Transcription of the conversation with light edits:
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[(0:04)] Eddie Glaude: I am delighted to have this conversation with Professor Imani Perry, the Henry A. Morse Jr. and Elizabeth W. Morse Professor of Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality, and of African and African American Studies at Harvard University. I can't stand saying that.[laughter] I just wanna say that, she's the author of eight books, including the National Book Award winner, South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation. It's an extraordinary book. You know, in each of her previous works, Professor Perry applies the lessons of modern history to our effort to bring about a more democratic and just world.
She challenges, she celebrates, I mean, Looking for Lorraine: The Radiant and Radical Life of Lorraine Hansberry, the best biography of Lorraine Hansberry you can put your hands on, May We Forever Stand, traces the history of the Black National Anthem, More Beautiful and More Terrible, which is the ground for this conversation today,is an examination of contemporary practices of racial inequality that persist in the United States, despite our so-called commitments to racial equality. Vexy Thing, a critical work, a critical theory that traces the thread of modern patriarchy from the transatlantic slave trade to the age of conquest through up to the present day. I mean, I could go on. Oh, Prophets of the Hood, inaugurates in so many ways a field in hip hop studies, It's an extraordinary text. And of course her writings appear in the New York Times, The Atlantic, the New York Magazine, and Harper's. Among other things she's an art collector and art critic. And she has a new book coming out in January, Black In Blues: How a Color Tells The Story of My People. It's a beautiful book.
Thank you Professor Perry for joining me in this brief conversation.
[(2:06)] Imani Perry: Well, thank you for having me. It is always a joy and an honor to be in conversation with you.
[(2:12)] Glaude: Well, I wanted to talk with you on Friday of last week. I was on Morning Joe, and there was a segment on Morning Joe by Morgan Radford. She's an NBC News correspondent and the co-anchor of NBC News Daily. And it was a segment on mixed race voters. She sat down with six people from different racial, ethnic, and political backgrounds and sought to, in some ways, delve into the issue of being mixed race. I keep putting that in inverted commas for a reason. In America, and particularly what did that mean or what did it suggest to us in this particular election cycle? You know, she noted that multiracial Americans are now the fastest growing racial or ethnic group in the country over the last decade, and she made the claim that their voting power will be significant. And you know, the focus group was pretty controversial. You had a chance to listen in.
[(3:19)] Perry: Had
[(3:20)] Glaude: I was trying to push in a number of ways and I thought it was important that we take a moment to unpack some of the assumptions informing that conversation and maybe help, our listeners and readers understand, what's going on when we talk in this way, when we think about biraciality or mixed race, folk as a category.
[(3:53)] Perry: Right
[(3:54)] Glaude: And to move from there, what were some of your thoughts as you digested that segment?
[(3:58)] Perry: Yeah. So thank you so much for inviting me to discuss this because I was actually quite frustrated by the segment. The presumption is that there is a kind of, single category, right? To be mixed race or multiracial as opposed to it being this framework at the intersection of categories that are already contingent. So that a racial group, which is, you know, a social construction is not biological. Is produced by a set of formations. Of classifications, the way we order our society. And within each group there are distinctions.
There are the distinctions of ethnicity; there are the distinctions of class; there are distinctions of region; there are distinct, you know, all of these various distinctions that occur, right? And part of the challenge of formulating multiracial people as a single group actually then flattens all of the other distinctions that exist. As though race or ethnicity are sort of fixed in simplistic ways. So, for example, we might say that someone who sits at the crossroads of two groups on the one hand may not fit easily into either group. But also may be in a position of relative advantage or disadvantage vis a vis those other groups. Right?
And that depends on other factors. So, for example, we can say, and Patricia Hill Collins has written about this, that Black, white, multiracial people tend to have greater wealth on average than African Americans. Or we can look at research that suggests being lighter skinned has an economic impact, that there are greater advantages, right? So that there's a way in which it sort of flattens all of those social realities, the ways in which stratifications happen between groups and within groups. And ultimately, I think, in some ways it falls out of the conversation, is the way whiteness functions. That is to say, for someone who is mixed race, it's not so much the question of do they fit easily in each group, but that to be mixed race has meant historically in the United States to not be white and that being the marker of being less, having less access to relative privilege and power in the society. Now, to a certain extent, some of that is shifting, right?
