slavery. Before that time period, you can't go back in time and find the racial categories that we have anywhere.

[00:23:46] When you look at the Bible, they may talk about how people were described feet, wool hair, wool, bronze skin or, the like, or they may talk about ethnic groups and the like, but not black and white and, Latino. Those categories were created to justify enslavement before the Vatican when people were looking at setting out to build the slave trade.

[00:24:07] And we have continued that narrative today. And if that narrative is 600 years old we can change it. It hasn't been, but many of us believe it has been here since the beginning of time. And on top of that, when you look at legendary educators like the like white educator, Jane Elliot, who did that brown eyed blue eye test, whiteness has become such a construct that people, even though they know it's not real, they don't want to give it up. As a matter of fact, as I talk about in the book, people that fought to expand whiteness by adding groups like Irish adding groups like Italians who were looked at as like one step above black people just a little bit back then.

[00:24:47] But now they're white. We could talk, we know, we could talk about the history that and, ignorance and hate that Irish people experience in this country, that Italian people experience in this country. But now they've been brought into whiteness and now you have Latino people who are trying to fight into that space.

[00:25:02] Asian people who are trying to fight into that space because people have seen the benefits that just come along with whiteness. 

[00:25:10] Bob Gatty: Okay. You write that being black in America is like being constantly connected to a lie detector. Why did you write that? 

[00:25:22] Dr. Omekongo Dibinga: Because people just don't believe our truth to be real.

[00:25:27] They don't believe our qualifications to be real. They don't so many people I interviewed in the book or I talked to talk about how they have to prove that they have a doctorate. They have to prove that they went to this school or that school. There's a situation I talk about in the book where a person was having a heart incident on a plane and a black doctor went up to try to help, and the, flight attendant said, oh, we don't need your help.

[00:25:49] And it basically was treating her like she was a random person. And then a white person came up who was a doctor or a nurse of some sort, didn't show any qualifications and was allowed to help the person. And so the black, the person in the book said in the interview said, what does a black per a black, what does a doctor on a plane look like?

[00:26:07] And social media, every time I bring up a point And they gave you a verified check. You studied at Harvard, you have a PhD. We are constantly not believed before we are believed and in many situations we're not believed that before it's too late.

[00:26:22] Am I not, if I'm a nurse, can I not give somebody CPR who's dying because people are gonna question my qualifications? We always have to prove ourselves and that's part of the problem. We all talk in our communities about, as black people, we have to be twice as good. But like Chris Rock said, we have to be twice as good to get half as much in many situations, and that's because people don't believe us upfront. One chapter, I'll say real quickly when I talk about. I don't feel your pain. This idea that black people can experience more pain because of this stereotype that black people, the black buck, we can experience more pain. Black people get prescribed less medication when we go to the doctor, black women get less epidurals and other types of medication when they're dealing with pregnancy. And that's why one of the reasons black women are dying during pregnancy at a higher rate than any other group. Serena Williams was a great example of that. Black people, when we get shot down in the street by somebody, these unarmed shooting incidents, the idea was I needed more force to subdue them because of this idea that we can tolerate more pain, which goes back to the whippings we endured during slavery.

[00:27:22] Bob Gatty: Okay. Let me ask you this question. Has the Black Lives Matter movement helped or hindered the fight for racial equality. 

[00:27:34] Dr. Omekongo Dibinga: My, my short answer is that it helped, but what we are seeing, which is what we talked about earlier with Dr. King in the installment plan, is that there's a certain level of I speak at a lot of corporations and organizations, and I talk about this in the book, is that many organizations are starting to experience diversity fatigue.

[00:27:51] This idea again of, okay, we've done enough, we said this 

[00:27:55] Bob Gatty: Diversity fatigue. Is that what you said? 

[00:27:57] Dr. Omekongo Dibinga: Yes, Diversity, fatigue. The idea of okay, we changed our statement, we added a diversity mission statement. We hired this person, we did that thing. We did this thing. Can we stop now? And we also have to remember that coming out of 2020 black Lives Matter movement started and 20 12, 20 14 is when it starts to really establish itself.

