 If your country built its entire wealth from chattel slavery, segregation, Jim Crow, the prison industrial complex, you can't ignore those things. Or you can't even minimize how certain groups who have been disproportionately affected by those things are performing relative to everyone else. And you can't, you know, eliminate their outcomes and say, well, because everything's working for other people, we have progress. That's not necessarily the case. Hello and welcome to the state of Working America podcast, where we surround to provide a reality check on how workers from all walks of life are impacted by the economy and what needs to be done to address workplace inequalities. I'm your host today, Kyle Moore, an economist with the program on race, ethnicity and the economy at the Economic Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank focused on leveling the economic playing field for all Americans and their families. So I'm really excited to be talking with Anna Gifty Apoku Ajman, the editor of the book we'll be talking about today, The Black Agenda, Bold Solutions for a Rope System. Anna is an award-winning Canadian American researcher, entrepreneur and writer. She graduated from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County in 2019 with a B.A. in mathematics and a minor in economics. Currently, she's a grad student at the Harvard Kennedy School, studying public policy and economics. Her new best-selling book, The Black Agenda, what we're discussing today, published at St. Martin's, has received praise from the New York Times, from New York Times best-selling authors, Wes Moore, Dr. Ibram X. Kendi and Chelsea Clinton. The book is the first publication exclusively feature black policy and research actors for a trade audience. She's also a co-founder of the Sadie Collective and the former or perhaps still currently an absence president of the Young Black Economist group chat, of which I am a member as well. How are you? It's good to have you. Good to have you on the show, Liz. Thank you. First of all, it's such an honor to just be in conversation with you. Obviously, our conversation is long overdue, but I'm really excited to be here. And I hope that the Young Black Economist group chat is still living on, even though I'm not on group me anymore. It's still living, but we're trying to be more and we're trying to meet up and talk some more. But yeah, it's still nice. We miss you. We miss you. Yeah, but, but all right. So let's, let's just dive right into some questions about the book itself. And really, I want to get to talking about how it fits into our current political environment. Yeah. So, so in an introduction to the book, you talk about one of the inspirations for bringing the work together in the first place, being the lack of experts included in conversations around the envelope of 2020, the pandemic, the economic crisis, the racial reckoning we had, all of it. What do you think about the state of black expert inclusion in conversations today, about two years since the crisis began? Yeah, it's still pretty bad to be frank. I think it got like marginally better for like three seconds. And then it went right back to, you know, nothing really. So I mean, like during the summer of 2020, obviously we saw a huge uptake in black voices being featured in the mainstream, just because people were essentially trying to save their butts, right? They were like, they didn't want to appear racist by not featuring black voices. But I think that that's actually fundamentally at the root of the issue, right? This idea of like, you only are featuring black voices because you don't want to look bad, not necessarily because it's the right thing to do, right? And so, unfortunately, things haven't gotten that much better. I would say that, you know, thankfully this book has got an end of attention where I think that's a little bit, you know, coming back into the mainstream, at least in the policy space, but you know, I think organizations haven't been doing a great job of trying to find ways to integrate black expertise into, you know, what they're already doing or, you know, to use black expertise as a way to bolster what sort of policies are serving the black community. So I feel like it's not great, but I'm really happy that this book exists because it kind of removes the excuse of, you know, not knowing where to look and not knowing how to improve. Yeah, yeah, that, that really resonates with me. I definitely agree that there was a moment where people kind of realized, oh, we have to do something on this, right? We have to be making some sort of public facing something, putting a black face up front somehow. And that was really salient for a while, but it kind of, you know, doesn't feel like that's been sustained all the way. So that's an interesting sort of dynamic to think about. And it's kind of easy to the next question I have here, yeah. Sorry if I say, you have black, you have people posting black boxes on Instagram thinking that was enough and then they removed those black boxes when it didn't fit the aesthetic. So that kind of just gives you a sense. That was a moment. It's a metaphor, to be frank. Yeah, and I think this year, the trend was instead to have the sort of like, can take clothes, print, logo, somewhere around, you know what I'm saying? And