[(6:37)] Glaude: Right
[(6:38)] Perry: So we can see that there are groups of people of color who don't experience as great a degree of disadvantage along the lines of race or ethnicity. Not that there isn't any at all, but that it is not as their distinctions that take place. But there's a way that the framing can evade the actual operation of racial inequality.
[(7:05)] Glaude: So it can evade and, in some ways, obscure.
[(7:08)] Perry: Yeah.
[(7:09)] Glaude: Right? Now, what motivated this, of course, was the moment at the National Association of Black Journalists.
[(7:15)] Perry: Right.
[(7:16)] Glaude: When former president Donald Trump made the infamous remark that, he didn't know that Kamala Harris was Black. She just turned Black all of a sudden.
[(7:27)] Perry: Absurd
[(7:28)] Glaude: It's absurd. But, what do you make of that kind of confusion? Because the interesting thing is that the invocation of mixed race, of biraciality kind of comes about as a result of responding to it.
[(7:42)] Perry: Right.
[(7:43)] Glaude: The fact that her father's Jamaican and her mother is South Asian.
[(7:48)] Perry: Mm-hmm
[(7:49)] Glaude: Obviously Trump's comment was ignorant.
[(7:52)] Perry: Yeah
[(7:53)] Glaude: But it was ignorant in very specific ways that in some ways echoes some of the things that you've just laid out, right? I mean, the collapsing of racialization and ethnicity, all the things that happened in that moment. Talk a little bit about that. What it means for the conversation on Friday to be motivated by the confusion.
[(8:13)] Perry: Yeah.
[(8:14)] Glaude: Voiced by Donald Trump at the National Association of Black Journalists.
[(8:17)] Perry: Okay. There's a cause because it's not simple, and I think we have to be conscientious. And I think for us, being in the same decade of life as a Vice President Harris, there's something very particular. So t you might say today that a kind of multiracial identity is for young people actually something that is recognized. I think for someone in their 50s and older in the United States, who was a person of African ancestry in some form or another, right? The idea that one, irrespective of how many degrees, how much admixture one had, right? That is to be categorized as a Black person and as a consequence, she was in this, you know, there's interviews with her mother that suggested this.
She was very deliberately socialized as such. And so the decision to raise her and her sister as Black people, given the social and political context of the United States necessarily, meant that not only she was a Black person, but it actually was consistent with what it meant to be Black American historically. There are parts of the world where, and this is part of this confusion, it happens because her father's ancestry is Jamaican. There are parts of the world with a color cast system, even in the Americas was just where distinctions were actually more significant amongst people of African descent. This is not, was not the case in the United States where she was born and raised. Where, the one drop rules, not a...
[(9:58)] Glaude: Right
[(9:59)] Perry: ...universal practice, but in the context of the United States, it was fairly comprehensive. We are by definition, a mixed race people, historic, right? That's what it means to be African American.
[(10:09)] Glaude: Right.
[(10:10)] Perry: And so, and so then to suggest that some, you know, so part of the confusion is that the implication that one can, that there could be a distinction, there's a necessary distinction. You can be African American and be all these things because that has always been the case of what it means to be African American. Particularly if you are a person who was born in the 60s or 70s. I mean, there was no, or before there was just no alternative.
[(10:38)] Glaude: Right. To Morgan's credit, she acknowledged that everybody talked about the one drop rule. She acknowledged to a certain degree that racial reality. And then immediately went to the category and got into those murky waters. And I think part of the challenge, and you tell me if I'm wrong, is that hovering in the background was Rachel Dolezal, right? That, these people can choose.. Did I pronounce her name right?
[(11:11)] Perry: I don't know.
[(11:12)] Glaude: I can't, but you bet that there are folks who can choose to be black, right? And that this choice doesn't...What do we make of this choosing in some ways and, trying to trouble it as well as inhabit it in some ways? What do you make of that?
[(11:28)] Perry: I think that probably is the case, and the problem is, of course that, that formulation of race as either fixed, well the implication is that race is fixed, and that choice is deception.
