Southern University: Hip-Hop & Politics

White Hoods and Hollywood: How Media Portrays America's First Terrorist Group (Keondra Carter & Saanti Woods)

• Eugene B. Lee-Johnson • Season 2 • Episode 3

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The Ku Klux Klan isn't just a relic of American history – it's a terrorist organization whose influence continues to permeate our institutions, communities, and culture. Keondra and Saanti pull back the curtain on this shadowy force, beginning with a thoughtful analysis of how the recent horror film "Sinners" portrays white supremacy as an ever-present threat that can fade into the background only to reemerge with devastating consequences.

What sets this conversation apart is how the hosts weave together historical context with personal experiences. From the Klan's formation in 1865 as a response to the abolition of slavery to its nationwide expansion during the Great Migration, they trace how this organization evolved from hooded nightriders to individuals embedded within every level of American society. "They could take the hood off and still execute the same level of violence," Santi observes, highlighting the KKK's most dangerous quality – their ability to hide in plain sight as doctors, lawyers, and law enforcement.

The discussion takes fascinating turns through media representations of white supremacy across films like "Django Unchained" and "The Help," revealing how popular culture both exposes and sometimes trivializes the terror of racist institutions. Particularly compelling is their analysis of how white supremacist logic contains absurd contradictions – Black domestic workers could raise white children, but couldn't use the same bathrooms.

Both hosts share powerful personal narratives about using education as a means to escape limiting circumstances. Their insight that "to get out of the hood, you have to take off the hood of history" creates a striking connection between personal liberation through education and collective liberation through historical reckoning. As they note how current political attacks on diversity initiatives and critical race theory aim to keep those hoods of history firmly in place, listeners are left with an urgent understanding of why confronting our past is essential for creating a more just future.

Join us for this essential conversation that will change how you understand America's past and present. Share your thoughts about the episode with us on social media – we'd love to hear what insights resonated most with you.

Keondra Carter:

Hi, I'm Keandra.

Saanti Woods:

And I'm Santi.

Keondra Carter:

And today we're going to talk about the Ku Klux Klan. So before we get started to that, I did want to talk a little bit about something that everybody is talking about, but I want to add my little two cents in. So did you see sinners? I did see sinners, okay. So what was your initial thoughts about the movie? Well, first, how many times did you see it?

Saanti Woods:

I've only seen it once.

Keondra Carter:

Okay, but I went on a rabbit hole on tiktok about like hidden messages in the movie I only seen it once too, but I did the same thing, so I'm I'm excited about this conversation, so when I go back and see it again, I could definitely look out for some things.

Saanti Woods:

But what was your? Initial thoughts um, well, initially it was like, okay, I have to go see this movie because, for one, the director is from my hometown, so I had to go see it. But then everyone was just saying how good it was and I just went on this thing about watching Vampire Diaries, so I was already into vampires. So I just I was like let me go watch it, I'm gonna go watch it.

Saanti Woods:

Um, it was a good movie, it was. Was it as good as everyone was saying? It was? No, I had very high expectations about it and I anticipated it to be a lot better. Not saying that it was a bad movie, I would watch it again. It just wasn't as good as I thought it would be. Um, really I just thought it was rushed. But if we're talking deeper into it, I think historically the context was there. If you know things about your history, um, and also just touching on a lot of things that a lot of people may not know about the deep south back then, um, outside of sharecropping and slavery, like into, like the fun aspect of it, yeah, so I so I kind of went into sinners, kind of blind, so I've been on a little social media cleanse.

Keondra Carter:

So by time I got back on social media really, I started everybody's like sinners, sinners, sinners.

Keondra Carter:

I'm like when, when was this coming? Nobody told me this, so I didn't really and I'm still kind of having my social media limited, so I didn't really get any spoilers and I didn't really know what the movie was about other than like vampires in the south, and I was like, okay, I like that, um and so when I went in there I didn't really have any expectations but I really did enjoy how he pieced together so many different aspects of history, also like southern history, and just in a way that it didn't necessarily feel artificial, but more so very authentic. And I also liked how he brought in like a cloak of white supremacy around the entire movie without necessarily centering the entire movie on that Like it wasn't a black demise film, like it wasn't like 12 years a slave and things like that yeah and since we're talking about the kkk with this podcast, um, I really found it interesting how he tied that into the storyline, because the beginning of the plot really began with when we really met the stat twins.