[00:28:17] It came to a height with George Floyd. But also, you have to remember that during the pan, the George Floyd situation, we were during dealing with the pandemic. So a lot of people were indoors, had certain things they had to see all the time, couldn't go out. Now that people are out living their life again, they had this mentality that we should just move on.

[00:28:33] Corporations promised billions of dollars of things that they were gonna do to help build equity and the like, but only a few hundred million have actually been committed, and much of that was given in the form of things like loans that these banks and corporations and other groups can actually profit on off of as opposed to actual grants or things that didn't have any strings attached.

[00:28:54] So that's why I said the short answer is yes, but now we're starting to see people saying, okay, we've done enough and we can't let that happen.

[00:29:01] Bob Gatty: Okay, now One of the things that, that I've covered quite a bit on my podcast in various, with various guests, has been the disproportionate numbers of blacks who are incarcerated in our prisons. You talk about the preschool to prison pipeline, in your book. Yes. Can you talk about that a little bit and why you think that is and what should happen?

[00:29:31] Dr. Omekongo Dibinga: Absolutely. After, slavery ended there and sharecropping and, other things came up.

[00:29:36] Yeah. Convict leasing and the like. There's always been some way that those who have been in power have worked. To keep black people from being able to experience full freedom. And like I said, systems are sharecropped and convict leasing. And one of the ways that was also continued is with the prison system where you have black people who are about 13% of the population, but represent extremely large numbers.

[00:30:00] 40 to 50% astronomical in terms of people who are in incarcerated. Yeah. And so what happens is, You have legislation that gets created that makes it easier to criminalize behavior, and then you add more policing to our communities and that leads to more incarceration. So for example, when you look at the crack and cocaine versus powder cocaine disparity. There was a one to 100 ratio of crack versus powder cocaine. What I mean by that is that if you were white in the suburbs using one ounce of cocaine powder cocaine versus I'm sorry if you were both using the same amount of cocaine, but white people were using the powder substance and black people were using the crack substance.

[00:30:42] For every one year that a, white person would get, black people would get a hundred years. What? So the Obama administration that, that's what they meant was the one to 100 ratio. The Obama administration brought it down to one to 18, but we were like, why can't it just be one to one? Yeah. So that's what we're, those are some of the issues that we're talking about.

[00:31:00] Or when you look at the idea that many of our communities are more policed than other neighborhoods, if you add more police to areas, you're going to have more arrests of people in those areas. Stop and frisk, which was used under Giuliani in New York. The amount of people, which was declared unconstitutional by the way, the amount of black people who were stopped and frisked in New York City was larger than the amount of black people who actually live in New York City, which meant that there were people who were constantly being targeted by the police. So those types of things are more likely to promote criminal convictions.

[00:31:33] And then you look at our legal system where you have situations where we don't get adequate legal defense, where we have situations where we're getting encouraged to make plea deals because trials will be too expensive. When you look at systems like no cash bail and, situations like that.

[00:31:50] Every single way you look, that the system is stacked up against black people to make us more likely to be incarcerated. So when we go to schools, do a lot of work in schools, I was a K to 12 teacher. I work in schools. Now, obviously I'm university. I work on the university level. Now in our schools from preschool, we see situations where black people are set up to be disciplined more.

[00:32:11] Where black boys are five times more likely to be expelled than white boys from preschool. This is why the Department of Justice under the Obama Administration brought a lawsuit against many school districts. And then when you go further up the chain, when you have situations like special education and things like that, special education is more subjective than objective in many of our schools where people are just, in some situations or many situations, are deciding that black and brown students just should be in these communities more. And our special education population is preparing our students to do bids in prison because in our school systems the general education groups as well as special ed communities, they tend to be isolated more.

[00:32:53] They tend to be not more, not engaged more intellectually and there and then, so on many levels, you'll see that many students who are incarcerated, they had something called an I E P in school, which is an individualized education plan. And so that plan can actually set them on a trajectory to eventually leave school and go into our prison systems, where in many situations, in some of our states, we have built more prisons, then campuses, college campuses, which are waiting for our students to be able to, our young people to just enter them. So those are some of the things I talk about in the book as relates to the criminalization of black people, which starts at very young ages. 

