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MICHEL DEGRAFF: You know, so
why this hashtag for the course?

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The hashtags, Stay Woke?

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Well I love it,
because in a way,

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it's one of these phrases that
take a very complex concept,

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and that makes that accessible
to the larger public.

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Because Stay Woke
is a way to talk

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about critical consciousness.

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And what we've seen
in the past elections

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is this increase of
quote-unquote "fake news."

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And one thing which
I've been trying

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to share with the students is
that this concept of fake news

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isn't at all a new phenomenon.

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So in fact, if you
look at the way

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history is taught in the US--

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if you look at, say, Howard
Zinn's book about history--

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it tells us how
our history books

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are filled with fake news.

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So the point is that, it's not
just fake news that's fake.

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And what the students get
to see through, for example,

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the Haitian revolution is
that, in the textbooks,

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most of them-- actually,
almost all of them, maybe,

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except for one or two--

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they got to learn
lots of details

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about the French Revolution.

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And then the
American Revolution.

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So they know all the
things about that.

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But almost none of
them knew about Haiti.

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But if you think of
what revolution means,

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this revolution has
had much more impact

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when it comes to human
rights, civil liberties,

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than both the US revolution
and the French one.

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And the question that I
ask them is, why is it

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that they went through
the elementary school,

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the high school, some of them
most of the college years,

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without ever hearing about
the Haitian revolution?

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Right?

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Which, in fact, it has
been much more potent

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than both the French
one and the US one.

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And to me, that was a great way
to introduce to them the idea

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that, you have to stay woke.

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You have to
understand why history

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is being taught in such a biased
way, that excludes the one

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revolution that actually
allowed this concept of equality

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among all human
beings to become true.

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Because both in
France, and in the US,

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when they were claiming liberty,
equality, fraternity, there

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were still people
who were in chains.

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You know, in fact, blacks
were still in slavery.

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Women couldn't vote.

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It's only in Haiti that
revolution took its

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really meaning in really
changing the world order.

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And in creating this
possibility for all human beings

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to be equal.

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But yet, it's not taught
in the classroom in the US.

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And to me, that's one of the
most blatant cases of fake news

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that's become so much a
part of the way children

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are educated in the US.

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So Stay Woke means to be alert
to this kind of propaganda that

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passes for history.

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That's Stay Woke.

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And of course, we
look at other examples

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where they,
themselves, participate

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in these hierarchies of
knowledge that actually

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subserve hierarchies of power.

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That's Stay Woke.