Emanuele Berry
Appearances
This American Life
758: Talking While Black
From WBEZ Chicago, it's This American Life. I'm Emanuel Berry in for Ira Glass. In the last year, DEI programs have been blamed for an astonishingly varied set of disasters.
This American Life
758: Talking While Black
It's not mean girls situation. No, it's not like that at all. Nevaeh had a lot of friends. She wove in and out of a bunch of different groups at school. And then she had her inner circle. One of her closest friends in that circle, someone she talked to daily, I'll call Katie.
This American Life
758: Talking While Black
During the pandemic, they would sit on FaceTime together and hang out. Katie was a person who could talk Nevaeh down when she was stressed, especially about school. They were also goofballs together. They'd go to the mall just to try on outrageous outfits and crack each other up.
This American Life
758: Talking While Black
The racist thing that happened to Nevaeh, the thing that led to those heated school board meetings, that happened in the spring of 2021. And it started with a text from Katie.
This American Life
758: Talking While Black
Nevaeh wasn't really sure what Katie was talking about, so she brushed it off. She woke up the next morning to more messages from Katie about what happened in the group chat.
This American Life
758: Talking While Black
The story that started the episode began before the backlash in the summer of 2020. That was kind of, you know, peak woke America, if you remember. The murder of George Floyd had forced the country into another racial awakening. That summer, everyone was sending out emails and tweets about race and racism in America, statements of unity from corporations.
This American Life
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The group chat was called Slave Trade. with two purple devil emojis. It's about half a dozen mostly white students listing their Black classmates for sale, posting their pictures and throwing out bids, as if they're in an auction, like a slave auction. Apparently, Nevaeh was one of the people in the chat who was quote-unquote put up for sale.
This American Life
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The chat is essentially a private text thread that after some time disappears, a feature of the Snapchat app. Some students tell the school district about the chat. The school calls Nevaeh's mom and the parents of other students. And it's while her mom's on the phone with the school that it all starts to sink in.
This American Life
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This is what they say. First screenshot, one student. What up, niggas? New group chat for making fun of Black people. In reply, very nice. Another screenshot. All Blacks should die. Let's have another Holocaust. Yay, someone cheers. I concur, says another. Picture of a black kid. Homo goes for 50. Man sus. He comes as a bonus. He's free. Someone else adds, man so gay, I'll kill him for Jesus.
This American Life
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Another screenshot. Picture of another black student. Negative 10 for autism, someone says. 50% off sale. Picture of two black teenagers. Someone says they can run, but they can't hide. 100 each. Double the trouble. They like picking cotton. Someone makes an offer. I'll take them for 150 as the pair. Another screenshot. Picture of Nevaeh.
This American Life
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She's in a red crop top and jeans and a hat, posing near a tree. Written underneath. Starting bid 100. EU someone comments. Another EU, followed by another.
This American Life
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It's almost like Nevaeh's inside the darker, not funny version of the Eddie Murphy skit. Maybe you've seen it. The one where he goes undercover as a white man and discovers all the things white people do when there aren't Black people in the room. She had a new window into who her classmates were in private in these screenshots. It was the spring of 2021. Luckily, she was in remote school.
This American Life
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She wouldn't have to face them until her junior year started in the fall. Nevaeh's mom, Jayla, saw the screenshots and the words, all Blacks should die, and worried for Nevaeh's safety. She emailed all the school board members, went back and forth with school administrators. She felt like no one was taking it seriously. She called the police. The police investigated the group chat.
This American Life
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The Los Angeles wildfires, the Baltimore Bridge collapse, Boeing jets falling apart, the Secret Service failures leading to the assassination attempt on Donald Trump, and memorably, the midair collision between a helicopter and a passenger plane in Washington, D.C. last month. All of that, obviously, was the fault of diversity, equity, and inclusion.
This American Life
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One shoe brand tweeted, we are not asking you to buy our shoes. We are asking you to walk in someone else's. Remember when everyone on Instagram posted black squares for a day to show solidarity with the black community? I'd started to roll my eyes at all the MLK and Baldwin quotes.
This American Life
758: Talking While Black
A few weeks later, they told Jayla that there were no chargeable offenses. Jayla's confused.
This American Life
758: Talking While Black
The school gets back to Jayla and Nevaeh about how they will handle the Snapchat incident. Ultimately, they say they will follow the district's policy for discipline, but they couldn't say specifically what that meant. Nevaeh was worried. It seemed like the whole thing was just going to be swept under the rug. And she wanted people to know what happened.
