Speaker 1: Greetings and welcome to woke f with me Danielle Moody.
Speaker 1: Over a year ago, at the start of the coronavirus outbreak,
Speaker 1: there were many who were saying that COVID nineteen could
Speaker 1: be a great equalizer in theory, it is an unknown
Speaker 1: disease that could infect anyone, and our approach to confronting
Speaker 1: this virus could transcend the inequities in our society. Now, however,
Speaker 1: after that long troubled year, we can see that that
Speaker 1: was not the case. COVID nineteen was actually further exposing
Speaker 1: the deep inequality we are living through on a daily basis.
Speaker 1: This week on woke f Daily, I was proud to
Speaker 1: be joined by several professionals who were able to connect
Speaker 1: the dots between race and public health, not just our
Speaker 1: medical health, but our overall well being as a society
Speaker 1: and folks, we're not doing that. Great to hear these
Speaker 1: full conversations. As always, check out woke Daily on Patreon
Speaker 1: at patreon dot com, slash will gay app. For just
Speaker 1: five dollars, you can hear hundreds of shows, with five
Speaker 1: brand new podcasts going up every single week. For now,
Speaker 1: let's jump into my conversation with the doctor Tarika Barrett,
Speaker 1: CEO of Girls Who Code, an organization dedicated to closing
Speaker 1: the wide gender gap in the tech industry. She's talking
Speaker 1: about the coronavirus pandemic and how it has made the
Speaker 1: gender and racial gap in tech more obvious than it
Speaker 1: has ever been. COVID has really laid bare the inequities
Speaker 1: that so many of our girls and our women, especially
Speaker 1: our girls and women of color, are facing, both in
Speaker 1: school and in the workplace. You know, as a lifelong
Speaker 1: educator and equity advocate, and as someone who's helped lead
Speaker 1: Girls who Code now for the past five years. As
Speaker 1: challenging as this past year has been with the layers
Speaker 1: of inequity, I also feel energized to build on this
Speaker 1: incredible foundation that Rushma has laid to close this widening
Speaker 1: gender gap in tech. You know, as you pointed out,
Speaker 1: a space that is typically you know, white, male dominated,
Speaker 1: and we have worked so hard over close to nine
Speaker 1: years now to build this incredible movement of girls and
Speaker 1: women who now see a path forward in tech. And
Speaker 1: as CEO stepping into this seat, it is my job
Speaker 1: to harness that movement and really expand and extend the
Speaker 1: pipeline so that more girls and women, especially girls and
Speaker 1: women of color, have opportunity. And you know, it means
Speaker 1: tangible things like tripling the number of after school clubs
Speaker 1: that we launch over the next few years. It also
Speaker 1: means launching workforce development programs and mentorship programs so that
Speaker 1: our young women know that we're going to support them
Speaker 1: as they move into the workforce. We know that as
Speaker 1: bad as things are now, tech is still going to
Speaker 1: be central to the job markets recovery, and we can't
Speaker 1: have our girls and women, especially our girls and women
Speaker 1: of color, being left out when these opportunities present. So
Speaker 1: this moment is dire, it is urgent, and as I
Speaker 1: step into this seat, I want to make sure that
Speaker 1: are most marginalized girls, the ones who've dropped out of
Speaker 1: remote learning opportunities, that we are paying attention to them
Speaker 1: and supporting them, you know, in our work moving forward.
Speaker 1: You know, let's talk about that for a minute, the
Speaker 1: fact that young girls are dropping out of learning. You know,
Speaker 1: UNICEF estimates that we're looking at roughly twenty million secondary
Speaker 1: school age girls around the glow around twenty million dropping
Speaker 1: out of school because of the pandemic. We hear reports
Speaker 1: in the United States with at least two million women
Speaker 1: dropping out of the workforce because of the pandemic. Why
Speaker 1: do you think that this is affecting girls and women
Speaker 1: more so than it is any other demographic And what
Speaker 1: is Girls who Code doing in order to stemmy the
Speaker 1: to stop it from happening, or at least bring attention
Speaker 1: to the fact that it is happening. Yeah, Danielle, I'm
Speaker 1: so grateful for that question. You know, if we think
Speaker 1: about it, our girls and young women are the caregivers.
Speaker 1: They're the ones who are often turned to in families
Speaker 1: to support, to take care of siblings, to take care
Speaker 1: of parents. It's also connected to the culture shift that
Speaker 1: Girls who Code has been so committed to changing. We
Speaker 1: know that when you think about a computer program or
Speaker 1: a coder, you don't think of a girl. They're often
Speaker 1: not encouraged by parents, by peers, by teachers. Our education
Speaker 1: system doesn't it's not set up to funnel them into
Speaker 1: these opportunities. So in this moment, I find that our
Speaker 1: girls and young women are the burden bearers. They're the
Speaker 1: ones who are spoking in and doing all of this work.
