S E1273: In Class with Carr, Episode 273: Governance by Gaslight: Black Politics at the End of Empire

“Gaslighting” is the psychological manipulation of individuals or groups into questioning their reality, memory, or sanity—often to maintain control. In a week of continuing mounting chaos in US politics marked by the meeting of the National Organization of Black County Officials in Birmingham, we can recognize that both colonialism and American institutions have gaslit Black communities into believing that our cultures, languages, and histories are inferior.New Ancestor Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s work explains how elites from would-be oppressed groups are often recruited into tempering mass liberation movements through mental colonization in language, law, politics and economics, enabling forms of structural oppression masked as deep democracy.The critique extends to today’s struggles, from myths of meritocracy to distortions of Black identity and potential power in education and demography. While selective buying campaigns remain powerful in moments, the example of Alabama’s A.G. Gaston underscores that building movements anchored by independent Black institutions—banks, schools, businesses—is essential for generating sustainable power.These examples also challenge strands of Black radicalism that suffer from ideological gaslighting, leading them to reject economic self-determination and political pragmatism in favor of ideological purity—undermining efforts to deliver material gains for the poor.Real liberation requires long-view strategies, rooted in cultural self-determination, global awareness, and networked community infrastructure—not just litigation or protest, but power gleaned from purposeful creation. This is an antidote to being manipulated and trying to govern by gaslight.JOIN KNARRATIVE: https://www.knarrative.com it's the only way to get into #Knubia, where these classes areheld live with a live chat.To shop Go to:TheGlobalMajorityMore from us:Knarrative Twitter: https://twitter.com/knarrative_Knarrative Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/knarrative/In Class with Carr Twitter: https://twitter.com/inclasswithcarrSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In today’s turbulent global political landscape, relationships between the people, organized groups and the state is shaped by interactions frought with compromise, confrontation, containment, and control. This week’s moment of confrontation between state representatives of South Africa and the United States provide opportunities to examine where unresolved historical trauma, structural inequality, and ideological warfare define terrains of struggle in the Contemporary World System.South African President Ramaphosa’s recent US visit saw a propaganda assault from the U.S. President featuring inaccurate and unintentionally ironic uses of images from anti-Apartheid era cultural and political struggles as well as current struggles in the Democratic Republic of Congo which highlight continuing instances of state violence and neocolonial entanglements. While white nationalist in both South Africa and the United States continue to enjoy racially-engendered economic status advantage, a small Black managerial elite in both countries thrives as the majority in both countries either remain impoverished or are threatened with even more economic marginality. Oppression reflected in populist movements like South Africa’s Economic Freedom Fighters and the US’s Repairers of the Breach afford another opportunity to compare efforts of social confrontation and political compromise.  As Trump repeated lies about South Africa, the United States moved another step toward its own political and economic reckoning. The Trump-deployed “Project 2025,” spearheaded by Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought and others, took more steps in its efforts to entrench extreme wealth inequality while seeing other efforts to advance a white Christian theocracy fail at an increasingly besieged US Supreme Court. The propaganda-labeled “Big Beautiful Bill” passed by the US House of Representatives is a blueprint for dismantling democratic safeguards and weaponizing the state to favor corporate and white nationalist interests. As has always been the case, this moment demands intellectual warfare, legal resistance, and community-based institution-building. The people must decide: compromise, confront, contain—or control.JOIN KNARRATIVE: https://www.knarrative.com it's the only way to get into #Knubia, where these classes areheld live with a live chat.To shop Go to:TheGlobalMajorityMore from us:Knarrative Twitter: https://twitter.com/knarrative_Knarrative Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/knarrative/In Class with Carr Twitter: https://twitter.com/inclasswithcarrSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

