Speaker 1: Push it. Hey, it's Khalil and Ben. We'll be back
Speaker 1: with our regularly scheduled episode of Some of My Best
Speaker 1: Friends Are in a few weeks. But today we wanted
Speaker 1: to share with you a preview of another podcast we've
Speaker 1: been enjoying. We think you're gonna enjoy it too. The
Speaker 1: show's called Future Hindsight. Host Mila Atmost takes big ideas
Speaker 1: about civic life and democracy and turns them into action
Speaker 1: items for all of us. What you can do beyond
Speaker 1: voting short of running for office. Turns out there are
Speaker 1: so many possibilities. Mila has compelling conversations with public servants,
Speaker 1: nonprofit leaders, lawyers, and experts like activists Cecil Richards, political
Speaker 1: scientist Ian Bremer, and the executive director of Supermajority Amanda
Speaker 1: Brown Lehman Man Khalil I am sold because together they
Speaker 1: tell the story about your power and agency. You'll always
Speaker 1: get a dose of hope and inspiration on how you
Speaker 1: can get involved. The preview we're sharing with you today
Speaker 1: features Ian Haney Lopez, the Chief Justice Earl Warren, Professor
Speaker 1: of Public Law at the University of California, Berkeley and
Speaker 1: author of Merge Left. Haney Lopez focuses on what he
Speaker 1: calls strategic racism. What if racism is a class weapon
Speaker 1: that is rooted in making profit for elites? And if
Speaker 1: that's the case, what are the possible solutions to end
Speaker 1: racism and to win elections. Yeah? I really like this
Speaker 1: episode because there's a part when he fully explains why
Speaker 1: poor white people in this country have everything to gain
Speaker 1: if they can get past the elite manipulation. That alone
Speaker 1: is worth listening to. Let's listen in let's do it
Speaker 1: as we tape this. Primaries in Ohio are heating up,
Speaker 1: and I wanted to play you clips from a couple
Speaker 1: of campaign ads and get your thoughts on them. We're
Speaker 1: going to hear excerpts from ads from jd Vance and
Speaker 1: Josh Mandel, who are among the candidates competing in the
Speaker 1: GOP primary to run for Rob Portman's seat. Let's listen,
Speaker 1: and I'd love to hear your reaction. Are you a racist?
Speaker 1: Do you hate Mexicans? The media calls us racists for
Speaker 1: wanting to build Truck's wall. They censor us, but it
Speaker 1: doesn't change the truth. Joe Biden's open border is killing
Speaker 1: Ohioans with more illegal drugs and more Democrat voters pouring
Speaker 1: into this country. This issue is personal. I nearly lost
Speaker 1: my mother to the boys coming across our border. No
Speaker 1: child should grow up an orphan. I'm JD. Vans, and
Speaker 1: I approve this message because whatever they call us, we
Speaker 1: will put America first. Critical race theory is crap. Martin
Speaker 1: Luther King marsh right here, so skin color wouldn't matter.
Speaker 1: I didn't do two tours and ombar province fighting alongside
Speaker 1: marines of every color to come home and be called
Speaker 1: a racist. There's nothing racist about stopping critical race theory
Speaker 1: and loving America. Josh Mandel pro god, pro gun, pro Trump.
Speaker 1: I'm Josh Mandel, and I approved this message. You want
Speaker 1: a fighter sending the marine. So what do you think?
Speaker 1: This is classic dog whistle politics in the sense that
Speaker 1: it's using rhetoric design to trigger deeply rooted racist resentments
Speaker 1: and anxieties, while allowing people to believe that they are
Speaker 1: not in fact expressing or being stampeded by racist fears
Speaker 1: or anxieties. There's something that's new here, and that is
Speaker 1: the attacks on critical race theory from Mandel Knew. Also
Speaker 1: in the sense of JD. Vance, are you a racist?
Speaker 1: One of the primary messages from the right today is
Speaker 1: that after the mass mobilizations to protest police killings and
Speaker 1: police violence against African Americans in the wake of the
Speaker 1: murder of George Floyd, there's an effort to say people
Speaker 1: who are fighting for racial justice don't actually want justice,
Speaker 1: they want revenge. Be afraid white people, be very very afraid.
Speaker 1: They say they want justice, they don't. They want to
Speaker 1: create a new racial hierarchy that flips the old one
Speaker 1: on its head. And in fact, this is coming straight
Speaker 1: out of the white supremacist movement and the alt right.
