​​Dante King: When we as black and brown people begin to emote or express the ways that we've been aggressed in, uh, marginalized, in this society, there's resentment and hostility and defensiveness, no one wants to hear it because it, it's not aligned with the white American or the American value system.

Sam Fuqua: That's Dante King, and this is Well, That Went Sideways! A podcast that serves as a resource to help people have healthy, respectful communication. We present a diversity of ideas, tools, and techniques to help you transform conflict in relationships of all kinds. In this episode, we talk with Dante King about the roots of racism in America. Dante King is the author of The 400 Year Holocaust: White America's Legal, Psychopathic and Sociopathic Black Genocide - and the Revolt Against Critical Race Theory. He is also a human resources professional and has taught at the University of California, San Francisco, and will soon be guest faculty at The Mayo Clinic School of Medicine. We spoke with Dante King in April at the 2023 White Privilege Conference in Mesa, Arizona.

I am Sam Fuqua, co-host of the program with Alexis Miles. Hi Alexis.

Alexis Miles: Hi Sam.

Sam Fuqua: And we're so pleased to have Dante King join us for this episode. Welcome.

Dante King: Thank you.

Sam Fuqua: Uh, we're speaking at the White Privilege Conference, uh, here in Arizona. What brought you to the conference and what are you, what are you taking away from this one?

Dante King: So, there are so many things. Uh, the first is I recently published a book entitled The 400 Year Holocaust: White America's Legal, Psychopathic, and Sociopathic Black Genocide - and The Revolt Against Critical Race Theory. And so, um, in much of my work, I've been out on the road here lately doing a lot of promoting of the book, but also just making connections with other practitioners who are all working in this space. Uh, I think, what I'm taking away from here is just a bit of rejuvenation because it's just, it's been reaffirming and also fulfilling to be around people who are doing their own personal, internal work. Um, and so my work, as I say all the time is, is life liberatory work. I'm not afforded the opportunity much to go to conferences like this. Most conferences I go to feel like work. Um, and this hasn't felt that way much.

Sam Fuqua: The subtitle of the book has some powerful words, psychopathic, sociopathic, um, that some might say that's, that's a really hard language to use, and maybe I, I resist that, or that doesn't draw me in, but clearly, you've made a conscious choice to, to call it out in that way. Why?

Dante King: For sure. Um, when I begin to examine the legal history of this country and begin to draw through line, uh, in the ways, or in the institution of legality specifically, of the ways that the British and then white people created laws that permitted and, uh, promoted, facilitated the murders of black people. And specifically within the first two centuries, the language is very stark. It's extremely clear. The, the motivations are there. Um, and I'll give a few examples of that. Uh, but I kept repeating to myself, this is insane. This is insane. I can't believe this. This is diabolical. I had never seen certain things before. And then I located The Psychopathic Racial Personality by Dr. Bobby Wright in what, which was written in the 1970s. And he says very fervently in their relationship with the black race, whites are psychopaths. And I said, wow, that's it. And so I'll give a few examples. Um, just, I'm gonna quote from a few court cases.

One being an 1855, uh, murder case concerning a young girl by the name of Celia. This was in Missouri. And she had been raped repeatedly by her master Robert Newsom, and she had bore two children and was pregnant with the third one. And she con, consistently went to his daughters to seek help. She went to others in the community to ask them to, uh, help her stop him from raping her. And she was sick through this third pregnancy. And so, he continued to rape her so she ended up murdering him. And when the case went to court, the judge gave this instruction to the jury, basically. If Newsom was in the habit of having intercourse with the defendant who was his slave and went to her cabin on the night he was killed to have intercourse with her or for any other purpose, and while he was standing in the floor talking to her and she struck him with the stick, which was a dangerous weapon, and knocked him down and struck him again after he fell and killed him by either blow, it is murder in the first degree. So, I'm gonna restate this. So, if New, Newsom was in the habit of raping her, and he went to her cabin on that night to rape her, and she fought back and resisted and, and killed him, then it's murder in the, the first degree. And so, they had her hanged.

Um, and so another case by the Mississippi Supreme Court. In 1859, the Mississippi Supreme Court ruled that a nine year old black child that had been raped by a black male slave, that it wasn't rape. And what they said was, the crime of rape does not exist in this state between African slaves. Our laws recognize no marital status as between slaves. Their sexual intercourse is left to be regulated by their owners. The regulations of law as to the white race on the subject of sexual intercourse, do not and cannot, for obvious reasons, apply to slaves. Their intercourse is promiscuous. In the violation of a female slave by a male slave would be a mere assault and battery.

