Speaker 1: Push it. This is probably the first episode I'm actually
Speaker 1: nervous about. I'm not nervous in the shaky sense. I'm
Speaker 1: nervous about like striking the right balance and how you know,
Speaker 1: we talk about Obama and this book, and so I'm
Speaker 1: here for you. I'm gonna I'm gonna be a gentle
Speaker 1: a gentle lead. I'm gonna I'm gonna protect you. We're
Speaker 1: gonna get through this together. Okay, I won't let you
Speaker 1: get hurt. All right, Yeah, well that remains to be seen.
Speaker 1: I'm Khalil Dubron Muhammad and I'm Ben Austin. We're two
Speaker 1: best friends, one black, one white. I'm a historian and
Speaker 1: I'm a journalist. And this is some of my best
Speaker 1: friends are in this show. We wrestle with the challenge
Speaker 1: and the absurdities of a deeply divided and unequal country.
Speaker 1: And today's show, we're going to talk about two really
Speaker 1: incredible people that we have already been talking about for
Speaker 1: a long time. That's right, Barack and Michelle Obama. You know,
Speaker 1: they were actually here in Chicago just the other day,
Speaker 1: down the block from where I'm sitting right now, breaking
Speaker 1: ground on the Obama Presidential Library and we have been
Speaker 1: eager to dig into their biographies memoirs. There are autobiographies. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're gonna talk about Michelle and Barack Obama's books. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean like and the titles like Becoming, Becoming what
Speaker 1: that's fascinating and then promised Brama's Land. Yes, so we're
Speaker 1: gonna look at these books to look at how they
Speaker 1: talk about race and racism because we've been trying to
Speaker 1: figure them out for quite a while. Let's do this
Speaker 1: book club chapter one, chapter one, yeah, something. All right.
Speaker 1: So look, before we really get into this episode, I
Speaker 1: have to make it crystal clear. Look, Barack Obama is
Speaker 1: adored and loved by many. I love him in so
Speaker 1: many ways, but he's a complicated figure, and so I just,
Speaker 1: you know, needed to be clear that people like my
Speaker 1: wife Stephanie, are like, look, this is my first black president, period.
Speaker 1: End of story. These are Obama's fireworks, whether they are
Speaker 1: or not, there are for us. That was actually from
Speaker 1: when we were on Martha's vineyard this summer and we
Speaker 1: got out of our car because there were fireworks over
Speaker 1: the water and I had to press record on my phone.
Speaker 1: It's right. People thought that the fireworks might be for
Speaker 1: Barack Obama's birthday. This is a whole This is way
Speaker 1: too many fireworks. I'm just saying, this is Obama fireworks
Speaker 1: and I don't care. Is too conservative not this is
Speaker 1: a black You just celebrate yourself some Obama. That's right.
Speaker 1: Maybe I love my wife. She doesn't mince her words.
Speaker 1: But anyways, during all the release and news coverage about
Speaker 1: a Promised Land coming out Obama's new memoir, I was
Speaker 1: so excited to hear Obama talk about um, the book
Speaker 1: in general, right. Um. He was giving interviews, and I
Speaker 1: happened to be in the shower, and it was it
Speaker 1: was late afternoon, you know, after workout or something, and
Speaker 1: it's all things considered, I'm super excited, and I'm like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, I gotta call Ben because I got
Speaker 1: I gotta let him know that Obama's on talking about
Speaker 1: his book. And for me in particular, what I was
Speaker 1: fascinated at least anticipated, was he hadn't talked almost at
Speaker 1: all in the wake of the four years of Trump.
Speaker 1: Very little he had to say. I mean, he was
Speaker 1: writing a seven hundred page book. Well that's true. But
Speaker 1: I'm not the only one who felt like that. You
Speaker 1: know that we could have used more from him too,
Speaker 1: Definitely talk about what the hell was going on in
Speaker 1: the country. Okay, So that was one reason that I
Speaker 1: was fascinating to hear this interview. And then the second
Speaker 1: reason is because it was although it was November, he
Speaker 1: hadn't said very much about the madness of the George
Speaker 1: Floyd summer in the protest and all of that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we are, I mean, just thinking about that crazy moment.
Speaker 1: It's after the election. Biden has one, Trump hasn't conceded.
Speaker 1: We're in the middle of the pandemic. We're coming after
Speaker 1: the summer of George Floyd. It's fucking madness. Yeah, it's crazy.