Keondra Carter:

They were interacting with a gentleman by the way spoilers if you haven't watched the movie anyway, but you know you've had a couple weeks so it's okay but he was interacting with the white gentleman who we would later find out is a clan member you know they said he was a clanlan member.

Keondra Carter:

At the beginning I was just like, oh, do we know that? Let me. We kind of knew that this is out in the 20s 30s, but he, when they interacted with him, it was such a small brief moment to where you forgot about him. Then we're watching the movie and all this chaos is happening and everybody's turning against each other and all of this and it's so many different dynamics and you're over here deciding which characters you hate. You're like I hate this person because of this, I hate this person because of that. You know, you're looking, all these dynamics and then what got me was at the end he was like, oh, the clan's coming back tomorrow, by the way, and I was like I done forgot about these people.

Keondra Carter:

And I feel like he did that in such a beautiful way because it began and ended with the clan in a way that it shows that white supremacy, specifically the ku klux klan, goes as an undetected terrorist group. Essentially, that's what we. You know it's often called America's first terrorist group. You know, they go through the cloak of night, they have the hoods on and you and you almost forget about them until they're there again and then you realize that that is your final enemy. That's the true enemy is white supremacy.

Saanti Woods:

But I know you wanted to talk a little bit about, like the history of the clan so, um, yeah, so the ku klux klan was formed right after the abolition of slavery in 1865, um, and it was an organization whose goal was to basically maintain white dominance in the South, and they did things like lynch Black people. There was a lot of fires, they were setting houses and people on fires, they were raping people, men and women, and, just, you know, bringing terror to, you know, these Black communities. Um, and a lot of people don't realize that the demise of the black community in around that time, when we were trying to come on a come up, was because of the KKK. If, if you didn't know that, it's kind of like you need to open a book. But, um, yeah, so black advancement was, it wasn't a thing, because the KKK was making sure that it didn't happen.

Saanti Woods:

Um, and a lot of people just think that the KKK was only in the south. But these people were migrating all over the country, some for different reasons, like you know, maybe, um, an employment opportunity, but they were also going to the West Coast, they were going to the North and black people were also migrating around this time. So they were, of course, coming into contact with people who were coming from the South that were part of the KKK.

Keondra Carter:

Yeah, so and that brings an interesting juxtaposition because you, you're from California and I'm from Louisiana, so Louisiana to California, that was one of the routes of the great migration and it's I remember you mentioning in class how, you know, you didn't really experience like hard, outright, direct racism until you got to Louisiana. Yeah, and growing up in Louisiana, being here my whole life, I'm like, oh, I know people that since I was a child I knew that was a thing, a real fear. You knew it was a real fear but you'd never experienced it directly. And I think it's interesting because of just how cloaked they're allowed to be, they're allowed to be. So you mentioned how um, we it was mentioned in class but you had mentioned with the uh, you didn't really experience it directly but with employment a lot of clan members with great migration. You know we um professor johnson, he mentioned it and said that, oh, lapd was looking for clan members to come work Around, like the Rodney King stuff.

Saanti Woods:

Well, really, that was like the icing on the cake.

Saanti Woods:

And that was in the 90s, yeah, and I haven't specifically personally experienced things like that, but my parents and my grandparents did, but they did a good job with you know, sheltering me from things like that, because I was able to be in a community where it was very blended and I went to schools that there were a lot of minorities there. I didn't really have many run-ons with white people, so I didn't really experience things like that until I got to the professional realm as well as coming out of state for school yeah, and for in the south it's so different because you know you, it's so ingrained into all of us, even if you're in predominantly black areas.

Keondra Carter:

It's always a constant warning and fear like hey, don't go over there.

Keondra Carter:

They have clan meetings over there, like, don't go play. Like. I grew up in a very rural area of louisiana and you know it was just common knowledge, like some of these kids, that you're going to school with their daddies and their mamas are clan members and they and they're probably going to be raised up and be clan members too. And you know it. It's, it's so apparent that you know it's little cultural things that you don't even realize is rooted in certain things that pop up. And I think that's what makes the Ku Klux Klan so insidious, is it's not just a bunch of people running around terrorizing people. They have ingrained themselves into american systems to where they could take the hood off and still execute the same level of violence.