And so, you move forward to 1918. You've got the Florida Supreme Court ruling in Dallas v. State in 1918 that black women can't be raped because they're immoral, and what they say is what has been said by some of our courts about an unchained female being a comparatively rare exception is no doubt true where the population is composed largely of the Caucasian race. But we would blind ourselves to actual conditions if we adopted this rule where another race that is largely immoral constitutes an appreciable part of the population. And so, as a Black American being on the other end, the receiving end of this, I judge it and assess it as psychopathic. Whites may not. Asians may not. No other group or person has to judge it that way. But I really believe in the liberatory practice of being able to name my experience and the experience of my people in the ways that are useful and clear to me that give me validation. And so I, um, in looking at the, the definitions, the standard definitions of sociopathy and psychopathy, I said, wow, this is exactly what this is.

Sam Fuqua: And that obviously is, is gruesome to hear, but it's in the public record. And I think a, as we sort of generally know about mistreatment of, uh, enslaved people, it's important that we, we get the details sometimes as hard as they are to hear.

Dante King: For sure. And I also wanna, um, just clarify the last case I quoted was 1918. That's 53 years after slavery ended. And so, the Florida Supreme Court is ruling that black women are immoral and can't be raped.

Alexis Miles: And you, you talk about through line. So, can you show us that through line from these laws to current behavior, current policies, et cetera?

Dante King: Absolutely. Um, I'll give one example. So, I just gave those three, right? Those cases, um, span a period of roughly what, 60, 70 years. That's going out of the mid 19th century into the early 20th century. But if we go back, there are laws such as the Casual Killing Act of 1669, um, which said, "Whereas the only law enforced for the punishment of refractory servants resisting their master, mistress or overseer cannot be inflicted upon Negroes nor the obstinacy of many of them be suppressed by other than violent means. Be it enacted and declared by this grand assembly, if any slave resists his master or other by his master's order correcting him and by the extremity of the correction should happen to die, that his death should not be accounted a felony, but the master or the other person appointed by the master to punish him be acquitted from molestation since it cannot be presumed that premeditated malice, which alone makes murder a felony, should induce any man to destroy his own estate”.

And so, they're giving, in a very alacritous manner, the permission and authority for any person to just murder black people without consequence. It's not accounted a felony. That's followed up by laws in 1672, and a law in 1680, an act preventing negro insurrections. These laws are published, uh, in, in the colony records. They're also published at churches throughout this time. That was written into the law that they would be published at the parish churches every six months. And so, when you examine this history decade by decade, and I'm talking, I give, roughly, I would say 10 to 15 examples, decade by decade, a combination of colonial level laws and then state level laws once we transition into the United States, coupled with court cases at the local, state, and federal level, um, and you get to, for example, the 20th century and you have the Supreme Court ruling of 1927, the Buck v. Bell ruling, where they decided that compulsory sterilization of the unfit and undesirable population did not violate the due process clause in the 14th Amendment. And then, the Corgan v. Buckley, Euclid v. Ambler, they're using scientific academic theory to say we're going to subjugate blacks and put them in, uh, neighborhoods that are separate from white people because they're developmentally inferior. They're morally incapable of developing, uh, in that manner. And so, you have all of these rationalizations that are rooted in what I define as not just racism or white racism, it's anti-blackness. And so, the laws are riddled with anti-blackness. It's not just we're going to exclude, but we're going to actually do harm to you, and that's a different level of a maniacal situation.

Sam Fuqua: And to use, uh, science or, you know, bogus science, uh, to somehow justify. What is that about?

Dante King: Sociopathy is how I defined it, because there is an obsession and a compulsion that people possess, from how I read it, that drives them to find whatever reason necessary to superiorize themselves and create a, a very inferior orientation. And, one of the things I appreciate about Toni Morrison's work, and I quote her in here, an interview that she gave, and she said it very succinctly, "If you can only be tall because someone else is on their knees, then you have a very serious problem." And she said at the time, and I believe that white people have a very, very serious problem, and they need to figure out what to do about it. And so, if you go back and you investigate how whiteness emerged, it actually emerged initially as a Christian nation. They're using the language Christian, Christian, Christian. It's not until they begin to convert certain members from, uh, Indian bands as they're noted in the, the law, as well as, uh, Negroes. Once they start converting them into the Christian faith in, in or around the mid 17th century, they need to find another way to distinguish themselves. And so, it's no longer English freeborn Christian, it's white. And so, white, the white race in white America develops as a terrorist organization, um, on principles of terrorism. And, we have to understand then that the, the intentionality behind white racism and anti-blackness, this, this was not happenstance. It was legal, it was moral, violence, anti-black violence sat at the core of white morality, of Christian morality. Um, it was an economic and political pursuit. It's all of these things.