Speaker 1: And then we get smooth, smooth jazz Barry. Right, So
Speaker 1: he's giving an interview to Michelle Martin and they immediately
Speaker 1: get to the race issue well, as I write, particularly
Speaker 1: when you start looking at police issues. And that's why
Speaker 1: I think what happened this summer with George Floyd was
Speaker 1: so important, where you saw at least some shift in
Speaker 1: the general population in recognizing that there's real racial bias
Speaker 1: in how our criminal laws are applied and how policing
Speaker 1: operates in this country. What I realized was that nothing
Speaker 1: touches a nerve more in terms of the relationship between
Speaker 1: the races in this country than the issue of policing.
Speaker 1: We all know that Obama's brilliant and very thoughtful in
Speaker 1: his speech, and we're thinking a lot of complicated ideas
Speaker 1: and that he's not the fastest talker, right, but oh
Speaker 1: my god, man, I mean, do you remember how frustrated
Speaker 1: I was. I was like, yeah, yeah, every word that
Speaker 1: came out of his mouth about how he was understanding
Speaker 1: what was happening around races in the country was like
Speaker 1: dripping one syllable at a time. Well, the dripping metaphor
Speaker 1: is good because you're in the shower, but you you
Speaker 1: had developed a theory after this that he speaks more
Speaker 1: slowly when he's talking about race, yeah, than about other issues.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, and it probably could be empirically proven. I
Speaker 1: haven't done it yet, even though I'm the one who's
Speaker 1: the solow called why do you think that is? So
Speaker 1: you came up with this theory at that moment, we
Speaker 1: call it this shower theory. Yeah, I'm just listening to
Speaker 1: an interview. But now that I've read the book, I mean,
Speaker 1: the theory is now for real. Like he doesn't want
Speaker 1: to own notice I'm modeling Obama, you are speaking slow
Speaker 1: as he doesn't. He doesn't want to own the burden
Speaker 1: of making white people feel like they're all racists. He
Speaker 1: actually has a thing about black people who think white
Speaker 1: people are in general racist, and he rejects this view
Speaker 1: over and over again in the book. I resisted the
Speaker 1: notion held by some of the black folks. I knew
Speaker 1: that white people were irredeemably racist, the conviction that racism
Speaker 1: wasn't inevitable. They also explained my willingness to defend the
Speaker 1: American idea, what the country was and what it could become.
Speaker 1: He calls it out. But do you think so that
Speaker 1: means he's he's weighing his words even more carefully. Ye. Yes,
Speaker 1: I think he is weighing his words because he doesn't
Speaker 1: want to give the impression that he's one of those
Speaker 1: kind of black people. Maybe he's speaking really slowly, just
Speaker 1: hoping that people won't won't listen. Well, I think what
Speaker 1: he's doing, Like, here's my takeaway on this point. I
Speaker 1: think he's just trying not to give that impression to
Speaker 1: white people. He wants white people to like him, or
Speaker 1: at least to listen to him in such a way
Speaker 1: that they won't confuse him with those crazy, radical, racist
Speaker 1: black people. Yeah. So, so we didn't do an empirical
Speaker 1: study of how he speaks and his pace, but we
Speaker 1: did go back and read these two books, and we
Speaker 1: read them really carefully. We're going to talk about them
Speaker 1: in depth. Yep, let's do it. I mean, listen, Um,
Speaker 1: there's so much in this book to talk about, and
Speaker 1: one of the things that I think is really important
Speaker 1: to start with is his conception of the American story,
Speaker 1: the nation itself, like how he understands the promise of
Speaker 1: the nation, hence the title of the book, and he
Speaker 1: gets added right away. I mean, the preface, in many ways,
Speaker 1: maybe the most revealing of how Obama talks about race
Speaker 1: and democracy. I mean, oh, this is this is like
Speaker 1: one of those book reports where it sounds like you
Speaker 1: only read the preface. I know, I know, I know,
Speaker 1: the most important part is in the first four pages.
