November 22, 2025 • 71 mins
Abby Phillip is one of the most trusted voices in American media — the anchor of CNN NewsNight and a sharp, steady guide through democracy’s most turbulent moments. She argues that journalism today isn’t about pretending to be “impartial” but rather meeting every story with curiosity, honesty, and depth.
Abby's also unafraid to put the powerful on blast, and she reveals a major issue that politicians are missing when it comes to voters. Plus, find out how her new book A Dream Deferred is reframing Jesse Jackson’s legacy and raising urgent questions about America right now.
Check out her book at bookshop.org.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi, everyone, It's Sophia, Welcome to Work in Progress. Hello friends,
and welcome back to this week's work in progress. Today
we are talking to a journalist that I deeply admire,
(00:22):
and she also happens to be a woman I really
like to hang out with. Abby Phillip is our guest today,
and she has become one of the most trusted and
incisive voices in American journalism. She is known for her
unflappable energy, her sharp political analysis, and her incredibly steady presence.
Is the anchor of CNN's News Night. And Abby is
(00:45):
here with us today because she's just released a new
book which feels incredibly relevant for these times, even though
it's a study of the nineteen eighties. It is called
a Dream Deferred. Jesse Jackson in The Fight for Black
Political Power, looks at his nineteen eighty four and nineteen
eighty eight runs for president and really the way he
(01:05):
was shaking up a system that clearly needs some shaking.
Abby's here today to talk about the research that went
into this book, the lessons that it holds that are
relevant for all of us in this moment, her thoughts
about what it will be like in the future when
we look back at this current political time, and she's
(01:26):
also going to share some of her personal stories. From
growing up in Trinidad and Tobago to moving back to
the United States to studying government at Harvard. She has
really led a life that has allowed her to approach
the world with a drive to understand people and to
make sure their stories are being told well and fairly
(01:48):
and in ways that might unite rather than divide us.
So let's jump in with Abby Philip. I like to
go backwards with people before we dig into the present,
(02:09):
because everyone I get to sit with has some amazing story,
some amazing career. You have an audience that knows your life.
But I like to know how people were made. So
if we could have like a very cool animated movie
day of our own and like bend space time and
step out onto a playground and see our eight year
(02:31):
old selves. If you got to hang out with that
little girl who I know you still carry with you,
But if you got to hang out with her, chat
with her, hear what she's up to or interested in.
Do you think you would see the parallels in the
two of you. Would you see the woman you are
today in your younger self?
Speaker 2 (02:51):
That's such a great question, I think so yeah, because
when I the funny thing about me, first of all
is that I have a really bad memory. So there
are a lot of things about my childhood that I
just do not remember. And some of it, to be honest,
is probably just sort of a coping mechanism that I've
(03:13):
just sort of blocked out certain parts of my life,
not because it was particularly traumatic, but because, you know,
around that time, when I was eight, we had just
moved from Trinidad and Tobago to the United States. I
was born here, but shortly after I was born, we
moved to where my parents are from and we lived
there for eight years. So I really didn't know America
(03:38):
all that much until I was around that age, and
so much of that time is kind of fuzzy to me.
But what I will say is that I've always been
like Abby, I'm you know, I'm I'm Abby is like,
(04:00):
you know, a character in my family's house, because I'm
just like I've always been the kid who always wanted
to be in charge of things, always wanted to be
doing something. I've always had that side of my personality.
But I will also say that I don't know that
I ever really saw myself having a kind of public
(04:22):
facing life. That part, I think has been very different
from what I envisioned for myself from my earliest memories.
But I think that the drive, the work ethic, the
kind of the mom in me. Honestly, I've always been
a little bit of a mom ever since I was
(04:43):
a little kid. That has always been there. But life
has been actually kind of surprising in a lot of
ways for that other reason too.
Speaker 1 (04:54):
I love it. I get a vision that if we
did that walk out together and saw our little they'd
be organizing everyone on the playground to really crush a project,
just like this.
Speaker 2 (05:04):
Is how we're going to get something done.
Speaker 1 (05:06):
Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:07):
It was always the one who wanted to be like
at the grocery store, checking things off of the list
and pushing the cart. Yeah yeah, that type of personality.
Speaker 1 (05:17):
I totally get it. I love it. Do you think
that that shift? I mean, what a what a sort
of seismic experience. You know, obviously you don't remember moving
back to Trinidad and Tobago, but coming back here when
you really are forming you know, memories and in a
(05:39):
sort of routine in your childhood. To have that shift
was there lore around it? Was there a sort of
American dream story around it? Or was was there also
the sort of sad elements for your parents of having
to leave home again?
Speaker 2 (05:56):
Yeah, I mean I think there was totally a sense
of lore. I mean, any immigrant experience when you come
to America, like the movie Coming to America, it's it
is an experience, right, and it is something that most
people that I grew up with in Trinidad never experience.
But I always we always knew, me and my sisters
(06:19):
that we were we were born in America, and so
we always had that kind of part of us that
was what if we used to watch like Sweet Valley High,
Oh my God, the Throwback and like all these shows,
you know, I mean we would we would watch American
(06:42):
TV and just kind of dream about what it would
be like. And when we did come to the United States,
I mean, first of all, our parents had come up
a little bit before us to kind of get everything ready,
and so a lot of it was just being reunited
with them, and the other part of it was just
(07:03):
experiencing America snow and you know, the leaves changing and
Christmas and real Barbie dolls not the fake ones. That
we growing up and all of those things that were
part of the lore. And but also, I mean I
(07:23):
have to add that growing up my parents, regardless of
where we were born or the America of it all,
I mean, I think they always kind of instilled in
us this sense that we were not we were not
just like everybody else, for good or for bad. I
don't know where that came from for them. I mean,
(07:44):
some of it was that we were raised pretty religiously
in a Christian household, so it was always like, you know,
you're in the world, but not of the world. So
we were always kind of expected to be different from
other people. And I think that actually, in a weird way,
helped me acclimate and adjust to being in a completely
(08:05):
different place because I was very different. I used to
have an accent, a Trinidadian accent when I was eight,
and I I lost that accent. But I also just
I was okay with being different from other people, even
though I observed our differences, and I think it helped
(08:25):
that My parents were always like, you're You're not like
these other kids. You're gonna get a's, you're smart, you're
you know. They would always sort of reinforce in us,
this sense that we weren't going to just go with
the crowd. We had to have our sense of individuality
and our sense of purpose outside of what was happening
(08:45):
around us.
Speaker 1 (08:48):
Yeah, and I do, to your point, think that's such
a common thread in immigrant families because the move and
the arrival and the taking your place in this country
it has such lore. You're expected to earn it. And
it's really interesting to hear you talk about how you
had a sense of sort of this world and another
(09:09):
from your faith based upbringing. But also you're talking about
an experience that you know. So many people that we
both know, and so many public figures, particularly black people
in America, talk about like being of this place and
not and for you to be an American and also
(09:32):
to have grown up in Trinidad, it's like you had
so many versions of this and that. Yeah, the kind
of dialectics of your identity and how special that in
a way they were sort of told to you and
they were experienced by you in this way that made
you feel like, oh, yeah, I can be all of
(09:52):
these things.
Speaker 2 (09:53):
Yeah. I think it gave me a sense of empathy
and also a desire to real understand the people around
me and figure out how we could find things in common.