Alexis Miles: So, a lot of what you're talking about would be understood if people understood CRT - critical race theory. Can you talk about critical race theory and what that means? I know people hear the term a lot, but a lot of people don't know what it means.

Dante King: Right. So critical race theory is the idea that race informs people's realities or has informed people's realities, and it's not a theory. It's actually critical race reality because white men created laws, ruled in cases, which I just shared some examples about, of, of, and they decided the fate of people, and they decided to use their authority and position to do harm to people, and specifically black people. Economic deprivation, education, educational violence, um, uh, being in total control of our experience, our existence here as African people. As I say in my book, black people, black American people, don't know a reality outside of white racial control. And so, that's not a theory, that's fact and it's a reality. Everything I know has been defined and controlled and facilitated through white domination. And that's true for my mother, my, and father and grandparents, everyone, if you are a black American with a, a history here, uh, and a lineage that goes back to the antebellum period. That is not true for other groups.

We as African American people are the creation of white people and they've controlled everything about us, and so therefore, we have to look to them if we want to be a part of their organizations, if we want to advance in their organizations. If we go against this, uh, the context in a way that is not permitted and it makes the wrong people uncomfortable, we can be, um, our personhood, our livelihood can be diminished and affected and impacted in a way where we're no longer able to survive. And so, Martin Luther, um, not Martin Luther King, but Malcolm X, he gave an interview at UC Berkeley in 1963, and he says, when you're in your own nation, under your own court system, under your own, uh, institutions, you're in a position to get justice. But when you're in another man's country, in another man's land, under another man's court system, you have to look to that other man for justice and you'll never get it. And he followed it up with saying in Negroes are the authority on that here in America.

Alexis Miles: I'd like to drive a point home. Everything you're saying is not your personal opinion. This is documented.

Dante King: Which is why I used the, the approach that I do because if you and Sam and I sit here and we have a discussion around these laws and what they are, we're, we're not gonna argue, “Oh, this didn't happen.” We're going to say, “Wow, this is interesting. Let, let's discuss what the impacts of this were, because we can't debate that it happened.” As Sam mentioned earlier, it's in the public record.

Alexis Miles: So, what are your feelings about the attempts, and not only the attempts, but the actual implementation of laws that critical race reality, I think as you correctly refer to it, should not be taught in schools?

Dante King: Well, it's to protect white comfort. It's to protect white domination. It's to protect, it is to protect white racial control. And, one of the things that I begin to understand through my study is that white people have never had to be reflective or accountable when it comes to people of color. And so, how dare you try to compel me to do that as a white person? There's no inherent value in doing anything of that, that nature. It does not align with the white value system, with the white cultural value system, which is rooted in power and control through institutional design, right? Economics, educational, like it does not serve me in any way. I don't need to be in relationship with you, uh, inferior person. I just finished an interview with Robin DiAngelo. We did a joint interview together. Um, and one of the things she said toward the end, she looked me and the interviewer in the eye, who was a black woman, and she says, "I want you to take something in. I was told I was the, the message that I received about people of color," she says, "I was never meant to love you. I was never meant to love you. In fact, I was told as a white woman that being in relationship with you, having anything to do with a person of color actually lessened my value as a white person. And so, there's no compelling factor. Unless one becomes or, or works through processes to become in touch, uh, or connect with their humanity and the humanity of others."

But again, Dr. Bobby Wright, he says that white people have no morality where race is the variable. And, I am inclined to agree with that. I've lived it. I've experienced it. I've now researched it and understand why. You know, following laws and going by the book, which, what the, are, is what these laws required white people to do, it erased their moral compass. You, you cannot be socialized to commit violence and murder and be allowed to rape, rape, rape and, and then be connected in, into your own humanity in a way that compels you to feel. One would have to turn all of that off. And so, we look around today and when we as black and brown people begin to emote or express the ways that we've been aggressed in, in a, uh, marginalized, in this society, there's resentment and hostility and defensiveness. No one wants to hear it because it, it's not aligned with the white American or the American value system.