Speaker 1: Now a sort of more sanitized version takes as an
Speaker 1: article of faith that racial groups are inevitably in conflict
Speaker 1: and that some racial group must be on top, that
Speaker 1: they're will be a dominant racial group. And the question
Speaker 1: is which racial group will be dominant? And so what
Speaker 1: you here's people like Jade Vans and Josh Mondale using
Speaker 1: that frame essentially to say when people of color talk
Speaker 1: about racial justice, they're not actually interested in equality, they're
Speaker 1: interested in being the new dominant group. Even hear it
Speaker 1: in jd Vance saying Democrats want open borders to bring
Speaker 1: an illegal aliens and to bring in democratic voters. This
Speaker 1: is incredibly extreme to say, hey, this is the great replacement. Dangerous,
Speaker 1: pathologically violent, inferior people are being brought across to replace
Speaker 1: the silent, the hard working, the patriotic, the taxpayers, the responsible,
Speaker 1: highly coded in terms of race. Now, the question is
Speaker 1: what's the effect of response to that. And it's an
Speaker 1: enormous challenge for progressives. If Vans and Mandel are saying, hey,
Speaker 1: white people, they're calling you a racist, and progressives turn
Speaker 1: around and say, hey, Jade Vans, you're a racist, and
Speaker 1: so is anybody votes for you. Hey, Josh Mandel, you're
Speaker 1: a racist. So is anybody who votes for you. Vans
Speaker 1: and Mandel are just going to rub their hands in glee.
Speaker 1: That's what they're hoping for. They want to be called
Speaker 1: racist because it helps them say to their supporters, see,
Speaker 1: I'm not racist, this is just common sense. Of Course
Speaker 1: we should protect our borders. Of course crime is bad.
Speaker 1: But as soon as I say those things, they call
Speaker 1: me a racist, and by implication, they call you a racist.
Speaker 1: Two and Trump actually said this and, responding to some
Speaker 1: of Hillary Clinton's attacks, said she's not just calling me
Speaker 1: a racist, she's calling you a racist too. That's the move.
Speaker 1: That's the racial theater. But here's the important insight. That
Speaker 1: all depends upon a conversation about racism that accepts a
Speaker 1: basic frame of racism is just white people against people
Speaker 1: of color. When you shift the frame, when you begin
Speaker 1: to talk about the way in which race is a
Speaker 1: class weapon used against all of us, then you can
Speaker 1: respond to Vance by saying, Hey, where's your political support
Speaker 1: coming from? Again? Isn't it coming from tech pro billionaires.
Speaker 1: Aren't your policy proposals actually things like cutting social welfare
Speaker 1: and cutting taxes for the very rich. Isn't it true
Speaker 1: that you don't care about most average Ohioans. You really
Speaker 1: care about winning power, And to win power, you are
Speaker 1: willing to stoop these very low depths where you will
Speaker 1: turn Americans against each other, push us to hate each other,
Speaker 1: to fear each other, to fight each other, push racism
Speaker 1: into public culture just so you can win power for
Speaker 1: your dark money donors. That's despicable and same with Josh Mandel.
Speaker 1: This isn't about taking care of the silent majority. This
Speaker 1: is about duping average Americans into thinking that people from
Speaker 1: different countries are the real threat in their lives when
Speaker 1: it's the dark money donors who are rigging the system,
Speaker 1: who are the real threat. It's a completely different political conversation.
Speaker 1: That's the power of race class fusion politics. It allows
Speaker 1: us to respond to Vans and to Mandel not by
Speaker 1: calling them bigots, but by saying you're strategic racists. You're
Speaker 1: running racism as a con and you're calling everybody. You're
Speaker 1: calling people, whether they're black Ohioans or brown Ohioans or
Speaker 1: white Ohioans, you are the sort of person who would
Speaker 1: promote racial strife for your own profit. How low is that?
Speaker 1: Where are the places or moments or the politicians who
Speaker 1: communicate in this way where you see who really call
Speaker 1: out the dog whistling as a con, where you see
Speaker 1: race class fusion politics already at work and succeeding among politicians.
