Why Michael Harriot’s History of America is “Black AF”
What happens when a Black storyteller subverts the white supremacist cultural lens through which history is told? For example, what if, rather than “intrepid conquerors,” the first white settlers of the United States were more accurately viewed as “incompetent thieving cannibals”? That’s the kind of approach to history that acclaimed journalist and historian Michael Harriot adopts in his new book, Black AF History: The Un-Whitewashed Story of America.
Harriot is host of the podcast Drapetomaniax: Unshackled History and a columnist at TheGrio, where he covers the intersection of race, politics, and culture. He spoke with YES! Racial Justice Editor Sonali Kolhatkar on YES Presents: Rising Up With Sonali about his new book.
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Sonali Kolhatkar
joined YES! in summer 2021, building on a long and decorated career in broadcast and print journalism. She is an award-winning multimedia journalist, and host and creator of YES! Presents: Rising Up with Sonali, a nationally syndicated television and radio program airing on Free Speech TV and dozens of independent and community radio stations. She is also Senior Correspondent with the Independent Media Institute’s Economy for All project where she writes a weekly column. She is the author of Rising Up: The Power of Narrative in Pursuing Racial Justice (2023) and Bleeding Afghanistan: Washington, Warlords, and the Propaganda of Silence (2005). Her forthcoming book is called Talking About Abolition (Seven Stories Press, 2025). Sonali is co-director of the nonprofit group, Afghan Women’s Mission which she helped to co-found in 2000. She has a Master’s in Astronomy from the University of Hawai’i, and two undergraduate degrees in Physics and Astronomy from the University of Texas at Austin. Sonali reflects on “My Journey From Astrophysicist to Radio Host” in her 2014 TEDx talk of the same name.
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