Alexis Miles: So, the cost then would be the cost of humanity. One's own humanity.

Dante King: Yes.

Alexis Miles: So, the cost to white people is the cost of their own humanity in some ways.

Dante King: Yes.

Alexis Miles: So, it's not a freebie.

Dante King: No. No. And I appreciate, there, there's this, um, documentary called Slave Catchers and Slave Resistors, and there's a, um, white professor, I, I forget his name, he's from Duke University though, but he talks about how in order to integrate into these colonies back in the 17th, uh, and 18th centuries, he says, these white people, he says, you have to have made a deal with the devil. Like you, you had to just become soulless.

Sam Fuqua: Can you talk a little bit about another facet of, of your work, your life as an educator for one of the elite medical institutions in this country, The Mayo Clinic. How did you navigate some of what we've been talking about in that context?

Dante King: This is great. So, I actually, um, have been working with them for about a year now. And, but I just received, um, an academic appointment as an assistant professor of medical education in The Mayo Clinic School of Medicine. And how we came together, how this collaboration emerged was that several of them, I was serving as guest faculty at UCSF, another med, medical school and some high level people there, uh, at The Mayo Clinic took a course that I teach there. Within that course, I do a very elaborate lecture about the ways that anti-blackness, uh, emerged through the Ivy League institutions and produced philosophers and professors who developed theories that asserted that black people had lower lung capacity. That because our skulls were shaped differently than white people that slavery was our rightful place. There were other theories. There's a study of physiognomy, um, that was developed by Orson Fowler and Samuel Wells where they began to draw these diagrams and they said, you can just look at black people, um, and tell how inferior they are because of their, the way that their nose is shaped, their eyes. And these people were given the academic positional notoriety to disseminate and circulate these theories, not just nationally, but internationally. And they informed medical science.

They later led to the eugenical, um, movement that emerged during the late 19th, early 20th centuries. And, I connect all of that to the economic, um, support that these institutions and medical, uh, "experts," that they received, as well as how it informed the medical sciences and the, the behavioral sciences. And when, when you go and you begin to question, just present basic questions such as, well, what then is science? What then is academic rigor? What then is morality? And, and who are the authorities on these things? Because if you tell me, well, this is evidence-based, I am going to cringe when I hear that as someone that has done this, this research in this area, because we use that language to qualify that this has been proven. Well, I can show you a number of things that have been proven, that have made no sense, that have been harmful in, in creating that type of understanding and, and roadmap, and then connecting it into today where in the medical profession there are doctors that still assert that black people have, um, in theories, hospitals that have practices that won't administer certain medication because black people are known to have greater bone density. That black people have a higher pain threshold. I was just told by a doctor, advocating for care for my mom, that they didn't feel that they needed to increase her medication even though she was complaining about her pain because she looked strong. She looked strong.

Sam Fuqua: That just happened?

Dante King: Yes.

Sam Fuqua: How do you advocate within, um, say the male organization for, uh, I mean partly by I assume sharing this history with the folks who are taking your classes, right?

Dante King: Yes.

Sam Fuqua: And, and then how do we get to say doctors like that one that was sort of treating your mom, I guess, right? I don't, I don't mean to be dismissive, but that was clearly a bizarre statement coming from that particular physician.

Dante King: Yeah. And, again, this socialization runs so deep, so it's not going to reach everyone, unfortunately. I was teaching a class, this probably is two years ago now, and I had a medical doctor who had been practicing for over 50 years, and he said, you know, when he was a resident at Duke University, this was back in the early 70s, he says, you know, “I worked with the state eugenical board, and we went around and we located 16 year old black virgins and gave them hysterectomies.” Okay? And so, we need to understand just how deep this stuff is, and it's a dire situation. Um, I think in terms of the ways that we are collaborating at The Mayo Clinic, and I'm so appreciative for this, we just developed, uh, a course that's going to be, uh, rolled out in September. It's actually, the dates are September 12th, 14th, 26th, 28th. It's four hours each. The course is called Developing Anti-Racist Leadership Competencies and Practices for Health Equity. And so, it has to start at the top, and so we are targeting administrators, chief nursing, uh, operators, medical directors, anyone that runs medical facilities, um, or any type of organization who has responsibility for the way that culture, um, is, is functioning within that organizational context. Um, because it, it has to be a priority of the leaders, uh, because we know that culture is the result of the activities of people. And, I detail that legal history and so it has to start from the top. And that's, that's what we're doing.

