 Welcome to season three, episode four of CN Live, the future of racism. I'm Joe Lauria, editor-in-chief of Constory News. And I'm Elizabeth Boss. The conviction of police officer Derek Chauvin for the murder of George Floyd has led some politicians and commentators to speak about an end of racism, that an end of racism is possible. But what kind of future does racism really have? With us to discuss this topic is Margaret Kimberley, a columnist and editor at the Black Agenda Report and author of Presidential, Black America, and the Presidents. And Garland Nixon, political analyst, talk show host, and former police officer. CN Live is produced by Kathy Volga. Welcome, Margaret and Garland, to CN Live. Thank you so much. Good to be back. Thank you. Yes, great to see you both. So maybe let me start with you if I can. I've written a history book about racism and every American president, which I've begun reading and I'm finding fascinating. Before we talk about the future of racism, I wanted to take you back even further than the founding of the United States to the era of the European Middle Ages. Basil Davidson, the late British journalist who wrote more than 30 books about Africa, says that during the Middle Ages, African kingdoms were on a par with European monarchies that African leaders were routinely welcomed into European courts as equals. He argues that European racism against black people only began with the slave trade, that there was an economic motive to denigrate abuse and control Africans. Theories of racial superiority were then developed to perpetuate the system, justify and perpetuate the system of slavery. Then brutal European colonization followed to exploit Africa's people and resources. So I was wondering what you think of this theory, Margaret, that racism only began with slavery and with an economic motive. And if economics is at the heart of racism, how important is economics still today to the present and to the future of racism? Well, Davidson's not the only one who supports that theory. It is true that in ancient times, there was trade between Africa and Europe and colorism and racism became official, if you will, and popularly accepted with the transatlantic slave trade because after all, you could not treat people like animals, you couldn't treat them like chattel and also see them as equals. So it had to happen that way. So that is true, but, and I think it's still true, by the way. I think the legacy of slavery in the Americas is something we're still living with and a lot of anti-black racism is tied to that. But I think now we have a situation where race trumps almost everything in this country. Yes, one group is advantaged by anti-black racism, but I think now the feeling is so deeply ingrained that it's not just economics that continues this system. White supremacy now has a life of its own. And that is the only explanation for what we see. We live, for example, in a country where race determines what class you're in. So the class reductionist argument doesn't even work. If you're black, you're more likely to face all sorts of negative outcomes and less likely to face any kind of positive outcome. So I think that's important to know historically, but now we're talking about a system where white supremacy is supported for its own sake. Right, exactly. So even if there's no overt economic motive, there's a holdover and a legacy of that having been used to justify the domination of the black race in the slave system. Garland, I wanna know what you think about this. Well, I think that economics still plays a big part of it because when I look at the US policy, and I always argue the difference between domestic policy and foreign policy is only grammatical. So the US, now if you look, we're in South America and Central America, brown people overthrowing their country, stealing their resources, right? Right now, last week, Tony Blinken was in Africa telling the Africans, of course, talking down to them, telling them they shouldn't do business with China. Now the reality is he was telling them they shouldn't do business with China in the same way that a mafia figure shows up on your corner and says you shouldn't open a pizza parlor on this corner. That means the mafia's decided you can't do it and you'll be killed if you do. What Tony Blinken means is your government will be overthrown, you'll probably be killed and your resources will be stolen whether you do or don't. It's not like there's a good option here. So I think part of it is one of the things when we connect it to economics today, it's part of this colonialism going around the world stealing stuff from mostly brown countries almost exclusively, but not completely exclusively, but nearly exclusively brown and black countries. And so if in fact you address racism honestly in America, if you bring out the issues that really need to be discussed in America, you can't help but expose those same issues internationally. And I think that's why racism has to be maintained in America internally. The internal colonies have to be kept into their place and the discussion has to be kept quiet internally because to allow that discussion to blossom internally will automatically, next thing you know, you have to be talking about the Palestinians and you have to be talking about the Cubans and the Venezuelans. And before you know it, the cat is out of the bag when it comes to the, you know the international organized criminal group known as the United States government. I'll give you a quick work. Yes, Margaret, oh, Katza, sorry. Elizabeth, you're next. I was just gonna say that you preempted one of my questions Garland about foreign policy and the way in which this whole discussion avoids discussing the racism of the U.S. foreign policy. And so I was just going to ask you to comment further on how the media separates those two issues and ignores the racism of U.S. imperial foreign policy and you know, for years. Well, because you know, it plays again. It's interesting because let's say in the 1800s or 60s or whatever, right? They would say that these particular group in a particular group of indigenous people were savages. They were animals. Well, what did that mean? That meant that they didn't really have agency as a human being. So whatever gold or silver or whatever resources were on their land, certainly you could go take it because they didn't even have enough, you know common sense to understand the value. So you were really doing them a favor because they're