I don't even think like any of them think that like Ghana is like a thing, right? Because Ghana is like one of the originators of Kente cloths. I feel like, you know, some of them, like you asked them to point to Ghana on a map. They'd be like, this continent would you like, you know, no connection to the sort of cultural, like, you know, genuineness in there. And I was just like, oh, we need to do this. Yeah, there's work to be done, for sure. But that does kind of lead to the next question here. So we're almost through the first quarter of 2022, right? And I feel like it's safe to say, we're well into a major backlash to 2020s raised awareness of racial justice issues. Right? For example, critical race theory has become this sort of catch-all turn to silence any and all conversations about racial inequity. So just want to get your thoughts. How does it feel to have released a book like The Black Agenda into this political environment in particular where there's so much sort of hostility to even conversations about racial inequity? I remember when we were putting this book together, right? And I remember, you know, my prompt to all of y'all was, you know, write this book as if we've gotten through the pandemic. And then in the back of my head, I was like, I hope that that will be relevant enough. Obviously, the book has been incredibly relevant, right? Like, because we're still in the pandemic, things have just gotten worse in a sense. So I mean, this whole idea of critical race, I think you said it correctly, like it's become sort of this boogeyman term used by, you know, conservatives and the folks in the GOP. And it's effective. It's very similar to like the welfare queen, right? You can sort of rally around that and use that as a way to disenfranchise black people. What I love about The Black Agenda's timing, which, again, we didn't really like plan it because we didn't know what's going to happen, is that it's very much a counter to that, right? If folks are, you know, worried about critical race theory, the Black Agenda provides some really concrete ways in which racism is sort of integrated into the very fabric of our society and then says, look, it's not necessarily about, you know, having this conversation about race that needs to happen, it's more so about integrating these solutions that benefit black people as a way to sort of combat inequality for all of us. And I think that that's sort of the resonant message throughout the book, which is really exciting and a really, really great counter to boogeyman terms that quite frankly are baseless, right? And so you have people banning books all over the place simply because they're mentioning black folks, they're mentioning queer folks, they're mentioning black women or whatever. But I think what this book does is it says we're going to, you know, disguise these solutions that are ultimately for black people as solutions for all, because ultimately they are solutions for everybody, right? But the idea here is that black people are really fending for themselves and in doing so, we actually are benefiting a whole host of individuals. And so, you know, CRT is a very interesting conversation because like I said, again, like I think I've mentioned this on an interview or two, you know, folks on the right are very, very good at organizing. I think people underestimate that, right? And so, you know, the black agenda is kind of a really great start of how do we organize around some key principles that can really lead us into a society that honors us all? Yeah, I think that point, I think the book can work as a conduit for a lot of those good conversations and hopefully does cut through some of the just noise that's being thrown up by people just using critical race theories. It's just, again, like this sort of silencing thing. I think this will, I think the book does that and hope to see its impact continue to grow. You too. Yeah. And, you know, and it's talking about the structure of the book and kind of the core theme of the book, right? Yeah. And this is kind of a maybe philosophical question. In your estimation, how does blackness shake the production of knowledge, right? So what is it about black expertise that's needed in this moment and really all moments? That's such a deep question. And I knew you're gonna hit me with a philosophy. Yeah, you know, I had to. I had to. I knew you were gonna do it. I had to do it. I had this conversation early on with Dr. Keisha and Blaine. She was my first stop on the tour and she compared me to like a W.E.B. Du Bois of some kind, right? This idea of like harnessing black thought and doing it in such a way that is digestible for the public. The reality is that, you know, black life is engrossed in how we are operating just in public life, right? It's engrossed in social commentary. And so when we talk about black expertise, it's really the difference between living through racial inequality and studying it. And black experts are really good at both because you're black. So you have to live through these inequalities that intersect race, wealth and class. And sometimes gender. But at the same time, you also have these tools that you can now say, here are how the systems are working to suppress or undermine blackness. And so in those ways, I can now use my lived experience as sort of