This American Life
758: Talking While Black
She hadn't done anything to be a part of the Snapchat except be black. Should she speak up? But she worried over that too. If I say something, will people think I'm overreacting? But if I don't say anything, will anyone else even know about this? In the end, Nevaeh made the decision to speak. She talked to the press about what happened.
This American Life
758: Talking While Black
Instead of disappearing, the story of mostly white high schoolers auctioning off their Black classmates in a secret slave auction, it got a lot of attention. At first, Nevaeh felt good talking about it. She got a lot of support. People reached out. She felt a sense of relief. But just as quickly as is happening in many parts of America, talking about racism in Traverse City led to backlash.
This American Life
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Nevaeh speaking up set off other bigger conversations about racism in the community, which led to that heated school board meeting where some adults insisted Traverse City is not a racist place and that any discussion of racism causes division. But something that was more important to Nevaeh was the backlash she got from her peers.
This American Life
758: Talking While Black
Some kids started to get tired of seeing Nevaeh on the news, and to Nevaeh, it seemed almost irritated. She noticed a gradual change, even among some of her friends.
This American Life
758: Talking While Black
This question, where do the people around me stand? It was a question that kept coming up again and again and again as the summer passed and the school year approached. In the fall, she went back to school in person for the first time since the incident. Nevaeh is a junior. She looked around and wondered, who are my friends? Who can I trust? Who thinks it's okay I was sold in a slave trade?
This American Life
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In a school district outside Dallas, Texas, Dr. James Whitfield had just been promoted to high school principal, the school's first black principal. And he was watching everyone send out these emails. Not just corporate brands, but also his peers, other educators, and administrators.
This American Life
758: Talking While Black
Nevaeh thinks to herself, I can be friends with anybody. One of the kids who participated in the Snapchat slave trade, I'll call him Luke, they were texting right after the incident and again just before school started.
This American Life
758: Talking While Black
They texted a little, but it wasn't the same. Luke's a chatterbox and a jokester, Nevaeh says. They were old friends. They've known each other since middle school. But she couldn't talk to Luke about what happened. It seemed like he just wanted to move past it without ever addressing it.
This American Life
758: Talking While Black
Luke was the first friend Nevaeh was forced to make a decision about. Maybe she couldn't be friends with everyone. As the weeks passed, she started ignoring him. Like, if she sees him in the halls, she'd look at her phone, walk to the other side. Staying away from Luke meant she distanced herself from other friends. Like, her one friend I'll call Leah.
This American Life
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I guess, let him go. So Nevaeh tries to navigate this new social landscape on her own. But it's not simple. Take this one time a couple months ago. Nevaeh was meeting Leah at a football game. She got to the stands, and Luke was there. Nevaeh had no idea he would be there.
This American Life
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The game started. Leah called a player trash for making a bad play. Then Luke, who's behind Nevaeh with his buddies, defends the player, mocks the girl who shouted, calling her mean, telling her he'd never say something so mean. It rung in Nevaeh's ears.
This American Life
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Nevaeh didn't want to cause trouble for Luke. She wished him well. She just couldn't pretend that nothing happened. And she couldn't stop questioning a lot of her relationships, even her relationship with Katie. It was never clear to Nevaeh if Katie had participated in the chat. They were friends. Katie's the one who told her about the chat. It didn't make sense that she would have joined in.
This American Life
758: Talking While Black
But Katie had said she'd bought Nevaeh for free. That detail stuck with Nevaeh. Then she started to hear from other people that Katie had said stuff. Was that true? The screenshots Katie sent Nevaeh didn't have the full conversation. In the screenshot she does have, Katie says nothing. Was it possible there was something in the missing parts of the chat? Nevaeh wondered, did she laugh at me?
This American Life
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Did she place any bids? No, she probably stayed quiet, didn't say anything. She's the reason I even know what happened. Nevaeh was scared to ask her, so she didn't. They continued to be friends, but the uncertainty weighed on Nevaeh.
This American Life
758: Talking While Black
His email started by talking about the killings of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, and Breonna Taylor, and how these events have brought forth the familiar enemy of racism in America. Quote, Now it appears as though we are collectively using our voice to denounce systemic racism and the inequities that people of color face on a daily basis in our country.
This American Life
758: Talking While Black
I contacted Katie through her mom. I wanted them to know that Nevaeh and Katie's friendship would come up in this story. She told me they were not interested in talking and were moving past this incident. Nevaeh started to withdraw from Katie. When Katie confronted her about why she was ignoring her, the conversation Nevaeh had been avoiding happened.