childlike, right? Or they were savages and vicious. So you had to protect yourselves from there from them as you went into their country to steal their gold. Well, today it's the same kinds of thing but we go right to the top. The leader of the country is a savage. The leader of the country is some kind of an animal and a beast. And so we have to protect the people and the resources from him. It's the same kinds of game. It's discounting the agency of a group of people or their leaders in another country. But it always comes down to the same thing in the end. So we can steal their resources. That's why I refer to the United States government as basically an organized crime family because that's what organized crime does. You're organized so that you can make money in some kind of an illicit way and you use violence to support your actions and to convince people to go along with your whims. Margaret, did you want to weigh in on that at all? Yeah, you know, it's funny I mentioned China. I believe a lot of the animosity towards China is racial. The idea that this country that is not white, that it is now the equal financially of the US, overtaking the US technologically and therefore threatening economic supremacy is more than they can stand. And that is why Trump attacks China, but Biden does too. And of course, Trump was more crude and Biden doesn't talk about the Chinese virus or anything, but Lincoln is constant. His comments are always about China doesn't play by the rules. What rules? Garland just said, you know, the Western bunch of gangster states. But so I think it's not just an economic rivalry, not just a political rivalry, not just caused by the Belt and Road Initiative, that competition. I think it is also racial animus as well. And I'd like to add to that. And part of that, again, it's all one thing. Part of that is, you know, if you get back to that justification that the people in country X or wherever are genetically and inferior to us, right? They are not as wise and smart and they don't have as understanding of the world. Okay, that is used as a justification to go to these countries and take their resources. But that means that you're smarter than everyone else. Well, now you have a group of people, Chinese, who are non-white, who now the whole world can say, well, those people are not intellectually inferior to you. And in fact, they've surpassed you in some areas of technology. They surpassed you in some areas economically. Well, now the whole house of cards falls apart because if you're not superior to them, according to our rules-based order, which nobody ever says, what are the rules? There's a rules-based order, but I'd like to find where those rules are. I think it's an order-based rules. You make up rules to keep that order where we're at the top. But that's it. So if you're arguing, you're intellectually superior to everyone, so the order of the world is the intellectual superiors reign over top of everyone. According to your unwritten rules, then the Chinese should be in charge now because according to what you're arguing, well, they're, quote, smarter. They're technologically more advanced. They're economically more advanced. So it is like an existential threat to the neocons and to the colonialists to have any group that's non-white surpass them in any area. And God forbid, they have a different economic and social system. One that you've been saying has to fail no matter what. Now, everything that you've been arguing falls apart. Your whole deck of cards has come crashing to earth and they have collectively, the neocons are having a nervous breakdown over China and Russia. And they're all neocons, by the way. I'd like to duopoly the, there's always a consensus in foreign policy. So whether the president has a D behind his name or an R, that is the kind of foreign policy that we have, that the US and its allies, the US and NATO and EU access has a right to run the world. And anyone who falls out of it, and it's, well, sometimes it is a white country, Russia falls out of it. It plays a peculiar role, I think, in the mentality of these people. But for the most part, it's people who are not white being told what to do. And this assumption that this country has this is exceptional. The Monroe, I mean, I cannot believe, I can believe it actually, 200 years after the Monroe doctrine, people talk about it in total seriousness that the US can punish Cuba or Nicaragua or Venezuela because they dare to have a left wing government and strangle them with sanctions. There is a lot of white supremacy there. And I think we need to pay attention to it, as Garland pointed out, because that's what happens domestically too. You're not going to have a foreign policy that differs that much from domestic policy. I would like to make a quick comment on Russia. I think the issue of Russia is also connected to race in a way. Here's why. So Russia and China have very similar foreign policies when it comes to economy, economics. And that is we'll come to your country if we can come up with an economic deal that benefits us both, we'll take it. We're not going to look inside your country and do human rights judgment. We're not going to ask your questions. This is about economics. We will respect your sovereignty. And that's that. So Russia being a white country, but they refuse to go along, they're a white country, but they're anti-imperialist, which now the Russia would say, well, why can't I go to Africa and make a deal with an African country that benefits us both? China would say that. That's what's unacceptable. They're a, I guess, you know, there are those, you know, back in the old days which called them traitors to their race. That's what that's about. Am I a big part of it anyway? You know, James Clapper of course when he testified at the Russians in the Russian DNA, to be the citizen lying, that's kind of a, even though there are white race to Russians, there is a kind of racial, at least ethnic tinge to that. I think it's very much, it seems like an existential threat to the Anglo-Saxons who have been on top for so long that they cannot bear that there is an evening out of power in the world with various polls rather than just a unilateral power of the Anglo-Saxons. And that could be leading to even more more extreme expressions of this type of racial dominance by, or ethnic dominance by the Anglo-Saxons. Let's go on to the police killings the matter more at hand here today before we again talk about the future of racism. Let's