“It all started from stuntin’.” Many of the items we use each day were created by Black people but were stolen and patented by White Americans. Michael Harriot clarifies why that practice was so common and explains that it still happens today, it’s just been rebranded.
Full transcript below:
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Michael Harriot [00:00:05] When we talk about how white people take a TikTok dance and become famous or how they like to, you know, say they created stuff they didn’t like rock and roll and jazz and any kind of American culture. Or when we talk about the actual theft of intellectual property, we like to refer to it as cultural appropriation or intellectual theft. But what it really is, is colonizing. And that’s why I want to welcome you to theGrio Daily, the only podcast that will tell you why appropriation is just another word for colonizing.
Michael Harriot [00:00:49] So to understand the idea of intellectual property, you got to go way back. Right. So you got to think about like when white people first learned how to do things like science and math and philosophy. Right. You talk about those Greek and Roman philosophers. They went over to Africa and, you know, learned stuff. Right. Because you know why. Anyway, the idea back then was that owning ideas was foreign. Right. The idea that one person could own a concept or idea or principle of science, that was weird, right? Because you don’t build a society that way. It’s an effective way to build a society. And so they had no problem sharing it with each other. And I’m not saying the Black people didn’t. I’m saying the white people didn’t either. Right. Because, like, when you think about Socrates and Plato and you know, those white people from ancient antiquity that we think of as the first scientists and mathematicians and philosophers, what they really were known for were teaching. Right. Like they taught other people. Socrates taught Plato, you know. So it was common to share ideas because nobody could really own an idea. And that was true in all cultures since the beginning of time. Until about the 1300s in Europe, people, aristocrats started coming up with an idea on how they can basically stunt. Like it all started from stuntin’, right? So these powerful aristocrats began granting monopolies. It first started with glass. Right.
Michael Harriot [00:02:31] So a glassmaker would figure out a new process that made this color or beautiful kind of glass. And the aristocrats would say, Put it in my house and I’ll grant you a monopoly on your process. And like what? I could own the idea. Like, Yeah, but you got to put some in my kitchen. And so there were these monopolies. Well, they didn’t call them monopolies. They called them patents. And so the idea of owning an idea began. And then when people came to America, they had an idea on how they could colonize land with patents. Oh, no, they didn’t create land. They just stole it. Right. They just stole it from the people who were living here. And they said, we’re going to patent this because they didn’t know how to do stuff. So the king of England said, Hey, if you bring some people over here who know how to do stuff, I’ll give you a patent on this land. For every person you bring over yet will give you 50 acres. They were commonly known as head rights, but officially they were called land patents. And these patent offices began in the colonies. And they emerged because a guy named George Menefee in 1638 realized they wait. If I think just bring over people and get 50 acres of land, I can bring over slaves, make them broke the land, never let them go and I get 50 acres. So George Menefee got 300 partners for 30 Negroes that I brought out of Africa is what the document stated. Right. And that’s how America expanded.
Michael Harriot [00:04:14] Well, that same idea applied to intellectual property when Thomas Edison invented the lightbulb. Wait, no. Thomas Edison didn’t invent the light bulb. The light bulb that, you know, that’s probably in your house right now was invented by a guy named Lewis Latimer who didn’t patent his idea. And we’ll get to that. And then Thomas Edison patented. So he colonized the light bulb invention. One of the greatest invent just mechanical reaper. It wasn’t invented by the white dude, McCormick, who called it and as we know it, the McCormick Reaper, nah, a Black enslaved person named Sam, invented it. Same thing with the cotton gin. You know, Eli Whitney didn’t invent the cotton gin. The cotton gin existed before Eli Whitney even saw it. When he saw it, he realized the slaves had created something, but he could colonize their idea. Well how to decolonize the idea? Now here’s the key. When Eli Whitney and all of those inventors filed their pads, you had to take an oath. And that also basically said, I swear that I invented this and I swear that I am a citizen of the United States. Now, later, the patent oath was expanded to include every country. So you just had to swear that you are a citizen of whatever country you were from and that you invented the thing. Except in 1850 the Supreme Court of the United States ruled in the Dred Scott decision that Black people were essentially not citizens, that Black people had, quote, no right which the white man was bound to respect. And they were not citizens. And because they were not citizens, they could not take the patent. So anything they created was open to be stolen by a white person. And of course, it was.
Michael Harriot [00:06:16] So the first case we know of was a guy who invented what they call the double cotton scraper. So instead of picking cotton, this guy invented a machine that could go down a roll of cotton and pick the cotton on either side. Now, what this machine would do was decrease the need from four enslaved people and one man on a horse, to just one person. Right. Some people even conjectured that this could have, like, ended the economic need for enslaved people, especially in cotton production. Well, the enslaved person’s master file for a patent. The enslaved person’s name was Ned. Ned’s master filed for a patent, and the attorney general of the United States had to kind of figure out, well, can a master or a slave invent things? And he wrote a decision called Can a Negro Invent Things? And what he said was, No, you can’t, because Black people make citizens. So Ned never got a patent for the double cotton scraper. And across the country, enslaved people lost the right to invent things. And the masters would colonize them, because they owned everything.
Michael Harriot [00:07:44] Even to this day. Right. The ideas that come out of our heads want our property. They are able to take them because not only have they colonized the idea of theft. They have colonized the process for which things are given rights. So when you have an idea, even if you can prove it, it still belongs to whoever officially files for the copyright or the trademark or the patent. And if it ain’t you, you don’t win, you don’t get to keep that idea, that idea is technically not yours. Because the process of patenting things, of copyrighting things, of trademarking things is a process of colonizing, not a process of determining who owns things. Just like that land was. We knew it belonged to the Native Americans. But we create a whole process to patent land. We created a whole process to paint inventions. As a matter of fact, as an addendum, the reason Thomas Edison is credited as a great inventor is because he hired a Black person. He hired a Black person who couldn’t become a lawyer and he couldn’t invent things. And that Black man was a great inventor. But Thomas Edison hired him and taught him to file patents. And that man became one of the greatest finders of patents in the U.S. He eventually went to work for a corporation. And that man was Lewis Latimer, the man who actually invented the light bulb that Thomas Edison is credited for. And if a light bulb is going off over your head, that means, you know, we come to the end of this episode. So you got to tell your friends about this podcast. That means you got to subscribe on whatever platform you listen to podcasts on. That means you also have to download that Grio app. And you know what that also means? It means we got to leave you with a say. And today’s saying is, “Necessity is the mother of invention, but whiteness is a motherfucker.” We’ll see you next time on theGrio Daily. If you like what you heard, please give us a five star review. Download theGrio and subscribe to the show and to share it with everyone you know. Please email all questions, suggestions and compliments to podcasts at theGrio dot com.
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