And I think that is one of those things that
I carry with me and that I literally use in
(10:14):
my day to day life and in my job. Part
of it, I think also is also where I'm from,
where my family is from. You know, Trinidad and Tobago
is an island in the Caribbean that is actually an
incredibly diverse place. It's a lot of people of African descent,
a lot of people of Indian descent. There are Asians there,
(10:37):
there are people of Latin descent there. Even within my
own family, I have people who look like all kinds
of different things. And so that idea of differences was
not something that ever really bothered me, and it never
really stopped me from being able to make friends or
(11:00):
identify with people that I lived around or that I
went to school with. And the fact that I had
to come in culturally and I am black, and I
am African American, I'm Caribbean American, but I didn't actually
have that much in common with a lot of Black Americans.
I still had to adjust and to not just to
(11:27):
people who looked like me physically, but also people who didn't.
So I actually think of that as a great blessing
in how I grew up, that you're sort of forced
to just look at every person individually and just say,
what can we have in common? Because there's undoubtedly something,
(11:50):
and finding that thing was always more important than finding
the things that we didn't have in common.
Speaker 1 (11:55):
Yes, and now a word from our sponsors who make
the show possible. Well, and I think that's something that's
missing from our discourse in general today. We're being so
(12:15):
encouraged to other people in a negative way rather than
to be fascinated by people's otherness. And I you know,
I didn't grow up in the same circumstances you did,
but I feel a kinship in terms of the way
you talk about your childhood, because you know, I came
here with the intense lore of coming here for the
(12:37):
American dream. You know, my grandmother was brought over by
my great grandparents on a boat from Italy. You know,
my mom still remembers when her mother forbade her grandparents
from speaking Italian to her because they were trying so
hard to assimilate. And there is the wanting to belong
and also the loss in the belonging because then you know,
(12:58):
my mom lost her language. My dad came here to
go to university, and you know, just knowing how long
it took him to become a citizen. When people are
like do it the right way, I'm like, take several seats,
like you literally have no idea.
Speaker 2 (13:10):
Most people have no idea. How long and large was
the quote unquote right way is?
Speaker 1 (13:15):
Yeah, they don't know. And I and I think perhaps
because of their stories, I wonder if there's something about
that that desire to know people in their stories that
leads a lot of us down the journalism path. Do
you think maybe that's what drew you in that direction
as you as you made your way to Harvard.
Speaker 2 (13:34):
Yeah, I think that it's about stories, you know. I
mean I think that fundamentally history, politics, culture, it's the
story of us, how we came to be and also
where we're going. And I think I've always been drawn
to that. I've been drawn to the way in which
(13:56):
history sort of paints a picture that leads us to
the present. And I also have been drawn to the
way in which our present day actions are doing the
same thing for the people in the future. And so yeah,
I mean, I just think we as human beings we
(14:17):
have so much power and agency and the ability to
kind of shift space and time around our actions. And
that's always been fascinating to me because I think of
my whole life as a bit of an anthropological moment, right.
(14:37):
You know, when a family leaves one place and goes
to another, they create a whole new timeline for their descendants.
And I'm literally living in that timeline that was created
for me in part because of my parents' actions, and
(14:57):
who I am as a person is because of their decisions.
It's because of my experiences growing up as a child
living in one place and coming to another and knowing
what that feels like to have to adapt and change
(15:18):
and adjust. And I think that is that's my story,
but everybody has a story like that, and I find
that fundamentally interesting because that tells us a lot about
what people are really like, what they're gonna do, what
motivates them, what's important to them. And the truth is
(15:38):
that we have all of those things. We have those
things in common more than I think we know. And
in a way, I mean the politics of it all,
Like I mean, I love politics because I do think
that is sort of history in the present day. But
I do think that if there's one thing that's wrong
(15:58):
with politics, it's the way that it flattens us all
into just kind of two dimensional R and D or
whatever it is. And I think the promise of journalism
is that we kind of expand the dimensions of who
people really are beyond just what labels they put next
(16:21):
to their names, and really start to learn more about
what really motivates them, how they came to be. And
I think that is what I have always been drawn
to in doing this.
Speaker 1 (16:33):
I love that when you started, I guess rather, when
you decided to study government, did you imagine that you
were going to work in and on the political process
before journalism or was it the study of government that
led you to want to be a journalist? Like, how
did the light bulb for you in terms of your
(16:55):
path get illuminated?
Speaker 2 (16:57):
Yeah, it was kind of. Well, the truth is that
when I decided that I wanted to pursue journalism, I
was actually studying at Harvard. It was called social studies,
and it was sort of like, it's a little bit
like government, a little bit like philosophy. And I switched
(17:17):
to government for a number of reasons, some of them practical.
One was that I wanted to do a journalism internship
this summer that I would otherwise have needed to write
a thesis. So I decided to do the journalism internship first.
But also I knew I was very interested in political journalism,
and studying government sort of the structure of government and
(17:42):
how it works was sort of a way of kind
of deepening my understanding of that work. And so it
wasn't that I was studying it and decided to do journalism,
and I definitely did not want to work in government.
I think I knew that clearly pretty early on. I've
(18:03):
never really been much of a follower. I just I'm
not really a big fan of joining a team, so
to speak, and so the idea of being a part
of a political party as a you know, political strategist
(18:24):
or worker of some kind or definitely not a politician,
that just was never appealing to me. I think I've
always loved the sort of outsider role, the place that
journalism sits that is somewhere between the two party system
that we have, where we have the ability to kind
(18:46):
of probe into the teams, so to speak, and just
have a different relationship with our political system. So it's
never really been. I just I knew I have no
interest in actually being in politics in that way.
Speaker 1 (19:02):
Right, Yeah, like you'd rather play tennis not soccer.
Speaker 2 (19:05):
Yeah, I guess you know, you're like, I don't want
to have.
Speaker 1 (19:09):
To necessarily go where everyone's going.
Speaker 2 (19:11):
Yeah, I guess that.
Speaker 1 (19:12):
It's interesting the way you talk about journalism. It strikes
me that it's really it's a kind of engaged participatory voyeurism.
It allows you to do two things at once, because
you observe and you also really get involved, and then
you move back to the observing And in a way,
(19:33):
the position of watching to glean information and be able
to translate all of it into a story allows you,
I would imagine, to be welcomed into certain spaces that
had you gone into traditional government work, you wouldn't be
able to.
Speaker 2 (19:52):
Absolutely. I think that's a great way to put it.
I mean, I think journalism is apart from the the arena.
You're not in the arena in the same way that
political actors are, and we are in an observation role
to some extent. But I think the participatory part is
also really important because we are a player, a key player.
