#he talks about critical race theory and mentions reparations in this interview too

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“...I’ve been in the business of teaching Black history for over three decades, and every colleague I know includes Tulsa in their general survey courses. So why do we continually repeat the assertion that this history is completely unknown, a secret, or so shameful no one wants to talk about it? Because the issue has never been about not knowing; it is about a refusal to acknowledge genocidal, state-sanctioned racist violence in the United States, a refusal to recognize the existence of fascism in this country. This is not to say the violence is simply denied by the status quo. No, rather it is disavowed by the white propertied and political classes and displaced onto “ignorant” white racist workers. This narrative obscures how the violence, fomented and promoted by the press and business interests, became a pretext to take the land — an attempted land grab that continued for decades after 1921. [...]

...in telling the story, we focus solely on “Black Wall Street,” which made up just a few blocks of the 35-40 square blocks of Greenwood the mobs destroyed. All we really hear about are doctors and lawyers and entrepreneurs, Black-owned theaters and the luxurious Stradford Hotel, when, in fact, the vast majority of Black Tulsans beaten, killed and displaced were working people. [...] We live in such a materialist, celebrity culture that we measure our “success” by class mobility, by wealth accumulation, and then we fall victim to a tired narrative that white folks destroyed “our” communities out of jealousy over of our success. While there is truth to this, and white looting is clear evidence, the “jealousy” is cultivated, nurtured in the ideology of white supremacy, usually in the guise of patriotism and nationalism, or in the capitalist replacement theory — “N*****s are coming for your jobs!” The mob was largely made up of shock troops engaged in an attempted land grab from which they themselves would not directly benefit. The first spark for the mob wasn’t real estate, but another form of property rooted in patriarchy — property in women. A Black man accused of assaulting a white woman is a more effective dog whistle than Negroes with grand pianos and bank accounts. The second spark, of course, were Negroes with guns. Here we see Black solidarity and fearlessness on full display — Black World War I veterans representing all classes within Greenwood, armed and prepared to defend one of their own, their people and their property. That act of insubordination, more than anything else, convinced white folks to fuel up their planes and build an arsenal. [...]

...Some Black people got to Oklahoma by way of the forced march of the Creeks, Choctaws, Chickasaws, Cherokees and Seminoles from the Southeastern territories in the 1830s. Some came as slaves of wealthy tribal members, others as spouses and children — part African, part Indigenous. And many died along the way. Later, Black folks joined the exodus out of the South after the Civil War by taking advantage of the Homestead Act to acquire land and create all-Black towns — Oklahoma being a prime destination. But again, on whose land? ...I don’t think the issue of the Tulsa race massacre of 1921 can ever be fully resolved or “repaired” without addressing the question of both holocausts — Indigenous dispossession and African slavery. [...]

...American liberty was built on slavery and dispossession because liberty was fundamentally about property rights. ...liberals hold on to the idea that in the U.S. democracy is a creed passed down to us via these great documents — this myth, if we’re to be honest, has driven the liberal wing of the civil rights movement for decades and still drives it today. [...] I’m less concerned with paranoid right-wing white nationalists than I am with (neo)liberal multiculturalists who side-step the question of power... [...]

...while in principle I can agree that all Black people live with the possibility of being terrorized by whiteness, the possibilities are differential based on class, gender, age, disability, etc. [...] If we only remember the loss of property and wealth and the evisceration of a Black elite, then we only imagine a potential future in which someone like J.B. Stradford could have been the Black “Hilton,” where the wealthy are wealthier, and projected “reparations” payments are calculated based on accumulated property at the time of the violence. Despite recognizing that the entire community suffered, “compensation” would be differential, mirroring the very system of racial capitalism that structured enclosure (segregation), violence, deep inequality and poverty for most, and premature death. We will also forget what might be the most impactful response by the community: mutual aid, a caring culture, and the impulse toward self-defense and protecting one another. [...]

...In our Herrenvolk Republic, liberalism was founded on a definition of liberty that places property before human freedom (and human needs), and an exclusionary definition of the human that permits various forms of unfree labor, dispossession and subordination based on “race” and “gender.” And yet, we keep speaking of the Tulsa race massacre in terms of property, property rights, property destroyed. I think we need to talk about decolonization in order to advance beyond land as property toward a vision of freedom not based on ownership or possession or anthropocentrism. The land has been enslaved and needs liberation so the Earth could flourish, so people could flourish, so the historical and contemporary structures of violence might end, opening up a radically different future.”