Speaker 1: And we know what's happening to young women with children
Speaker 1: they've had to step out of the workforce to support families.
Speaker 1: AT Girls who Code, the way that we think about
Speaker 1: this urgent issue is to me make sure that all
Speaker 1: the programming that we design and that we've launched contemplates
Speaker 1: the needs and challenges that our girls are facing. So,
Speaker 1: for example, we would run typically a seven week summer
Speaker 1: immersion program. We shifted that with COVID to a two
Speaker 1: week program. We surveyed our girls. We checked on what
Speaker 1: they needed. Were they taking care of loved ones, did
Speaker 1: they have to do, you know, get earned money on
Speaker 1: the side, Did they have a computer? Did they have
Speaker 1: access to internet? We have to make sure that we
Speaker 1: are asking our girls what they need, but that we
Speaker 1: are also planting seeds of hope and remembering that as
Speaker 1: much as we're talking about learning loss in one breath
Speaker 1: and disengagement and marginalization, we know that our girls are
Speaker 1: going to be the key to what gets transformed in
Speaker 1: this world. You know, passionate, ambitious and diverse young women
Speaker 1: are going to change our workforce. So we have to
Speaker 1: continue to invest in them, and so AT Girls who Code,
Speaker 1: our programming is very much designed to support them in
Speaker 1: spite of the bird that they're facing in this moment
Speaker 1: with COVID. You know, we oftentimes you don't deal with
Speaker 1: things until we're in crisis, and the reality is, you know,
Speaker 1: I was just speaking with New York City MARYL candidate
Speaker 1: Maya Wiley, and in our conversation talking about New York
Speaker 1: City Public Schools, who you and I both worked for
Speaker 1: at one time, the largest school district in the country,
Speaker 1: I said to her, you know, we knew years ago
Speaker 1: that these communities didn't have broadband. We knew years ago
Speaker 1: that they didn't have the access to technology, let alone
Speaker 1: the devices that we're going to set them up for
Speaker 1: where we are now with remote learning, But we did nothing.
Speaker 1: You know, we continue to create pandemic on top of crises,
Speaker 1: on top of pandemic on top of crisis, as if
Speaker 1: we're layering some type of lasagna, and the reality is
Speaker 1: that we have the tools right and the awareness to
Speaker 1: fix it. Why don't we tackle these things on the
Speaker 1: front end. You think at such a question you had
Speaker 1: me when you said a lasagna nothing to do with Danielle.
Speaker 1: I mean, that is an important question, but I would
Speaker 1: say that very often. You know, inequity is complex, and
Speaker 1: you know, people deal with what's in front of them.
Speaker 1: When you think about this digital divide that you've said
Speaker 1: has been here forever. That is true. We've always known it,
Speaker 1: but we decide to pay attention to other the gaps
Speaker 1: in schools or other things. And now we're recognizing, like, oh,
Speaker 1: we wonder why our black and brown kids were never
Speaker 1: succeeding in school when they would go home and they
Speaker 1: couldn't Google search up the answer to their homework, just
Speaker 1: like these kids who had access to high speed internet.
Speaker 1: So it's really laid bare the inequities in a really
Speaker 1: stark way. I'm hopeful though that the steps that are
Speaker 1: being taken now to level the playing field. I think
Speaker 1: it's something like over a third of you know, black
Speaker 1: and Latino students don't have access to computers, you know,
Speaker 1: and high speed internet, and we know that twelve million
Speaker 1: students don't have access to high speed internet overall. This
Speaker 1: is the moment to not only sort of bridge that gap,
Speaker 1: but go a step further. We have to take the
Speaker 1: learnings that are positive in this moment around blended learning
Speaker 1: and digital learning and the ways in which some kids
Speaker 1: have been given some different kinds of engagement and opportunity,
Speaker 1: and we have to build on that and do even more.
Speaker 1: I wish I knew why folks didn't act on some
Speaker 1: of these things. But let's be honest. Racism is real inequity,
Speaker 1: and very often it becomes a hierarchy of needs, and
Speaker 1: it's a messed up hierarchy. It shouldn't be you know this.