[00:33:33] Bob Gatty: Okay. Talk to me a little bit about your background.

[00:33:37] What brought you to the place where you are today? 

[00:33:41] Dr. Omekongo Dibinga: So for me growing up, I was born and raised in, in Boston where I am now visiting family and I was just constantly subjected to so many stereotypes about black people. A lot of it, when I grew up in the black community, a lot of it I got from black people.

[00:33:58] So I, just kept asking myself why, do people think these things? My parents didn't believe it. My siblings didn't believe it. And and then I started in my school, I went to a very, the oldest public school in the country, Boston Latin School from seventh to 12th grade.

[00:34:12] In that school I read one book by a black author. And that book was called Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison and everywhere I was, the only places I really got heavy doses of black culture was from my parents or at that time, rap music was very educational at that time. Groups like Public Enemy and KRS One and Rakim were teaching me about my history.

[00:34:33] And of course, people in the community who are activists. But I kept asking myself if I'm not getting this story, what is everybody else getting about black people as well? And so I grew up in a situation where in my bubble, I was affirmed as a black person, but when I left my bubble, I was disrespected every single day.

[00:34:52] And then I saw the racism my parents experienced being beaten and mistreated by police, by siblings experience as well. And Rodney King 92 in those situations. And those things made me realize that. Rather than just complain about the problem, I need to be an educator. Somebody who can get out there and talk to people about what's going on.

[00:35:13] Somebody who can talk to people about stereotypes they have heard and learned about black people. The Washington Post reported in 2014 that 74% of white people have no non. White friends, not just no black friends, no non-white friends. So where are they getting their information from the media.

[00:35:32] And we see what the media does as relates to black people. So I, need to be an educator. I like being the person that going to these spaces, get courageous conversations going that Glenn Singleton talks about. Get people to expose themselves to the lies and the stereotypes they've been told, and then come out there with an action plan.

[00:35:47] That's why I started my company, Upstander International, so we can all take a stand against injustice. 

[00:35:52] Bob Gatty: Okay. I want you to tell us a little bit about Upstander, but first you mentioned that something about police in your own background, what happened? 

[00:36:01] Dr. Omekongo Dibinga: So for, me, my family has always dealt with police in some way, shape or form.

[00:36:07] They beat up my father. At one situation my, they arrested my mother. My mother was in a bathroom at a train station, and a white woman said that my mother tried to sell her drugs. This is my PhD, Harvard having mother try to sell her drugs and, my father had to go get her out of a jail cell after she was mistreated by the police.

[00:36:26] My, my own siblings have, dealt with physical issues by the police. Myself, I remember one situation i, was driving down and I don't drink and I, I don't consume alcohol, okay? So I'm driving down the street. I had a police officer drive up while I'm driving on the highway.

[00:36:40] Flashed the light into my car while I'm driving on the highway, and basically, in my opinion, to see that I was black and then proceed to pull me over. And then after he pulls me over, tried to convince me that I was drinking so that he could have reasonable justification to arrest me. I've had situations where I've been pulled over and my, my wife bought me a dash cam so I can record many of these instances. I was pulled over with a new car that I bought, not a Mercedes-Benz or something extravagant. A Toyota like Highlander and police pull me over. It says that my tags are expired and I have all of the right tags on the car, but I bought the car in Virginia, but I just got the DC tags, so I still have both on, I just hadn't taken the other one off. That led to a situation. My, my four-year-old daughter found the video and asked me a question, why are you recording the police? So I start seeing that even with her mind, these things start to get ingrained and in my mind, I'm starting to have these ideas ingrained in my head.

[00:37:35] People need to understand that most black people Have had some run-in with the police that was not warranted. Some of them end up tragic Philando Castile or Mike Brown, but many of us, when our heart skips a beat, when police are behind us, there's a history behind that.