talk about the present killing by police of unarmed black persons has been a massive problem for at least a decade now. But it's ever since cell phone videos of these killings began appearing on social media that we've become more aware of it. First, it's probably true that these killings have been going on at the same rate before the cell phone videos. We just know more about them now. Despite this explosion of such videos on social media the mainstream press remained pretty silent until the mass protests began and the wider public started after St. Louis in five years ago, I guess. So it was always rare for a police officer to be convicted of any crime. Now I want to know both of you I could start with with Margaret do you think Chauvin would have been convicted without these mass protests? No, he would not have been. And I also don't think it's a coincidence. Let's go back a year. You know, that first day that the video appeared and riveted millions of people, authorities in Minneapolis were acting as the way they always do trying to play it off. Well, you're gonna take him off desk duty and you know, that's it. And we're gonna suspend him with pay and don't worry about it. And then someone set a police precinct on fire. And the next day Chauvin and the other cops were arrested. Now I'm not trying to give people advice or tell anybody they should do that. There are people who are still locked up who participated in protests who didn't even do anything violent. But I think it is not coincidental that they arrested him after the police themselves were attacked. So I think that from the beginning that changed the way this case was going to be handled. And then this movement across the country, millions of people, more white people than usually participate in these actions. For the first time, Poles showed that by a slight majority, most white people had a positive opinion about a black led movement. So I think Chauvin's goose was cooked, frankly. I was not surprised that he was convicted. I felt all along they handled the prosecution the way these cases should usually be handled, but aren't. And I thought it was very unlikely that he would be acquitted. That this was one guy who wasn't going to get away with it because the stakes were too high. Yeah. And let's not forget here a few years ago, there was the Walter Scott shooting in South Carolina. The incident in which a, on videotape, a police officer shot an unarmed man in the back five times and then planted evidence on the body, ill-weekly planted evidence on the body, on video, everybody saw it and there was a hung jury. And after the hung jury, they planned on a second trial and the officer played out before it and ended up I think at 12 and a half years or something like that, I forgot, whatever it was. But the bottom line, it was a plea bargain. So when I looked at that to, there could be the George Floyd murder was no more obvious, was no more blatant, was no more outrageous. The guy shot the guy in the back five times and then planted evidence. And then wrote a report that had lies in it. I mean, he did everything illegal. And yet there was still someone on a jury, at least one person who was willing to say, despite all of that evidence, I'm not going to find him guilty. And in my opinion, what that was about is, there are people in America, no shortage of them, that I think in kind of a dread Scottish kind of way, do not see black people as having the legal or social standing to even bring these kind of charges against a white person. So when they see a white officer, no matter what he did, it was a black person. So they just don't see that person as having this legal standing or their family or survivors or whatever to bring this action against the officer. So they're going to throw it out of court. It's not talked about, but I think there is a social version of dread Scott. Cause let's not forget, we talk about the officers, we talk about the prosecutors, we talk about everything. But when they go to court, these are a jury of their peers, right? These are civilians, just regular old average, everyday Americans who do these horrific deeds in my opinion of letting these people go. And I go back to my law enforcement days and I learned that. And that was I would be off duty and I would see terribly racist things happen or have them happen to me. I got profile, cause I would have 10, I was a young guy, I liked to have nice cars. I'd have nice cars. I get pulled over racial profile all the time and I was a cop. And I'd have people make statements to me. I had a nice car. I went to 7-Eleven one time, I come out. The guy in there later on tells me, yeah, when you were walked out, a couple of people said, yeah, I bet that guy's a drug dealer cause I had a BMW and he left. He says, no, I said he was a cop. But the bottom line was they weren't police officers. But if they were police officers, they'd have been ready to pull me over. This is, I think because law enforcement is an institution and that institution should be able to be changed by top down, by the government, we look at it as being something unique and different when it comes to racism. The difference is they can kill you, they can take your life, they can take your liberty, they can take actions against you. But the thought process to me is the same that I see. It's just those same people in that 7-Eleven, hey, a black guy in a nice car, he's probably a drug dealer. If they were cops, they'd have figured out how to pull me over. So it's a uniquely American problem, not saying that I have the answers, but that's just my thoughts on it. So I wanted to add one thing very quickly. You mentioned Dred Scott and I'm mentioning my book. I think it's important for people to know about the Dred Scott case that President Buchanan colluded with the Supreme Court. He involved himself in that case to make sure that the decision did not just deprive Dred Scott of his freedom, but deprive all black people of citizenship rights. And he hoped this would end the issue of slavery and it would no longer be a political issue. But that is, we started off talking about the transatlantic slave trade, but chattel slavery in this country, the law enforcement we have now is a relic from that day. And the police forces of today are the slave patrols of yesteryear. And that is why they have the right to pull people over or people in cars, people walking, people on bicycles doing any number of things, minding their own business, people who get