Speaker 1: Instead of that, I would say access to high speed
Speaker 1: internet is a human right. You cannot succeed in society
Speaker 1: without it, and so I'm hopeful that it's a complete
Speaker 1: paradigm shift that we're looking at moving forward. It's true
Speaker 1: that we've been facing multiple social pandemic so long before
Speaker 1: we were hit by COVID nineteen. The lack of internet
Speaker 1: and access has been an issue facing millions of people
Speaker 1: of color across the country for years. We have no
Speaker 1: choice but to address and remedy these issues, especially as
Speaker 1: we expect more people to transition to a lifestyle of
Speaker 1: working from home. Another pandemic we've been facing for decades
Speaker 1: is the vulnerability of healthcare to all Americans. After a
Speaker 1: year of living through an unprecedented public health crisis, we
Speaker 1: are still fighting to make sure everyone can get the
Speaker 1: care that they need. Doctor Abdul Lsayed wrote the book
Speaker 1: on Medicare for All. Literally, it's entitled Medicare for All,
Speaker 1: a Citizen's Guide. So he joined me to break down
Speaker 1: the systemic forces that are blocking healthcare progress in this country.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about why polling shows most Americans are for
Speaker 1: Medicare for all, and yet the people that we put
Speaker 1: in control of our Congress are not. Where's the disconnect here? Well,
Speaker 1: the industry spends a tremendous amount of money making sure
Speaker 1: that that's the case. Last year alone, the health insurance
Speaker 1: industry spent one hundred and fifty two million dollars lobbying
Speaker 1: across eight hundred and forty five lobbyists. That's nearly two
Speaker 1: lobbyists per member of Congress. To make sure that that
Speaker 1: disconnect exists. They spent one hundred and twenty million dollars
Speaker 1: in addition to one hundred and fifty two electioneering, so
Speaker 1: giving money through their pack to politicians. And then that
Speaker 1: doesn't include all of the money that they spend disinforming
Speaker 1: the public on the airwaves, which has reframed this issue
Speaker 1: rather than being about providing every single person a good,
Speaker 1: a tangible good, real insurance that doesn't come with the
Speaker 1: same kind of out of pocket costs that doesn't leave
Speaker 1: them when they turn twenty six, or get married or
Speaker 1: get divorced, or get a job or lose a job. Rather,
Speaker 1: they're framing this about the loss of quote unquote choice
Speaker 1: or the fact that it's going to cost. You know,
Speaker 1: they say more than more than we can afford, despite
Speaker 1: the fact that we spend eighteen percent of all the
Speaker 1: money in our economy on healthcare in the current system,
Speaker 1: So you know, there's a lot of money being spent
Speaker 1: to shape public opinion and in particular, to shape the
Speaker 1: opinions of politicians. You know what's funny is that when
Speaker 1: we talk about the fact that Republicans continued battle against
Speaker 1: Medicare for all, is this idea that it is a
Speaker 1: loss of choice, right, that Americans deserve freedom, and yet
Speaker 1: millions of Americans are tied to jobs they hate and
Speaker 1: don't want to be in because of the fact that
Speaker 1: there is no other opportunity and no other actual choice
Speaker 1: for them to have in order for them to get healthcare.
Speaker 1: I know many people that are locked into jobs because
Speaker 1: what is the alternative? And so I think that it's
Speaker 1: really interesting to me that it's consistently the mantra of
Speaker 1: the right to talk about choice and to talk about
Speaker 1: freedom while robbing the American people of both. That's right, Daniel,
Speaker 1: I'll tell you this. You know, when you think about
Speaker 1: what a choice is, it is the ability to, regardless
Speaker 1: of your circumstances, be able to select what you would
Speaker 1: like to do, when you would like to do it,
Speaker 1: how you'd like to do it. And you know, the
Speaker 1: choice that they tell us that we should be so
Speaker 1: excited to have is about the choice between different corporate
Speaker 1: bureaucracies that charge some difference in an allocation of money
Speaker 1: that always has them finishing up on top, right, based
Speaker 1: on where you work and what your employer has told you,
Speaker 1: your choice is. So, you know, we get our insurance
Speaker 1: through my wife, who's a psychiatrist at the university here,
Speaker 1: and she gets to choose quote unquote between a few
Speaker 1: different corporations who charge a few different rates, some in
Speaker 1: quote unquote premium, and premium is which you pay every
Speaker 1: two weeks or every month, some in quote unquote deductible,
Speaker 1: another opaque term, which is the paywall that exists before
Speaker 1: you actually get the healthcare you already paid for in
Speaker 1: your premium, and then some amount of copay or coinsurance,
Speaker 1: which is what you pay to get, you know, basic
Speaker 1: care at the point of care. And I mean, honestly,
Speaker 1: I'm a physician who wrote a whole book on the
Speaker 1: healthcare system. My wife is a physician, and every time
Speaker 1: we have to make this quote unquote choice, we got
Speaker 1: to pull out a whole actuarial table to figure out
Speaker 1: how likely it is that me at thirty six, her
Speaker 1: at thirty four are gonna get really sick, our daughter
Speaker 1: at three is gonna get sick, or that she's gonna
Speaker 1: have a baby, which is probably the highest cost thing
Speaker 1: that happens conditional on us staying healthy. So all of
Speaker 1: that is to say that that's no choice at all.
