Pushkin Honors Juneteenth

Published Jun 17, 2021, 9:00 AM

At Pushkin, we think of Juneteenth as an opportunity to reflect on the past and think about the future: How do we build a more just and equitable society? We strive to make podcasts that help answer that question, and in honor of Juneteenth, we’re highlighting two of them. In this episode, you'll hear previews of our new shows Be Antiracist and A Slight Change of Plans. We hope these episodes inspire thinking and conversation around issues of race in your own lives.

You can listen to more episodes at www.pushkin.fm/show/ 

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Pushkin high listeners at Jacob Weisberg Here, I'm the CEO of Pushkin Industries. At Pushkin, we think of Juneteenth as an opportunity to reflect on the past and think about the future. How do we build a more just and equitable society. We strive to make podcasts that help to answer that question, and in honor of Juneteenth, we're highlighting two of them. Be Anti Racist is hosted by doctor Ibram X Kendy, an author, professor, activist, and historian. His book How to Be an Anti Racist has become a guide for anyone interested in dismantling the structures that racism creates. The podcast gives him a chance to dive deep into issues like immigration, to sports, and voting rights with guests like Julian Castro and Jamel Hill. Who're going to You're An excerpt from a conversation doctor Kendy had recently with author and political analyst Heather cmghee. They focus on the economic costs of racism for everyone, not just those in black or brown communities, and how diversity can lead to economic prosperity for all. Then you'll hear a truly remarkable story of bridging racial divides. Darrell Davis is a black jazz musician who has convinced hundreds of KKK members to leave the clan. It all started with one conversation in a jazz club because Darrell was interested in understanding people with wildly different views. Darrell appeared on A Slight Change of Plans, a podcast hosted by doctor Maya Shankar. Shankar is a cognitive scientist who's fascinated by what happens when we find ourselves at the brink of change, and she's got a knack for getting people, including Hillary Clinton and Tiffany Hattisch to open up to her. Here's Doctor Kendy on Be Anti Racist Welcome to Be Anti Racist in Action podcasts where we discuss how to diagnose, dismantle, and abolish racism, how to save humanity from the divisiveness of racist ideas and the destructiveness of racist power and policy, How to free humanity through the unity of anti racist ideas and the constructiveness of anti racist power and policy. On b Anti Racist, we discuss how to make the impossible possible and how to bring into being what modern humans have never known, a just and equitable world. You ready, Let's roll in the night thirties and forties, the United States went on a nationwide building boom of public amenities funded by tax dollars, which in Montgomery, Alabama, included the Oak Park Pool, which was the grandest one for miles, except the Oak Park Pool was for whites only. When a federal court finally deemed this unconstitutional, the reaction of the town council was swift. They decided they would drain the public pool rather than let black families swim to They never rebuilt the pool. Racism has a cost for everyone. HEATHERN McGee is an expert in economic and social policy and the author of the best selling book To Some of Us, What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together. Heather explodes one of the greatest racial myths, that white people lose as people of color gain. She shows that as racism wins, we all lose. Heather is one of America's sharpest thinkers. The former president of the inequality focused think Take Demos and its drafted legislation, testified before Congress, and contributed regularly to new shows, including NBC's Meet the Press. She now chairs the board of Color of Change, the nation's largest online racial Justice organization. I sat down with Heather McGee recently to learn how by investing in each other we can all achieve better jobs, better health, better democracy, better schools, better neighborhoods for our kids, and so much more. Heather is always is truly an honor to speak with you. Your book, The Some of Us is the type of book that I learned from that I think many Americans and many people around the world can learn from. I wrote this book because I felt like we were missing something in the great pursuit of a society. It should be to have progress, to have people have less want and more joy, people to have more of the fruits of economic progress and technological progress, and for our problems to be solved generation after generation, right, And it felt like that progress was slowing down, slash reversing. When some Americans imagine the transformation of this country, they imagine that they're going to lose if we actually create inequitable and just anti racist America. And it seems, as you've written, that