(20:16):
I mean, the First Amendment is the First Amendment for
a reason, because you literally cannot have a democracy without
a free press. And I do think that as a
journalist we do have responsibilities, and one of it is
to the truth as far as we can ascertain it,
(20:37):
and the other is, I think to the public, to
the citizen, and the citizen, in my view, is who
we work for. That's who we work on. Behalf of
that is who we sometimes are in a position to
speak for. That is who voices we are responsible for
(20:59):
las or illuminating. And so that responsibility is massive, but
it also has incredible impact. I mean, one of the
reasons I was decided that journalism was going to be
what I did was because when I was looking back
(21:20):
and studying the Civil rights movement, it was so clear
to me that that era would not have had the
impact that it did had it not been for the
role of journalism in bringing these stories to life, in
literally going to the places and saying to you know,
some family in Ohio, this is what it's like in
(21:43):
you know, the Mississippi Delta. This is what it's like
in the places where black people can't even drink from
the same water fountain as white people. And there were
so many Americans who had no idea what was happening
in their own country, and so the role of journalist
in just talking about those stories and putting it on
(22:05):
the front pages is massive. And that's the active part
of this democracy that we are participants in. We don't
have to be on a team in order to play
a role, and I think it is important actually for
there to be journalists who really aren't on a team,
(22:26):
because I know that right now there are a lot
of journalists who they their liberals, their conservatives, and that's fine,
but I also think that there is a need, a
necessity for there to be people who are not doing that.
Speaker 1 (22:40):
It's so important to pull back and remember that being
impartial can be a requirement for clear communication. And that
also feels really hard, you know, on my end, as
a very engaged citizen, you know, I know, spend more
time in the sort of news cycle and on the
(23:03):
political stuff than a lot of people can or want to.
By the way, no harm, no foul, but it makes
me feel crazy. You know. For example, you talk about
journalists working for the people. Yes, you know, our courts
are supposed to work for the people, and we currently
are in a time with this current administration where fealty
(23:25):
to the administration is being demanded. You know, you see
shifts at CBS, you see people getting fired, you see
anchors being pulled off the air. You see news organizations
paying the president even though they told the truth. Like
your alma mater, Harvard is in this thing with Trump
and they're going to pay him. Like when you know
(23:45):
that that impartial requirement matters for how communication is done,
how do you make sense of all this stuff that
is so impartial. Do you feel like these institutions are
being captured or do you feel like we're just midway
through a chess game and people are trying to figure
out how to get to the other side of the board.
Speaker 2 (24:06):
You know, I think it might be just that that
we are in the middle of We're in the middle
of a moment, and it's a very significant moment, and
I don't know really how it's going to end. I
don't think the story is over the you know, I
don't think the game is done. I think we're just
we're right in the middle of it. And you know,
(24:28):
if there's anything I learned from my studies of government
is that the structure of these institutions really matters, and
we live in a society where we have all these
layers of these layers of structures that are intended to
protect democracy, and sometimes we find gaps where there are
(24:53):
they're just blind spots, where there are things that the
framers didn't even envision that are happening that we're dealing with,
and where sometimes many layers of those structures are being
captured all at once and we don't know what that
(25:14):
means because it's never happened before. So that's how I
kind of look at it, is that we are still
seeing how our institutions and our democratic structures hold up
in this moment under probably the most concerted effort to
(25:36):
control and restructure them that I think our democracy has
ever seen. And I don't know how it's going to end,
that's the truth. But I do think what I've seen
is a bit of a mixed bag, and that's good. Actually.
I think that it's meant to be that way, that
(25:57):
the system is actually meant to produce a lot of
different outcomes and it averages out to something in the end.
But I think it is a good sign that you
can see that sometimes they win, sometimes they lose. That's
what it's supposed to be. Like if it were that
(26:18):
one team was winning one hundred percent of the time,
that would be a different story. And I know that
sometimes it feels that way to people, but I think
it is not that way. Based on the fact that
I follow a lot of this stuff very closely, I
think it is still a mixed bag. And I think
what that tells me is that we still have this
really kind of brilliant system in which there are so
(26:41):
many different checks and balances on power that no one's
ever really able to run all the way to the
end zone without encountering resistance. And that is the way
that this place is supposed to operate, And as long
as that continues to happen, I have a lot of
(27:01):
confidence still in the way that this country is set up.
And on the impartiality question, I mean, I think that
this has been one of the most hotly debated things
right in journalism. Is it possible even to be objective?
Is it possible to even be impartial? And sometimes I
(27:24):
think that's the wrong question to ask. I think the
right question is are you approaching every story with openness
and empathy? And I think that if you can do
that you. What that requires is an acknowledgment of who
you are and some of the things that you bring
(27:45):
to the table because of who you are and where
you come from and what you know, and also what's
in front of you, recognizing that what's in front of
you might be different from what you know, and being
open to what you're hearing and you're seeing. And I
think that is really that's the real challenge of journalism,
because I think for too long people have thought that
(28:06):
they were burying their biases, and they weren't. They were
just trying to present their biases as impartiality when it
was not. And I think that just being upfront about
how you come to a story and also being open
(28:27):
to what is actually in front of you, that is
the real test of journalism. That's why it's so important
to go places and actually talk to people, because when
you talk to people, you receive what they are telling
you that is sometimes different from what you might believe.
Speaker 1 (28:46):
And now a word from our sponsors. I think one
of the wisest adages I've ever heard is that you
read things as you are, not necessarily as they've been written,
(29:08):
you know, And I think that's incredibly true for the
political discourse. When you read someone's comment under an Instagram
post of a news story, or someone retorts to you
on a social media platform, you're not having a real conversation.
And I think one of the great privileges in my
life that I think overlaps with my very favorite profession,
(29:29):
which is yours, is that we get to travel a lot.
And so for me, even with political advocacy or working
on things like paid leave for all or trying to
get better health care protections for people, sometimes people don't
understand why I'm really passionate about that, And it's because
I spent ten years surrounded by union workers in North Carolina,
(29:49):
and you know, time in Ottawa and Vancouver and small
town New Mexico and Texas and upstate New York and
in California and this enormous city we're in today, And
like everywhere I go, I learn people's stories, and I
learn about their families, and I learn about why they
do the jobs they do and the ways they're protected
(30:11):
and they aren't. And so those stories feel important for
me to carry. And I think for anyone who has
a mission of advocating or telling the truth somewhere, you
carry people's stories with you.
Speaker 2 (30:30):
Yeah, and I think that when you talk to people,
you see how multi dimensional they are. Yes, And I
think that is the That's a thing I'll think a
lot of people don't understand about just voters out there,
that yeah, they have a lot of contradictory views on things,
(30:53):
and that's because people are complex and they see different
parts of their lives in different ways, and being open
to that is really important because again politics Sometimes in politics,
it's the job of a political party to have all
these things that they believe in, and most people who
(31:15):
align themselves with that political party probably believe in a
lot of those things. But there are many, many people
who take a little bit from over here, from the
left and a little bit from the right, and they're
somewhere in the kind of weird, bizarre middle and it
doesn't really make a lot of sense to you, but
that's okay. And giving voice to those people is super
(31:35):
important because guess what, those are the people who actually
determine how elections go in this country. They're the ones
with the kind of strange, weird points of view on
all these different issues, and you don't know exactly where
they're going to come down, Well, guess what, they're the deciders.
And so those types of people I encounter all the time,
(31:56):
and I think they probably could be better represented in
our public discourse. I mean, I also think that, you know,
when we talk about characteristics of different people. And I
remember a couple of years ago, I was in Kansas
doing a story after the Dobbs decision, and I went
(32:20):
into this working class Latino neighborhood and was talking to
people about it because there are actually a lot of
Latino voters in Kansas that were actually very significant in
those elections. And you know, the thing that I think
a lot of people don't see is the way that
(32:41):
Latino voters are, many of them deeply religious people, and
they're hard working, and they have personal views that are
actually very strong about things like abortion, but their political
decision making is different from their personal views, and that
(33:05):
viewpoint doesn't really get represented all that much. And voters
like that are why in Kansas they protected abortion rights
in that state. And so when we fail to surface
those viewpoints, will miss those stories that diverge from conventional wisdom.