the backdrop for the kinds of questions that I'm asking. And that being said, I would say black experts have a huge role to play in the years ahead. And I think that people are underestimating just how big of a role black experts have to play in ensuring that, you know, we all don't kind of, you know, climate change doesn't take us all, right? Because climate change at the end of the day at its root is really about racial justice and whether or not black and brown communities are being served in a way and living in conditions that ultimately dignified their life. And so I think black experts role moving forward is gonna be about steering the narrative. I get really annoyed sometimes when people are pitching op-eds specifically myself. I'm talking to myself, right? You're pitching op-eds to these white editors and they don't see the relevance of what you're talking about because you're black. Or they don't say like, they say, oh, well, you bringing in race into this issue doesn't seem as relevant, but as we're seeing with the Ukrainian crisis right now in the war between Russia and Ukraine, blackness actually reared its ugly head in that, amidst that crisis, right? Where you had issues at the border and it was definitely because of race to the point that the United Nations came out and said, yeah, there's definitely racism happening at the border, right? So this idea of fundamentally situating solutions around how black experts think about the problems that we're facing globally, like that needs to be core to any single conversation across policy industry academia moving forward. And what I love about the, I wouldn't say what I love about it, but what I appreciate about the conversations happening around Ukraine and Russia is that we actually do have black experts and black journalists who are at the helm of these conversations, who are talking a bit about how race intersects with global and geopolitics in the region in a way that many people wouldn't have expected, right? And so that being said, again, black scholars have this understanding of inequality in a very deep way and that's why they are best equipped to sort of lead us out of these crises that we're seeing across the world. Yeah. I love that you mentioned the lived experience that black experts have, right? Cause, you know, some people will see a book like this and see that it's all black authors and things of like, oh, there must be saying something fundamental about blackness that like makes black knowledge fucking different. It's like, it's not necessarily the case. It's just that they, because of the circumstances of the world that we live in in all parts of the world, like even in Ukraine, like you mentioned, people who are black just have a different experience, right? And they can bring those experiences to bear. And especially when they have the tools to be able to do that, right? Like these experts do in this work, that gives you different perspectives and it leads you in different direction for policy and it gives you better solutions than if you were to exclude no voices. So again, so glad to see this work coming for Wishing and see it out here and see people taking advantage of it. You know, since we're talking about the experts in the book, another question here, and putting together this, the book, you were, you know, again, you were gracious enough to include me in it to write a chapter on that occasion, Khan. So again, thank you for that. Of course. And, you know, cause I got the opportunity to participate alongside some, you know, some giants in this, in this collection. But, you know, that raised an interesting point because this book is this interesting mix of both junior and senior black scholars, both in and adjacent to the econ profession. Can you talk a little bit about the importance of having that generational range of younger and more experienced scholars on display? Yeah. Absolutely. That was intentional. Sure. And the pleasure was all ours to be quite frank. Your essay is one of the most popular ones that have been in different interviews. Yes. Of course. You are very, very interested in the traffic in economics. And I'll be reaching out to you about something later on. But that being said, that was an intentional decision. I think, you know, as somebody who is young and, you know, a black woman in the economics profession, a lot of times people are very confused when I, you know, roll up on the scene because I'm 25 and they're like, why is everybody listening to this 25 year old about, you know, a number of different issues? And I think it's just because I'm willing to say something about it at the end of the day. And I think recognizing that, you know, a lot of junior black folks, not just in economics, but across different sectors are just stepping up and saying, I have something to say. And it turns out, you know, young people have quite a few, you know, I would say solutions and, you know, ways of thinking about the context in their back pocket. And so I don't think that you have to have a certain level of pedigree to speak on something. I do believe that you have to be convicted by what you're speaking on to speak on it. And so I think that was sort of the driving force behind selecting younger scholars to kind of intersperse between these more seasoned experts. The idea that, you