[00:37:51] Bob Gatty: That certainly is understandable. Do you believe black people in America deserve reparations and other forms of remuneration for the suffering and the bullshit that's gone on in this country over the years, including slavery? 

[00:38:04] Dr. Omekongo Dibinga: Absolutely, Other groups in this country have received some form of reparations in other places like Canada, they've experienced to do with with their native indigenous population as well. And one of the challenges, just like with affirmative action, how everybody immediately attaches it to a black face, everybody immediately attaches reparations to just writing a check to black people. I'm not in favor of that.

[00:38:26] Bob Gatty: What are you in favor of? 

[00:38:28] Dr. Omekongo Dibinga: I believe that there are other places in I believe it's Evanstown and in Illinois, California and other places, we need to look at other ways of getting reparations. For example, making sure that the schools in our communities are equally funded. As in this country, we fund our public schools by our zip codes.

[00:38:47] So you could be in a community where the average income is a million dollars a year, they get better schools than the community when the average income is $20,000 a year. The students didn't do anything to deserve those better schools. So why are we doing that? Yeah. How about equality? In terms of how we fund our schools?

[00:39:00] How about doing work to eliminate the health disparities that exist in our communities by making sure we're getting adequate health centers, free healthcare and, various things like that. Job training as well. When you look at places like Georgetown University, Georgetown, where I did my undergrad, Georgetown University survived off of selling their enslaved black people back in the day, they wouldn't be here if it wasn't for our labor. We built these universities and that, and a few years ago I was so proud of the Georgetown students where they voted to have a portion of their tuition go towards scholarships for black people, many of whom were the direct descendants of those people who were sold.

[00:39:38] Those types of things are not putting money into people's pockets. Cuz to be quite honest, Bob. Because of the tensions we have within our own community, they start to arise where, oh, you're Jamaican. Like you just got here. You didn't experience this even though there was slavery in Jamaica.

[00:39:54] Or you're from Ghana. And then people start to be, go back and forth at each other. At Harvard there I believe it was, yeah. At Harvard, there was a group that was created by black students called the Descendants, where you couldn't join this organization unless all four of your grandparents were African-American.

[00:40:12] So we have done things within our own community to keep ourselves divided. Those individual things like writing checks and the like, I don't believe that they're gonna work, but there are cases across the country where people have started to experiment with other forms of reparation, housing, making it not as difficult to get housing because of discrimination. We affect dealt, with redlining and loans and all of those types of things. I believe that's worthy of study. 

[00:40:37] Bob Gatty: Affirmative action I think was some form of, really some form of reparations, wasn't it? 

[00:40:42] Dr. Omekongo Dibinga: The thing with affirmative action is that affirmative action was never a law.

[00:40:46] Affirmative action was a policy. Every organization or company can deal with it however they wanted. Which meant that they can end it whenever they want it or just increase their minority representation without increasing their black representation.

[00:40:59] Yeah. The school I went to Boston LAD School, very prestigious school, older than Harvard University. It's the oldest public school. As I said, a discrimination, an affirmative action case came up at that school and after that case, the numbers of black and brown students at that school dropped dramatically.

[00:41:13] So at any point when there's no real law attached to these things, people can do whatever they want. So yes, there are many cases where black people have benefited from affirmative action. But again, it was never really a set in stone type of thing, so people can do everything they want with it as we saw last week. 

[00:41:31] Bob Gatty: Do you think the Trump administration, the Trump presidency has made racism worse in this country? 

[00:41:41] Dr. Omekongo Dibinga: Oh, most definitely. What do you expect when you have somebody who admits to being a racist? As he was saying in his interviews on, on, on video, I'm the least racist person you'll ever know.

[00:41:50] Somebody says I'm the least of the thieves. I'm not gonna leave my money around them. So he, came in with racist ideas. And what he did was he didn't create racism, he just unleashed it and said it's okay to get out there with your Archie Bunker style racism and ideas, and let's make those policies.

