Speaker 1: You're listening to Comedy Central. So lovely to have you here.
Speaker 1: It's wonderful to be here. Thank you, thank You're so
Speaker 1: happy to have you here. So UM, I want to
Speaker 1: get your titles right because last year you passed on
Speaker 1: the mantel of President and Director Council of the n
Speaker 1: double A CP Legal Defense Fund. Yes, now, how hard
Speaker 1: is it to leave that job because you can't go, well,
Speaker 1: my work is done, because there's so much more work
Speaker 1: to do. You know, it was hard. I love the
Speaker 1: Legal Defense Funds where I started my career, and I
Speaker 1: love the work, and um, I feel like I was
Speaker 1: made for that position. But I also feel like, um,
Speaker 1: I let it at the right moment. You know that
Speaker 1: that almost ten years that I let the organization was
Speaker 1: right for me. And I really believe transition as part
Speaker 1: of leadership. I think, especially in the civil rights space,
Speaker 1: sometimes we we hold on a little too long, and
Speaker 1: I think it's healthy for our organizations when we passed
Speaker 1: that mantle. And fortunately for me, I had an amazing deputy,
Speaker 1: jan A Nelson who's now the head of the organization,
Speaker 1: and I know that she can continue the work well.
Speaker 1: And I have things I want to do. Um, because
Speaker 1: the work is not finished. Okay, yes, and you said that, Uh,
Speaker 1: well you've said that if you were in the private
Speaker 1: sector that you would be able to cover of Forbes magazine. Well,
Speaker 1: nonprofits get you know, we don't get we don't get
Speaker 1: no respect. When does the Rodney Dantaville used to say,
Speaker 1: and that, Um, it's very hard to do this job.
Speaker 1: And in addition to doing the substantive work, you're a
Speaker 1: business leader, you're leading a staff. I mean I grew
Speaker 1: LDF five times the size it was in staff, in budget,
Speaker 1: in endowment. Um. And that's not not a small thing.
Speaker 1: And you know, I think if you're if you're running
Speaker 1: a for profit company and you do that, you know,
Speaker 1: people consider you a financial wizard and a superstar. And
Speaker 1: I think I was a superstars. Um. And so I
Speaker 1: think it's important to say it. But does the nonprofit
Speaker 1: allow you to do more of the type of work
Speaker 1: that you want to do, like to achieve the goals
Speaker 1: that you want, or like, could you do that the
Speaker 1: same work like in the privacy No. I mean when
Speaker 1: I was a little girl, I wanted to become a
Speaker 1: civil rights lawyer. That's what I wanted. I wanted to
Speaker 1: be in a position where I could strategically confront issues
Speaker 1: of inequality and injustice wherever they are, however they appear.
Speaker 1: Sometimes that means, you know that we sue corporations, sometimes
Speaker 1: we sue states, sometimes we sue cities, um. And so
Speaker 1: the nonprofit space allows us to be you know, independent,
Speaker 1: We don't take any money from government, and that allows
Speaker 1: us to do whatever we have to do. Because you know,
Speaker 1: racism and white supremacy is a complex structure and if
Speaker 1: you want to get at it structurally, you have to
Speaker 1: be able to meet it where those structures are kind
Speaker 1: of manifesting the injustice. And you don't want to be
Speaker 1: restricted in that who gave you money or um. You know,
Speaker 1: by the rules of government. You want to be able
Speaker 1: to really get at it. So I love being in
Speaker 1: the nonprofit sector. I just want us to feel worthy
Speaker 1: of the kind of respect that people get in the
Speaker 1: for profit sector for all the aspects of what we do,
Speaker 1: and in fact, we do a little bit, we do
Speaker 1: a lot with a little bit and um, and we
Speaker 1: do it gladly and joyfully because of our commitment to
Speaker 1: the work. So it's just I love the nonprofit world,
Speaker 1: and I particularly love the nonprofit civil rights world. And
Speaker 1: but now it's time to get paid. So this is
Speaker 1: what I want to um. Right now, on the Supreme Court,
Speaker 1: they're they're here in a case about a firmative action
Speaker 1: in college. This keeps coming up over and over again,
Speaker 1: Like why do you think you know, we're still having
Speaker 1: this battle. Yeah, it's quite interesting, you know. Uh so
Speaker 1: I'm a litigator, and and most litigators lawyers know that
Speaker 1: if you're going to take a case up to the
Speaker 1: Supreme Court, you're bound by president. If the Supreme Court
Speaker 1: has decided that issue before and has decided it one way,
Speaker 1: it's very hard to get the Court to reverse course.