(33:26):
And that's why it is so important to not only
go out and talk to those people, but to also
really kind of unveil their complexity to the public so
that people understand that people are not parodies. They're not
like you know, they're not cardboard cutouts. They're real people
(33:47):
with all these depths to them. And that is what
creates sort of a dynamism in our political system that
I personally find super interesting.
Speaker 1 (33:57):
Well, and it's also so refreshing to hear you speak
about people that way, because it's a great reminder that
no person is a stereotype, no person is just a
data point. You know, that that kind of dynamic, and
I would say very human reality of saying I believe this,
(34:17):
but I don't think my beliefs should legislate everyone else's lives.
That's that's a powerful example, you know. And I and
I think when we when we consider, as you were
saying earlier, that right now we are making marks that
people who come after us will look back at. Those
(34:40):
are the kinds of marks I hope we get to make.
That we figure out how to show up and allow
people to be fuller humans and listen before we judge,
and perhaps advocate for the best outcomes for the total
of us. You know, you hear a lot lately about
how people are focusing on the wrong one percent, and
(35:01):
I'm like, you think and it it really does. When
I think about it, it feels like we've gotten people
really hyped up about some of the wrong things and
missing we're missing our legacy and we've clearly forgotten some
of our history. And that's why I'm so excited about
(35:22):
your book, because I feel like a broken record at
this point, being like, is anybody paying attention to the
correlation between what's happening now in Germany in the nineteen
twenties and nineteen thirties, And it's like the history nerd
in me is just flipping out all the time. And
you gave me another gorgeous piece of history to dive into,
(35:42):
you know, elements of which I've studied. And there's things
in your book that I learned for the first time.
And for our friends who are going to watch our
little clips, yes I have it here, and yes, I
also brought a sharpie so I can ask you to
sign it for me later. And I did the thing
because I'm so excited about this, where I prepped for
the podcast, reading the pdf, making notes on my iPad
(36:04):
because I didn't want to absolutely destroy the call of
the book, because I can never read a book and
then give it to anyone. They're just like, what is
what is this?
Speaker 2 (36:13):
Like?
Speaker 1 (36:14):
What is this Gray Gardens thing? You've handed to me
in tatters?
Speaker 2 (36:17):
But I love it. You're a close reader.
Speaker 1 (36:19):
Yeah, so I I really I've been so excited about
this and I I'm just so curious. You know. You
you take us back through Jesse Jackson's presidential campaigns in
the nineteen eighties. Yea, and from this moment this time,
you know, ten years into trump Ism and the the
(36:43):
intensity of the firefights we see in the digital world,
particularly over politics.
Speaker 2 (36:50):
What was it.
Speaker 1 (36:51):
About this story for you that made you say, this
is what I want to put out into the world,
and this is the time that I want to do it.
Speaker 2 (36:59):
Yeah. You know, I think that this story actually has
a lot of lessons for where we are right now
in this country, because I do think we're in a
moment of kind of backlash against the growing diversity of
the country. I think that there's also an active fight
(37:24):
going on about who can speak to and appeal to
the working class, and both of those themes are kind
of at the heart of what was happening with Jesse
Jackson's campaigns in the nineteen eighties as well. One of
the key lessons that can be taken away from his
(37:45):
campaigns is the way that he argued in favor of
seeing people with those multiple dimensions. That we were just
talking about the way in which people have all these
different desires and all these different motivations, and that even
though we might all look different, we might be black
(38:07):
or white, or women or men, or farmers or city
workers or whatever it is, factory workers, we share a
common desire to have a better life, to have a
government that works for us, to have a society that
feels like it is invested in its citizens and not
(38:30):
in other pursuits. And that was a lot of what
he campaigned on in the eighties. And I think that
one of the unfinished pieces of this is actually what
do we do in this moment of division where it's
actually very effective to divide us along all of these
(38:53):
different identities, and can candidates figure out how to do
the opposite, how to actually bring people together, not by
ignoring who they are, but by saying, I see who
you are, and I acknowledge it, but also let me
show you what we all have in common. I think
(39:15):
that that is that I call that unfinished business, because
I do think that is still yet to be done.
And I think there is a lot in Jesse Jackson's
vision for politics, his dream, so to speak, that I
think is still worth contemplating today. Can it be done?
(39:36):
And in a way, both parties are kind of engaged
in that conversation to some extent, or at least it
seemed to be in the last election, where you know,
in twenty twenty four, despite all the rhetoric, I think
(39:56):
the Trump campaign actually they were carrying out like a
get out the vote strategy that was geared toward all
these different groups and had some success in chipping away
at the Democrats diverse coalition. And so I do think
that that reality, plus the fact that the Democratic Party
(40:17):
does right now have as its base a very diverse coalition,
means that there just seems to be a sort of
refocusing on what does it really mean to craft a
message that can actually speak to all Americans, that doesn't
slice and dice them along their different identities, but finds
(40:38):
the unifying ties. And you know, Jesse Jackson used to
talk about the country as a quilt. He used to
talk about his grandmother using scraps of clothing because they
grew up very poor in South Carolina, and to make
a quilt that would keep them warm in the winters.
And he would talk about all the different parts of
(41:00):
this country as being a part of a quilt. And
I think that is still for so many of us
who really do believe in the beauty of this very
diverse country, that is still something that is worth aspiring toward,
regardless of your political persuasion. And I still think that
(41:20):
there is a lot of work that needs to be
done to bring our politics to a place where that
really we can say that that really is true.
Speaker 1 (41:29):
It's interesting because that took my breath away. It's a
metaphor that my best friend and I use a lot
about communities that we want to connect and connect with
and sort of coalitions of support that we are always
working to network across the country, and we talk about
this quilt all the time. It feels so imperative to
(41:52):
do the thing you're talking about to remind people that
what we have in common. I mean, we're literally each
other's name, right, And I think his messaging was so
effective at the time, and to your point, when you know,
we were only fifteen years after the fever pitch of
(42:14):
the civil rights movement. I won't say the civil rights
movement because it's not like it ended. But one of
the things that struck me is that in the eighty
four and eighty eight runs, his candidacy really pushed the
Democratic Party to acknowledge that black voters are indispensable.
Speaker 2 (42:36):
And it's so.
Speaker 1 (42:38):
Important that it was said, And it strikes me as
one of those things that also does what you're talking about,
which is if everyone gets bucketed by their identity. You know,
Latino voters who carry personal beliefs but will vote to
protect you know, reproductive rights access, black voters, Black voters
in the South, black voters in the North, you know, women,
(43:01):
collegiate women, you know, whatever. All the ways we get
kind of siloed. The silos can be destructive, but the
recognition of people's identity and what they bring to a
conversation and their lived experience and their expertise based on
their diverse identities is also so imperative. So how do
(43:23):
you make sense of.