Speaker 1: But I can assure you, Barack, if you're listening, I
Speaker 1: read the entire book. Okay, Now that being said, you
Speaker 1: know this notion. We talk a lot, you and me
Speaker 1: about American exceptionalism. Yeah, and usually for me it's like
Speaker 1: the myth of American exceptionalism. Yeah, so American exceptionalism the
Speaker 1: idea that this country is really the greatest country in
Speaker 1: the world, that we are the most perfect nation, and
Speaker 1: we're striving towards a perfect nation, but we're already like
Speaker 1: leaps and bounds ahead of others from our founding and
Speaker 1: a sense of equality and democracy to now that we
Speaker 1: are the leading democracy in the world. Right that there's
Speaker 1: that there's something about this notion of the American dream
Speaker 1: about everyone can have their cake and eat it too
Speaker 1: if they just work hard enough. Usually for us falls
Speaker 1: short of reality, and we spend a lot of time
Speaker 1: trying to square that myth with reality. So Obama gets
Speaker 1: right at it. I mean, in the preface, he basically says,
Speaker 1: you know, I recognize that there are those who believe
Speaker 1: that it is time to discard the myth. And then
Speaker 1: he even says that the critiques of him as someone
Speaker 1: who is committed to American exceptionalism means that he has
Speaker 1: been quote unquote understood to be too tempered in speaking
Speaker 1: the truth, too cautious in either word or deed. I mean,
Speaker 1: this guy understands himself where he fits in the world,
Speaker 1: and the ideas that are at stake with the choices
Speaker 1: that he has made and the choices he's likely to
Speaker 1: make in his post presidency. And so at the end
Speaker 1: of the day, he says, like for him, he's not
Speaker 1: ready to give up. He cites Lincoln. He says, like
Speaker 1: Lincoln called out the better angels of our nation. He says,
Speaker 1: I think we stand a better chance believing in the
Speaker 1: promise of America. And he says, of course the jury
Speaker 1: is still out, but I think this book is for
Speaker 1: young people. This is an invitation for them to remake
Speaker 1: the world, to work hard, to be determined, and to
Speaker 1: make America finally achieve what it's always believed is possible.
Speaker 1: So I'm really interested in that idea that you take
Speaker 1: from the premise that we have this the myth and reality.
Speaker 1: But he's still incredibly hopeful and is going to strive
Speaker 1: towards good. Yeah, And then how he applies that to
Speaker 1: some of these specific moments and talks about them, some
Speaker 1: of these kind of racial trigger moments in his presidency.
Speaker 1: So he basically talks about two Americas. There is essentially
Speaker 1: the America of the Confederacy, the America of slave owners
Speaker 1: of people committed to segregation in Jim Crow, in America
Speaker 1: where there are real racist bigots and people who don't
Speaker 1: believe in democracy. And then there's this other America, the
Speaker 1: America that he believes in, the America that elected him twice,
Speaker 1: the America that is the one that made promises that
Speaker 1: will be the beacon of light to guide us to
Speaker 1: the future. Because one the things that becomes clear very
Speaker 1: quickly is that what Obama calls race, or what he
Speaker 1: describes as our racial past and what we might call
Speaker 1: as racism, is for him a thing of the past.
Speaker 1: He has a clear eyed understanding of the realness of
Speaker 1: racism that is situated in our past, but he does
Speaker 1: not call it the same thing in our present. Here's
Speaker 1: one thing I never believed, right, was the fever of
Speaker 1: racism being broken by my election. But I never subscribed
Speaker 1: to the we'd live in a post racial era. But
Speaker 1: I think that what did happen during my presidency was, yes,
Speaker 1: a backlash among some people who felt that somehow I
Speaker 1: symbolized the possibility that they or their group were losing
Speaker 1: status just by virtue of the fact that I didn't
Speaker 1: look like all the other presidents previously. It is almost
Speaker 1: as if in the present what we might recognize as
Speaker 1: racism are grievances, resentments, lights, and things that are in
Speaker 1: people's head. So Khalil I spoke to one of the
Speaker 1: smartest people I know about books, Jennifer Sally. She's brilliant.
Speaker 1: She has reviewed pretty much every single political memoir over
Speaker 1: the last four years. I think public figures in general,
Speaker 1: when they read a memoir, it is often about, you know,
Speaker 1: either trying to explain themselves, trying to excuse themselves, and
Speaker 1: trying to shape the contours of how they're remembered. She
Speaker 1: actually reviewed both of these books, Becoming and a Promised
Speaker 1: Land in the Times. So I asked her basically, like,
Speaker 1: how do these books function? Meaning if we're going to
Speaker 1: look into these books, you know, how are we supposed
Speaker 1: to judge them? And this is one of the things
Speaker 1: that jen told me. I do think that his way
Speaker 1: of thinking, even if it turns out sometimes to be
Speaker 1: politically frustrating and it is not necessarily what you want
Speaker 1: from a politician, especially when the stakes are really high.