Speaker 1: It happens, but it's hard to do, and you have
Speaker 1: to really have a reason for why you think at
Speaker 1: this moment the Court should reverse course. Um. But this
Speaker 1: Court has been doing it quite a bit at a
Speaker 1: brisk clip. Um. And you know, obviously we know the
Speaker 1: Dobb's decision overturned Row versus Weight, a fifty year old decision,
Speaker 1: and affirmative action as well. I mean, it's not as
Speaker 1: though the Court is not deciding affirmative action over and
Speaker 1: over again. This is like, you know, you just keep
Speaker 1: going to you get the court, you want UM. In
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy nine, in the Backey case, affirmative action in
Speaker 1: college admissions was challenged and upheld. It was upheld again
Speaker 1: then in the Grutter case out of University of Michigan,
Speaker 1: then in again in the Fisher case University of Texas,
Speaker 1: and after the University of Texas lost, the man who
Speaker 1: has been behind this whole effort basically said, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: using a kind of a clue from the descent of
Speaker 1: Justices Thomas and Alito, I think I need Asian American plaintiffs.
Speaker 1: And he said about crafting a set of of claims
Speaker 1: that UM raised conscious admissions is actually discriminatory against Asian Americans.
Speaker 1: And that's the claim that he had brought uh in
Speaker 1: in in Harvard at Harvard, and that's the case that's
Speaker 1: now before the Supreme Court. But should the Supreme Court
Speaker 1: be hearing this again when they just heard it in
Speaker 1: and before that, just heard it in two thousand two
Speaker 1: and before that just you know, but um, it's a
Speaker 1: new court, right And so basically you have somebody who
Speaker 1: keeps coming back and now they have the court they want, Okay,
Speaker 1: but this scares me about the court. Though the Court
Speaker 1: we have now right, I mean, it's the Supreme Court
Speaker 1: has really been our only recourse for justice. I mean
Speaker 1: pretty much everything that we've gotten as far as rights
Speaker 1: right has been based a decision from the Supreme Court.
Speaker 1: Now everything, like like you said, has been overturned. What
Speaker 1: do we do now, how do we get past this court? Well,
Speaker 1: I think actually it's a sober and sobering moment for
Speaker 1: us to recognized that although I think many of us
Speaker 1: grew up in a period of time where we believe
Speaker 1: that it's in fact not true, it is true that
Speaker 1: the Court decided Brown versus Board of Education, which ended
Speaker 1: legal apartheid in this country and really changed American democracy.
Speaker 1: And there's been many other Civil Rights Division decisions from
Speaker 1: the Court that have been wonderful. Most of them have
Speaker 1: not been wonderful actually, um, in the history of the
Speaker 1: United States Supreme Court, and so we've always had to
Speaker 1: supplement it with legislative action with the Civil Rights Act
Speaker 1: of nineteen sixty four, with the Voting Rights Act of
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty five, with the Fair Housing Act of nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty eight. UM, we've had to supplement it with direct
Speaker 1: action with protests, with Boycott's We've had to supplement it
Speaker 1: with education, We've had to supplement it in all kinds
Speaker 1: of ways, and so it's always been a multi pronged strategy.
Speaker 1: The problem we have now, though, is that the Court
Speaker 1: seems been on dismantling the successes we make in those
Speaker 1: other realms. And so we see that with, for example,
Speaker 1: the Voting Rights Act, which has been severely weakened, you know,
Speaker 1: by this Supreme Court. That's where we have to really
Speaker 1: start to get worried, and it is a real problem. Um.
