Stop Calling It Supremacy — It’s Terrorism | Part 6: Slavery Never Ended

Stop Calling It Supremacy — It’s Terrorism | Part 6: Slavery Never Ended

We'd love to hear from you. Send us your questions, comments, and suggestions. [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2464633/fan_mail/new]  In Chapter 6 of the series, Chisom turns to the Black American experience itself and argues that it is not a closed chapter of history but the longest-running case of white terrorism on earth. The claim is that slavery in America never ended, it changed clothes, renaming itself in every generation while the line of control ran unbroken from the first slave ship to the prison farm in 2026. It opens on Angola, the eighteen-thousand-acre former plantation in Louisiana where Black men still pick crops by hand under armed guard for as little as two cents an hour, by the authority of the single clause in the Thirteenth Amendment that abolished slavery except as a punishment for crime. It traces the unbroken line through chattel slavery, the Black Codes, convict leasing, sharecropping and debt peonage, lynching and massacre, Jim Crow, the Great Migration and redlining, the Civil Rights Movement, and mass incarceration, naming what each form was. It sets the record precisely: the four million enslaved people worth more in 1860 than all the country’s banks, railroads, and factories combined, the Colfax massacre of 1873 and the gutting of its convictions in United States v. Cruikshank, the Equal Justice Initiative’s count of at least two thousand racial terror lynching's under Reconstruction and more than four thousand between 1877 and 1950, and the coups and massacres at Wilmington in 1898, Elaine in 1919, Tulsa in 1921, and Rosewood in 1923.  It reads the present in current figures: the Derenoncourt wealth series showing the gap barely moved from roughly two cents on the dollar at emancipation to about fifteen cents today, incarceration at thirteen percent of the population and roughly thirty-seven percent of the imprisoned, the failed 2024 California Proposition 6 and the revised measure aimed at the 2026 ballot, and the May 2026 federal ruling that left the Angola farm line standing. It holds all of it against the series definition of terrorism, the systematic use of violence to control a population through fear, and shows it meets that definition more completely, and for longer, than any case the series has examined.  It names the counterweight the system could not erase, the people who made American music, American English, and the freedom template every liberation movement now reaches for. It handles the predictable attacks: that slavery existed everywhere, that Black Americans are better off than they would have been in Africa, that comparing prison to slavery is hyperbole, the Black-on-Black crime deflection, the model-minority comparison, the genetic claim, and the question of a Nigerian’s standing to tell the story.  It turns to Africans, on the continent and in the diaspora, to name the bias many carry, where it was learned, and the debt owed to the people whose movement opened the door African immigrants walked through. It closes by turning the Three Clarities directly toward Black Americans to honour them for their work and ongoing contributions. Support the show [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2464633/support] ----------------------------------- On Overnight Wisdom, new solo episodes drop every Wednesday, with occasional guest and solo conversations released on Sundays. Streaming & Social Links Visit our website https://overnightwisdom.com/ [https://overnightwisdom.com/] YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@Chisom-Udeze [https://www.youtube.com/@Chisom-Udeze] Spotify https://open.spotify.com/show/5pD7OuPqWKDsd5ymoo7lSz [https://open.spotify.com/show/5pD7OuPqWKDsd5ymoo7lSz] Apple https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/overnight-wisdom/id1804746544 [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/overnight-wisdom/id1804746544] Instagram https://www.instagram.com/overnight.wisdom/ [https://www.instagram.com/overnight.wisdom/] TikTok https://www.tiktok.com/@overnight.wisdom [https://www.tiktok.com/@chisom_udeze] LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/company/overnightwisdom/ [https://www.linkedin.com/company/overnightwisdom/] RSS Feed https://feeds.buzzsprout.com/2464633.rss [https://feeds.buzzsprout.com/2464633.rss] Connect with Chisom on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/chisomudeze/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/chisomudeze/]

Stop Calling It Supremacy — It’s Terrorism | Part 5: The Compound in Black Womanhood