killed because they call the police for help. Those are all legacies of slavery as practiced in this country. And I think it's one of the reasons that white supremacy has taken on a life of its own without an honest reckoning, those attitudes persist. I would like to make another quick comment. You know, when I grew up, so when I grew up, not far from me, there was like maybe a mile away, there's a basketball court. And right over by that basketball court, there was a black community that was public housing, right? So I lived in a different area in a kind of a suburban area, but I went over to the basketball court and all the kids from public housing, they were my friends, I hung out with them and stuff like that, rode bicycles with them, you know, et cetera, right? They were black, I was black, whatever. We lived in different economic strata as it were, but I didn't see a difference. Okay, my point being, very early, I recognized that when I came in and out of my neighborhood and where I lived, I didn't never saw a cop ever. Well, yeah, you may see one parked in a community that lived there, but when I went over to their community, there was one road going in and out of this public housing project. There was always a cops there, cops there. They were always waiting, you know, they were pulling people over, I had friends as I got old enough, we had drought, they were pulling people over, I was pulling. So it's like, when you go into this black public housing community of poor people, it was like, they were gatekeeper cops that were always there, always watching the people, always, and I thought to myself, in my neighborhood, you know, first of all, that's where the black kids got their weed from, my neighborhood, because the white kids had a quarter pound at a time. They didn't have a little $5 bag, right? And I thought, geez, if they pulled the kids over going in and out of my, the people going in and out of my neighborhoods, they'd get the guys with the big amounts of weed. They get a bunch of guys with a nickel bag or something, but my point being, I realized early that black communities are these, they're like, you know, soldiers who are covering in policing this black community and the white community is just, they don't need to be a police or they don't, you know, they don't, they just do whatever they want to. But I saw that early, you know, I'm sure you all know what I mean. Fascinating. So back to the question of the protests, I guess there's a lesson to be learned even for the anti-war movement, that protests matter, protests have effect. You could remember the story of Richard Nixon looking through the curtains of the White House at Lafayette Park, where an anti-war, anti-Vietnam War demonstration was going on. He went out one night to the Lincoln Memorial at 3 a.m. to talk to them. They very much aware power response to protests and pressure in the streets. Let me ask you Margaret, tell the audience a little bit about the short history of black lives matter, the organization, how did it begin? How did it become organized? What structure does it have today? Where's all the money going to that has been poured into it? Well, well, black lives matter, the organization, it's rather complicated. This organization founded by these three women, who all of whom were political operatives. And they, and I'm not saying you shouldn't do this, but at the moment of, in 2014, you mentioned Ferguson, Missouri when teenager Mike Brown was killed by the police. And they saw that there was this popular uprising, this upwelling of anger. And they capitalized on it. And I don't think that's necessarily bad, but they were people who were very savvy. They raised a lot of money. Now the words black lives matter have taken on a life of their own and are a rallying cry here and around the world. And there are black lives matters organizations all over the country, which are independent of this larger organization. Now this is problematic. The larger organization is problematic. As I said, they're democratic party operatives. They are not radical. They raise money from all the right people, Soros and others. I mean, you don't raise $90 million, just from him. And so they have, they are pretty much establishment now, frankly. And there are people in the grassroots groups who have started to talk about these contradictions involving the umbrella organization. Having said that about them, I think it's important that we recognize that they had their finger on the pulse of the country, especially of the black community. As you point out, we now know more and more about police brutality. Actually, no one keeps, there's no official number, except those who pay attention, media reports, et cetera. It seems that on an average, three people are killed by the police every day and one of those people will be black. The Malcolm X grassroots movement came up with that one every 28 hours. Probably is one every 24 hours. But so that's in a nutshell, I know I'm oversimplifying the issue of Black Lives Matter, the group and the words, the words that mean so much and that convey so much that's important to people. But on the other hand, I also have to say there has been some, the word hot word is performative. So people were spray painting, the words Black Lives Matter on the street, all over the country. That's okay. I'm not sure what it accomplished. I'm not sure it was the political action that was needed at that time. And it is very, very important as you point out, mass movements get results. We talk, but as in the case of the civil rights movement, which everyone fetishizes and talked about, we have to remember it took place over many years and people consistently made demands. They made demands of the system that they knew the system did not want to meet and they made them anyway. And that is where the success came in. So you're not going to get popular success raising millions of dollars. You get popular success for the people when power is confronted and when demands are made and there's too much after that time, a lot of co-optation, black faces in high places which didn't necessarily mean very much. So I think those are, I know I said, I tried to say quite a lot in a short period of time, but I think those are the salient points about Black Lives Matter and about organizing. You've anticipated one of my questions. I have, which is about just compare the movement today with the civil rights movement of the 1960s. What are any similarities or differences? Big