Speaker 1: It's a completely opaque and is conditioned by an employer
Speaker 1: in the first place, and is dressed up in all
Speaker 1: of this language that's really really hard to penetrate. The
Speaker 1: choice that I want is what doctor I see, what
Speaker 1: hospital wh I go to? And that choice right the
Speaker 1: number one gatekeeper on that choice is the insurance industry
Speaker 1: itself telling you who you can see. And you know why,
Speaker 1: because they've negotiated a bunch of sweetheart deals with various
Speaker 1: providers that they have reimbursement relationships with and so they
Speaker 1: want you to stay within that network of providers with
Speaker 1: whom they've negotiated sweetheart deals. So if you dare stray
Speaker 1: outside of the sweetheart deal that that insurance corporation is negotiated,
Speaker 1: then you're going to feel the financial penalty of that,
Speaker 1: so that their CEO can continue to make tens of
Speaker 1: millions of dollars a year, denying you the care you
Speaker 1: already paid for. You know, I don't want to lose
Speaker 1: part of the reality here. So one is just the
Speaker 1: corporate greed, right, and you unpack that often when you
Speaker 1: come on wok F. The other piece of it is racism. Right.
Speaker 1: We know that the countries that in fact do pay
Speaker 1: for their citizens healthcare are more or less homogeneous, right,
Speaker 1: Like we know that everybody looks alike. So there are
Speaker 1: countries that have universal basic income, fine, because everybody looks
Speaker 1: the same, praise the same, what have you. We can't
Speaker 1: decouple race from this, and so how do we have
Speaker 1: what is a very real conversation about the two evils
Speaker 1: that are driving the most disparities in this country, which
Speaker 1: is capitalism, right, this extractive principle of capitalism and the
Speaker 1: idea that everything is built on a pyramid, which means
Speaker 1: that the only way that the pyramid survives is if
Speaker 1: people are on the bottom right. And then racism, which
Speaker 1: has created this stereotype and this ideology that has prefaced
Speaker 1: on the fact that people of color are less deserving
Speaker 1: right of other people, and so white folks will go
Speaker 1: ahead and cut their nose to spite their face as
Speaker 1: healthcare is presented to them. No, no, no, we don't
Speaker 1: want it because we don't want the people down the
Speaker 1: street to have it. So how do how do we
Speaker 1: reconcile these things? How do we have this conversation while
Speaker 1: advocating for what is necessary in order to make America
Speaker 1: well and not just well enough that you're addicted to
Speaker 1: pharmaceuticals and what have you. But actually, well, yeah, thank
Speaker 1: you for saying that, Danielle. Look, I actually got a
Speaker 1: piece coming out about the biggest obstacles in the way
Speaker 1: of medicare for all on Racism is definitely one of them.
Speaker 1: In what I thought it was a fantastic book, Heather
Speaker 1: McGee really dissects the way that racism has been leveraged
Speaker 1: against the well being of all of us because of
Speaker 1: this zeroum kind of thinking. But I honestly think the
Speaker 1: way that we do it is to call it out right,
Speaker 1: because what happens is that you've got really powerful people
Speaker 1: in these corporations that recognize that the best single way
Speaker 1: to deny people access to a set of services that
Speaker 1: they need and deserve is to divide them such that
Speaker 1: they cannot build the power to actually be able to
Speaker 1: engage that. And even worse is that you turn one
Speaker 1: group of them so inextricably against another that rather than
Speaker 1: fight to actually beget a set of public goods that
Speaker 1: benefits everyone, they will fight to actually deny it. And
Speaker 1: that is the circumstance that we have at this point.