Speaker 2 (43:25):
That? Seesaw? Yeah, it's both of those things, and it's
such a It is a nuance, right because I think
that sometimes when people talk about identities, they want them
to disappear, as if they don't exist. But I think
that is that's one version of doing it. The other
(43:46):
version of doing it is to say, I recognize who
you are and your individuality, what you bring to the table,
what matters to you. I'm saying that you can take
your individuality and hold hands with someone else who has
(44:06):
a different experience, and you can have a shared sense
of purpose. And in a way, I do think that
that actually comes out of Jesse Jackson's experience in the
Civil Rights movement, because when you really think about what
that movement did, it actually helped spur change not just
(44:29):
for Black people, but for all kinds of other people,
for women, for LGBTQ people, for Asian Americans, for Arab Americans,
you name it, Latino Americans. I think that that movement
gave all these other movements sort of language and power
in the political system. And the civil rights movement has
(44:53):
not ever just been liberation and justice for black people.
It's been for making the country actually live up to
its promise to everyone. And so because of that tradition,
when he comes into the nineteen eighties and says that
(45:13):
black voters are going to lead the way, We're going
to use our political power to force the Democratic Party
to recognize all of us. I think that was just
a continuation of the story that began in the fifties
and the sixties in the height of that civil rights
movement that everybody now understands and knows, and it is
(45:37):
the black struggle has always been inseparable from the struggles
of all these other people. In some cases, he would
go to the South and campaign there and had a
lot of support from black voters, but he would also
be speaking to white voters and he would say to them,
(45:58):
it's really only the cynics and the people who are
full of hate who want you to believe that you
have more in common with the uber wealthy white man
than you do with the working class black man. And
the message was essentially that there are people who want
to divide you along race, but that's not really the
(46:22):
power struggle that you're fighting against. And I think he
was offering he was offering a handout in two white
Americans who at that time were not that interested in
listening to or voting for a black man, and essentially
saying that everything that you've been taught about race being
(46:45):
the dividing line between us is not really the thing.
The real thing is whether or not you have economic opportunity,
and whether I have economic opportunity, and that message I
think he took to the South, he took to the Midwest,
to farmers, he took to rural parts of the country,
(47:06):
to urban parts of the country, and it resonated because
there really weren't other people talking like that and openly
acknowledging that some people actually needed a little bit of
help getting past what they had always known, and a
lot of people listened. He had a lot of support
(47:29):
from white farmers, who he literally spent before he was
running a night between nineteen eighty four and nineteen eighty eight.
He would go and he would rally with them when
they were about to lose their family farms, and he
built solidarity with them through his actions, not just through
campaign speeches. And there is a lesson in that in
(47:53):
not giving up on people, not deciding that, oh, those
people are never going to be for you, so let's
not talk to them, not assuming that they have biases
that you can't get passed. I think he blew past
so much of that and never took that as a
(48:17):
given that somebody wouldn't listen to him because they were
biased against him, which they might very well have been.
But he was from the South, so he was used
to being around racist white people that he had grown
up around in the Jim Crow South, and so it
never that part never faced him. And I think that
(48:38):
in a way, we might need to remember a little
bit of that, because I think there are a lot
of people right now who want to just say, well,
they're bad people, let's not talk to them, and I
just don't. I don't know that our democracy can survive
that writing off people because you assume that they can't
be persuaded, or you assume that they can't be brought
(48:58):
into your column. I think the act of persuasion is
the practice of democracy, and you cannot write people off
if you say you want to practice democracy.
Speaker 1 (49:11):
I love that. And now a word from our wonderful sponsors,
would you say that's one of the greatest lessons of
working on this, because I get really geeked when I
(49:31):
think about the years you got to spend researching this
and interviewing everyone around him and being in his world.
You know, it's like a dream project, right, But I
wonder when I think of the size and scope of
it and the sort of you know, stories you're telling
about something as upper echelon in the world as running
(49:51):
for president, when I bring it down to sort of imagine,
you know, Abby at her computer, like, what do you
think the most surprising personal takeaways have been for you,
not just as an author, but as the total you,
the individual.
Speaker 2 (50:10):
Yeah, I mean it made me really think about how
history we'll see what we're doing right now. Because I
did spend a lot of time going back and reading
and watching the coverage of him at the time that
he was running, and seeing with twenty twenty five eyes
(50:35):
the biases that were sort of embedded in how he
was talked about. I think it really kind of crystallized
how important it is to be mindful of that and
not just there were plenty of I think racial biases
and how he was covered, for sure, but even biases
(50:58):
in terms of when we see something different come out
in the political sphere, the media has a tendency to
dismiss it because it's unfamiliar. And that was true then
and it's true now. And I do think that openness
to phenomenon that defy recent history, that challenge the status quo,
(51:28):
that challenge what we know about politics is super important
because if you're not able to do that, you might
miss something that's extraordinary that's happening right in front of you.
And I do think that, frankly, a lot of journalism
missed this story in the nineteen eighties. They missed how
(51:49):
truly remarkable it was. And looking back on it, there
were so many moments that I was like, if that
had happened today, it would be a completely Banana's thing,
Like it would just be it would just like rock
the political world. Like the type of candidate he was.
(52:09):
He was dynamic and interesting, and honestly, I went back
and I was talking to a lot of the journalists
who covered him than who I actually, some of whom
I know now, and you know, a lot of them
said to me he was the most interesting candidate they
had ever covered, just the most exciting candidate that most
(52:30):
of these journalists had ever covered. But they couldn't really
convey that because it was considered kind of naive to
say that, to express that he was capturing the imagination
of Americans with just how different he was for all
kinds of obvious reasons and other reasons like getting on
(52:54):
a plane and going to Syria and bringing back an
American prisoner of war, and you know, just doing things
that contravened conventional wisdom. And I think as a person
who's practicing journalism today, it is a reminder to me
that open mindedness is the job. That is a huge
(53:17):
part of the job, because people at that time, I think,
were not really listening to what voters were telling them
about what they were interested in and why they found
him so compelling, and they kept looking for all these
different reasons why they needed to sort of put Jesse
Jackson in a box. And that's a lesson for all
of us that we should probably do a little bit better,
(53:41):
and I think we are doing better, to be honest.
I think frankly, the industry is more diverse. I think
they're way more voices involved now and that's a good thing.
But that really struck out to me because I do
think that he's a type of figure that I think,
had he been placed in a different context, have ended
a little bit differently.
Speaker 1 (54:03):
And how do you think about portraying his contradictions right,
Because he had this visionary leadership style and he had
personal controversies.
Speaker 2 (54:18):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (54:19):
The reality is every human, even our best leaders are human.
You know, people fail, they're fallible, they're complicated, as you
mentioned earlier with even our you know, our voting blocks. Like,
is it a strange thing to admire someone and to
admire so much of their character and to have to
(54:41):
talk about their flaws.
Speaker 2 (54:43):
As a journalist? No, I mean I think that that's
what makes it a good story. Yeah, And I don't
even know that admiration is really the totality of it.
I think what it really is is that he is
a complex person, like pretty much all of our leaders, right,
(55:05):
every single one of them. And in order to tell
this story about why he was both a consequential and
extraordinary person but also why he came up short, you
have to explain where he fell short. You can't get
to that without explaining it. And some of it is personal,
(55:27):
some of it is actually also in his leadership style,
the way in which he had certain extraordinary gifts and skills,
but also certain weaknesses and shortcomings. And you just can't
tell the story without telling the full story. And we
do like to lionize people and pretend like they don't
(55:51):
have flaws in order to feel comfortable telling their stories
in order to Yeah, I mean, and I think that
that's we should just face that. Yeah, you know, as
human beings, I understand where that comes from. We want
people in our minds to be perfect in order to
be remembered. And that's not really how history works. That's
(56:13):
not really how human beings work.