Speaker 1: But I think as a reader, I do appreciate reading
Speaker 1: along in someone's consciousness who is, you know, very self
Speaker 1: aware and also aware of the situation at hand. I
Speaker 1: think that that can actually have you know, maybe real
Speaker 1: world hindrances when it comes to dealing with some of
Speaker 1: these things. Oh Man, that that that line when she
Speaker 1: says that he's you know, thoughtful, very self aware and formed,
Speaker 1: that's it, Like she's guided exactly right, just in terms
Speaker 1: of my one of my major impressions, aside from watching
Speaker 1: him very thoughtfully and deliberatively talk about complicating things over
Speaker 1: the course of his presidency, reading his memoir, I was
Speaker 1: struck by the fact that all the times that I
Speaker 1: would have pulled him by his lapel and said, rock,
Speaker 1: this is where you need to do and then given
Speaker 1: him a history lesson or some kind of policy context
Speaker 1: or something like the New Deal didn't work for black people,
Speaker 1: the universal programs won't get us there to racial justice.
Speaker 1: Like any of those moments I felt over the course
Speaker 1: of his administration, I learned by reading this book that
Speaker 1: he taken all that into account. Yeah, Like I came
Speaker 1: away from the book thinking to myself, I could not
Speaker 1: have passed on any nugget of information or historical context
Speaker 1: wisdom that he didn't already know. And in that She's right,
Speaker 1: he's brilliant. He's incredibly well informed. Let's turn to Michelle
Speaker 1: Obama's Becoming. Let's do it. Becoming came out at the
Speaker 1: same time as my book, High Risers, and I would
Speaker 1: go to the bookstore, you know, fucking excited, like there's
Speaker 1: my book on the stand, and I would see people
Speaker 1: come in and buy Becoming. This is on the South
Speaker 1: side of Chicago, like like they were like they were
Speaker 1: shopping for toilet paper during the pandemic. They would like
Speaker 1: grab six or seven and you know, and just like
Speaker 1: walk to the register. I was like, oh shit, that's
Speaker 1: how you sell a lot of books. They were making
Speaker 1: an investment. Man, those books. They're thinking those books, they're
Speaker 1: gonna be worth a lot of money on eBay one
Speaker 1: day it was before Christmas of twenty eighteen, and people
Speaker 1: were just giving them away. Yeah, you know, that was
Speaker 1: in everyone stocking or under their manorah or on the quan.
Speaker 1: So you had, in many ways, the better of the
Speaker 1: two tasks, because I read a whole bunch of foreign policy.
Speaker 1: I mean, I know more about what was going on
Speaker 1: in the world during Obama years than most people in
Speaker 1: the world who were living in those places. But I digress.
Speaker 1: So the first time Michelle Obama is really thrust into
Speaker 1: the national stage is this moment in two thousand and
Speaker 1: eight when she's on the campaign trail for her husband.
Speaker 1: Let me tell you something, for the first time in
Speaker 1: my adult lifetime, I'm really proud of my country, and
Speaker 1: not just because Barack is done well, but because I
Speaker 1: think people are hungry for change. And what she means
Speaker 1: is that there's even a black candidate for president. But
Speaker 1: it becomes this sort of highly politicized moment, and to
Speaker 1: think of her becomes her angry black woman moment. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: she suddenly gets stamped as an angry black woman. You know.
Speaker 1: There there's you know, this idea that she is a
Speaker 1: radical who, like, the most radical thing she's ever done
Speaker 1: is decide not to be a lawyer. But it's it's
Speaker 1: also a radicalism that is interpreted through the right wing
Speaker 1: media as someone who hates America, because if this is
Speaker 1: the first time and she's a grown up adult, then
Speaker 1: what then she must have been hating on the country
Speaker 1: all this time. So for us to talk about how
Speaker 1: she talks about race, this is a good starting point
Speaker 1: because it is this sort of like, you know, touchstone
Speaker 1: moment for her yeah, and I can't wait. I know
Speaker 1: what Obama says about it. He was like, yeah, we
Speaker 1: shouldn't have even put her up there without practice, which
Speaker 1: is interesting, But I can't wait to hear what she
Speaker 1: says about it. I'm gonna actually tell you about how
Speaker 1: the book is written to sort of explain. Becoming is
Speaker 1: written in three parts, okay, and the first part is
Speaker 1: called Becoming Me, the second part is called Becoming Us,
Speaker 1: and the third heart is called Becoming More. The book
Speaker 1: is kind of self empowerment, sort of has this kind
Speaker 1: of self help, self actualization. She keeps on talking about
Speaker 1: finding her voice, and she talks a lot about how
Speaker 1: women support women. And the part that you just mentioned
Speaker 1: where she says this in Madison, Wisconsin occurs late in
Speaker 1: the second part of Becoming Us, which is about her
Speaker 1: and Barack becoming a couple and then him running for president.