question, short answer. Yeah, I think there was more organization then. There were more organizations that were focused on the key issues of the day. That was making Jim Crow illegal, doing away with Jim Crow, guaranteeing the right to vote, making segregation illegal. They were very, when I say simple demands, I don't mean to imply that it was not complicated, but it was very clear what people wanted and needed. Now it is less clear, but I think we can go back to that and we need to remember that clarity of purpose and that willingness to confront power that went on for a long time. And the fact that people didn't care that what presidents wanted, they didn't care what politicians wanted. They knew politicians didn't want to do what they wanted them to do, and they made the demands anyway. And whatever the issue is, if it's mass incarceration, if it's foreign policy, whatever it is, I think those are the most important things to keep in mind. I think one big difference is the Democratic Party. Of course, back in the 1960s, Democratic Party was still in the early 60s, the major party in the South. Openly racist party, so there's no way that the civil rights movement will want to have anything to do with the Democratic Party and Republicans weren't any better, I guess on race issues at that time, but this is before Nixon's Southern strategy. So today, what's the role of Democratic Party in the Black Lives Matter movement? It's quite different to relate to between the movement and Democratic Party, isn't it? Garland, let me ask you that. Well, but I'll say, here's one thing, it's really different. People forget. The, you know, Martin Luther King and the people in civil rights movements are just turned into some kind of saintly Moses, let my people go kind of figures, right? But in reality, let's not forget the March on Washington was a march for jobs. They were asking for a $2 minimum wage. If you talk to the people who I've met, some of them, I was good friends with John Conyers. I knew him well, he was very good friends with, in fact, my mentor was Paul Robeson Jr. for years. And when you talk to those people, they remember an island of poverty in a sea of wealth. What they connected very well was the poverty in the black community and how that was connected directly to their race. But they didn't, you know, eventually, the civil rights movement eventually did broaden out to the point where they were looking for economic justice for everyone. But they recognized, look, black people are uniquely disadvantaged economically because of their race and they addressed that. And I think that's critical. I'll tell you one of the reasons I think that's critical. Because when people start saying, what do you want? What do you think we should do? Too often, we get back to this kind of the Booker T. Washington Atlanta compromise where it's something like, yeah, give a bunch of money to the HBCUs and things that, you know, the historically black colleges, which I'm for don't get me wrong. But I know a lot of young black people that have gone to HBCUs that have already kind of at least made it up into the middle class or the upper middle class get to going in there. You go to Howard University and you see the young black people. There's a whole lot of BMWs and Mercedes that daddy bought riding around to Howard. That's kind of like the Harvard or the black community. That's a great college. But so my point being, I think now there's not as much of a discussion that there's this huge black economic underclass. And if you're saying we want reparations or we want somehow this thing to be made whole, all too often it's like, well, let's forgive college loans. That'll help a lot of black people. This huge black underclass, many of which I know and some of which members of my family are extended family, cousins, et cetera, are part of this huge black economic underclass wouldn't really get anything out of these so-called reparations by saying, okay, you don't have to pay off your college loans. College loans, a lot of it didn't finish high school. So I think it's economics have to be addressed here because anything that's done to mitigate the pain that black people have suffered has to be, to me, addressed to this huge black economic underclass working poor and poor where most black people fall in and they're the ones that get overlooked. My dyadic discussion you have to have to in here somewhere is the congressional black caucus and the black so-called leadership that's willing to go along to get along and live well. And again, pretend that this gigantic black economic underclass doesn't exist and doesn't need to be held and made whole. Marguerite, what about the rest of the Democratic Party? How have they exploited the situation for their employees? Well, you're correct. The Democrats were the party of the segregated South until starting in the late 60s and now the white South is almost entirely Republican. There's always a black political party and a white political party. So regardless of who the Republican candidate is, most white people will vote for the Republican. I mean, that's true across the country. So the Democratic Party became, thanks to Lyndon Johnson, became the black party. And there were black Republicans, mind you, in many places up until the late 50s, early 60s, but now the black community is solidly at least 90% Democratic. This doesn't always work out to our benefit, of course, because we black people see themselves as, since those successes, we see our role as basically keeping Republicans out of office. And this allows the Democrats to take advantage, to take us for granted, because we will silence ourselves. And you've seen it in the last couple of presidential elections, where we are convinced that we shouldn't vote for a certain person because white people won't vote for them. So for example, with Bernie Sanders, many of, most of what he was talking about are things that black people agree with, if you ask them. But all you need to do is plant that seed of doubt and say, well, you know, but white people aren't gonna vote for him. So black people will often reject the things that we want the most because we feel we don't have a choice. It's either the Republicans who are our enemies. And then that's it. Our job is just to keep them out of office and we are to be happy with anything we get from the Democratic Party and the black political leadership, the Congressional Black Caucus. I mean, that's the role they play. People like