Speaker 1 (56:15):
Does it strike you as kind of interesting though, that
that at least the men at this point are allowed
to be fabulous and flawed and the women are still
held to the perfectionism standard? Like what the hell?
Speaker 2 (56:28):
Yeah? Well, you know, I it's so interesting because I
do think that because there have just been way more
men like doing this thing, there is more of a
textured treatment of them, But because there are fewer women
who have done it, there isn't right.
Speaker 1 (56:51):
They're still flattened. More men are allowed to be a
little more.
Speaker 2 (56:54):
Threat But I mean, I also think that, to be honest,
I think that I sometimes I wonder whether women who
support women as I know that you do, are okay
with that, because you know, sometimes that means that the
woman candidate that you love is going to come under scrutiny,
(57:14):
that her flaws are going to be revealed and talked
about in the same way as her strengths. And I
do think you have to be both. In order to
be allowed to have weaknesses, you also have to be
willing to be critiqued for them. Yes, so both things
have to be true. And the critique that I would
give to a lot of my friends who I know
(57:35):
aren't just profoundly supportive of the few women candidates who
have tried to run for president, is that sometimes I
think there's an unwillingness to hear the critiques. And you know,
in politics, when you run for president, man, you've got
to have the thickest possible skin, right. And the thing
(58:00):
about these men is that they never let their flaws
and their weaknesses stop them from doing something. And I
think that that is still part of what women haven't
really been able to get past. Like I think we
hold ourselves women to a higher standard, a be the
(58:24):
world holds us to a higher standard. But also see,
I think there is this sort of willingness for the critiques,
even coming from from your friends, to be out there
and for it to not be taken personally and not
be taken as sort of the end of the world
(58:45):
and just taking it as part of the journey in
public life. I think we're still not there yet. And
you know, I think about I covered Hillary in twenty sixteen,
I've covered common Harris. I've seen how both of these
women have had a lot of fair and unfair criticism.
(59:09):
But I also think that I also see how their
allies try to create a cocoon around them. And I
don't know that the cocoon is helpful, Yeah, because I
think that the peep the complexity of the person is
part of actually what needs to be revealed, communicated and communicated.
Speaker 1 (59:29):
Yeah, it's really interesting. I love thinking about that. And
it's a great point that you make when you talk
about the fair and the unfair criticism. I think because
so much of it is unfair and outsized, it makes everyone.
You know, It's almost like when your therapist gives you
the adage of how full is your cup? And if
your cup is really full, and then more is poured in,
(59:50):
it's spilling out everywhere. It's like the women get more
dumped in their cups and then what should be relatively
normal becomes.
Speaker 2 (01:00:00):
Outsized in a way.
Speaker 1 (01:00:02):
And I also think that's kind of to your earlier point.
The fault of a society that's not as used to
seeing women in these spaces. Is you know, if a
woman was running for president with three baby daddies and
an affair with a porn star, like, she never would
get on a ticket she just wanted. So it's like,
you can't ignore the double standard. And perhaps one of
(01:00:25):
the ways we change it is as you're suggesting to
just own our shit a little bit and be like, yeah,
I made a mistake and move on.
Speaker 2 (01:00:34):
Yeah, yeah, you know.
Speaker 1 (01:00:34):
That's that's pretty fascinating.
Speaker 2 (01:00:36):
And it's I get it it trust me. I'm not
suggesting that it's like, oh no, I don't think you are.
You know, snap your finger and you're done. There is
just like in the same way that you know, when
Chessie Jackson was running as a celebrity candidate who had
never run for office before, who was sort of had
(01:00:57):
this sort of larger than life personality and was an
economic populist, it was like, get out of here. And
then you know, fast forward thirty years later and then
you get Donald Trump. It seems just unfair, right, because
it's just a different standard in a way. So I
get that that exists at the same time that I
(01:01:20):
think what we're sort of striving for for women candidates
or not just women in the world is that their
flaws are not weighted more than anybody else's, and that
their dimensions are also capable of being put out there.
(01:01:45):
That we can be whole people. We don't have to
be perfect people. And I do think that it's going
to take someone being willing to sort of just say
so what. I don't know when, but at some point
a woman candidate is going to come around and it's
going to sort of blow through some of that, and
that's what's going to be necessary to sort of get
(01:02:07):
women into that final tier of American politics, you know, belatedly,
even though the rest of the world is already there
ahead of Yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:02:16):
Yes, please and now a word from our sponsors that
I really enjoy and I think you will too. When
I think about women in leadership positions, I often think
about the way you lead us on the news. You know,
(01:02:36):
your work on Newsnight is so valuable to me as
a viewer. I know to so many people you seem
to have really pierced the veil in certain ways, especially
when you get everybody around the desk and get people
talking like I just I love to see the way
you are shaking it up, and yet you are this
(01:02:58):
incredibly poised, trusted voice in our news media. And it's
not lost on me that, you know, especially after recent
shifts at CBS, like you're one of the few black
women anchoring a national news broadcast. So how does it
feel right now for you in that in that space?
(01:03:20):
Do you have these days where you go like this
shit can't be real? Or are you so you're so
on your game that you're like, and I will continue
through this crazy thing here and that crazy thing there.
Speaker 2 (01:03:33):
How do you do this?
Speaker 1 (01:03:34):
And and do you I guess it's a two prong question.
Do you also feel nervous because so much of people's
identities are being weaponized right now?
Speaker 2 (01:03:47):
Like? How are you doing this? All? That part of it?
I'm pretty used to, you know, because I think that
one of the things about being a black woman in
news and on television is that everybody knows you're a
black woman television, and there are plenty of people who
on a regular basis try to weaponize my identity against me.
(01:04:09):
And the truth is you can't help that. So I
put that to the side. What I do on a
day to day basis is try to convene a conversation
that I don't think is happening enough in the country
(01:04:31):
where people from all different backgrounds have an opportunity to
talk to each other, to challenge each other, to have
their ideas heard, to have their ideas challenged, to be
pressed on the substance of the thing that they are
advocating for and not just the politics of it. And
(01:04:52):
it is hard. And you know, I kind of audit
myself and what I'm doing daily, you know, every day
I kind of think back on the last show and
I could have done this better? Or did I do
that right? Did I you know, am I approaching this
the right way? You know? All of that, Like that's
(01:05:15):
part of my practice because I don't see myself as infallible.
I don't want to be the center of that conversation.
I want to be the facilitator of it. And I
think that in these times like we have to constantly
be asking ourselves are we striking the right tone, the
(01:05:39):
right balance and doing that exercise? And I don't know.
I mean, I think the media business for my entire
career has been changing, it continues to change. I've never
taken anything for granted in this business. I've never I
didn't ever have the luxury coming into journalism thinking that
(01:05:59):
I would ever have a job forever. And so I
do not think that right now. That's not I approach
this as this is what I'm doing right now, this
is what I'm you know, asked to do, call to do.
I'll do it to the best of my ability while
it's serving a purpose in this you know, news ecosystem.
(01:06:24):
And there might be another challenge, it might look a
little bit different, it might you know, it might evolve
just in the same way our show has evolved. And
that's okay, because I think we have to evolve. And
so I don't I don't feel you know, I don't.