Speaker 1: And you know, I hate to say it, but I
Speaker 1: feel like the Republican Party and so much of the
Speaker 1: base has hit this sort of peak white identity politics
Speaker 1: where now ideology has fully decoupled from the conversation. There
Speaker 1: is no Republican policy ideology anymore. You know, we were
Speaker 1: debating a one point nine trillion dollars COVID relief package
Speaker 1: and Republicans were in the corner talking about doctor Seusan,
Speaker 1: mister potato head, come on, And so you know, we're
Speaker 1: at this moment now where they don't even have to
Speaker 1: talk about policy ideology anymore, because at this point it
Speaker 1: has just become about this sort of white idnated politics
Speaker 1: and the weaponization of that in our public space. And
Speaker 1: so you know, we've got to call it out. And
Speaker 1: I think what I've found. You know, I can't paid
Speaker 1: for governor in Michigan, and I had a lot of
Speaker 1: conversations with folks who don't see this the world the
Speaker 1: same way that I do. And you know, I was
Speaker 1: campaigning as the former health commissioner for the country's largest
Speaker 1: majority black and poorest city in the country in Detroit.
Speaker 1: And you know when I when I sit down with folks,
Speaker 1: i'd say, look, you know, I get it. My name
Speaker 1: is Abdurrahman. Right, if you say the whole thing, it's
Speaker 1: abdual to you, and you're not primed to agree with me.
Speaker 1: But I'm just going to say a couple of things,
Speaker 1: and I want you to nod your head. If this
Speaker 1: is your experience. You pay a tremendous amount of money
Speaker 1: in health insurance. You don't know where that goes. And
Speaker 1: if you or a loved one gets sick, what's going
Speaker 1: to happen is they're going to send you an additional
Speaker 1: bill on top of what you already paid, which is
Speaker 1: going to send your financial circumstances in a tail spin.
Speaker 1: All that money you were saving, whether it was to
Speaker 1: send your kid to college or to take them on
Speaker 1: a nice little vacation, that's gone because someone had the
Speaker 1: audacity to get sick. And that's if you're insured. And
Speaker 1: if you're not insured, right, what you're seeing is that
Speaker 1: you've got to reapply and reapply to get on Medicaid,
Speaker 1: and they're trying to cut and cut and cut those services.
Speaker 1: And if you're in rural Michigan right, your experience is
Speaker 1: that even if you have healthcare, you're driving an hour
Speaker 1: to two hours because the closest hospital shut down a
Speaker 1: couple of years ago because it couldn't make ends meet,
Speaker 1: because too many folks in your community are either uninsured
Speaker 1: or on Medicaid, and so the reimbursements are too low.
Speaker 1: And you got folks. By the end of everybody's nodding
Speaker 1: their head, and I said, listen, that is the same story.
Speaker 1: Whether we are here in rural Michigan or we are
Speaker 1: in Detroit. It is the same exact story. And the
Speaker 1: fact is is that none of you all have heard
Speaker 1: one another tell the story, because you all have been
Speaker 1: too busy, right, We've been too busy being told right
Speaker 1: that the reason you don't have is because they have. Well,
Speaker 1: I'll tell you what they don't have and you don't have.
Speaker 1: And the only way that we take this on is
Speaker 1: that we all come together and decide that all of
Speaker 1: us ought to have. And the system that is keeping
Speaker 1: us from having right is making tens of millions of dollars.
Speaker 1: Seventy percent of the market share in health insurance in
Speaker 1: Michigan is Blue Cross Blue Shield in Michigan. And guess
Speaker 1: what their CEO made nineteen million bucks last year. They
Speaker 1: were the most profitable that they've ever been in the
Speaker 1: midst of a pandemic. That's all fifteen million people kicked
Speaker 1: off of their health insurance. This system is fundamentally broken.
Speaker 1: It has become fundamentally a tool of extraction, and it
Speaker 1: doesn't serve the purpose that it's supposed to serve. White
Speaker 1: identity politics. That is what is behind the minority rule,
Speaker 1: emotional apartheid government we have in this country. Right now,
Speaker 1: I got mine, but you can't have yours. We cannot
Speaker 1: afford to continue down that path, and it's crusaders like
Speaker 1: doctor Terka Barrett and doctor Abdullah L. Sayed, who are
Speaker 1: putting in the work to alter our course for a
Speaker 1: better tomorrow. There are so many more amazing guests on
Speaker 1: wokef Daily this week, like doctor Kyless, Story Out, Emily's List,
Speaker 1: President Stephanie Shriach, and doctor Yaba blay So. To hear
Speaker 1: from them and my bevy of woke a F guests
Speaker 1: and contributors, head over to patreon dot com slash woke
Speaker 1: AF and subscribe. You can't put a price on the
Speaker 1: value of getting woke, but five dollars is pretty low.
Speaker 1: And as always, share, Share, Share this podcast with your
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Speaker 1: the people. Power, Get woke and stay woke as fuck.