that's based on a zero sum myth. So I left a career in economic policy to go out on the quixotic journey in some ways to find the answer to the question of why can't we seem to have nice things? And what are the roots of our dysfunction? And it's there that I came upon this paradigm of the zero sum. It's a term that means there's no such thing as mutual progress when you have people who are in a competition with one another. If Team A scores one more point, team B scores one less point, the points will always add up to zero, positive on one side, negative on the other. Progress for team A has to come at the expense of team B. There's a limited or fixed pie. And that idea resonated so deeply with me. It sort of gave a name and a description to something I had sensed my whole life, this fear that when white supremacy falls, that the world will become one that white people should fear. Therefore, racism is really great for white people, really terrible for people of color, and so their self interest is in preserving racism at all costs. And it's the at all costs piece that really felt so important for me to lay out, what are the costs of racism to our entire society, What exactly is the price white people are willing to pay to keep the system as it has been. And once I started looking, the list just kept growing, and that made it clear to me that we have these self interested elites packaging marketing, selling this zero sum lie to most white Americans, and they're doing it for their own profit. But our side, when we only talk about racism as something that's good for white people, are kind of like helping out a little bit, right provocation. The agitation that made me feel like, Okay, maybe I do have something to add to this conversation was we haven't told the full story of what it has cost this entire country. You were specifically writing about white folks who think that they're going to lose, But as a man of color reading it, I also think men of color too have bought into this myth of the zero sum, and I think that as they've seen women of color organizing and advocating in some cases rising, they too have felt threatened as if they're losing. Yeah, but back to white folks, this is what I've been sort of saying, and I want to know whether I'm just wrong that white Americans typically compare their lot two people of color, and so, in other words, if their school has more resources in a way, their child's school is almost like a first class school. They're like, whoa, if we create equity, then I'm gonna be back in coach. Yeah. I don't want that. I'm gonna lose. My kid's gonna lose. But it seems to me that white Americans should be assessing themselves from other white people in the Western world. Yeah, and when they make that comparison, that's when they can see actually what they don't have, how they're in coach. That's right, And in fact, maybe in other societies in the Western world, everybody's just in first class. There's no little curtain that the flight attendant moves over. Right, everyone gets food, right, everyone has a leg room, you know, everybody gets to bring a bag. You know. This really comes from and is a feature of how brutally hierarchical our society is. In the first chapter of the Some of Us, I go back in our history. I am I am like somebody else here on this conversation. I'm not in the story, but I felt like I had to go to the beginning to find out where this zero s worldview and this lie came from, whose interest it served, and why it sort of reanimated generation after generation. And as it turns out, it was created as a way to sort of discipline white Europeans in the colonial era to be satisfied with their lot in a society where wealth was still quite concentrated, and where, because of chattel slavery in a plantation economy, there actually wasn't a lot of room a white person who was not a plantation owner. Their labor wasn't needed in the southern economy, right, Like, what do we need you for? Right? This myth of white supremacy was sold to white masses so that they could have, of course, as WB. Devoy said, the psychological wages of whiteness rather than material wages, and those psychological wayses were knowing always that in a deeply unequal economy they could nonetheless count on being more than and better than Black people. Now hang on for the amazing story of Darryll Davis from a slight change of plans. So, I was riding in my car. I'm driving, and this klansman was sitting in my passenger seat, and we got on the topic of a crime, and he made the mention that black people are born with a gene that makes them violent, and I said, look, I'm as black as anybody you've ever seen. I have never done a drive by or a car jacking. How do you explain that this man did not hesitate one second? He answered me instantly, He said, your gene is latent. It hasn't come out yet. That's Darryll Davis, a blues musician. And yeah, you heard him right. He's driving in his car with a member of the Ku Klux Klan. You