know, we are the next generation. And, you know, in time, those who have come ahead of us are going to pass. And so we need to have, you know, some level of say as we are building across generations to ensure that the solutions that are being proposed aren't lost once those individuals have passed. And so that's kind of how I think about it. It's really to cement legacy. This idea of having young people throughout the entirety of the book is to ensure that individuals recognize that this work does not begin and end with those who have done the work for years. In fact, it's actually beginning again with young folks who are at the helm of these conversations in their own respective spaces. And I would argue too that not everybody is, you know, someone who has gone through higher education, has a PhD as a master's or is in policy. Specifically, some of these individuals are activists and writers and advocates. And I think that that's also important because a lot of times you will encounter seasoned experts who will discount advocacy, right? We see that with AOC and the Democratic Party, quite frankly, right? Where people will discount organizing, discount advocacy. And these things are really powerful and really effective tools of getting people excited about different issues. And so that being said, I wanted to ensure that those young voices were also included on the advocacy front because a lot of times those are the conversations that are happening on the ground. And then, you know, we then can talk about the evidence. We can then talk about the facts and the figures that justify the different solutions that are being proposed at the end of the day. So, yeah. Yeah, no, I think that's, I love the continuity that we can see in the work that's still going. And I do think there is a real danger in trying to, you know, link every, or link these conversations specifically to a few big names, right? Because so much work happens in so many different places. And that's why, you know, there's so many scholars included in the book and that's why it makes it a powerful tool, right? To have so many different sources to link to, right? So many different people you can go to. Again, like I said, the books are starting point, right? So when people see the book, they see names in the book, they can go look up that person's work to be connected to them. And it just like broadens the field of conversation just beyond a few names. And I think, again, a huge value, huge value add there as well. Thank you. Yeah, and so the book covers a wide range of topics, right? But since this is state of working America, I want to zone in on just a few, namely those that touch on public health and the status of American workers. Now, surely every topic in the book is related to those, but I want to look specifically at healthcare and wellness and the economy and public policy. Because there's a deep connection between the health of workers and the health of the economy that not enough people emphasize. But I was glad to see some of that brought out in the works folks brought into the book. So what I'm going to do I'm going to read the opening quotes from each of these sections and then get some of your thoughts on why you felt they characterized each section. So I'm going to start with healthcare and wellness. So from Dara Mendes and Jules Scott on healthcare, we have the structural determinants of health, such as the processes, systems and policies that lead to inequities in the distribution of resources are central in shaping inequities in housing, employment, and other social determinants of health, right? And then from Jamie, I'll say right, Slater AC on wellness, we have to health inequity scholars, the idea that black Americans live sicker and die younger comes as no surprise, but it's a logical result of social realities. So taking these two bright points, what do you take from those two bright points as, and the overall chapters themselves as the core message coming from the scholars here on the black healthcare wellness agenda? My thoughts immediately go to the need for universal healthcare and better work protections, but what's your perspective on that from those chapters? Yeah, I think, I mean, that's exactly right. This idea of not protecting black life ultimately undermines black workers and subsequently undermines all workers. This idea of black life ultimately is the core of a lot of the inequities we see across America and it manifests its way into different sectors of society, such as healthcare, right? This idea of structural determinants of health and that being directly linked to racial wealth gap, that being directly linked to educational outcomes and access to opportunity and access to capital. These are all themes that come up in other areas of the book, but it kind of points to the fact that until black life is fully dignified in all sense of the word, we're not going to see a healthcare system that actually serves everyone equitably. And so I really, really love the healthcare and wellness chapters because one, they're very complimentary. The healthcare chapter takes sort of this macro approach and how we think about how black life, excuse me, has been undervalued over centuries over the entire existence of the healthcare system and how we can think about different frameworks that