This American Life
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Nevaeh hasn't talked to her since. The Snapchat slave trade was almost nine months ago. Because there was a school investigation and a police investigation and a Title IX investigation, lots of adults, school administrators, police, know exactly what was said in those messages. But Nevaeh doesn't. It really bugs her. How odd to have an otherwise ordinary rite of passage for any high schooler.
This American Life
758: Talking While Black
What did my friend say and do behind my back? I actually have a documented answer. Nevaeh says she asked for the full conversation from the school, but they never gave it to her and told her Katie shouldn't have shared it. They told her if she wanted to see more, she could file a Freedom of Information Act request or a FOIA request. So she did. I did too. And then Nevaeh waited.
This American Life
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I asked her, you know it could say some really hurtful stuff, right?
This American Life
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My FOIA request came in first. It was close to 500 pages printed out, emails after emails, police reports, disciplinary hearing forms. But it's heavily redacted, which is honestly pretty normal for a FOIA. I brought it to Nevaeh's house, and she, her mom, and I sat at the kitchen table trying to sort through it all.
This American Life
758: Talking While Black
The screenshots Nevaeh was hoping to see fully blacked out. There were little bits of information here and there in the report, but it was hard to decipher. There was some new information in there. For one thing, this Snapchat wasn't the first time that a group of kids sold their Black peers in a slave auction.
This American Life
758: Talking While Black
In the FOIA, the kid who started the slave trade in Traverse City said they saw it on TikTok. There was another one in Texas. Second, the FOIA made it clear that there were more screenshots than the ones Nevaeh had seen. All of them are blacked out. I could see the frustration and disappointment on Nevaeh's face as she flipped through page after page.
This American Life
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He goes on to write from a personal perspective of a Black man who grew up in Texas. He writes, He continued, I'm here with you to do whatever we need to do to disrupt systemic racism and eradicate it. Whitfield ends his email the way he ends many of his emails and messages, by telling people he loves them dearly, which is kind of who he is.
This American Life
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Nevaeh saw something in the FOIA that gave her pause. The names are blacked out, but she could see in the report that someone in the chat didn't participate. She kept seeing that over again. Blacked out name, did not participate. Fifty pages later, blacked out name, did not participate. Was that Katie?
This American Life
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The next day, Nevaeh sent me a text. She made the choice to believe that the blacked-out name, the person who did not participate, was Katie. Reading the FOIA made Nevaeh think about their relationship, about who she could trust, something she'd been struggling with. Before this incident, she had no reason to think that Katie wasn't an honest person.
This American Life
758: Talking While Black
She said she reached out to Katie to apologize, and Katie had responded. Nevaeh did not just want to know what was said about her in the chat. She wanted everyone to know. She wanted to talk about it.
This American Life
758: Talking While Black
But the message she felt like she kept getting, from her school, the police, her friends, from the school board meeting in her town, from the 500-page blacked-out FOIA, was we don't want to talk about this. We don't want to talk about racism. It's the same message that has been on repeat everywhere in this moment of backlash. And as a kid, if that's the message you're getting, bury the racism.
This American Life
758: Talking While Black
What do you do with that? About an hour after I left their house, Nevaeh's mom sent me a picture. Nevaeh in her room, sitting on her bed, surrounded by the foyer, which she'd arranged in many little stacks of paper, like a detective sorting and sifting through the clues. Still puzzling, still trying to find something to help her make sense of it all.
This American Life
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Since this story aired a few years ago, Nevaeh has started college. She's studying psychology, still trying to figure out how people work. Coming up, a person who does not want to know anything about what's being said behind their back. That's in a minute from Chicago Public Radio when our program continues. It's This American Life. I'm Emanuel Berry in for Ira Glass.
This American Life
758: Talking While Black
Today, our show, Talking While Black. This episode originally ran in 2022. We're rerunning it at this moment when anti-DEI measures are sweeping the country. In the last five years, we've gone from companies tweeting out Black Lives Matter, all these diversity initiatives, to now, where it feels like even just saying something is Black is controversial.
This American Life
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States are passing laws to limit conversations about racism. Black people are losing their jobs for talking about race too much. I keep returning to this question over the last few months. In this backlash, what are you allowed to say? Like, as a Black person, like, what about Black lives or the Black experience is actually okay to talk about? This next story gets at this question.
This American Life
758: Talking While Black
We've arrived at Act 2 of our program, Act 2, The Farce Awakens. One place where you can see this dizzying whiplash is books by Black people and about Black people. After the murder of George Floyd, sales of Black books skyrocketed. Ibram X. Kendi's Stamped from the Beginning, The New Jim Crow, So You Want to Talk About Race were all of a sudden bestsellers.