[(11:45)] Glaude: Yes.
[(11:47)] Perry: When in fact we know that constructs take, exist, right? And so, people, the same person, can be categorically different in different spaces. And that's all interesting. But without question, this particular human being, in the context of the history of the United States, that, you know, that doesn't make sense, right? And so the form, you know, it's so I do think that that's hovering in the background. And I think part of what's, the other piece, and this is part of what I talked about in More Beautiful, More Terrible, is perhaps the shifting construct of race in the United States.
[(12:22)] Glaude: Yes.
[(12:23)] Perry: So, and for me, the classic example was Nicole Richie, and I don't know if people are necessarily tapped in anymore, but this idea that she was, she was a woman who is also, and she's younger than us, but you know, old enough to have lived the one drop rule without any question, but who is understood in the larger society, not as a Black woman, even though she identifies as a Black woman, was raised by two Black people and was, you know, and, you know, people from Louisiana and Alabama, there's no question. Right? I think it is the case that there are questions being raised about the ongoing salience and significance of the one drop rule in the present moment. But that doesn't dismantle what a person has been throughout the course of their life and how they have been constructed and how they've lived. And that, I think, is a separate question.
[(13:19)] Glaude: Yeah. You do such a wonderful job in More Beautiful and More Terrible as well as in, not that you need me to tell you that but, in South.
[(13:29)] Perry: Appreciate it.
[(13:30)] Glaude: South to America about kind of complicating the various ways in which race registers, right? That even across the South, right?
[(13:38)] Perry: Yes
[(13:39)] Glaude: What does it mean to think about oneself as black in these various places? And this is really important to remember when we think about these folk that were being interviewed in Mecklenburg, North Carolina,
[(13:53)] Perry: Mm-hmm
[(13:54)] Glaude: and folk like Vice President Harris, who was raised in Oakland, California.
[(13:59)] Perry: That's it.
[(14:00)] Glaude: And race registers in very different ways in these regions, even though she came of age in the context of a community that, you know, produced Cedric Robinson that had a certain kind of politics. I'm thinking about the Afro American Association. But the way in which race registers in San Francisco and in Oakland, right? Isn't so hard, fast and binary in a way that can be read in other places. Although it is.
[(14:31)] Perry: Yeah. I think.
[(14:32)] Glaude: Although it is, but you know what I mean? I'm thinking it is more fluid in...
[(14:35)] Perry: I think that...
[(14:36)] in interesting sorts of ways. Go ahead.
[(14:39)] Perry: That's what people say narratively about the Bay. I don't necessarily, I don't actually believe that it's true. I think race is actually very, um, um,
[(14:49)] Glaude: Do you think about EB 40 or something? No, just kidding.
[(14:51)] Perry: No. [laughter] That's funny. No, no. I mean, I think that while there is a conversation about multiraciality in the Bay, when we look at every metric of racialization, housing, income, educational access, quality, it's as it is...
[(15:14)] Glaude: Yes
[(15:15)] Perry: ...as oppressive as any place else in this country. So I think it is discursively this sort of multiracial, you know, fantastical place, but it is still the case that race and in particular how racialization affects Black people is incredibly intense.
[(15:33)] Glaude: Yes.
[(15:34)] Perry: And in some ways those spaces are more dangerous for black people because there tends to not be the full acknowledgement of the way in which racism is in operation. So...
[(15:46)] Glaude: Unpack that because that's so important for our readers to understand.
[(15:51)] Perry: Everybody is saying that race is not as if everybody in a particular community is saying, you know that we are this is not in this becomes the constant refrain. This is not the South. Right? This is not a place that's oppressive. This is not a place where race matters as much. We're all friends. We all care. Then when you experience racism, it is so immediate that people turn to. That's not what it is. We're not like that. There's an evasion, a denial of the pervasiveness of racialization and of racial inequality and all of the kinds of isms. That go along with racialization. And so there's a way in which that can actually make it harder to organize around racial inequality. I don't think it's incidental. That ice President Harris's mother describes her experience. And I would even, I don't necessarily agree with this, although it has, you know, this is a historical context, but she said, I raised my children as Black because in the United States, being brown is what matters and that you become a Black person. Now we know in this context now that the way that South Asian people experience racialization is different from people of African descent. But that is, but it is instructive that that was her observation as someone living in California. And..