I don't feel nervous in that respect. I just try
(01:06:45):
to approach it with a sense of integrity every day. Yeah,
and that's all I can do. And I if I
know at the end of every show that my intention
was to have the most interesting conversation that surfaced the
(01:07:08):
things that I think would resonate with people at home,
that challenged our guests in ways that are important, that
raised topics that aren't getting discussed elsewhere, I'll feel like
I've done my job, and I'll do it as long
as I'm allowed to do it. In this crazy media
(01:07:29):
world that we're in, and people, I mean, they attack
me every day and it doesn't it doesn't matter, you know,
because I think we can sometimes overweight, like what happens,
especially on the Internet, so much more than it needs
to be. And when I go out in the world
(01:07:50):
and I encounter people randomly, like totally randomly, and they'll
be on the right and on the left, and they'll
be like, I love your show, you know, and they'll
be like, give Scott Jennings a break, and you know,
I mean, they just they enjoy the back and forth.
They enjoy the discussion. They enjoy the fact that it's
(01:08:14):
challenging for guests to come on. And I hear from
people who are like, oh, my extremely conservative grandmother loves
your show, and or my extremely you know, liberal grandfather
loves your show. And I just I love hearing those
stories because those are real people.
Speaker 1 (01:08:33):
In this moment, the show is going well. You're centered
in your purpose and in your family. You have this
book that is so beautiful, the culmination of years of work.
When you look forward in your personal landscape, what feels
like you're work in progress.
Speaker 2 (01:08:53):
Well, the elusive balance, right it doesn't really exist, but
you know, I mean you come into periods where you're
kind of like in the grind. And I definitely think
doing this book, getting it out the door and into
the world, that has been a major project, on top
(01:09:17):
of keeping a little child alive and well. And you know,
I do think that I look at my life as seasons,
and I see this season kind of coming to an
end and the beginning of a new season coming into being,
(01:09:38):
and I really hope that my next season has a
little bit more rest. But in my professional life, I
also want a little bit more balance in terms of
balancing the voices, the inside voices and the outside voices
and bringing them together a little bit more. And so
that's kind of what I'm meditating on right now, you know,
(01:10:00):
as this is sort of this project is sort of
wrapping up, it's just an opportunity for me to think
about what does it mean to sort of like take
in a little bit more of life and let that
kind of inspire more creativity in my personal life and
in my work, and also getting more out of real people,
(01:10:20):
because I think that is such a rich source of
creativity in my journalistic work, and it's really important to
figure that out, so I'm excited to try to do that.
Speaker 1 (01:10:32):
Amazing. Thank you so much for today. I really appreciate
you coming. I'm so happy for you, and the book
is so beautiful and I can't wait to hear from
all of our listeners about how they enjoy it.
Speaker 2 (01:10:45):
Well, thank you so much. It was so nice talking
to you too,
Hi, everyone, It's Sophia, Welcome to Work in Progress. Hello friends,
and welcome back to this week's work in progress. Today
we are talking to a journalist that I deeply admire,
(00:22):
and she also happens to be a woman I really
like to hang out with. Abby Phillip is our guest today,
and she has become one of the most trusted and
incisive voices in American journalism. She is known for her
unflappable energy, her sharp political analysis, and her incredibly steady presence.
Is the anchor of CNN's News Night. And Abby is
(00:45):
here with us today because she's just released a new
book which feels incredibly relevant for these times, even though
it's a study of the nineteen eighties. It is called
a Dream Deferred. Jesse Jackson in The Fight for Black
Political Power, looks at his nineteen eighty four and nineteen
eighty eight runs for president and really the way he
(01:05):
was shaking up a system that clearly needs some shaking.
Abby's here today to talk about the research that went
into this book, the lessons that it holds that are
relevant for all of us in this moment, her thoughts
about what it will be like in the future when
we look back at this current political time, and she's
(01:26):
also going to share some of her personal stories. From
growing up in Trinidad and Tobago to moving back to
the United States to studying government at Harvard. She has
really led a life that has allowed her to approach
the world with a drive to understand people and to
make sure their stories are being told well and fairly
(01:48):
and in ways that might unite rather than divide us.
So let's jump in with Abby Philip. I like to
go backwards with people before we dig into the present,
(02:09):
because everyone I get to sit with has some amazing story,
some amazing career. You have an audience that knows your life.
But I like to know how people were made. So
if we could have like a very cool animated movie
day of our own and like bend space time and
step out onto a playground and see our eight year
(02:31):
old selves. If you got to hang out with that
little girl who I know you still carry with you,
But if you got to hang out with her, chat
with her, hear what she's up to or interested in.
Do you think you would see the parallels in the
two of you. Would you see the woman you are
today in your younger self?
Speaker 2 (02:51):
That's such a great question, I think so yeah, because
when I the funny thing about me, first of all
is that I have a really bad memory. So there
are a lot of things about my childhood that I
just do not remember. And some of it, to be honest,
is probably just sort of a coping mechanism that I've
(03:13):
just sort of blocked out certain parts of my life,
not because it was particularly traumatic, but because, you know,
around that time, when I was eight, we had just
moved from Trinidad and Tobago to the United States. I
was born here, but shortly after I was born, we
moved to where my parents are from and we lived
there for eight years. So I really didn't know America
(03:38):
all that much until I was around that age, and
so much of that time is kind of fuzzy to me.
But what I will say is that I've always been
like Abby, I'm you know, I'm I'm Abby is like,
(04:00):
you know, a character in my family's house, because I'm
just like I've always been the kid who always wanted
to be in charge of things, always wanted to be
doing something. I've always had that side of my personality.
But I will also say that I don't know that
I ever really saw myself having a kind of public
(04:22):
facing life. That part, I think has been very different
from what I envisioned for myself from my earliest memories.
But I think that the drive, the work ethic, the
kind of the mom in me. Honestly, I've always been
a little bit of a mom ever since I was
(04:43):
a little kid. That has always been there. But life
has been actually kind of surprising in a lot of
ways for that other reason too.
Speaker 1 (04:54):
I love it. I get a vision that if we
did that walk out together and saw our little they'd
be organizing everyone on the playground to really crush a project,
just like this.
Speaker 2 (05:04):
Is how we're going to get something done.
Speaker 1 (05:06):
Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:07):
It was always the one who wanted to be like
at the grocery store, checking things off of the list
and pushing the cart. Yeah yeah, that type of personality.
Speaker 1 (05:17):
I totally get it. I love it. Do you think
that that shift? I mean, what a what a sort
of seismic experience. You know, obviously you don't remember moving
back to Trinidad and Tobago, but coming back here when
you really are forming you know, memories and in a
(05:39):
sort of routine in your childhood. To have that shift
was there lore around it? Was there a sort of
American dream story around it? Or was was there also
the sort of sad elements for your parents of having
to leave home again?
Speaker 2 (05:56):
Yeah, I mean I think there was totally a sense
of lore. I mean, any immigrant experience when you come
to America, like the movie Coming to America, it's it
is an experience, right, and it is something that most
people that I grew up with in Trinidad never experience.