know, I was speechless. I was dumbfounded. And he's sitting next to me with all smug and securely. Huh. You see, you know you have nothing to say. And I thought about it for a moment rather than attack him, you say it's not true. It's not true. I said to him, I said, you know, white people have a gene within them that make them serial killers. And he said, why would you say that. I said, well, face it, name me three black serial killers. He thought about it. He couldn't name anybody. You couldn't do it, I rattled off. Charles Manson, Jeffrey Dalmer, Henry Lee Lucas, John Wayne Gacy, Ted Bundy, David Burklew, son of Sam, Albert de Salvo the Boston Strangler. And I said, son, you are a serial killer. And he said, Darrell, I've never killed anybody. I said, your genus legend hasn't come out yet. He said, well, that's stupid, and I said, well, duh, it is stupid. And he got very, very quiet, and I could tell that the gears in his head were spinning super fast, probably you know, burning a hole in there. And then he a moment later he changed the subject. But within five months this guy quit the Ku Klux Klan. Since that car ride thirty years ago, Daryl Davis has gone on to convince dozens of people to leave the Ku Klux Klan. Convincing someone else to change their minds their view of reality is one of the most elusive, coveted types of change, which is why Darryl's story feels so improbable. So how does he do it? I'm Maya Shunker. As a cognitive scientist, I've always been fascinated by how we change our minds and why we change our minds. On this show, I'll have intimate conversations with people who've navigated extraordinary change, and hopefully their stories will get us to think differently about change in our own lives. This is a slight change of plans, our constitution, our constru Darrel didn't set out to change anyone's mind. He was mostly just focused on his music. But one night his life took an unexpected turn when he was playing a show at a bar called the Silver Dollar Lounge. The Silver Dollar Lounge at the time was an all white lounge. And I say that not meaning that black people could not go in, but meaning that they did not go in by their own choice because they were not welcome there. And when you go somewhere where you're not welcome and alcohol hall is being served, sometimes it does not make for a good combination, especially when you're out and numbered. So we took a break after the first set, and I was walking across the dance floor to go sit you with the bandmates when somebody approached me from behind and put their arm around my shoulder. No, I don't know anybody in this place, so I'm turning around to see who's touching me, and it was this gentleman, maybe fifteen eighteen years older than me, and he's all excited. He says, man, I sure like your piano playing. This is the first time I ever heard of black man play piano like Jerry Lee Lewis, and I told him. I said, well, Jerry Lee got it from the same place I did, from black blues and boogie woogie piano players. Oh no, no no, no, no, I never heard no black man play like that except for you. Jerry Lee invented that style. I said, look, I know Jerry Lee Lewis. He's a good friend of mine. He's told me himself where he had learned how to play. The guy didn't buy that either, but he was so fascinated with me that he wanted me to come back to his table. He's want to buy me a drink, so I don't drink, but I agreed to have a cranberry juice. He bought it, paid the waitress, and then he took his glass and he clinked my glass and cheered me, and then he announces, you know, this is the first time I ever sat down with a black man and had a drink. So innocently, I asked him why, and he didn't answer me at first. I asked him again, and his buddy sitting next to him elbowed him and said tell him, tell him, And the guy looked at me and said, I'm a member the Ku Klux Klan. Well I burst out laughing at him because now I do not believe him. I thought he was putting the joke on me. I'm laughing. He goes inside his pocket, pulls out his wallet, flips through it, and hands me his clan membership card. I recognized the clan insignia, which is a red circle with a white cross and a red blood drop in the center of the cross, and I'm thinking myself, oh my goodness, you know this is for real. So I stopped laughing. But he was, you know, very friendly and very appreciative of my music and all excited. He gave me his phone number to you know, to call him whenever I was to return to this bar with this band, and so I'd called him every six weeks and say, hey, man, you know I'm down there at the Silver Dollar this week and come on out. You say, it's so nonchalantly like so I called the guy. It is remarkable that you called this person. And you know, I don't think I'm alone in struggling to understand, you know, what was going through through your mind at this moment. If someone told me that they were in the freaking clan. I would certainly not call them back. In fact, I'd probably just flee the scene. And