Speaker 1: You could look at twenty eighteen in Minnesota. Minnesota had
Speaker 1: a grassroots coalition of religious groups and labor groups who
Speaker 1: very early on appreciated the power of a race class
Speaker 1: fusion to deal with dog whistles a against immigrants and
Speaker 1: African Americans in Minneapolis Saint Paul, but also to build
Speaker 1: political power between those constituencies and rural Minnesota, which is
Speaker 1: overwhelmingly white, they started using race class fusion. Really a
Speaker 1: brilliant campaign that talked about Minnesota's being greater than fear,
Speaker 1: and the brilliance there was one a very pithy statement,
Speaker 1: right when politicians warn about dangerous immigrants or terrorists, that
Speaker 1: they're pandering to fear, and we're greater than that. So
Speaker 1: greater than fear really captured this idea like we're not
Speaker 1: going to be fearful of each other. We are onto
Speaker 1: the Khan by these politicians. That was one. The other
Speaker 1: thing that was so clever about this was Greater Minnesota
Speaker 1: was the phrase people used in Minnesota to distinguish rural
Speaker 1: Minnesota from the cities, and so it was really a
Speaker 1: way of saying this race class fusion, this is designed
Speaker 1: to create a multiracial majority that includes white people. So
Speaker 1: often when Democrats or progressives talk about a multiracial movement,
Speaker 1: it's as if they mean a multiracial movement of communities
Speaker 1: of color. And it's very important to remind white people
Speaker 1: you're part of a multiracial society. You can be part
Speaker 1: of a multiracial majority, and indeed, we will only have
Speaker 1: an empowered multiracial majority when whites see themselves as equal
Speaker 1: and welcome members of that multiracial movement. So that's one
Speaker 1: place I think the other places you can see it. Increasingly,
Speaker 1: labor unions like SCIU have moved to this intentional effort
Speaker 1: to create multiracial worker solidarity by emphasizing to workers that
Speaker 1: racism is a weapon of division used by bosses. So
Speaker 1: one thing that labor has historically done is it says
Speaker 1: racism is a weapon of the bosses. Therefore, let's focus
Speaker 1: only on our shared class interests. Race class is doing
Speaker 1: something different. It's saying racism is a weapon of the bosses. Therefore,
Speaker 1: let's focus on racism and building cross racial solidarity so
Speaker 1: that we can achieve our economic and racial justice interests.
Speaker 1: One question I have is that you know, we have
Speaker 1: been building up to this moment for over fifty years,
Speaker 1: and now we're at a precipice of democracy, right we
Speaker 1: are in danger of losing democracy itself. And it feels
Speaker 1: as though, you know, the clock is really ticking down
Speaker 1: pretty fast, and what you're saying is something that we
Speaker 1: can use right now, but I feel like it's going
Speaker 1: to take time. Nonetheless, can we speed this up, especially
Speaker 1: in light of the twenty two minute term elections. I
Speaker 1: think you're right that there's an immediate crisis looming the
Speaker 1: twenty twenty two elections than the twenty twenty four elections.
Speaker 1: I think we are on a precipice and we risk
Speaker 1: losing democracy and collapsing into an authoritarianism from which we
Speaker 1: might not recover for decades. In some ways, politicians, political consultants,
Speaker 1: that whole consulting class, they're extremely cautious. They want to
Speaker 1: get to fifty percent plus one. They want to do
Speaker 1: whatever is safest that will get them there. That means
Speaker 1: that they're going to do the same thing they've been
Speaker 1: doing for the last fifty years. But that's insanity. We
Speaker 1: are not in a steady state. Things are getting worse,
Speaker 1: and they've gotten much much worse, very rapidly. And if
Speaker 1: Democrats keep responding by saying, well, we'll do what we've
Speaker 1: done for the last fifty years, we are going to
Speaker 1: go off of that cliff. What's going to get them
Speaker 1: to change. It's going to be their constituents. It's going
Speaker 1: to be people organizing house parties and making calls and
Speaker 1: making demands and organizing discussion groups. It's going to have
Speaker 1: to come from people listening to this now, it's going
Speaker 1: to have to come from folks who love democracy, who
Speaker 1: love society, who look at their neighbors and right to
Speaker 1: have a sense of like, I'm connected to these folks.
Speaker 1: I want to make sure I live in a society
Speaker 1: in which we respect each other, and people have dignity,
Speaker 1: and we trust each other, and we take care of
Speaker 1: each other, and we try and protect each other, especially
Speaker 1: from the reactionary, powerful few who cynically try and turn
Speaker 1: us against each other. And we have to talk about
Speaker 1: the way in which division has been weaponized against us.
Speaker 1: We have to talk about the class war that we
Speaker 1: have been losing for decades. And we're going to insist
Speaker 1: that we build power with our neighbors, and that we
Speaker 1: go and grab our political representatives by the lapels and
Speaker 1: say you need to talk about this too. You need
Speaker 1: to help us build power with each other so that
Speaker 1: government actually begins to work for the vast majority of
Speaker 1: Americans and not simply for the ultra rich.