James Clyburn, who's he's no kingmaker or anything. Come on. He's the Democratic Party leadership. He gets more money from Big Pharma than anybody else in Congress. So he's and people like him are not gonna promote any policies that actually address the needs that people have. So we're in this predicament where we feel weak. We don't have that strength we had years ago where we believe we can, excuse me, where we can direct politics. Now we feel like we're victims. And that's very, very unfortunate because we end up where we are now where Joe Biden is, who's always one of the more right-wing Democrats. Now he's president. We're supposed to forget his entire past. Forget his being anti-busting. Forget him talking about a racial jungle and the corn pop story and so many other things. Forget him insulting black people in that meeting shortly after the election because we don't have a choice. And Donald Trump made that worse because now Republicans equal Trump. So people who I think know better and should have more faith in themselves and in our abilities, say that there's nothing we can do. We have to accept whatever Democrats provide. Yeah, and I'd like to add this. I thought something, an interesting thing that happened just prior to the November 4th election was Ice Cube. Ice Cube came out and basically, I mean, it was pretty simple. He basically said, we have a right as black people. We are the key makers in this election. We have a right to ask the Democratic Party for something in return. And he was blasted by the, as many people have referred to use this term, the black misleadership class. He was blasted. No, no, no, you're gonna help Trump but they didn't even think about what that implied. When he said, we're giving them our votes. We have a right to ask for something in return. And the black misleadership class said, no, no, no, that's gonna help Trump. That will win. What that implied was that if we ask the leadership of the Democratic Party for, if we say to them, either you're gonna have to do something to mitigate our suffering or we won't vote for you. It implied that they wouldn't do it. It implied that they, because what she said, if you, what they're saying is, if you do that, Trump will win. That means if we ask, they'll say no, then we won't vote for him and Trump would win. It was just acquiescing to power saying, look, there ain't no, they ain't gonna give us nothing. There is no point in asking for it. Then Trump will win and we'll be even worse off. So let's continue to support people that, let me add this, they would rather give the election to Trump than they would give you what you ask for. Absolutely. That's true. And I have a question related to this and that is specifically to the way that the Democratic establishment has sort of co-opted and misrepresented a lot of this. And that is, and I wanna hear from both of you on this. How has the mainstream press really spun this story and their coverage in a way that it benefits the establishment if they have? Well, the corporate media, they're intertwined, the corporate media and the Democratic party, they are one. You see what they've done with Biden, the propaganda about Biden, it's just, he's FDR, he's transformative, no, he's not, not at all. So the media, they work hand in hand, they work together, the establishment, the elites, whatever it is you want to call them. They are self-interested and they look after their own interests, their class interests, if you will. And those interests do not have anything to do with the interests of people who are in such dire straits. So they don't care if the federal minimum wage doesn't go up. They don't care if there's a war somewhere. They don't care about homelessness. They don't care about any of those things because they don't touch their lives. And they are part of the ruling classes. They're the ruling class. So they work together and all they do for the people is try to fool you that you don't have any choice but to go with Joe Biden that, oh, he's like, FDR's twin brother or any sort of nonsense that they want in order to be secure in their position and prevent other people from getting the things they need because the truth of the matter is if the people get what they need, the ruling classes are disadvantaged. So they are not going to do their jobs as journalists. That's why we need consortium news, right? So we can't count on them to be the journalists that they used to be, but we're not gonna see that again. And I would add this, I mean, we use the word media when we're talking about these corporate entities in America, but they're not media, these are, what we're looking at is the PR firms and the public relations outlets for major corporations, for the intelligence community and for the powers in particularly in the Democratic Party right now. But, well, you know what? I couldn't make an argument as a guy who was at Fox for many, many years that while people think it's a Republican Party outlet, it is a mainstream outlet. It is a neocon outlet, but at any rate, so I think what we have to look at in reality is that we don't have a media. We have something really, really terrible in this country, but, you know, a media exposes reality, reports on things that are going on in the real world and gives you some level of exposure to things that you wouldn't normally see in a way that's accurate. Our media now, I had some, I was fortunate, I had some time, extensive time to talk to Vijay Prashad and he was talking about the mother of all bombs when that was dropped and the Washington post, you know, the Moab that was dropped in Afghanistan and they were talking to the people from the Washington Post and the Washington Post released a story and they were saying, well, where'd you get that story? And they wouldn't say, well, they was dropped in an area, you know, X amount of Taliban were killed, no innocent people died. Where'd you get that? They kept pushing them, kept pushing them until they found out they got a press release from the Pentagon. So the Washington Post did a press release from the Pentagon, but didn't say that, they pretended that it was actual news. That's what we have now, press release, every day you're gonna get a press release from the Pentagon or the CIA, the Democratic Party, the American Enterprise Institute, whatever, and you get that in the guise of news, there's no news here anymore. Well, given that, I mean, what are some of the things that you'd like to discuss that are left out of this