[(17:18)] Glaude: Right
[(17:19)] Perry: She saw something, right?
[(17:20)] Glaude: Right
[(17:21)] Perry: That operation that was, that shaped the way that she socialized her children. So all of that to say, yeah, I do think there's differences, but I think that they're very much overstated.
[(17:34)] Glaude: Yeah, but part of the point I'm making is not so much to deny the deleterious effects of race... The consequences of a certain kind of racialization, but to talk about the cultural shifts and differences that evidence themselves in the geographical context in which great race plays out. Right? So...
[(18:00)] Perry: Right
[(18:01)] Glaude:, It's a similar point that you make in South to America. That the way in which blackness is lived in Appalachia isn't the same as it's lived on the Gulf Coast of Mississippi, right? To pay attention to that internal diversity is really important if we're going to understand the complex ways in which this stuff is lived.
[(18:24)] Perry: It's yes, I think it's really important and it is particularly important given the way, and this is complicated, right? Because I'm almost averse to this in politics, but it's real. We read, I'm not almost, I am averse to it.
[(18:37)] Glaude: I thought so.
[(18:38)] Perry: Read, we read race performance. And this is particularly true of Black folks in the political landscape, and we read authenticity in particular ways, and then we register and and not just Black folks, but everybody reads Black authenticity in particular ways. That often don't attend to the specificity of region or the way in which race is registered or the way in which racial socialization differs and so, I mean, you know, maybe something good can come of this conversation where there's a recognition of not only the distinctions based upon degree of, you know, admixture with, with people for, or immigration and multiraciality, but maybe also regional distinctions and class distinctions and cultural distinction, all these other things that are absolutely abundant.
There are a lot of Black people in this country. And part of the frustrating thing for me is that whenever there are those who are drawn out as somehow distinct, then the rest of us get flattened as all the same.
[(19:45)] Glaude: Exactly. Say that again. That's a really important point.
[(19:49)] Perry: You know, there's these small groups that say, well, they're different from other Black people and often that is implicitly different and yet, and therefore superior. When the reality is there's an incredible diversity of experiences of even language styles, of histories, certainly of politics, which we don't get at all in the public arena. You know, so that conversation, you know, not to go harp on it too much, but there's the, you know, there, the range is...
[(20:21)] Glaude: Yes
[(20:22)] Perry: is Democrat to Trump right, right? And that Black politics are much broader, right? Black American politics are much broader, of course. So hopefully, you know, we can get to something that isn't just focused on sort of the small number of Black people who are seen as distinct and then the rest of us get flattened, but actually to understand the unbelievable complexity of our communities, period.
[(20:42)] Glaude: And I think that is the point that we need to insist upon. I remember you saying to me over and over again, and particularly, you know, recalling a conversation with Princeton administrators. Telling them, actually, I teach the most, some of the most diverse classes in the university, if you actually understood it.
[(21:03)] Perry: Yeah. Great. So this was a response to the question, you know, well, aren't you, are you worried about your classes not being diverse if you have already a black class. Are you kidding? I mean, talk about students from the greatest cross section of class and regional and national origin and language groups. And I mean, just unbelievable, even the distinction between the kids from Chicago and the kids from Detroit. I mean, you know, to understand the depth of our complexity and it's funny that people don't register flattening the complexity of Black people as a form of racism. But it absolutely is. You know.
[(21:47)] Glaude: Indeed.
[(21:48)] Perry: Making us into two dimensions when we're, when we're much...
[(21:51)] Glaude: Well I'm glad we had a chance to talk about this because I think it's important, as we make our way to November 5th and beyond, we know that we're in this inflection point. How many times have we been in this inflection point as a country? And we'll see who we take ourselves to be as we get on the other side.
[(22:12)] Perry: More than a notion.
[(22:15)] Glaude: More than a notion. Thank you, Professor Perry. I appreciate you.
[(22:19)] Perry: It was great talking to you.
[(22:20)] Glaude: Always. Always.
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