Keondra Carter:

And I think that's what really centers brought out in an interesting way was they baited those men. They didn't even have to do that. They were trying to. Those men were trying to be progressive. They were trying he could have killed them to right there where they stood and gotten away with it, but he chose to maximize it by catching them off guard, you know, and letting them drag in the rest of the community, just to burn it all down the next morning. And it's like what? What was the purpose. You could have went and did this anyways, but it's it's toy. It's it's to show people when you get to a certain level, when you think that you have something for yourself, we could take it back.

Saanti Woods:

I gave this to you and I'm gonna take it back and like bringing up that, going back to the actual beginning of the movie, when we're, when we're introduced to um smoking stack, right, they go to this grocery store or this, uh, convenience store that's ran by chinese people and me. I went into the movie blind as well to an extent, and me just knowing the storyline behind how prevalent anti-blackness is, especially in stores, exactly, I immediately thought the chinese people were going to be the problem, but you know, it ended up not even being the case.

Keondra Carter:

But I just had to make that point they had issues and I think that's interesting too that you bring it up.

Keondra Carter:

You know we they had the privilege, the scene of um I think it was the daughter walking back from one store on one side of the street to the store on the other the store on the one side street was all white, they were, shopping, was peaceful and directly across the street there were shootings and it was for black people and it was, and they were able to walk across just peacefully. And and I think it's interesting because, at the end of the day, you know that people maneuver with certain levels of privileges based on their relationship with race, the race that they belong to, the color of their skin within that race, things like that. But we all maneuver within the systems of white supremacy in the United States.

Saanti Woods:

And other other races well, not other races, other ethnicities. They experience it in a different way, just because they've all had their different experiences with white people. So Chinese people they come to this country, they're feared of their fear that that they're going to be more successful than the white race.

Keondra Carter:

So I do yellow peril and things like that yeah.

Saanti Woods:

So the idea of Chinese people being in this country is different than black people. Black people is like we're you're inferior to us, we're not scared of you, we do whatever we want to you. Chinese people is different. So what bringing up the idea of anti-blackness is being so global and just just thinking like I immediately thought that that chinese man or that chinese woman was gonna do something to that man in that story.

Keondra Carter:

So and it's a whole time. You know they there was issues, like I said, levels of privileges, but they're not the and I think he did this on purpose to show they're not the enemy. You know we have to address certain things in certain conversations but they're not the enemy because even addressing within groups of other white people you know, with Remick being Irish Mm, hmm, the way the Ku Klux Klan has had a hold on this country, even at the beginning it has for people. A lot of white people don't realize that the Klan isn't for them either. They could be members of the Klan and it's not for them either because at the end of the day, white supremacy doesn't benefit anybody. Everybody ends up having some level of disadvantage because it's rooted in hatred and it's rooted in keeping others down and I think, especially if you're not a rich, straight, cisgender white man, you don't see the benefits.

Saanti Woods:

And the only the only thing I can say is the disadvantages that come to white people because of that are just moral things. It's not necessarily something that they'll see their money still going to be the same, it might even come in a surplus. They're still going to be loved in their communities, they're still going to get these great jobs. But and I mean, yes, it's moral things, but do they care?

Keondra Carter:

Yeah, and I think it's also well we can say in the sense I know there is one scene, and I'm speaking specifically to white women. You know, there we saw it with the presidential elections White women often vote against their own self-interest and it often, often follows the interests of their husbands or spouses, mates, whatever, and we saw it in the movie for a second.

Keondra Carter:

When she was sitting there and the native americans, the indigenous people, came to tell her like hey, don't do like, you got something in that house and you need to get out. And she, instead of trusting her gut because you could tell that she was like you know a little much yeah, she went based off of what her husband told her and she went back and she ended up getting attacked too. So it's like yeah, and so I think that's a metaphor for, like you, it's a perceived jump, but a lot of white people who go based off these white supremacy tactics especially now we're seeing it with this presidential election they still keep their money in their communities, but it's not the same because, at the end of the day, the one percent is winning. So you, a lot of people voted for a president thinking that they were going to get lower groceries and lower this, lower that, and it's like no, at the end of the day, white supremacy is based off of a hyper-capitalist society yeah, and a lot of these people are understanding too.