This American Life
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For a window of time, people really wanted to hear what Black authors had to say. And then, they dramatically did not want to hear anymore. Not only did sales slow, but there are now efforts to ban many of these books that were so celebrated. Producer Hana Jaffe-Walt spoke with one author who found his book banned, and whose professional arc is sort of a mirror for this backlash. Here's Hana.
This American Life
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Approachable, warm, a beloved figure, a cardigan-wearing dad. People appreciated the email. Parents, teachers, and students wrote to say thank you. Some said they were ready to learn more. One parent mentioned how refreshing it was to see a school leader send out this kind of letter. A year passed, Whitfield's first year as principal. And it's a tough one because, you know, the pandemic.
This American Life
758: Talking While Black
But he made it through. And then he arrived at the summer of 2021. It is a very different landscape from the summer of 2020. In fact, the script has flipped. Public conversations have moved from let's all try and understand and talk about systemic racism to let's never mention systemic racism. This is especially true in Texas, where Dr. Whitfield is.
This American Life
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In Texas, the conversation is suddenly all about banning critical race theory. Critical race theory, CRT, you've probably heard about it. It's a way to chart how racism is ingrained in the American legal system and other institutions. But at this moment, CRT has become kind of a boogeyman, a quick shorthand to shut down anything acknowledging racism or even blackness.
This American Life
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Texas passed a law in 2021 banning CRT in schools. And during the school year, Dr. Whitfield heard that some people were grumbling about him on social media, saying he was a race warrior. The online grumblings became public at a school board meeting in July, when a resident points to Whitfield's email. His email where he basically says, it seems like we're ready to talk about race as a country.
This American Life
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He points to that email as proof that he is indoctrinating students with critical race theory.
This American Life
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In other words, marginalized people having jobs means bad things happen. I'm a Black person. I'm doing my job right now. And so, of course, today's episode may very well fall apart because I'm hosting. Let me read you a list. Disney, GM, Google, Toyota, McDonald's, and Walmart. All of them have rolled back DEI efforts. These companies are really just following President Trump's lead.
This American Life
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We'll be right back. Our managing editor is Sara Abdurrahman, and our senior editor is David Kestenbaum. Help on today's rerun from Angela Gervasi.
This American Life
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Special thanks today to New Leonard Media of Traverse City, Mark L. Wilson, Nicole Hannah-Jones, Orlando Dial, Eve Ewing, Rob Kerr, Sophia Husson, Seven Forsen, Andrea Grace Makuna, Dami Lola Awofisayo, Jewel Coulter, Ami Chum, Michelle Togby, and Gianna Maltby.
This American Life
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Since we first ran this show, Dr. Whitfield, the principal from Texas, has accepted a new position as superintendent of a small public charter school in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. Our website, thisamericanlife.org. This American Life is delivered to public radio stations by PRX, the public radio exchange.
This American Life
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To become a This American Life partner, which gets you bonus content, ad-free listening, and hundreds of our favorite episodes of the show right in your podcast feed, go to thisamericanlife.org slash lifepartners. That link is also in the show notes. Thanks as always to our boss, Ira Glass. You know, he's instituted this new rule in the office. He gets to take one bite of anyone's lunch.
This American Life
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And when I told him that was insane, he got pretty upset.
This American Life
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I'm Emanuel Berry. See, I didn't break the show. Ira Glass will be back next week with more stories of This American Life.
This American Life
758: Talking While Black
To be clear, Dr. Whitfield is not teaching CRT. He didn't propose educational reforms in his email. He wasn't reshaping the curriculum. He did support an existing program at the school that tried to get kids into college who wouldn't traditionally go. He got flack for that. But the program predated him.
This American Life
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People complained about an approving mention of the Southern Poverty Law Center, but also that he quoted Gil Scott-Heron in an email saying the revolution will not be televised. And, of course, that email from 2020, where, like everyone else in 2020, he denounces systemic racism.
This American Life
758: Talking While Black
At the time, it seemed absurd that this would actually happen, that Dr. Whitfield would be fired. A handful of people at a board meeting demanding a respected and newly hired principal be fired for promoting an academic theory he wasn't promoting, that seemed hard to imagine. But over the next few months, that is what happened.
This American Life
758: Talking While Black
In August, the board placed Dr. Whitfield on paid administrative leave, but didn't give a reason why. He talked to the media about it. In September, Dr. Whitfield defended himself at a board meeting. One of the items on the agenda was should the district renew Whitfield's contract for the next year. Whitfield showed up for the public comments, and like everyone else, he got one minute to speak.