Speaker 1: The third part is when they're in the White House.
Speaker 1: But to really answer that question, I have to go
Speaker 1: back to the first part, which is about her becoming me.
Speaker 1: You're you're teasing us. You're setting this up, right, I
Speaker 1: just got to explain the context. You can't understand it.
Speaker 1: I'm I'm giving the book it's due because I gotta say,
Speaker 1: like that first part. I love that first part. The
Speaker 1: first part of the book is, which is about her
Speaker 1: and her upbringing, is beautiful. It's beautifully written, it's powerfully written.
Speaker 1: It's so specific and rich in detail and read something
Speaker 1: from it. And Michelle's book is so specifically about being black,
Speaker 1: working class on the South Side of Chicago and of
Speaker 1: a certain moment in time which we know, which is
Speaker 1: after civil Rights. It's so grounded in that moment and
Speaker 1: in such in such detail. Now I don't live that experience,
Speaker 1: but for me, part of the pleasure of the book
Speaker 1: is that it's so familiar in locale. Uh. You know,
Speaker 1: she is growing up a couple of blocks from me.
Speaker 1: She gets on the six Jeffrey bus, which is my
Speaker 1: bus yep, I know that buzz that's my bus too.
Speaker 1: She goes to Whitney Young, where my niece goes. You know,
Speaker 1: her and her friends go to WaterTower to ride up
Speaker 1: and down the escalator, which is what we did. That's right.
Speaker 1: Marshall Fields was where I got all my backed clothes,
Speaker 1: because yes I was. I was black and bougie in
Speaker 1: a way black and bougie, black and bougie. Yep. You know.
Speaker 1: She talks about racial turnover in the neighborhood, which is,
Speaker 1: you know, it's my experience if suddenly you see all
Speaker 1: these churches that ten, fifteen, twenty years before, we're synagogues.
Speaker 1: It's just incredibly But I think the book it would
Speaker 1: be almost it would even even other people reading would
Speaker 1: feel this sense of familiarity, because that's just good writing,
Speaker 1: you see it. And it's also about striving. It's also
Speaker 1: about being. You know, the very first line of the
Speaker 1: book is I spent much of my childhood listening to
Speaker 1: the sounds of striving. And she's talking specifically about her aunt.
Speaker 1: They live in a split level home and her aunt
Speaker 1: is teaching piano below her. But um, you know, it's
Speaker 1: it's as a metaphor, she extends it of being somebody
Speaker 1: who wants to achieve, who thinks about this and is
Speaker 1: kind of on a path, almost thoughtlessly. She talks about
Speaker 1: herself being a box checker. She's such a rule following.
Speaker 1: You know, Michelle gives Obama this grounded experience, you know,
Speaker 1: a sense of place. So back to the idea of
Speaker 1: when she says, you know, I'm not this is the
Speaker 1: first time I've been proud of my country because it's
Speaker 1: really in the details and in the details of her experience.
Speaker 1: She doesn't she doesn't have to say it exactly, it's
Speaker 1: actually been shown. She has this sketch of her grandfather,
Speaker 1: and I'm going to read your little bit of it.
Speaker 1: I'm really glad you're going to read a little bit
Speaker 1: of it. If this were an American dream story, Dandy,
Speaker 1: which is what she calls her grandfather, who arrived in
Speaker 1: Chicago in the early nineteen thirties, would have found a
Speaker 1: good job and a pathway to college. But the reality
Speaker 1: was far different. Jobs were hired to come by, limited
Speaker 1: at least somewhat by the fact that managers at some
Speaker 1: of the big factories in Chicago regularly hired Europeans over
Speaker 1: African American workers. Dandy took what work he could find,
Speaker 1: setting pins in the bowling alley and freelancing as a handyman. Gradually,
Speaker 1: he downgraded his hopes, letting go of the idea of college,
Speaker 1: thinking he'd trained to become an electrician instead. But this
Speaker 1: too was quickly thwarted, and so then she talks about
Speaker 1: not experiencing the American dream. She has this really amazing
Speaker 1: depiction of her father, and you'd asked what are her
Speaker 1: parents to Her father works in the water department for
Speaker 1: the city of Chicago, and he also has stunted dreams.