We'd love to hear from you. Send us your questions, comments, and suggestions. [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2464633/fan_mail/new] In Chapter 5 of the series, Chisom turns to what the operating system does when it compounds. The claim is that compounding is multiplicative, not additive: when rac!sm meets patriarchy meets ant!-Blackness, the result is not the sum of three harms but a third condition that neither rac!sm nor patriarchy alone because it produces a structural position so specific that the dominant analyses of either race or gender systematically fail to see it. It names m!sogynoir, Moya Bailey’s 2010 term for the specific contempt that is neither generic m!sogyny nor generic ant!-Blackness, and Patricia Hill Collins’s controlling images, the Mammy, the Jezebel, the Sapphire, the Welfare Queen, the Strong Black Woman trap, as the apparatus by which the compound is administered. It ties the compound back to the series’ through-line: the point where rac!sm, patriarchy, and ant!-Blackness converges on a single body is where white terror!sm does its most concentrated work. It traces a lineage fifty years deep and three continents wide, from the Combahee River Collective in 1977, bell hooks in 1981, Hortense Spillers in 1987, Kimberlé Crenshaw who coined intersectionality in 1989, and Patricia Hill Collins in 1990, to the African and Brazilian Black feminist traditions of Oyěwùmí, Amadiume, Mama, Carneiro, and Gonzalez. It names the adultification of Black girls, the Georgetown research showing that adults perceive Black girls as less innocent and more adult beginning at age five, and the five mechanisms of the assault on Black girlhood. It documents the compound in 2026 across five sites: the US economic compound, the political-violence compound in Brazil with the February 2026 Supreme Court conviction of Marielle Franco’s killers, the gender-based-violence compound in South Africa with the November 2025 national disaster declaration, the postcolonial-state compound across Africa with its child-marriage and economic-exclusion data, and the compound carried by Black queer and trans women. It handles five predictable critiques. It closes by turning Chisom’s Three Clarities framework directly toward Black women: refuse the controlling images, see the system as it is, and build your own tables without waiting for a system that may not change in your lifetime.  Support the show [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2464633/support] ----------------------------------- On Overnight Wisdom, new solo episodes drop every Wednesday, with occasional guest and solo conversations released on Sundays. Streaming & Social Links Visit our website https://overnightwisdom.com/ [https://overnightwisdom.com/] YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@Chisom-Udeze [https://www.youtube.com/@Chisom-Udeze] Spotify https://open.spotify.com/show/5pD7OuPqWKDsd5ymoo7lSz [https://open.spotify.com/show/5pD7OuPqWKDsd5ymoo7lSz] Apple https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/overnight-wisdom/id1804746544 [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/overnight-wisdom/id1804746544] Instagram https://www.instagram.com/overnight.wisdom/ [https://www.instagram.com/overnight.wisdom/] TikTok https://www.tiktok.com/@overnight.wisdom [https://www.tiktok.com/@chisom_udeze] LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/company/overnightwisdom/ [https://www.linkedin.com/company/overnightwisdom/] RSS Feed https://feeds.buzzsprout.com/2464633.rss [https://feeds.buzzsprout.com/2464633.rss] Connect with Chisom on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/chisomudeze/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/chisomudeze/]

One Year In — A Reflection on Lessons Learned from Hosting Overnight Wisdom Podcast.

We'd love to hear from you. Send us your questions, comments, and suggestions. [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2464633/fan_mail/new] One year of Overnight Wisdom. Whew! On May 28th, 2026, my podcast turned one. One year of conversations, solo reflections, tech issues, learning in public, and occasionally wondering why I added one more thing to my already full life. Here are 8 things I’ve learned: 1. Start before you are ready. Your first episode does not need to be iconic. It needs to exist. 2. Consistency needs a system. Motivation is cute. Systems are better. 3. Do not be afraid of failing. Say the thing. Learn. Improve. Keep going. 4. Do not build around fantasy guests. Start with people whose work, lives, and stories make you curious. 5. Protect your energy. Some people will not respond. Some will record and never share. Do not take it personally. Be willing to pivot. 6. Sometimes your niche is not niching. Expand the room. 7. Try solo episodes. If you have a point of view, let people meet your mind directly. 8. Do not be precious. The work will teach you what it wants to become if you are paying attention. One year in, I am still learning, refining, building, and occasionally winging it with confidence and a calendar invite. But I am so glad I started. So if you are reading this and have always wanted to build, something of your own, a business, a project, a piece of art, start with what you have. Start with what you know. Start messy, but start honestly. The work becomes clearer once it exists.  Support the show [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2464633/support] ----------------------------------- On Overnight Wisdom, new solo episodes drop every Wednesday, with occasional guest and solo conversations released on Sundays. Streaming & Social Links Visit our website https://overnightwisdom.com/ [https://overnightwisdom.com/] YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@Chisom-Udeze [https://www.youtube.com/@Chisom-Udeze] Spotify https://open.spotify.com/show/5pD7OuPqWKDsd5ymoo7lSz [https://open.spotify.com/show/5pD7OuPqWKDsd5ymoo7lSz] Apple https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/overnight-wisdom/id1804746544 [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/overnight-wisdom/id1804746544] Instagram https://www.instagram.com/overnight.wisdom/ [https://www.instagram.com/overnight.wisdom/] TikTok https://www.tiktok.com/@overnight.wisdom [https://www.tiktok.com/@chisom_udeze] LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/company/overnightwisdom/ [https://www.linkedin.com/company/overnightwisdom/] RSS Feed https://feeds.buzzsprout.com/2464633.rss [https://feeds.buzzsprout.com/2464633.rss] Connect with Chisom on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/chisomudeze/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/chisomudeze/]

Stop Calling It Supremacy — It’s Terrorism | Part 4: Racism as the Operating System.