I think this is for pretty good reasons. Well, you know, I was questioning myself for a second, like what the heck am I doing sitting here with a klansman. But the guy was friendly. He disputed the things that I had in mind of the image over typical klansmen, and he wanted to share my music with some of his fellow clansmen and clanswomen. And they would, you know, get on the dancelore and danceloor I'm music. You know they didn't come in rope and hoods, right, you know, they came in regular street clothes. This goes on for a year, an entire year. Darrell would play a gig at this bar, and he would invite clan members to watch him play. This is one of those things that makes Darrell so unusual. I mean, for me, a huge part of what makes someone who they are is their belief system. And so if we share the same taste in music, that's fine, that's great. But if I then find out they're a flagrant racist, that's going to fully eclipse everything else about them. So how does Darrell look past that, he says, It's not like that. He wasn't looking past it. He wanted to learn from it. See, Darrell had spent his early childhood overseas in a school he describes as a United Nations for little kids. Race was always in the background, But when he moved back to the States when he was ten, he couldn't escape racism, and ever since then he's been interested in why people hate. I had had an experience at the age of ten where some racist people threw rocks and bottles at me during a parade in which I was the only black participant, and never having had this happened to me before, I was perplexed as to why people were doing this, And when later my parents explained that it was racism, my ten year old brain could not process the idea that someone who had never seen me before, who had never spoken with me, and knew nothing about me, would want to inflict pain upon me for no other reason than the color of my skin. You know, that just did not compete with me. Well later, when I realized this was true, there are people like that, I formed a question in my mind, which was, how can you hate me when you don't even know me, And some people would just say, well, Darrel, you know that's just the way it is. Well, no, it's not just the way it is. There has to be a reason behind it. Well it's always been that way. That was not good enough for me. I wanted to get to the nucleus of it. So Darrell dedicates himself to answering this question. He devours books about race and racism. He reads nearly every book that exists on the clan, but he's still unsatisfied, so he decides he wants to write his own book about the clan. All the books written on the clan except for mine, have been written by white authors. You know, white authors obviously have an easier time getting in contact with the clan and sitting down and not fearing any ramifications or whatever, or they might even join the clan undercover. A clansman would have a different perspective sitting there talking to a black person than he would a white person. And how do you feel that perspective would have been different because he's sitting there telling the person that he hates why he hates them. So now he's having to face me and face those same questions. You know that somebody would ask or even different questions that a white interviewer journalist would not ask because they don't think of him, because they don't feel the things the same things that I feel. As Darrell starts read searching for his book, it suddenly dawns on him he already knows someone in the clan, that guy from the Silver Dollar Lounge. So he goes on a mission to track him down. It takes a while, but eventually he finds the guy's address. And I knocked on the door, you know, unannounced, and he opens the door and sees me, goes, Darrel, you know, what are you doing here? And look, he looked up and down the hallway to see if I brought anybody with me. So it was more of him that who was intimidated than me. And when he stepped out of his apartment, I stepped in. So he turns around, comes back in. So now we're standing inside his apartment and he says, you know what's going on? Are you still playing? What's going on? I said, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm still playing. But listen, I need to talk to you about the clan. He says, the clan. I said, yeah. He goes well, I quit, Yeah, I quit a while back. I said, well, you know, where's all your clan stuff? He says, well, they came and got it. And I said, what do you mean they came and got your robin hood? You know, don't you own it? And he explained to me, when you joined the clan, if you have the money to pay for it, you can purchase your robin hood and it's yours to keep forever. If you cannot afford it at the time, you can still take it home with you, but you put a little extra money in every time you pay your dues until you pay it off, sort like layaway kind of thing. The bizarre financial lead system within the clan. Love it, yes, exactly, equal opportunity for everyone who's