can address those inequities. And then I think the wellness chapter zones on the actual individual experiences of black individuals who are dealing with healthcare. So you see that with mental health for black America with Javay Grooms. You see this with the diary of a black disabled woman with Tindu Abiyemi-Paul. You also see it with health in her hues. Founder Ashley Wisdom, who talks about how the literal, I would say lack of access of black providers is an opportunity for us to connect black individuals to better culturally competent providers. We're talking about individuals here. And so what I really love about those two quotes is that at the end of the day, it speaks to this broader issue of, how does America view black life? If it doesn't value black life within everybody's life is subsequently undervalued as a result because the systems are calibrating to suppressing black life, which then suppresses life for all. Yeah, that definitely resonates with me. When we do a lot of policy research, we end up often using outcomes for black Americans as a sort of benchmark for determining how bad things are really. And I think that's a useful thing to do, just historically speaking, black Americans often have had the worst health outcomes, black Americans, Native Americans as well. But if we can improve systems for such that the outcome for black Americans improve, again, like he was suggested, things will improve for everyone, right? That's the perspective that I think we need to take, especially thinking about the workers as well, right? We can make things secure for the precarious, for the least well-off workers. That's gonna improve things for everyone. Absolutely. So finally, let's talk about the economy and public policy, right? So this is one of those rare moments where you get to quote yourself, but I'll do that since you chose a quote of mine for the economy section. So for myself on the economy, we need new economic principles. Once they offer something better than the false scarcity narratives that have made us all sicker and poorer while enriching the wealthy white few who have been able to use their positions of power to make liberal policy choices that brought us here, brought us to where we are. And from William Sandy Dairy on public policy, we have, while all Americans are bearing the harsh brunt of the pandemic, evidence of aggravated racial and ethnic inequalities make even more transparent the necessity of bold and transformative policy agenda in America. So again, taking these two close into consideration, what are the main takeaways here for the black economic and public policy agenda? I mean, for me, the need for a strong, transformative agenda jumps out to me as being particularly important, but what are your thoughts on those two chapters and what they add to the conversation? Yeah, I mean, there's actually quite a few parallels between what you said, what Dr. Dairy said, and what, you know, those who were in the healthcare chapter and the wellness chapter said, right? This idea of structural inequities being at the root of a lot of the problems that we're seeing and those inequities failing black people in particular, and in particular ways, right? I think a lot of times when people talk about economic justice, they talk about it in silos, right? This idea of like people need financial literacy to like, you know, build capital. But a lot of times economic justice is tied to healthcare justice, is tied to wellness justice, is tied to, you know, climate justice. All of these different areas of society in which justice hasn't been fully realized is undermining black life in different ways. And so I think one of the biggest takeaways I took from your essay, Stratification Economics, and I would love for you to speak on your own essay. Sure, sure, sure. Because I have your year, right? Is that the way we think about the economy needs to change. So as a PhD student, I have, you know, had the pleasure and also, you know, have also gone through the pain of thinking microeconomic things in my first semester. It was a really good class. It taught me a lot. One thing that, you know, my wonderful professor, Arta Gitmez mentioned towards the end of the class, he was talking about markets. And he said, look, you know, some people really love markets. They really do. However, I want you to think critically about how markets operate and how markets are used to explain economic phenomenon. He said, you know, you might find the most efficient market, but it might not be the most welfare maximizing. And I said, that is fascinating, right? Because I had never heard about markets in that context of, you know, just because of market, you know, equilibrium is efficient doesn't necessarily mean that it's maximizing welfare for all the players involved. Doesn't necessarily mean that. I mean, in normative words or normative stances, it's fair. And I think that I was like, why don't people teach this, right? Like in the undergrad, because I feel like that's a really compelling perspective. And I remember like literally sitting there and being like, oh, I understand why people are heterodox economists now. Oh, like I get it, right? It makes a lot of sense. And so I think from your essay I took that the way that we think about the economy needs to consider context. You can't