Saanti Woods:

A lot of white people have old money, especially in the south.

Keondra Carter:

A lot of white people here, who maybe even live in the city of their family, benefited off slavery, and you can tell yeah, well, I would say, growing up in the south is actually funny, because it's like there is a group of people who do benefit from that old money but there's a lot of people who really don't, and I think that difference too, because there's a there's, there's you have your old south white money and they're benefiting, you know, but a lot of white people in the south don't have money and I think that's also they're not, they're being limited by chasing after white supremacy and these ideals. You want to be in this position, so bad that you have to have somebody underneath you, but in reality, you you're being held down too by these systems. It's the idea of the plantation owner and the, the, the watchers, the slave, uh hand that ended up being sharecroppers. Yeah, the people who, the people who were overwatching the enslaved people at the time, those weren't rich white plantation owners.

Saanti Woods:

The plantation owners rarely really interacted with enslaved people it kind of reminds me of Django, yeah, um, when the real country bumpkin black men where they had their hoods on and they, you know, riding, riding around on their horses with their torches and stuff, like that kind of this thing, yeah, so it was just like I, I get, I get it. I see that in California too, so a lot of people don't know we do have rural parts in California. Some of them are like kind of the outskirts, some are towards Oregon and some of them are closer to the bottom of California. Those white people are the ones who benefit off of things like Medicaid and food stamps. But they voted for trump, yeah so now they're protesting.

Saanti Woods:

Oh um, maga is a cult and I need my medicaid.

Keondra Carter:

And x, y, yeah, and it's like this is this is people don't realize that buying into you know the mentioning centers that hive mind. You're buying into that idea of something and you're not cashing out on the check that you wrote. But I I think it's interesting how there's so many different things. You mentioned django, you mentioned um, we mentioned sinners. There's so many media portrayals of the kkk and it's also interesting because I think it's it. Some ways it's shown as the scary figure in the night. In some ways it's shown as humorous, like when they were on the horses talking about criticize, criticize, criticize. And you laugh at it because it's and it's like it can be all these things because, at the end of the day, these are people, these are real people who hide behind hoods.

Keondra Carter:

These are people that you are interacting with doctors, lawyers, police officers this they could, they could be the homeless man on the street, you know if you don't know who these people are, and I think that's what makes it so fearful, especially for black communities, because it's like you don't know who the enemy is until they're knocking at your door the next morning. And now, it's.

Saanti Woods:

It's very easy to see who might be racist.

Keondra Carter:

I know it's a.

Saanti Woods:

It's a hard prejudice to have, but I can tell. For example, I was walking into Walmart and this Walmart was probably about 20 minutes from here. I don't know what part of Baton Rouge I was in.

Saanti Woods:

I don don't know, I had no business being over there, but this tall white man with a long ponytail, long little whisker mustache and some cowboy boots was walking towards the door the same time that I was. That man didn't stop, so that interaction right there just told me everything that I needed to know, because any chivalrous man ladies first, especially in the South, it's often that man, chivalrous man, especially in the south, yeah, especially in the south.

Saanti Woods:

It's often that man saw me walking to that door and kept walking, actually rocked right in front of me.

Keondra Carter:

Yeah, didn't say excuse me or anything and it's little interactions like that, that kind of make it more revealing towards a potential danger, and you know I feel like you. Um, you also had mentioned another show that you watched and I feel like it. I only saw a little bit of it, so I'm going to let you explain a little bit more.

Keondra Carter:

But you were talking about them and how. I remember seeing little clips of it and at the beginning it didn't seem like it was going to be such a deep show because it was just little interactions. But those little interactions outside reveal more of what goes on behind closed doors.