This American Life
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the 2018-2019 school year, when he was first hired by the district.
This American Life
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The board's response, they vote not to renew his contract. I reached out to the district and they said they were not going to talk about this. But in public statements they made earlier, they said the decision was not based on people calling for Dr. Whitefield to be fired. They list a bunch of other reasons, stuff like insubordination.
This American Life
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A Facebook post he wrote defending himself was not OK with them, against professional conduct. He talked to the media instead of filing formal complaints with the school. As they read this list at the meeting, you could hear students and parents who came to support Whitfield scoff at the items being read.
This American Life
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The response went on for so long, she never got to finish the statement. It said he was dividing large sections of the community by, quote, continuing to raise issues of critical race theory. Dr. Whitfield lost his job. What changed over the last year? As Whitfield said, not him. That email didn't change. The black squares are gone from Instagram. The random reparations money from friends, gone.
This American Life
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He signed an executive order on January 20th, ending all federal DEI initiatives. To comply, research agencies have scrubbed words from their work like women, disability, bias, Black, and gender, as well as socioeconomic and systemic. Three years ago, we did an episode about the pushback to critical race theory, which is really just DEI in a different font.
This American Life
758: Talking While Black
We went from anti-racist books crowding the bestsellers list to banning kids' books about Rosa Parks. For Dr. Whitfield, the consequence of getting caught in this backlash is he's no longer in the one place he really wants to be. When I spoke with him in early November, he told me he was still dropping his kid off at elementary school. The high school is across the street.
This American Life
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The line of what's acceptable to say about race and racism in America, it moved. It's as though we were having one argument and then the terms changed. And that shift has left many Black people exposed and vulnerable and living with those consequences. This backlash, it's not surprising. This is what America does. Reconstruction, then Jim Crow. The civil rights movement to the war on drugs.
This American Life
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Obama to Trump. So no, it's not surprising that there is backlash. But what I am surprised by is the way people have been caught up and tangled in it. The choices they've made to either further twist themselves along the line of what's acceptable or move away from it. The way Black people have had to reconsider what to say and the fallout that comes with those choices.
This American Life
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Our show today, two stories of people trying to figure out what to say or if they should say anything in this moment of backlash. Stay with us. It's This American Life. Act One. Incident. The place that this backlash is playing out most dramatically is in schools, in particular school board meetings.
This American Life
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Sometimes parents are angry about something as small as the email Dr. Whitefield wrote, or a specific book they don't like, or an effort to diversify a library's collection. Sometimes it's a new resolution to promote equity in the school. And a lot of these parents repeat the same talking points in these meetings across the country. They say microaggressions are not real.
This American Life
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What about reverse racism? And somehow Martin Luther King Jr. comes up a lot. But what these examples boil down to is we shouldn't be talking about racism because it's not a thing anymore.
This American Life
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I keep wondering, what is it like to be a kid in one of these towns? For kids of color especially, when some adults are saying racism is a problem and other adults are saying it's not one at all.
This American Life
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And we thought we'd play it again today because it tried to describe a turning point. The beginning of the backlash that's playing out with such force in the first few weeks of Donald Trump's return to office. Not just diversity programs being wiped out of existence, but being blamed absurdly for anything bad that happens in America.
This American Life
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For instance, the meeting you just heard from Traverse City, what's so remarkable about this particular meeting is that what these parents are partially responding to is a clearly racist incident in their schools. I've been talking to a kid who was targeted in that incident, a 16-year-old Black biracial girl named Nevaeh, about what happened to her.
This American Life
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And her story is so much more personal and immediate than what you get from any of these meetings. A quick warning, this story might not be appropriate for kids. Here it is, Act 1. A year ago, Nevaeh was a sophomore in high school who didn't think about her Blackness too much. Yes, she lives in a mostly white town, 90% white.
This American Life
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And yes, she's often the only person of color in a given room, including her family. She's adopted. They're white. But her journals were not filled with tragic black girl and white town cliches. She was writing fiction, fantasy, young adult, romance.
This American Life
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When you say psychology, what is it about psychology that like you're interested in?
This American Life
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Nevaeh is a self-proclaimed overthinker. And she does this thing when you talk with her that makes her feel both mature and young at the same time. It's that when she doesn't know something, she says she doesn't know it with such confidence that you feel assured that someday she will know that thing. A year ago, Nevaeh would have described her high school and her experience there as typical.