talk about economic indicators and, you know, economic progress without talking about how racism fundamentally shaped the way the economy was formed in the first place. And it's just like this concept that, you know, people may get seen like it's so outlandish and so out there, but it's really not. If your country built its entire wealth from chattel slavery, segregation, Jim Crow, the prison industrial complex, you can't ignore those things or you can't even minimize how certain groups who have been disproportionately affected by those things are performing relative to everyone else. And you can't, you know, eliminate their outcomes and say, well, because everything's working for other people, we have progress. That's not necessarily the case. So I think for me that was the biggest takeaway from your essay. And I think it's also why it resonated so much with so many individuals who were reading the book and who have, you know, interviewed me about the book and asked about your work, that it's getting at this core issue of, are we even talking about the economy in the right way? Are we even thinking about the holistic context of how we think about economic indicators and economic progress and economic opportunity? And then I think to, you know, Dr. Darity's essay, he provides a really interesting solution. I cannot, you know, the 21st Economic Bill of Rights where he says there's certain things that every American should be privy to just because they're here. And it reminds me a bit of, you know, Dr. Derek Hamilton's work with Baby Bonds. So this idea of, you know, every individual should be entitled to a certain amount of money to ensure that generational wealth isn't some sort of lofty dream. I think these things are all connected, right? It's about understanding context and how context informs the past, the present and the future. And I think a lot of times, you know, folks in economics want to be very idealistic about, oh, if we see progress in one area, then it must mean that there's progress for all areas. But I think the reality is that black economists have always known that that's not the case. And that's more of a reason why folks need to listen to y'all and also cite you. And so that's really why I included your essay in the book. I knew that you were going to speak to the stratification economic framework in a way that would honor both the past and the present, but also look to the future as well. I definitely appreciate that. And, you know, of course I have to give credit where credit is due that, you know, Derek Hamilton and Sandy Darity and Pat Mason and Jim Stewart once, of course, introduced me to stratification economics in the first place, but I think you're right. I think the main idea that I wanted to convey with that essay is the fact that we need a different framework for thinking about the economy. And I think that's one of the perspectives that stratification economics does bring to it, is that there's a lot of knowledge out there about, there's a lot of knowledge in history and context that, you know, and again, I want to say condolences and congratulations for making it through Grand Micro. That is, okay, well. I'm not doing it yet, I swear that up. You're going to go. Game theory. Game theory, game theory, all right, game theory's okay. Yeah, it's fine. It's all right, yeah, that's exactly right. But I will say that in a lot of, in a lot of, you know, more mainstream economics, we're taught to ignore a whole lot of the world and a whole lot of history that we, that we know is true in a lot of the insights that come from other disciplines who have things to add to this conversation about how we understand the economy, how we got to where we are, why certain people have access to resources or people don't, right? There's a historical record. We can just look and see how wealth was built in the country, right? But if we're taking a perspective where the only thing that matters is a theoretical model as to how wealth could be built, that will lead us in directions that are misleading. And I think that's the problem, right? It's not only that they're incorrect, it's that they build within us bad habits about how we think about how people get the resources that they have. And so you end up with really bad explanations, especially when you're trying to explain racial disparities, right? And so again, that's why you really wanna bring different frameworks to bear here. And I think that's the value-add stratification that economics has, particularly in this moment where we're trying to understand things like disparities in COVID death rates, right? Like how do we get to a place where the disparities are so stark, right? Wealth disparities, same thing. How did this happen, right? If you have a model explanation that doesn't take into account history and context, you can just say, oh, well, it must be something wrong with these individuals, right? It must be something wrong with this particular group that leads into this outcome. Yeah, I think the last thing I'll say really quickly before we move on to the last question is, economists make a lot of assumptions. Yeah, they do, they do. Mathematically and socially. And so for me as like a buddy economist, it's incumbent on me to really in lieu of what you're talking about to collaborate with folks who can add