whole discussion then by mainstream coverage, whether that's issues with the prison industrial complex, whether it's legal reform, the racist effect institutionally of the drug war and on and on. I think, personally, well, personally, I'll be quick. Personally, I would like to see where the media talks to people who aren't members of the nobility, members of the upper crust, that we talk to people who've actually been in jail, who have been gang members, that we talk to poor people, working people, working class people, hear what they have to say, because now all we get is a bunch of wealthy, Harvard educated people talking down to the people in the lower economic classes and giving them solutions. I would like to see our media talk to some of the people, for instance, in Baltimore City, to talk to some of the people in the small organizations that are in communities that do things like, and I've worked with the community before in West Baltimore, they do things like they help poor people, old seniors, get their medication. They don't drive, they can't get their medication. Simple things like that, the ones that can get medication because there's Medicare, they can't get through it or they have no way and have nobody. And so I'd like to see people talk to groups like that and when, just I'll finish up by saying this, when the Freddie Gray uprising happened and I was working for the American Civil Liberties Union, I was working for the ACLU then and I was going to these communities and I started talking to these groups, what are you doing now? And they were like, look, we got a bunch of seniors who can't get their medications because the drug store was, but we got some basic things. And when you talk to those people, you realize that there's day-to-day issues in their lives because they're poor and black, there's a lot of opportunities and things they don't have. And I'd like to see some of that discussion too, some discussion of the people, because we just pretend like they don't exist. All we gotta do is give a couple more million to the HBCUs and black people will be happy and go home. Well, you know, Garland's absolutely right. And but the worst thing that they do in the corporate media establishment is try to fool people into thinking they don't need what they need. So they keep trying to tell us, oh, you don't need an increase in the minimum wage. That's very complicated. People don't want Medicare for all free college. People don't like that. They'll try to tell you that you don't want what you really want. I'm old enough to remember when there was some adversarial journalism when the Washington Post in the New York Times would have a reporter or two who questioned what Garland said about foreign policy. They became, you know, Nixon had an enemy's list because there were journalists who questioned what he said and what he did. So now we have this situation where all we have is gaslighting. It's just, you know, people telling us you don't really mean that, you don't really want that. You know that Joe Biden is FDR reincarnated, right? Don't you? And all we have are scribes. We have people, they're all friends. They all go to the same school. They all see the world the same way. As Garland pointed out, they never talk to people, ordinary people. How was, you know, the stimulus? You know, we were told $2,000. It was a lie to get elected. And it turned out to be 2,000 minus 600. Did they talk to average people for whom that difference was the difference between paying their rent and not or buying their food and not? How often did you see people who were impacted by these decisions? How often are they spoken to? Hardly ever is the answer. And that is a very big problem with journalism. It's a political, and it's a political problem as well. So we're gonna move to the last segment of the program. We're gonna look at the future now of this issue. But before we do that, I wanted to echo something Margaret said about this incredibly disciplined messaging from the Democratic Party through ostensibly independent media like MSNBC and The New York Times, that Biden is FDR. I mean, this is clearly intended to go against his left flank. It's not about the general public. It's to put down the progressive wing that whatever exists of it is left in the Democratic Party. Well, he already is FDR, so forget about it, except FDR said, big business hates me and I welcome their hatred. Biden has not done any of that. He's pitch-related to health insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies, et cetera, et cetera. He's not FDR. So let's go now to the future of racism, which is the title of this program. And Garland, let me begin with you in this last segment. Ken, since you were a former police officer, can police forces in the U.S. really be reformed to weed out these kinds of racist attacks that we've been saying? I absolutely believe that that is true and let me tell you why. So I was a member of a police department. You couldn't get any more racist than the police department was, that I was a very racist police department. Keep in mind, so I started in January 7th, 1981. I started, I was a teenager, in fact, and I became a cadet and I became a police officer and it was just blatantly racist in an environment in all of law enforcement. Throughout the late 80s and all through the 90s, but not people don't know this, most police departments and fire departments in this country that integrated were sued because they would first, first they integrate, then the white officers push back and then something happens and then ultimately there's lawsuits and then the other part of it was this. Officers, black officers joined and then they take the promotion test and now they can move up the line and the other white officers were like, I don't know black sergeant, I work for the black sergeant. Of course, the people in charge would go along with that and so there were issues of promotions, et cetera. Now, I sued my police department, myself and other people. They fired the chief. Everybody talks about bad apples, right? And I say, uh-uh, that ain't about, this is not about fruit. This is not about individuals. You know, that's that individualism, individual. That ignores the institution that lets the institution off the hook. There's just a few bad people making decisions. If we get rid of those individual people, why this pristine institution will be perfect, right? No, they fired the chief and they brought in a new chief and the guy came in and he