Speaker 1: He wanted to be an artist, he was an athlete,
Speaker 1: but then he gets ms, he gets multiple sclerosis, and
Speaker 1: he is just somebody who works so hard and works
Speaker 1: kind of like silently and tirelessly. And she tells this
Speaker 1: amazing story of his car and how much he loves
Speaker 1: his car, and his car is sort of like a
Speaker 1: symbol of success and and you know, rising up but
Speaker 1: also giving him mobility because of his disease. And he
Speaker 1: has this car. It's a bronze colored two door Buick
Speaker 1: Electra two two five, which he calls Aduce in a Quarter.
Speaker 1: I was gonna say it, man, I wanted to call
Speaker 1: it out just before you did. Of course, it's a
Speaker 1: deuce in the quarter. Aduce in a quarter. So then
Speaker 1: she tells this story of you know, someone in the neighborhood,
Speaker 1: a black family, one of their neighbors moves to the suburbs,
Speaker 1: and it's like what they moved to the suburbs, And
Speaker 1: so they live in the in the city on the
Speaker 1: south side of Chicago and they, yeah, all get in
Speaker 1: the in the car. One day, Michelle, her brother, Craig,
Speaker 1: her parents, and they drive out there in the deuce
Speaker 1: in a quarter to see this family and they're like,
Speaker 1: you know, its suburbs are kind of weird. There's all
Speaker 1: these white people looking at them. Um, they have a house, like,
Speaker 1: you know, she doesn't think it's that appealing. At the
Speaker 1: end of the day, they leave to go home and
Speaker 1: they get to their car and there's a giant scratch
Speaker 1: in it. Someone has run a rock or something across
Speaker 1: across the driver's side. Wow. And and like literally like
Speaker 1: for a black man, his castle is his car, like
Speaker 1: in a in a way that like having you know,
Speaker 1: the American dream embodied in a mortgage in a great home.
Speaker 1: If you couldn't have that, the next thing you could
Speaker 1: have is a is an amazing ride like a deuce
Speaker 1: in a quarter. Now some asshole has scratched it up. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's and it's a it's about race. I mean,
Speaker 1: they're in a white about racism. Let's be clear, that's
Speaker 1: about racism. Yeah, And what her father says is, well,
Speaker 1: I'll be damned, and then they don't talk about it again. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so that's that's how she talks about that moment. That's
Speaker 1: how she explains it. Yeah. So the so when you
Speaker 1: say the devil's in the details, like the narrative arc
Speaker 1: of that kind of origin story for Michelle, when she
Speaker 1: sees a racist act that Obama might call a racial
Speaker 1: slight because he doesn't really talk about such things in
Speaker 1: the kind of forceful way, so she bears direct witness,
Speaker 1: like to the vulnerability and innocence of her own family
Speaker 1: and yet they could be subject to this degrading assault
Speaker 1: on just their basic dignity. Then helps to explain why
Speaker 1: she is now on this national stage potentially be about
Speaker 1: to become the first Lady. And it's like, holy smokes,
Speaker 1: Like I'm seeing a part of America that I'd never
Speaker 1: really known personally before until now. Yeah. This ties to
Speaker 1: something that Jen Sali said to me when I interviewed her.
Speaker 1: I did get a sense of political pessimism in her book.
Speaker 1: You know, not quite in his book, but in her book,
Speaker 1: where you know, the implication is that there's only so
Speaker 1: much that politics can do to change something as deeply
Speaker 1: entrenched in American institutions as racism. You know, people love
Speaker 1: Michelle Obama for her realness. She's relatable in this way
Speaker 1: that that her husband isn't. Who's you know, is prophetsorial
Speaker 1: and cerebral and like sometimes you know, aloof cool um.
Speaker 1: She's so grounded in place, and I I have to
Speaker 1: say that reading this book, I loved her even more
Speaker 1: like I felt that. And even in the ways that
Speaker 1: she she talked about race and racism, you know, especially
Speaker 1: in those early parts, you know her her own history.