[00:42:07] And I live this in real time. While he was president and had his executive order canceling diversity trainings and the like, there were organizations that I was working with for years. That I would go to and they would say can you not talk about this anymore because we don't wanna lose our funding. We don't wanna be a target of this and the like. So there were real losses that were taking place during this time where schools felt like, and companies and corporations felt like they couldn't say certain things. And now we have seen how that has gone full blast with governors and different states and legislators creating these fake anti critical race theory laws. Critical race theory is not taught in K to 12 schools. I have a whole chapter on that, and they're taking his racism to a larger level legislatively. 

[00:42:50] Bob Gatty: Yeah, I didn't really have any questions about critical race theory, I probably should have, but you know what, we could always do a another show and talk about that if you want to. 

[00:43:01] Dr. Omekongo Dibinga: Absolutely. And I can share some poetry too, that I have a lot of poetry in the book as well, if we can come back and do some of that as well. 

[00:43:07] Bob Gatty: There you go. All right. Now Dr. King expressed the hope that someday in our world, people will be judged by the content of their character and not the color of their skin. Do you feel like we're anywhere near achieving that goal? 

[00:43:25] Dr. Omekongo Dibinga: No. If anything, we've gone backwards. His generation and, I will say a generation after his they really were the generations and you, know this better than anybody that really fought to expand rights, when you look at gay rights, women's rights, black rights and so on and so forth. Now my, my, kids are part of a generation where, my oldest is 17, my youngest is eight, where rights are being taken away. At American University, I started asking my students, I want you to think about how many laws or have been changed or challenged since the beginning of this semester, and then look at the list at the end of the semester.

[00:44:02] In January, I was talking to my students about the fact that there were over 180 anti L G B T Q bills that were being proposed. Now it's 500. Over 500. Wow. And just, and last year, all alone, last year there were less than 250 the entire year. So people have an active mission to contract people's rights with the Roe v, Wade and the likes.

[00:44:26] Yep. Content of character. No. What it's, not happening. We're going backwards and we have to fight harder. I'm optimistic because we've been through worse. And if we can overcome those things and if we can encourage people to keep fighting and not get comfortable. A lot of these things are happening because many of us who consider ourself activists, we got comfortable.

[00:44:43] We, let Donald Trump get elected. We let him get to Supreme Court. We didn't fight hard enough. Some of these things happened under Democratic administrations as well, how Merrick Garland got blocked under McConnell and we weren't fighting hard enough. 

[00:44:56] We are not better off. We're going backwards. 

[00:44:59] Bob Gatty: Okay. So now we're in the middle of a early part of a presidential campaign and we've got all these Republicans lining up in one way or another to try to get the nomination. And some of 'em are dancing around what to do about Donald Trump and others are being a little bit more outspoken.

[00:45:22] But nevertheless he is nominating the narrative so far, despite the fact that he's been twice indicted 

[00:45:33] Dr. Omekongo Dibinga: and everything else 

[00:45:35] Bob Gatty: And, twice impeached. There you go. And, so anyway what do you think about some of these candidates, like DeSantis, for example, or what's going on with him?

[00:45:46] Dr. Omekongo Dibinga: I think DeSantis is, He has policies that are just very evil. And I've been thinking of different words. I've I'm try, I'm very selective in the words that I use. I'm not into name calling in a way that's degenerative or anything like that. But when you look at what he's doing, when you, as it relates to the gay community as it relates to abortion rights, that ad that he had.

[00:46:08] A couple last week that was very homophobic and, then in schools teachers can't even talk about being gay, can't have a picture up of their spouse if they're of the same gender and the like. He, is trying to be, as the many people say, Trumper than Trump.

[00:46:22] That may work in in, in, the Republican primaries, but it's not gonna work in a general election. I don't think he's gonna beat Trump for one. But these this, idea of people trying to outtrump Trump are basically making America more worse off because they're making people feel comfortable in their racism, their homophobia, their anti-Semitism, their Islamophobia.