On Monday, May 19, 2025, we mark the 100th birthday of Malcolm X—a centennial honoring a life shaped by self-transformation, Black self-determination, and an unwavering commitment to global liberation. His words and actions continue to challenge systems rooted in white supremacy, now desperately clinging to power through international self-dealing, global realignments, and domestic attacks on voting rights, birthright citizenship, and national identity.Since his assassination in 1965, one question persists: What would Malcolm say now? From The Autobiography to ongoing efforts to define—and redefine—his legacy, from dialogues with elders, organizers, artists, and scholars, we remember Malcolm not just as a man, but as representative of an ongoing, unfinished movement.As explored in many sessions of In Class with Carr, Malcolm taught us to witness—and to act. White nationalism’s violent death rattle is not a moment for silence. As Malcolm said: you don’t make peace with injustice. You finish the job.JOIN KNARRATIVE: https://www.knarrative.com it's the only way to get into #Knubia, where these classes areheld live with a live chat.To shop Go to:TheGlobalMajorityMore from us:Knarrative Twitter: https://twitter.com/knarrative_Knarrative Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/knarrative/In Class with Carr Twitter: https://twitter.com/inclasswithcarrSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Across political, social, and spiritual spheres, humanity faces a reckoning with the structures of power that shape our world—and the urgent need to turn from putting our faith in unreliable actors in favor of putting our faith in ourselves and responding to oppression with collective action.The recent acquittal of the police officer killers of Tyre Nichols, Donald Trump’s continued assaults on both international institutions and domestic democratic norms, and the rising threat of regional international wars are all points of entry for deeper reflection on the meaning of collective human purpose—focusing on broad movements for liberating social change despite the constant noise of daily events. Against this backdrop, the selection of Pope Leo XIV (Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost) as the leader of the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics raises a pressing question: How can moments that command the attention of billions signal a renewed call to renegotiate the foundations of the modern world order?At this critical juncture—amid the accelerating decline of the Age of Europe and White World Supremacy and the emergence of truly multipolar global relationships—even faith, whether in the divine or in each other, can feel insufficient. But history reminds us that, while individuals alone cannot dismantle entrenched institutions, people acting together can. As U.S. courts begin to challenge the most flagrantly illegal acts of federalized white nationalism, and as institutions such as markets and universities resist authoritarian pressure, more and more people are turning to the most potent force in any society: collective action. Whether through town halls, protests, or civil disobedience, communities are rising up.As this commencement season—a time of hope and renewal—unfolds, we are reminded of a timeless truth: belief must be made real through action.JOIN KNARRATIVE: https://www.knarrative.com it's the only way to get into #Knubia, where these classes areheld live with a live chat.To shop Go to:TheGlobalMajorityMore from us:Knarrative Twitter: https://twitter.com/knarrative_Knarrative Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/knarrative/In Class with Carr Twitter: https://twitter.com/inclasswithcarrSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

The first one hundred days of the second Donald Trump presidency saw an unprecedented campaign to dismantle institutional norms and accelerate structural transformation, evoking the spirit of the earliest days of American settler colonialism. Each executive order, policy decision and rhetorical outburst worked to normalize a vision rooted in theocracy, white nationalist fascism, and xenophobic fervor—aimed particularly at white fear of immigrants and non-white communities and the delusion of narrow, absurdist “community norms.” Yet, amid this full-spectrum assault on democratic institutions and the possibilities of social cohesion, the judiciary, select institutional actors, and a rapidly mobilizing popular resistance have begun to push back with increasing acuity, challenging the fragile aura of inevitability that such authoritarian posturing seeks to imagine. Meanwhile, within broader Black Governance imaginaries, a different narrative is forming—one epitomized by the Cultural Meaning-Making phenomenon of the movie “Sinners.” This narrative, increasingly disabused of the notion of a cohesive US people, reframes the moment of precarity in the US Social Structure by reconciling the country’s latest crisis of confrontation with its white nativist core with deeper Africana Movement and Memory. In doing so, the reinforcement of Africana Ways of Knowing affirms a critical truth: That information alone does not empower—it is the shaping of that information through collective Movement and Memory that gives rise to communal agency and social, political and economic resistance. The convergence of systemic assault and cultural response poses a vital question: what does it mean to remember—and to move—deliberately through time and space, fueled by ancestral memory and purposeful action?JOIN KNARRATIVE: https://www.knarrative.com it's the only way to get into #Knubia, where these classes areheld live with a live chat.To shop Go to:TheGlobalMajorityMore from us:Knarrative Twitter: https://twitter.com/knarrative_Knarrative Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/knarrative/In Class with Carr Twitter: https://twitter.com/inclasswithcarrSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