Speaker 1: It's so detailed, her own striving, her feeling of being underestimated,
Speaker 1: her feeling of being the only black person in her
Speaker 1: world as she's sort of moving through corporate worlds and
Speaker 1: Princeton in other places, and then she enters the maelstrom
Speaker 1: of national politics, and she she talks about being bewildered
Speaker 1: by it all suddenly for her to be cast as
Speaker 1: this this black radical and that's just not who she is.
Speaker 1: But I want to tell you a quick story. The
Speaker 1: last week of the Obama administration. I think it was
Speaker 1: like the last week before the election. I actually went
Speaker 1: to the White House with my wife. You went to
Speaker 1: the White House? What to this? You didn't take me
Speaker 1: to this beat? There's a b et event black entertainment
Speaker 1: television has a sort of like, you know, celebration of
Speaker 1: the Obama's this must be a BT event. Hello, everybody,
Speaker 1: welcome to the White House. I love you back. That's
Speaker 1: why we're having this concert. And I'm there because my
Speaker 1: wife has the Hook told me about this. Yeah you
Speaker 1: saw everybody, Yeah yeah. Ton Hassei Coachs writes about this,
Speaker 1: and he is there. Barack Obama gets on the stage
Speaker 1: with Bell Biv Devaux and dances. Cisco was there? Wasn't
Speaker 1: Cisco there too? This woman Yolanda Adams, this gospel singer,
Speaker 1: sings uh the John Legend part of Glory with Common
Speaker 1: and it is just like her sound. Her voice is
Speaker 1: just ricocheting off the room. It's like the greatest musical
Speaker 1: experience I've ever had in my life. You know, it
Speaker 1: was like a religious experience. Dave Chappelle actually makes a
Speaker 1: joke there. He says that all the famous black people
Speaker 1: and one white person, Bradley Cooper, but not the only one,
Speaker 1: not the only one, the only one. This motherfucker was
Speaker 1: there too. But I think I think it's important to
Speaker 1: note that you weren't there as journalist Ben Austin. You
Speaker 1: were there as as arm candy to your beautiful black wife.
Speaker 1: So it was amazing, it was extraordinary. But the vibe
Speaker 1: of the night was just this you know, celebration of
Speaker 1: the last eight years, almost like pinching yourself and saying,
Speaker 1: there really was like a black first family in the
Speaker 1: White House. Like the whole evening is just this wild celebration.
Speaker 1: The election is in days. There wasn't one mention the
Speaker 1: entire night of the election. Get out the vote Hillary
Speaker 1: Clinton is the best way to continue this legacy. We
Speaker 1: need to support her, support your local elections. Not a word, nothing, zero.
Speaker 1: And so you know, most people didn't expect that Trump
Speaker 1: was going to win, but it did happen. And you
Speaker 1: can't go back and talk about that night and talk
Speaker 1: about what a great celebration of looking backwards at these
Speaker 1: last eight years without thinking about what was to come.
Speaker 1: And so there was that night just this great omission.
Speaker 1: And you know that is a way. Also I think
Speaker 1: about Michelle's book, because you can't reckon with the past
Speaker 1: without thinking about what's going to come next. And I
Speaker 1: guess I would say, like that's like for her to
Speaker 1: do that, it would be a different book. It would
Speaker 1: be less uplifting and maybe she would also be like
Speaker 1: a different person, but that's a difficult storytelling you also
Speaker 1: have to do. And I just I guess to kind
Speaker 1: of bring it full circle, I think the frustration overall
Speaker 1: is understanding for the first time that Obama's gonna stick
Speaker 1: to his guns, right, And I mean that, like in
Speaker 1: every way he truly believes in American acceptionalism, his commitment
Speaker 1: to this notion of a promised land. I don't believe
Speaker 1: it in the way that he does, and that's okay.
Speaker 1: He just he wrote a book that basically said, no
Speaker 1: matter what's happened in our past, and no matter what
Speaker 1: happened doing my presidency, and no matter what's happened since,
Speaker 1: including with the election of Donald Trump, that he's going
Speaker 1: to double down on it. And I think I think
Speaker 1: actually both books and when you talked about this belief
Speaker 1: in the country, both books sort of reference that that
Speaker 1: King quote that Obama would often cite. You know, the
Speaker 1: arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends
Speaker 1: towards justice. Justice. Yeah, that it is. It has this
Speaker 1: very optimistic view of the country and the sense that
Speaker 1: the work it actually takes to move it towards justice.