Speaker 1: It is not something to be taken lightly. And it's
Speaker 1: not just a partisan battle, as many people think. I've
Speaker 1: been a civil rights lawyer for thirty years. You win someone,
Speaker 1: you lose some. The rule of law is that you
Speaker 1: abide by what the court says and does. But you
Speaker 1: do that with the knowledge that the Court is behaving
Speaker 1: fairly and with integrity and legitimately. And when you start
Speaker 1: feeling like um decisions are being made without the proper foundation,
Speaker 1: then it gets very hard to convince your clients that
Speaker 1: it's a fair system. And so I think we are
Speaker 1: in a kind of perilous moment um as it relates
Speaker 1: to the Court. Before you go, you said something I
Speaker 1: want to get to, um that you said, our democracy,
Speaker 1: we're it's like a teenage We're teenagers, just are We're young.
Speaker 1: It's like teenagers. So what democracy is staying up all
Speaker 1: night on Snapchat and what's up there? You know? I mean, yes,
Speaker 1: like teenagers who think they know everything, who have a
Speaker 1: grandiose sense of themselves, who throw tantrums. Yes we we are.
Speaker 1: I mean, if you think about American democracy, at least
Speaker 1: for me, I wouldn't count America as a democracy as
Speaker 1: certainly as a nation, but not as a democracy until
Speaker 1: at least nineteen fifty four, when Brown was decided, Because
Speaker 1: you can't call a country a democracy if um, by law,
Speaker 1: If by law, a whole segment of citizens can be
Speaker 1: denied the right to participate in the political system. So
Speaker 1: that's just, and that's being pretty generous. That's nineteen fifty four.
Speaker 1: I would take it to nineteen sixty five with the
Speaker 1: Voting Rights Act because before the passage, Before the passage
Speaker 1: of the Voting Rights Act, even though the right of
Speaker 1: black people should have been guaranteed by the fourteenth and
Speaker 1: fifteenth amendments to the Constitution enacted, enacted and ratified after
Speaker 1: the Civil War. Most black people then lived in the
Speaker 1: South and still live in the South, and most of
Speaker 1: the South was denying the vote to black people. So
Speaker 1: until nineteen sixty five, I wouldn't call us even credibly
Speaker 1: a democracy. And if you think of it that way,
Speaker 1: then we are young. And so we're still agreeing this
Speaker 1: thing out and I'd say, wanted just to give people hope.
Speaker 1: Please give me something and give surely give me some boat.
Speaker 1: We're also trying to do something that no other country
Speaker 1: has done. There is no template for the kind of
Speaker 1: multi racial democracy with the kind of history of white
Speaker 1: supremacy and slavery. There's no other country that's trying to
Speaker 1: do that in the dynamic way that we are doing it. Um.
Speaker 1: We talk about, you know, being a nation of immigrants,
Speaker 1: which is not entirely true, but immigration is a huge
Speaker 1: part of the character of our country, and twentieth century
Speaker 1: immigration for sure made the country have the cast that
Speaker 1: it does. And so we're trying to create something. We're
Speaker 1: not trying to do something like another country. We're not
Speaker 1: pointing to them and saying, oh, yeah, I like that. Um,
Speaker 1: We're trying to do something very particular, and it's hard,
Speaker 1: and that's what I'm currently writing a book about. It's
Speaker 1: called Is This America? And um, it is about race,
Speaker 1: but it is also about what I think of at
Speaker 1: this moment as the last best chance for us to
Speaker 1: really create a healthy democracy in this country. Okay, well,
Speaker 1: when you finished a book, I won't be here, but
Speaker 1: I'm sure bring it back and there'll be a nice
Speaker 1: white guy sitting here. Explore more shows from the Daily
Speaker 1: Show podcast universe by searching The Daily Show wherever you
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Speaker 1: tenth Central on Comedy Central, and stream full episodes anytime
Speaker 1: on Fair Amount Plus. This has been a Comedy Central
Speaker 1: podcast