Alexis Miles: Bias capacity training. That's one of the things I believe you have expertise in.

Dante King: Yes.

Alexis Miles: So, can you tell us what that is and can you tell people how to access that kind of training?

Dante King: Sure. So, my work now is more so rooted in the more, or focused on the more intense, I guess, undergirding of, of bias, which is really getting to the, the core of our socialization, the anti-black bias, uh, and the infusion of that into laws and policies that shape culture and white whiteness and white supremacy. Looking at the spectrum, and then also how people are prioritized here in America, um, by race and ethnicity. The, the pr, the more proximity that one or a group has to white culture, the more privileges and benefits they experience. They may not be aware of that, but it is true. And the more proximity groups of people have to black people, the, the less privilege they experience here in America. And so, I've done bias capacity training, but that really doesn't get to the root, um, to help people understand the historical and the perpetual aspects of what I, I don't refer to it as necessarily just bias, I, I reject partially that language because it's so subtle. It's so subtle. But I can tell people to understand what their role, how they are participating in terrorism because this is a culture of terrorism.

And so I would first say, I would say to all of those groups, everyone listening to this, please go to my website, which is danteking.com. Please read my book, The 400 Year Holocaust, but also a few other books that I think people, um, should read are, uh, W.E.B. Du Bois' Black Reconstruction in America. If you haven't read that. Carter G. Woodson's, uh, Miseducation of the Negro. Dr. Joy Degruy's, uh, book Post-Traumatic Slave Syndrome. Dr. Ibram Kendi's first, um, publication, Stamped from the Beginning, and another book, um, by Dr. Richard, uh, he, I'm not sure if he's doctor, but Richard Rothstein, who was the, uh, author of The Color of Law. Those are five reads I would have people endeavor into. Two more if you're an avid reader or fervent reader. Um, one being N*gga Theory by UCLA professor Jody Armour, and then the other being The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander.

Alexis Miles: Dante, you have done an incredible amount of research and work. Um, what is one thing that gives you hope?

Dante King: So, I don't have hope. I have an anger and a rage, a righteous anger and a righteous rage that drives me to work and to strive and to lead change. So, you know, I, I do these things because my anxiety and my frustration, um, they drive me, and I've had to learn how to redirect it because I was at the point of suicide and homicide when I decided to write this book. And there were a few wonderful black women who I got in touch with, um, psychologists and psychiatrists, who helped me to understand my racial trauma because I was ready to check out. And so I don't have hope, but I wake up every day knowing that I have to, with a drive, knowing that I have to do something to try and shift conditions for people who look like me.

Sam Fuqua: Dante King, thank you for speaking with us and our listeners.

Dante King: Thank you.

Alexis Miles: It's a real pleasure. Thank you.

Dante King: Thank you so much.

Sam Fuqua: Dante King is the author of The 400 Year Holocaust: White America's Legal, Psychopathic, and Sociopathic Black Genocide - and The Revolt Against Critical Race Theory. He's also a human resources professional and has taught at the University of California, San Francisco and will soon be guest faculty at The Mayo Clinic School of Medicine. You can find out more at his website, danteking.com. The Sideways team attended the 2023 White Privilege Conference, and our conversation with Dante King is the first of several interviews recorded at the White Privilege Conference that we look forward to sharing with you in the coming months.

Thanks for listening to Well, That Went Sideways! We produce new episodes twice a month. You can find them wherever you get your podcasts, and on our website, sidewayspod.org. We also have information on our guests and links to more conflict resolution resources at the website. That's sidewayspod.org. Our production team is Mary Zinn, Jes Rau, Norma Johnson, Alexis Miles, Alia Thobani, and me, Sam Fuqua. Our theme music is by Mike Stewart. We produce these programs in Colorado on the traditional lands of the Arapahoe, Cheyenne, and Ute Nations. To learn more about the importance of land acknowledgement, visit our website, sidewayspod.org. And this podcast is a partnership with The Conflict Center, a Denver-based nonprofit that provides practical skills and training for addressing everyday conflicts. Find out more at conflictcenter.org.