San Diego Native Wins MacArthur 'Genius' Grant

Speaker 1: 00:00 It's an award given to those who have shown extraordinary originality and dedication in their creative pursuits rooted in purpose. It's called the MacArthur genius grant, $625,000 paying over five years and investment into each recipient's potential. Kelly Lidell Hernandez, who was raised right here in San Diego and is now a history professor at UCLA is one of 26 people to receive the award this year, which includes artists, novelists, doctors, and more. Lidell Hernandez is being recognized for her work to put race, incarceration and deportations under the light of historical context. She joins us to talk about it. Professor Lidell Hernandez, welcome and congratulations to you. Thank you very much and thanks for having me on. You know, when you found out you had received this award, how did it happen and what was that moment like for you? Speaker 2: 00:55 Well, I was on the UCLA campus walking between meetings and I was getting some phone calls from Chicago from a number I didn't recognize and I picked it up and someone hung up on me immediately. And then they called back and said, is this Kelly Lidell Hernandez? We have to speak to you. And they asked if I was in private now. I said, no, not yet. Give me a moment. And I found a seat and you know, they let me know that I had been selected as a MacArthur fellow. And I went breathless. I went limp, I lost the ability to speak. This is something that fell out of the heavens and really took the wind out of me. Speaker 1: 01:32 Wow. And some of our listeners may also be familiar with your father's Cecil Lidell, a classic pianist and a you CSD provost emeritus. Uh, how'd you tell him about all this? Oh, that's right. Of course, my dad was Speaker 2: 01:48 the first person I thought of and I called him immediately, just so thankful for the life that he was able to build for me with my mother in San Diego. So thankful for all the support he's always given me. He's just always been my greatest champion. And so I shared the news with him immediately and we rejoiced and we cried and we hollered and we were disbelief together. Speaker 1: 02:13 Wow. And of course we know you grew up right here in San Diego during the 1980s and what was it about this area of the country and your eighties childhood that inspired you to be a historian? Speaker 2: 02:27 [inaudible] well, all San Diego residents who were living in the area prior to operation gatekeeper and operation hold the line certainly will recall that the presence of the U S border patrol was, um, far more common in our communities, on our streets, um, at schools and transit stations. And for me it was very impactful to see the men in green snatching people off of the streets, um, lost far too many friends and neighbors to deportation. And that was really a terrorizing experience even for myself. I don't come from an immigrant community, but to exist and to grow up in that environment in which the removal of human beings is so normalized, um, was deeply impactful for me. And I also saw it and it resonated for me as a young black youth growing up during the war on drugs and we were disappearing. We were being set on curves, put on gang databases, taken into the local jail system, um, called up on, um, various violations. And so I saw what was happening to Mexicans through the border patrol to the lens of what was happening to black youth through the police and wanted to figure out how these stories were connected. And I have to say the last 20 years of my career, I've been dedicated to unraveling these questions that I had as a child in San Diego in the 1980s. Speaker 1: 03:51 Hmm. And you know, you've written several books, one of course on the history of border enforcement and another on incarceration in Los Angeles. Looking back on your work, what's the biggest lesson you've learned about how the nation built these systems? Specifically in the West? Speaker 2: 04:06 It's all about race. That is what I have learned, um, that border enforcement, immigration control is a story of race and labor control over the course of the 20th century. And of course as so much scholarship and organizing has taught us the rise of mass incarceration is, um, the extension of histories coming out of enslavement coming out of colonization in the American West. And so if we really want to get serious about what people call comprehensive immigration reform or comprehensive criminal justice reform, we are going to have to get very serious and have hard conversations about race and resources and the reallocation of power in this country. Speaker 1: 04:49 And you've had to create your own archives for your work. The rebel archives. Tell us about that. Speaker 2: 04:55 Sure. The rebel archive I'm in my work is two things. One, I greatly rely upon the work of people who have rebelled against systems of policing and incarceration across time. All of their activities, all of their words, every piece of evidence of their labors that they left behind is what I have gathered up over decades. Um, use to build what