racist, that's right, okay, absolutely so. Anyway, he said that they came and got it, but when they came to get it, he could not find the mask, and he has since found it and he needed to return it. I said, what can I see it? So he goes down the hallway, comes back and hands me the mask and I said to him, I said, do you know Roger Kelly? He goes, yeah, Roger was my grand dragon. I know him. And I said, well, listen, I need you to hook me up with mister Kelly. I want you to interview him. I'm going to write a book on the clan. Now, let me explain how the hierarchy of the clan works. You understand these terms we would call a state leader of governor. They call that the Grand Dragon a mayor. That person is known as the exalted Cyclops. Anybody on the great level is Yeah, it's very self importance of these names, that's yeah. But see that's also what attracts people because you know, they get titles, they feel imported. Yes, it's a sense of self importance, you know, because they're not getting that from the society in which they live. So you know, this brotherhood, this gang, if you will, gives him those things. So at the time, Roger Kelly was the Grand Dragon state leader from Maryland. So I said, I'll tell you what you need to return this mask, right He said, yeah. I said, give me Roger Kelly's phone member and his address and I'll go and return it for you. And he snapped that thing right out of my hand and said, in no way. And so I begged and plead it with him. Well, he finally gave it to me on the condition that I not revealed him mister Kelly where I got it, and he warned me. He said, Darrel, do not go to Roger Kelly's house. Roger Kelly will kill you. And I said, well, that's that's the whole reason why I need to talk to mister Kelly. I know, why would he kill me? What is going on in his mind when he sees me. I have to understand this. You did realize that you might not get the answer to the question if, in fact the dangerous part happened first. Right, true, this is true, But but I was thinking, you know that I would I would prevail. I'm the eternal optimist if you will, Well, I am not the eternal optimist. And Darryll's decision feels incredibly risky. But anyway, he has a secretary Mary call and schedule the interview, and he gives her one important instruction, do not tell him that I'm black, and see if you would consent to sitting down and giving her boss an interview. I figured, you know, he might pick up in my voice that I'm black, and I didn't want him to hang up the phone, say am I talking to you, and my whole project would have ended before they ever got started. Roger Kelly agrees to meet for an interview one evening at a nearby motel. Darrel gets to the motel early with Mary. He's not sure if Roger will even agree to step foot in the room, but if he does, Darrel wants to be hospitable. He asked Mary to fill up the ice bucket and buy some sodas and then they start arranging the room. There's not much to arrange. There's the ice bucket, a table, two chairs, and Darrell's canvas bag which has his tape recorder and a Bible. The clan claims to be a Christian organization and they claim that the Bible preaches are racial separation. Now, in my reading of the Bible, I have never seen anything like that in there. So I want to be able to pull up my Bible and hand it to him and say, here, mister Kelly, please show me chapter and verse where it says blacksom whites must be separate. So I'm all prepared, right right on time, right to the minute. Five fifteen knock, knock, knock on the door. In Waltz, what is known as the Grand Nighthawk. Nighthawk means bodyguard security. He's dressed in military camouflage, and he has that clan patch on his chest on one side on the other side of his chest or the initials cakak and embroidered on his cap and said Knights of the ku Klux Klan, and on his hip. He had a semi automatic handgun in a holster. He comes in. Mister Kelly is walking directly behind him, carrying a briefcase in a dark blue suit and tie, and the Nighthawk turned the corner and saw me and just froze in his trap. So mister Kelly slammed into his back and knocked this guy forward. And now that they both are stumbling around trying to regain their balance, and they're like looking all around the room like somebody's not right here. And I'm just sitting at the table looking at their faces, and I could read their faces like a billboard. Their faces were saying to me, did the desk kirk give us the wrong room number? Do you do? Do we misunderstand something or is this an ambush? So you know, I saw the APPREHENDI and so I stood up and I displayed both of my palms to show I had nothing in my hands, and I walked forward. I extended my right hand and I said, Hi, mister Kelly. I'm Darryl Davis. I hope both of these conversations inspired thinking and conversation around issues of race. You can find more episodes of b Anti Racist and A Slight Change of Plans wherever you get your podcasts

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