Speaker 1: It's not that it bends on its own. That's exactly
Speaker 1: that is so well said, because that's my other point,
Speaker 1: like I wanted to say, because I don't want to
Speaker 1: just seem like I'm like hating on our country, right,
Speaker 1: I live here too, my people back generations that I
Speaker 1: can't even number. My point is that the only way
Speaker 1: we ever got to make the country better was by
Speaker 1: facing the facts in front of us. And the facts
Speaker 1: of race and racism are the actual stories that Obama
Speaker 1: tells about American exceptionalism, the story of civil rights leaders,
Speaker 1: the stories of people who put on their marching shoes.
Speaker 1: He tells those stories constantly, as if race and racism
Speaker 1: are only ever a thing of the past. And this
Speaker 1: book does exact same thing. It keeps referring to the
Speaker 1: heroism and the sacrifice of people in the past, but
Speaker 1: never calls to arms the requirement and necessity of facing
Speaker 1: those facts before the same thing in Becoming, I mean,
Speaker 1: so those powerful stories about her father and her grandfather
Speaker 1: of not having an equal opportunity, that the country does
Speaker 1: not allow the dream to happen for these black men,
Speaker 1: that that isn't a thing of the past, that is
Speaker 1: something that is something that could could be applied to everything. Yeah, yeah, yeah, No,
Speaker 1: she doesn't bring it up, you know, that past and
Speaker 1: sort of apply it to her own experiences in the
Speaker 1: White House. It feels sort of, you know, a little
Speaker 1: bit in amber in the background. Yeah, well, I mean this,
Speaker 1: this raises a whole series of questions that we've tried
Speaker 1: to explore, just in centering how they talk and write
Speaker 1: about race and racism. All right, Khalil, this was a
Speaker 1: great talk. Yeah man, great chat. Oh man, this has
Speaker 1: been such an amazing experience. I learned I repent from
Speaker 1: both my reading and listening to you and this conversation
Speaker 1: for sure. And of course yeah yeah, yeah, we got
Speaker 1: to do this again. This was this was fun, This
Speaker 1: was fun productive, I don't know, all right, love you,
Speaker 1: Love you too. Some of My Best Friends Are is
Speaker 1: a production of Pushkin Industries. The show is written and
Speaker 1: hosted by me Lil Jibrad Muhammad and my best friend
Speaker 1: Ben Austin. It's produced by Sheer Vincent and edited by
Speaker 1: Karen Shakerjee. Our engineer is Martin Gonzalez, our associate editor
Speaker 1: is Keishell Williams, and our showrunner is Sasha Matthias. Our
Speaker 1: executive producers are Lee Tall, Molad and Mia Lobell at
Speaker 1: Pushkin thanks to Heather Fane, Carly Migliori, John Schnars, and
Speaker 1: Jacob Weisberg. Our theme song, Little Lily, is by fellow
Speaker 1: chicagoan Avery R. Young from his amazing album Tubman. You
Speaker 1: will definitely want to check out more of his music
Speaker 1: at his website Avery R. Young dot com. You can
Speaker 1: find Pushkin on all social platforms at Pushkin pods, and
Speaker 1: you can sign up for our newsletter at pushkin dot fm.
Speaker 1: To find more Pushkin podcasts, listen on the ByHeart Radio app,
Speaker 1: Apple podcast and wherever you like to listen. If you
Speaker 1: love this show and others from Pushkin Industries, consider becoming
Speaker 1: a Pushnick. Pushnick is a podcast subscription that offers bonus
Speaker 1: content and uninterrupted listening for four dollars and ninety nine
Speaker 1: cents a month. Look for Pushnick exclusively on Apple podcast
Speaker 1: subscriptions and most of all, I want to thank you, Khalil,
Speaker 1: and thank you too. Mom. All right, so Khalil, let's
Speaker 1: let's just move. We're flowing. We're flowing. So you you
Speaker 1: you set me up. Yeah, I was like I was
Speaker 1: out of fifth I was out of fifty cent party
Speaker 1: last night. He smelled like we uh. I saw a
Speaker 1: big Daddy Kane at a concert and in Manhattan. It
Speaker 1: was amazing. No one's gonna accuse you of being a
Speaker 1: certain Your your your bona fides are right there.