I call the rebel archive. The words and the deeds of the people who ever build. But the rebel archive is also a set of documents that I've gathered from across the country and around the world. In fact, um, that have escaped police destruction. Um, law enforcement tends to destroy their records very quickly, very seamlessly. We're certainly see this, seeing this happen in the state of California now with the officer involved shooting files that were recently required to be released to the public. Some Lea as law enforcement agencies have decided to destroy them instead. So I have gone around up these records, um, in forgotten boxes or winning them through litigation to make sure that they see the light of day so the historians can tell the story so that the public can inquire into the activities of law enforcement. Look, they have the power of the violence of the state that they can wield against ordinary people. And it is absolutely vital that we have the, the right and the capacity and the access and the transparency to see how that work is done. Speaker 1: 06:26 And why is it, why is challenging these narratives so important and what really drives your work? What drives my work Speaker 2: 06:36 is a freedom dream that I have and I share and I work on with so many organizers and advocates and activists that I, since the time I was a child and certainly taught by my father and my aunts and everybody understand that we're living in a particular moment on a long arc of time and four peoples of African descent for indigenous folks, for nonwhite immigrants, that long arc time, long arc of time has been filled with struggle. We continue to live in these struggles. We, if there has been some movement, some improvements, but it's really that freedom struggle coming out of the transatlantic slave trade out of colonization in the Americas. We're still trying to get the boot off of our chest. And so it's that campaign that so many people have waged over centuries that keeps me inspired to do this kind of work. And the historical narratives are vital because how we understand the past is how we see our present and it's what helps us to imagine and even re-imagine the futures that we can build together. So I've taken getting up this work, um, in terms of unmasking untold histories about the collisions of racial violence in the American West against native black and nonwhite immigrant communities and the work that we have collectively done to fight back, to survive, to dance with that oppression and even to create spaces of liberation. Speaker 1: 08:14 And as a historian, I'm wondering what this moment today in history feels like to you? It feels like 1896. Speaker 2: 08:23 Um, I don't mean to laugh at that or, um, to diminish it in any means, but we certainly are in the middle of a race war that, um, echoes back a moment of Plessy V Ferguson to the moment of the creation of, um, immigrant detention. Um, both of which were solidified in us law on May 17th, 1896 by the United States Supreme court. And we have a president in powered right now who I would argue is someone is a strong advocate. I'm a silent get boisterous advocate of these types of policies and practices who was trying to resurrect an America that many of us thought that we had, um, taken Stu two steps back from. And so I'm deeply troubled by this moment that we live in. Um, the border is really just a euphemism for race. The war on crime is really just a new mechanism for anti-black, um, policies and practices. And, uh, we have taken some steps backward in the last few years, but of course this is also stirred the rebel archive, which is hard at work. Um, and you can see that organizing at the immigrant detention centers now inside prisons, outside of prisons for now, first beginnings are seriously talk about prison abolition in this country. Um, so I still have great hope that the rebel archive will at the end of the day, uh, be victorious. Speaker 1: 10:04 That in mind as part of the award, you'll receive a pretty large financial stipend over the next several years. Uh, do you know what you'll do with it yet? Speaker 2: 10:14 Well, I'm straight still dreaming about this. I'm not quite sure. I want to make sure that I steward this investment well. So I'm taking my time and thinking it through carefully. But when my mind keeps coming back to is the need for myself and for others to find the time and to find the space to write. Um, we are so active right now. Um, the rebels are hard at work, pushing back against this new tide of white supremacy. I would like to be able to find and help to create some new respite and spaces for these organizers and myself to be able to write about, to write our stories and to write back against the regime. Speaker 1: 10:53 I've been speaking with Kelly Lidell Hernandez via Skype. She is a professor of history, African American studies and urban planning at UCLA and one of this year's 26 MacArthur genius grant fellows. Professor Lidell Hernandez. Thank you so much. And congratulations again. Thank you for having me on. Speaker 3: 11:15 [inaudible].