Saanti Woods:

Yeah, so them is basically a horror kind of show. Um, there's actually a spinoff on. I think it's on netflix. I could be wrong, but um, it's a show about a black family, um, husband, wife, two daughters. They moved to a suburb in southern california. The entire suburb was white people and it's just about them trying to. They're not trying to assimilate at all, but they're just trying to basically be welcomed into their new community that they'll be living in because they actually bought a house and there's just all these different things. Like the wife, she's a stay-at-home mom. Of course, this is generals in the 1920s, um, and the dad is trying to basically he's trying to get this new job. He had a new job opportunity as an engineer and this goes into the workspace. He has a really good job as an engineer. I even think he had some sort of degree and got demoted to a janitorial position, if I remember correctly.

Saanti Woods:

Um, but the show basically encapsulates how white people are in a sense demonic and literally their life just just went terribly after they moved to that community. She had run-ons with her racist white woman neighbor. They used to try and fake like the kids wanted to play with their daughters just so that they can be racist towards them. The little boys used to go and pee on their clothes that they had hanging up and stuff like that. It was a lot. But stuff like that in that show was happening in real life. Yeah, um, and just seeing that it just kind of put a lot of things into perspective. Like this is what my, my family was going through.

Keondra Carter:

This is what black people were really going through less than a hundred years ago yeah, I think it's definitely interesting how you know, you mentioned that they used to invite the little kids over just so they could do it, and it goes back to what we're saying the games, the ideas of you know, instead of just being outright like, let me lay this trap, just so I could really show you my perceived dominance and I'm emphasizing perceived because in a lot of it was jealousy as well.

Saanti Woods:

Um, this was a healthy black family and a lot of the neighbors they're either their relationship was dysfunctional, some of them couldn't have kids, some of their kids were just off the walls like it was just a lot of stuff like that. Um, and it was also surprising to see that a show like this. It didn't none of the white families had a maid or a, like you know, a servant of some sort in the house.

Saanti Woods:

Um, which is really surprising because that was peak time for that yeah um, yeah, so that goes into my next point of how you brought up how it some some of it has seen this it's looked at as comical, the help yeah so, um, yes, the kkk is very much just oh, my goodness, stay away, I don't know what's going on. But also there were ways that, like black people, weren't always helpless. Yeah, in in this sense. Um, so talk about the help um one of the scenes in the movie you know you know, eat my shit.

Saanti Woods:

Um was when. What is that lady's name? What is her name? The actor, the actress that played that role, what is her name?

Keondra Carter:

and it just kind of gives you this insight of these are things that people really had to do and you just and then it also shows you how evil white people were, to where they really wanted them to eat shit I think also the fact that you bring up like the comedy of it is just how, especially in that movie, it's it was so funny because none of it really made sense. Like you're watching this and you're like, why, how does this, how is any of this logical to you? Know, you could take care of my child. You could. You could help raise my child. You could raise up all these babies. You know, she, um, she mentioned, um raising up the babies and these same babies would turn around and hate her and it's like how can that's so funny, like, or just like these kids are raised by black women, but are they're growing up to hate black women?

Saanti Woods:

and then even at the same time, I'm cooking your food, I'm cleaning your house, but I can't use your bathroom yeah, I could.

Keondra Carter:

I could touch everything in this house, but I can't touch your toilet because that's, that's how I'm going to give you diseases, or, and it's just the. The idea of white supremacy is really a joke, because it's all it's made up.

Keondra Carter:

A lot of this is so made up and they bend over backwards just to make it make sense and it never does truly, because at the end of the day, you know, we, we go back down to it. It's perceived race is a social construct and it's perceived and it's it can be rooted in cultural, ethnic ties, but a lot of it is just simply made up by people.

Saanti Woods:

That's been retold over history and anti-blackness wasn't a thing until our country introduced it. Yeah, a lot of people were not against, like there was. I was watching something and somebody was saying that they knew this woman from russia and she came to the united states and was like oh my gosh, did you hear about racism? Racism sounded so bad.

Keondra Carter:

Yeah, and they were like I'm glad you think that.

Saanti Woods:

I'm so glad that you think it was so bad, but we've been dealing with this for centuries.