We'd love to hear from you. Send us your questions, comments, and suggestions. [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2464633/fan_mail/new] In episode 4 of the series, Chisom turns to the operating system that white terrorism built: racism. The chapter opens with the precise distinction between racial prejudice and racism: prejudice is what individuals carry, racism is what happens when racial prejudice meets systemic power. The chapter traces the construction of race itself across the papal bulls, the Iberian casta system, the English colonial slave codes, the French Code Noir, and the nineteenth-century scientific racism whose biological dressing has been settled as fiction while the political category continues to operate. It marks the May 25, 2026 Pope Leo XIV encyclical apologising for the Holy See’s role in legitimizing slavery, names that Leo did the specific thing his predecessors refused to do, and notes that the bulls have still not been rescinded. It makes the case for anti-Black racism as the foundational case the operating system was built around through three arguments: the economic, the global export, and the intra-racial reproduction in colorism. It names the family of racisms (anti-Indigenous, anti-Arab, anti-Asian, anti-Jewish, anti-Roma) as variants of the same technology, each with its own history and present. It documents anti-Black racism in 2026 globally: Black maternal mortality in the U.S., in the U.K., in Norway; police violence disproportionately of Black Americans, Nahel Merzouk in France, U.K. stop-and-search disparities, and the 6,243 Brazilian police killings in 2024 with 82 percent of victims Black; the Mediterranean border regime and its more than 30,000 dead since 2014; the Dominican Republic’s mass deportations of Haitian-descended people, more than 276,000 in 2024 and more than 379,000 in 2025; and the post-2023 corporate DEI rollback. The episode names five predictable critiques, including the “we have moved on” deflection among many people across continents and racialised groups who claim we live in post-racial, post-sexist, post-homophobic, post-Islamophobic, post-colonial worlds we do not actually live in. The episode locates Chisom as a woman whose children will encounter the operating system in a different form than she did. Support the show [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2464633/support] ----------------------------------- On Overnight Wisdom, new solo episodes drop every Wednesday, with occasional guest and solo conversations released on Sundays. Streaming & Social Links Visit our website https://overnightwisdom.com/ [https://overnightwisdom.com/] YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@Chisom-Udeze [https://www.youtube.com/@Chisom-Udeze] Spotify https://open.spotify.com/show/5pD7OuPqWKDsd5ymoo7lSz [https://open.spotify.com/show/5pD7OuPqWKDsd5ymoo7lSz] Apple https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/overnight-wisdom/id1804746544 [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/overnight-wisdom/id1804746544] Instagram https://www.instagram.com/overnight.wisdom/ [https://www.instagram.com/overnight.wisdom/] TikTok https://www.tiktok.com/@overnight.wisdom [https://www.tiktok.com/@chisom_udeze] LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/company/overnightwisdom/ [https://www.linkedin.com/company/overnightwisdom/] RSS Feed https://feeds.buzzsprout.com/2464633.rss [https://feeds.buzzsprout.com/2464633.rss] Connect with Chisom on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/chisomudeze/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/chisomudeze/]

On Our Shared Humanity, Leadership, & System’s Change — Logan McClure Davda, CEO of TED

We'd love to hear from you. Send us your questions, comments, and suggestions. [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2464633/fan_mail/new] In this episode of Overnight Wisdom, Chisom sits down with Logan McClure Davda, CEO of TED, for a layered conversation on leadership, systems change, joy, motherhood, power, and what it means to remain human while building institutions that shape the world. Logan reflects on her path from mission-driven work in East Africa, to Palantir, the Obama Foundation, and eventually back to TED, where she now leads one of the world’s most influential platforms for ideas. Together, they explore what systems change actually requires, why real impact is rarely the work of one heroic individual, and how ideas travel differently when they are held in community. The conversation moves through the responsibility of platforming difficult perspectives, the need for nuance in a polarized world, the role of TED in climate and democracy work, and the challenge of building spaces where disagreement does not become dehumanization. Chisom and Logan also speak candidly about motherhood, caregiving, joy as resistance, privilege in birth, AI, imposter syndrome, and the discipline of staying grounded when the world feels overwhelming. At its core, this is a conversation about clarity, complexity, and responsibility. What does it mean to lead without losing your humanity? How do we build for the future when we may never sit under the shade of the trees we plant? And how do we keep choosing connection in a world that keeps rewarding division? Support the show [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2464633/support] ----------------------------------- On Overnight Wisdom, new solo episodes drop every Wednesday, with occasional guest and solo conversations released on Sundays. Streaming & Social Links Visit our website https://overnightwisdom.com/ [https://overnightwisdom.com/] YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@Chisom-Udeze [https://www.youtube.com/@Chisom-Udeze] Spotify https://open.spotify.com/show/5pD7OuPqWKDsd5ymoo7lSz [https://open.spotify.com/show/5pD7OuPqWKDsd5ymoo7lSz] Apple https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/overnight-wisdom/id1804746544 [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/overnight-wisdom/id1804746544] Instagram https://www.instagram.com/overnight.wisdom/ [https://www.instagram.com/overnight.wisdom/] TikTok https://www.tiktok.com/@overnight.wisdom [https://www.tiktok.com/@chisom_udeze] LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/company/overnightwisdom/ [https://www.linkedin.com/company/overnightwisdom/] RSS Feed https://feeds.buzzsprout.com/2464633.rss [https://feeds.buzzsprout.com/2464633.rss] Connect with Chisom on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/chisomudeze/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/chisomudeze/]