Schizophrenic History

History Against the Grain

Do you take this woman to be your lawfully wedded slave? Ouch! No, say the saucy boys, you wanna get hitched? Go to Reno and the Silver Bells Wedding Chappel, but under no circumstances should anyone get married on an Old South plantation. As a wedding destination, a former slave labor camp just has no merit! And speaking of merit, Josh explains that when it comes to so-called meritocracies, the deck is too often stacked in favor of the privileged and the vile. Our interview guest this week is an old friend, Jordan McGowan, who is a Sacramento educator and activist working to unstack the deck of racial privilege. From the classroom to encampments of the unhoused, Jordan carries the spirit of the Black Panther originals to build agency and respect among those who have been dealt a bad hand in the racist pseudo-meritocracy of the U.S.