that much needed context. So sociologists, psychologists, folks who are in history, because at the end of the day, that's what makes the work rich, but more importantly, that's what makes the work useful. What good is an economic model if it only applies to white men? That's right. That's right. That's it. And so let's close it out with one last question here. The subtitle for the book is both solutions for a broken system. So let's just talk a bit about systemic change. I see this book as part of the stage setting for making that change. So, but what do you think it takes to go from the knowledge production happening in this book to moving the needle on policy? Yeah. I think it begins with inviting several of these individuals into your organization, not just for Black History Month, but throughout the entire year, right? This idea of them informing how you think about questions because the truth of the matter, a lot of policy organizations, industry organizations, academic institutions, they don't know what questions to ask correctly around race and how it integrates into different aspects of society. And the truth of the matter, like I mentioned before is that Black folks have this unique, especially Black experts, have this unique toolkit in which you have lived through racial inequality and you can study it at a very intimate level. And so that being said, organizations need to leverage that expertise in that, you know, if you're really trying to, you know, aim for solutions around Build Back Better, you probably should start with Black experts because that's who hopefully Build Back Better will ultimately benefit. But if you're seeing gaps in that or Black experts are already seeing gaps in that, well then that's where you kind of start with the questions, okay, where does it need to be filled? Where do those gaps need to be filled? How do we think about, you know, different ways to address some of the issues that are brought up by Black experts who have an understanding of the literature but also have an understanding of this lived experience of being in Black communities, Black and Brown communities that are gonna be disproportionately affected by whatever policies being put in place? I think the other thing too is that, you know, not looking at Black leadership as an aside, that is something that, you know, a lot of times people will say, I'm just gonna put a Black leader here. Great to have that Black face there. Checking a box. Good to go. And it's like, not necessarily, right? I think recognizing that racial inequity is fundamentally at the root of a lot of different issues that we're currently facing in America, that means that in order to essentially address that, you're going to have to have Black and Brown people centered in your organization. They cannot be aside. And I think a lot of people to bring in a DEI expert, have folks, you know, ru-ha-ha, cry, da-da-da-da-da, and then think that's okay. And it's not sufficient. It's not sufficient to just be like, oh my God, we're racist. And then, we'll just leave it there. You really have to have, yeah, Black people integrated into your organization. I once was asked this question, the University of Nebraska, shout out to the University of Nebraska for having me. They were very, very nice, by the way. They were like, someone had asked, so how do I get Black people into my lab? And I said, well, you just do it. Bring them in and buy them. And they were like, wow. Ha-ha-ha-ha, right? Make a decision, make a decision. And it's like, this is not rocket science, y'all. At the end of the day, to just conclude, we can't move forward until everybody agrees that Black people are people. There's something that Michael Harriet tells me a lot. I've spoken with him a couple of times. And he says, we just have to agree on the facts. People can't even agree on that. But the fact of the matter is Black people are people. When we start with that fact, all the other problems that we are facing, then are sort of thrown into this lens of, okay, now we know that Black people are people, well, clearly things are inequitable. Clearly Black life is criminalized. How then do we take what we've been doing and center those who are worse off? And in many ways, Black and Indigenous folks are worse off. And then start solutions there because I always got to bring her into this. Janelle Jones, as she says in her Black women best framework, the best outcome for Black people, specifically Black women, is a better outcome for everyone else, always. There's like no case where that's not true. And so seeing that fully realized in organizations like Economic Policy Institute, in organizations like the Peterson Institute, Brookings, the White House, Congress, like these are all different institutions across DC and beyond DC that need to implement this sort of Black women best, what I would say Black people best framework that ensures that Black life has been dignified, honored, and fully recognized. And I think we better point to end it on than that. Anna, thank you so much for coming and speaking with us today. It's been a great conversation. We got to talk more, got to stay in contact. Yeah, for sure. For sure. Of course. Thank you. Working America, I'm Kyle Morp. And we will talk to you all next time. This podcast was produced by Heartcast Media.