The rapid success of Ryan Coogler’s film Sinners provides an ideal text for analysis through the Africana Studies Disciplinary Framework. As we explore some of the film’s central themes, it becomes clear how both the film itself and responses to it reflect intersections of the Social Structure and Governance Disciplinary Conceptual Categories. Rooted in self-determination—both as a cinematic work and a commercial project—Sinners offers repeated examples of Africana African Ways of Knowing, Cultural Meaning-Making, and Movement and Memory. Through its use of icons, shrines, totems, and rituals, and by blending and at once renegotiating elements of The Blues and Horror as both concept and genre, the film opens a powerful space for commentary on culture, race, allyship, appropriation, resistance, and the varied and at once strikingly similar world senses of African peoples. Sinners contrasts the temporary conditions of our physical existence with how humans imagine the eternal realms from which we emerge and to which we ultimately return.JOIN KNARRATIVE: https://www.knarrative.com it's the only way to get into #Knubia, where these classes areheld live with a live chat.To shop Go to:TheGlobalMajorityMore from us:Knarrative Twitter: https://twitter.com/knarrative_Knarrative Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/knarrative/In Class with Carr Twitter: https://twitter.com/inclasswithcarrSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In a week when Harvard University marked the first full-throated act of resistance in U.S. higher education against the rising tide of institutionalized Trumpism, we are also reminded—through annual rituals of remembrance—of our enduring struggle for liberation. From the commemoration of Jackie Robinson’s debut in Major League Baseball to the District of Columbia's observance of Compensated Emancipation Day, these moments highlight a deeper truth: the fight against limitation and oppression is a fundamental part of life.JOIN KNARRATIVE: https://www.knarrative.com it's the only way to get into #Knubia, where these classes areheld live with a live chat.To shop Go to:TheGlobalMajorityMore from us:Knarrative Twitter: https://twitter.com/knarrative_Knarrative Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/knarrative/In Class with Carr Twitter: https://twitter.com/inclasswithcarrSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week, Smithsonian Secretary Lonnie Bunch offered expansive public remarks that help reframe how we think about nationhood, identity, and responsibility to the group. While we often see ourselves bound by narratives tied to constructs like “nations,” Bunch’s assertion that there is no single U.S. narrative—that there are many stories—reminds us that our existence is both local and global, rooted in daily life yet connected to distant people and places. Our Africana Studies framework, grounded in deep listening and study, helps us engage a world where European expansion forged global contact that now erodes borders—even as politicians cling to them for control. Trade dissolves commercial lines while fear-based politics tries to reassert them. Are they incompatible? As migration, regionalism, and networks grow, so does fear among those defending an unequal global order. But through libraries, courts, classrooms, and culture, people resist. Stories expand. In the post-national world, power shifts. People think. They resist. They fight on, “‘til victory is won.”JOIN KNARRATIVE: https://www.knarrative.com it's the only way to get into #Knubia, where these classes areheld live with a live chat.To shop Go to:TheGlobalMajorityMore from us:Knarrative Twitter: https://twitter.com/knarrative_Knarrative Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/knarrative/In Class with Carr Twitter: https://twitter.com/inclasswithcarrSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In a week when the imposition of US tariffs by an increasingly unstable federal government weaponized by white nationalism pushes the US and global economies towards global recession and depression, the University of South Carolina Women’s Basketball Team highlights ongoing tensions between race, power, and control in U.S. society.While Black students make up only 10% of USC’s student body, they represent over a quarter of the state’s population. Meanwhile, South Carolina’s political power is shaped by hyper-gerrymandered districts, allowing white nationalist control, seen in actions like the state legislature’s recent ban on DEI initiatives.The most potent DEI force in modern world history is the equity that blends the diversity in and inclusion of a full range of racial identities that mask under the label “White.”“March Madness” centers Black bodies on Basketball courts contrasted by predominantly white bands, cheerleaders, and fans whose own lives stand in sharp contrast to the lives of the families of those who entertain them in the arenas, making unavoidable issues of representation and control.In the week marking the 57th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination and funeral, we consider moral, ethical, and political challenges to those resisting diversity, revealing that their motives are rooted in full spectrum dominance, not dislike.Collective struggles for equity reveal clashing and irreconcilable societal visions.JOIN KNARRATIVE: https://www.knarrative.com it's the only way to get into #Knubia, where these classes areheld live with a live chat.To shop Go to:TheGlobalMajorityMore from us:Knarrative Twitter: https://twitter.com/knarrative_Knarrative Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/knarrative/In Class with Carr Twitter: https://twitter.com/inclasswithcarrSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

The white nationalist movement in the U.S., now overburdening its manipulation of the electorate to dominate the executive and legislative branches, has become both more emboldened and chaotic in response to growing opposition from the courts, media, and the public.This movement, recognizing its increasing anxiety, has resorted to distractions such as controversial trips, absurd executive orders, and threats to impose harsher tariffs or force legal opponents into submission.An expected example of this is the Executive Order titled “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History,” which aims to revise history to align with the narrative of white supremacy, a key objective in their agenda. This fight is over reality as we remember it as a foundation for changing reality as we live it today and in the foreseeable future.This attempt, a key feature of state capture fascism globally, is also increasingly desperate and disruptive, seeking to distort history and manipulate public discourse.We must combat these efforts by reinforcing our collective memory and commitment to liberation, by engaging in what Jacob Carruthers has called “intellectual warfare.”It is crucial that we draw strength from the past. By strengthening our understanding of connections between the long view genealogy of our history, including ancient, medieval and more recent past resistance movements, we will better navigate the current political climate and continue our work towards eventual and sustainable liberation.These efforts require resilience and a clear sense of purpose, reminding us of the importance of historical consciousness in confronting the present.JOIN KNARRATIVE: https://www.knarrative.com it's the only way to get into #Knubia, where these classes areheld live with a live chat.To shop Go to:TheGlobalMajorityMore from us:Knarrative Twitter: https://twitter.com/knarrative_Knarrative Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/knarrative/In Class with Carr Twitter: https://twitter.com/inclasswithcarrSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.