Keondra Carter:

And if you, if you break it down, it's so funny, I think. Like you know, I talked to people and when wicked came out, everybody was like, oh, we get so deep, how could they be mean to her? Because she's green, that's so evil. And I'm like y'all do the same thing, like what are we talking about? The fact and the idea that people just don't comprehend it until you break it down, and so fairytale characters is so hilarious to me, because it's like you know this is wrong, yet you buy into it, and I think that's what's interesting and that's what's held down. But not even just white people buy into it. Black people buy into it because we we've internalized it for so long to the point where a lot of people we are OK with staying in the hoods, we're OK with, we're worried about the infighting, we're worried about these things. In reality, we forget who the enemy is at the end of the day.

Saanti Woods:

So growing up, I thought the hood was normal, just because that's what I was around my both my parents grew up in the quote-unquote hood. Um, I grew up in a mixture between the suburbs and the hood, like it was. Like it was. It used to be a very nice suburb that people probably moved into and it just went downhill. So I was introduced to a lot of things that I didn't have any business seeing. I wasn't sheltered as much as my parents probably would have liked, so a lot of things that I deem as normal.

Saanti Woods:

Someone else may not think of it like that and because of that, because I was able to not be a product of my environment, I went to the route of going to get an education when I didn't have to. And another normalization in Black communities in, you know, these hood areas, education is not big. So in a sense, you could say I made it out of the hood because I definitely came out of state. I actually brought my mom. I was the first person to bring my mom out of the western part of the country to move me into college. Her first time ever out of Vegas or California was in New Orleans in 2021 and she was well in her 50s yeah, I think it's interesting too because it's like, like I said, the opposites of like our lives.

Keondra Carter:

I growing up in the south, the hood in the south, especially in louisiana, and like living we don't. It's not nice neighborhoods but it's like rural, especially in baton rouge too. It's, you know, it's a city but it's not really a city houses yeah, potholes, streets and it's like you don't realize that this is the hood, because it doesn't necessarily look like what you see on tv.

Saanti Woods:

It looks different everywhere around the country because the hood in california is similar, like it's a lot of run-down houses. We call them bandos, um, but also it's um the people. So like we, our gang culture. In california, everybody thinks that there's crips and bloods all of me now in california, when in reality I've never met one but um, the Bay Area being seven hours away, our, our gangs look different than LA. So LA, you can't wear certain colors, you can't say certain words a certain way. In the Bay Area it's more so. The street that you go on, or like the neighborhood that you're kicking it in, you have to be careful on who you're around, and that's similar to.

Keondra Carter:

Baton Rouge, because I would say, when people would talk to us and they'd be like oh, like I remember I saw like a news article, it was like gang violence. I'm like we don't have gangs like who are the gangs.

Saanti Woods:

And then it's like you know, now they're starting to form a little bit but even then it's more so based off of family ties, streets that you live on, who you grew up around things like that, around who you decide to, you know, center yourself around, like with, sometimes even the high school that people went to if they associated themselves with the wrong people in high school.

Keondra Carter:

There were people from the other side of the city coming over and they're dealing with stuff and I think one of the interesting things about this is the way that you you mentioned the way you made it out the hood was through education and I would say, like, similarly, like coming from a certain lifestyle, like living in louisiana, the people you know, my cousins, my family members, like my, a lot of people in my family didn't graduate high school, much less going to college, that I'm going to be one of the first in my family to graduate college and I will be the first in my family to go to law school. So, seeing that the way to make it out the hood is educating yourself and it might not be a formal education but, you know, taking off the mask of history and really standing and staring and seeing what is holding you back Isn't necessarily that person that you interacted with in high school or the person down the street that you know you don don't like the. The thing holding you back is in the united states, in white supremacy, most likely, and taking like to get out the hood. You have to take off the hood of history. You know you have to sit there and stare in the eye, but it's.

Keondra Carter:

It's interesting because that's what they're attacking so much with this new administration is education, diversity, equity and inclusion, critical race theory. These things are things that people will use to stare history in the face without a hood on it, and actually stare at it for what it is, and that is white supremacy. So it's interesting to see. You know, it feels like the hoods are coming back off in politics. It feels like people are more blatant with it, and it's scary to see where we will end up in the future. But that's all we have for y'all today. You know we could go on a couple tangents. So I'm Keandra and I'm Santi, and thank you all for listening. Reggie B.