[00:46:43] Then you got people out there, Tim Scott and the Nikki Haley's on the other side, who have this mindset of oh, America's fine. Look at me, which is so ignorant and so selfish and so arrogant. To, look at themselves, but not look at the broader picture of, society. Nikki Haley couldn't even compete in, in beauty contests when when she was a kid because they were like black and white beauty contests and she was neither.

[00:47:05] You can't speak to those real experiences and talk about how many still exist today. You just wanna talk about, look at me and what I've done so anybody can overcome. That's not leadership, that's just selfish and arrogant and, may raise them money, but they also have no chance of going anywhere in this, electorate. The Republicans have never elected anybody who was not a white male to towards the presidential candidacy ever in history. It's not gonna change under this party. 

[00:47:34] Bob Gatty: No, I don't think so. I don't think so. All right. Have you got anything else you'd like to add to the discussion before we close it off?

[00:47:44] Dr. Omekongo Dibinga: If, you're interested in, in, in some poetry I, would love to, share one if you're interested. 

[00:47:51] Bob Gatty: Oh, sure. Go ahead. 

[00:47:53] Dr. Omekongo Dibinga: So it, I know. We'll we talked about getting to critical race theory a little bit at another time. Yeah. But this poem I wrote is called Critical Racist Theory, and it speaks to this idea of what people are doing in our schools in terms of, Getting rid of all of our history.

[00:48:09] I also have a chapter in our artificial intelligence and how that's racist. We can talk about that, but here we go. 

[00:48:15] I guess we can't teach why Native Americans shed tears on that trail. I guess we can't teach why Japanese Americans were in turn to those camps in jail. I guess we can't teach why Jews fleeing the Holocaust came to America and were forced to reverse sail.

[00:48:28] I guess we can't teach about those who had their rights, all that stonewall as they cried and willed. Too many in America caught up in ignorance and denial. They'd rather have you forget history than learn about his tribulations and trials. They'd rather not teach you the history so white folks don't feel guilty.

[00:48:43] They think white kids will only see themselves as evil and filthy. But where were your laws? When I was learning about me, when my history books taught that I only came from slavery when my mathematics classes left out? Black contributions. When my science class has left out, our contributions to evolution when my class has talked about.

[00:48:58] America's hopes and intentions, but didn't lift my hopes by teaching me about black inventions. You don't think I felt guilty like three fifths of a man when y'all taught me that I was only civilized when you brought me to this land. Nubia, but I ain't gonna be selfish. It ain't just my history dismissed cuz I can talk about Latino, Asian, indigenous, and Jewish cuz y'all wanna exclude the Chinese exclusion acts from the books.

[00:49:19] You don't wanna know about all Latinos labeled as Chicanos and crooks and even though there are white Muslims, that narrative won't work. Because y'all want to teach that Muslims are just terrorists who murder and hurt. You don't want to teach Islamic contributions to science and math. You don't want to teach about Native American soldiers present in past, but maybe at the end of the day, we're all fools arguing about something that isn't even taught in schools.

[00:49:41] But to me, C R T and Critical Race Theory is ly relevant or culturally responsive teaching. Hear Me? For Teachers Teaching and Reaching for the Truth Your Efforts. I applauded for the rest of y'all. If you didn't want history taught. Why did y'all record it? But I digress because my faith in white students is stronger than yours.

[00:49:58] I know They can handle full history in all of its flaws. They can learn the evils of some white people cause those evils were defeated. And when we teach 'em the history, they're inspired to never repeat it. I know that white kids eight, 16 to 19 can handle 16, 19, even white kids in elementary and free teens because too many students get angry when they find out the truth.

[00:50:17] They have no hiding about America's complete history that wasn't taught in their youth. America can only be as good as is promised when we teach history in full. So let's support our teachers by teaching the truth in school. 

[00:50:29] Bob Gatty: That's really good. I appreciate you sharing that with us. So thank you very much. I enjoyed talking to you. I think it was a very informative session and I appreciate you joining us today on the Lean to the Left Podcast. 

[00:50:45] Dr. Omekongo Dibinga: Thank you so much for having me. I really do appreciate it. 

[00:50:48]