was like, look, I just want somebody to do anything, anything, just a racist joke, whatever. I don't care what it is. I want somebody to do something so that I can make an example of them. I'm gonna crush them so bad that everybody else will see what happened to them and boy, nobody'll do that again. Let me tell you something. My department turned around in a way that the American Civil Liberty Union of Maryland, which that's how I got involved with the ACLU initially, said it is the most successful cases they've ever had. And what did they do? They fired the chief. They fired the, well, they forced them to retire. They couldn't really fire them. They had enough time for retirement, they've been the chief, deputy chief, et cetera. We had a new governor that came in, a guy named Paris Glenn, so the situation at the top changed and the rest of it changed. So what I, can they change? Yes. In fact, remember, the type of people that are attracted to law enforcement, right, are the kind of people that it's black and white. It's right or wrong. It's legal or it's not legal, right? And if you set those kind of parameters up for them, they're very comfortable living in those parameters, right? But what happens is they're put in an environment where you can do whatever you want and they're gonna do that. So do I believe they could change? Yes, but it has to come from the top. And if it's forced on them, you would be shocked how fast it will change, but the people at the top don't wanna change it. I will say this, I'll make this really quick. I know of an attorney who worked, and I'll say this because I'm retired, Baltimore City. Baltimore City brought him in and he was supposed to look for officers that had a lot of complaints and work on a way to fix the officers that had a lot of complaints, to give them training and stuff like that. And it was working well. Guess what happened? He had the people at the top come to him and they said, you're turning our, literally you're turning our lions into lambs. We don't like that, nevermind. They didn't like the fact that he was taking officers that had tons and tons of complaints against them and turning them into nice guys that don't get any complaints anymore. They saw that as weakness. There's your problem. Well, what the, Garland, what is the effect on police departments across the country on the conviction of Sheldon, you know? In the same way that as the issue of racism becomes more, the discussion of addressing racism becomes more prevalent, you notice there's pushback, some of the red states. There's voter laws, there's DeSantis. You notice there's a pushback that says, oh, no, I don't like this. I'm going to push back against it. There's the same thing. And that is in law enforcement, the same exact pushback. Oh, no, we don't like this. We're going to push back and keep things the way there are. So I think the immediate action is just like, say, the civil rights law passes. Black people are euphoric. Hooray, the civil rights laws pass it. And then a whole bunch of red states say, we got to pass some laws to push back against it. Same type of thing going on in law enforcement, I think, pushback. So Margaret, let's end with the question started this show, the future of racism, can racism be ended or does racism have a future? Well, I'm not certain it can be ended, but it can be diminished. But there has, Garland was just saying, there has to be a commitment at the top. It's a funny thing. People, racist white people always claim that George Wallace stood in the schoolhouse door and baseball players said, I'm not going to play with Jackie Robinson. But when someone says Jackie Robinson is playing and if you don't like it, you're going to leave, they didn't leave. So when you have, if Biden was half the person they're claiming that he is, if he were to say, we're going to start keep the Justice Department, we'll now keep track of every police fatality. We're going to investigate every single police fatality. This stuff would end, I'm certain of it. So yes, there is action that can be taken. I mean, the issue of how people feel and what they want is something else altogether. But we've already seen that the cities that had the most protests last year now have the fewest complaints about police brutality. So it's a combination of people pushing up from below and the people at the top being put on the spot and demanding that they take action. Garland, I'll give you the last word on this. Yeah, I agree with Margaret, but based on, I guess most Black people feel like this based on my experiences, I don't feel positive that these things are going to happen. I feel like we're going to do the same thing over and over because one of the things that happens is you have so many white people in America who feel like they have to defend America against any charges of racism because any charges of racism falls on them too. So even no matter how blatant it is, no, no, no, no, there's no racism because if there is, that means I'm racist. Rather than see this as an issue, they divide things completely in black and white. If the black people say this against the white person and I'm a white person, that means I get painted with a broad brush. So the best thing for me to do is just simply say it doesn't exist to defend myself, my own personal self. And so that's what makes it difficult. Sadly, I think there'll be marches and kind of ugly things happen before it really changes and a lot of them for a long time. Well, that's the last word. I want to thank our guests, Margaret Kimberley and Garland Nixon and my co-host Elizabeth Voss, producer, Cathy Logan and our audience for watching this episode of CN Live. And please remember to support Consortium News during its spring fun drive. Go to the homepage and click on the red donate button and also become a patron of CN Live by going to patreon.com slash CN Live. So once again, say good evening from Sydney, Australia. This is Joe Laureate saying goodbye for CN Live. If you are a consumer of independent news and the first place you should be going to is Consortium News and please do try to support them when you can. It doesn't have its articles behind a paywall. It's free for everyone. It's one of the best news sites out there and it's been in the business of independent journalism and adversarial independent journalism for over two decades. I hope that with the public's continuing support of Consortium News, it will continue for a very long time to come. Thank you so much.