But I always we always knew, me and my sisters
(06:19):
that we were we were born in America, and so
we always had that kind of part of us that
was what if we used to watch like Sweet Valley High,
Oh my God, the Throwback and like all these shows,
you know, I mean we would we would watch American
(06:42):
TV and just kind of dream about what it would
be like. And when we did come to the United States,
I mean, first of all, our parents had come up
a little bit before us to kind of get everything ready,
and so a lot of it was just being reunited
with them, and the other part of it was just
(07:03):
experiencing America snow and you know, the leaves changing and
Christmas and real Barbie dolls not the fake ones. That
we growing up and all of those things that were
part of the lore. And but also, I mean I
(07:23):
have to add that growing up my parents, regardless of
where we were born or the America of it all,
I mean, I think they always kind of instilled in
us this sense that we were not we were not
just like everybody else, for good or for bad. I
don't know where that came from for them. I mean,
(07:44):
some of it was that we were raised pretty religiously
in a Christian household, so it was always like, you know,
you're in the world, but not of the world. So
we were always kind of expected to be different from
other people. And I think that actually, in a weird way,
helped me acclimate and adjust to being in a completely
(08:05):
different place because I was very different. I used to
have an accent, a Trinidadian accent when I was eight,
and I I lost that accent. But I also just
I was okay with being different from other people, even
though I observed our differences, and I think it helped
(08:25):
that My parents were always like, you're You're not like
these other kids. You're gonna get a's, you're smart, you're
you know. They would always sort of reinforce in us,
this sense that we weren't going to just go with
the crowd. We had to have our sense of individuality
and our sense of purpose outside of what was happening
(08:45):
around us.
Speaker 1 (08:48):
Yeah, and I do, to your point, think that's such
a common thread in immigrant families because the move and
the arrival and the taking your place in this country
it has such lore. You're expected to earn it. And
it's really interesting to hear you talk about how you
had a sense of sort of this world and another
(09:09):
from your faith based upbringing. But also you're talking about
an experience that you know. So many people that we
both know, and so many public figures, particularly black people
in America, talk about like being of this place and
not and for you to be an American and also
(09:32):
to have grown up in Trinidad, it's like you had
so many versions of this and that. Yeah, the kind
of dialectics of your identity and how special that in
a way they were sort of told to you and
they were experienced by you in this way that made
you feel like, oh, yeah, I can be all of
(09:52):
these things.
Speaker 2 (09:53):
Yeah. I think it gave me a sense of empathy
and also a desire to real understand the people around
me and figure out how we could find things in common.
And I think that is one of those things that
I carry with me and that I literally use in
(10:14):
my day to day life and in my job. Part
of it, I think also is also where I'm from,
where my family is from. You know, Trinidad and Tobago
is an island in the Caribbean that is actually an
incredibly diverse place. It's a lot of people of African descent,
a lot of people of Indian descent. There are Asians there,
(10:37):
there are people of Latin descent there. Even within my
own family, I have people who look like all kinds
of different things. And so that idea of differences was
not something that ever really bothered me, and it never
really stopped me from being able to make friends or
(11:00):
identify with people that I lived around or that I
went to school with. And the fact that I had
to come in culturally and I am black, and I
am African American, I'm Caribbean American, but I didn't actually
have that much in common with a lot of Black Americans.
I still had to adjust and to not just to
(11:27):
people who looked like me physically, but also people who didn't.
So I actually think of that as a great blessing
in how I grew up, that you're sort of forced
to just look at every person individually and just say,
what can we have in common? Because there's undoubtedly something,
(11:50):
and finding that thing was always more important than finding
the things that we didn't have in common.
Speaker 1 (11:55):
Yes, and now a word from our sponsors who make
the show possible. Well, and I think that's something that's
missing from our discourse in general today. We're being so
(12:15):
encouraged to other people in a negative way rather than
to be fascinated by people's otherness. And I you know,
I didn't grow up in the same circumstances you did,
but I feel a kinship in terms of the way
you talk about your childhood, because you know, I came
here with the intense lore of coming here for the
(12:37):
American dream. You know, my grandmother was brought over by
my great grandparents on a boat from Italy. You know,
my mom still remembers when her mother forbade her grandparents
from speaking Italian to her because they were trying so
hard to assimilate. And there is the wanting to belong
and also the loss in the belonging because then you know,
(12:58):
my mom lost her language. My dad came here to
go to university, and you know, just knowing how long
it took him to become a citizen. When people are
like do it the right way, I'm like, take several seats,
like you literally have no idea.
Speaker 2 (13:10):
Most people have no idea. How long and large was
the quote unquote right way is?
Speaker 1 (13:15):
Yeah, they don't know. And I and I think perhaps
because of their stories, I wonder if there's something about
that that desire to know people in their stories that
leads a lot of us down the journalism path. Do
you think maybe that's what drew you in that direction
as you as you made your way to Harvard.
Speaker 2 (13:34):
Yeah, I think that it's about stories, you know. I
mean I think that fundamentally history, politics, culture, it's the
story of us, how we came to be and also
where we're going. And I think I've always been drawn
to that. I've been drawn to the way in which
(13:56):
history sort of paints a picture that leads us to
the present. And I also have been drawn to the
way in which our present day actions are doing the
same thing for the people in the future. And so yeah,
I mean, I just think we as human beings we
(14:17):
have so much power and agency and the ability to
kind of shift space and time around our actions. And
that's always been fascinating to me because I think of
my whole life as a bit of an anthropological moment, right.
(14:37):
You know, when a family leaves one place and goes
to another, they create a whole new timeline for their descendants.
And I'm literally living in that timeline that was created
for me in part because of my parents' actions, and
(14:57):
who I am as a person is because of their decisions.
It's because of my experiences growing up as a child
living in one place and coming to another and knowing
what that feels like to have to adapt and change
(15:18):
and adjust. And I think that is that's my story,
but everybody has a story like that, and I find
that fundamentally interesting because that tells us a lot about
what people are really like, what they're gonna do, what
motivates them, what's important to them. And the truth is
(15:38):
that we have all of those things. We have those
things in common more than I think we know. And
in a way, I mean the politics of it all,
Like I mean, I love politics because I do think
that is sort of history in the present day. But
I do think that if there's one thing that's wrong
(15:58):
with politics, it's the way that it flattens us all
into just kind of two dimensional R and D or
whatever it is. And I think the promise of journalism
is that we kind of expand the dimensions of who
people really are beyond just what labels they put next
(16:21):
to their names, and really start to learn more about
what really motivates them, how they came to be. And
I think that is what I have always been drawn
to in doing this.
Speaker 1 (16:33):
I love that when you started, I guess rather, when
you decided to study government, did you imagine that you
were going to work in and on the political process
before journalism or was it the study of government that
led you to want to be a journalist? Like, how
did the light bulb for you in terms of your
(16:55):
path get illuminated?
Speaker 2 (16:57):
Yeah, it was kind of. Well, the truth is that
when I decided that I wanted to pursue journalism, I
was actually studying at Harvard. It was called social studies,
and it was sort of like, it's a little bit
like government, a little bit like philosophy. And I switched
(17:17):
to government for a number of reasons, some of them practical.
One was that I wanted to do a journalism internship
this summer that I would otherwise have needed to write
a thesis. So I decided to do the journalism internship first.
But also I knew I was very interested in political journalism,
and studying government sort of the structure of government and
(17:42):
how it works was sort of a way of kind
of deepening my understanding of that work. And so it
wasn't that I was studying it and decided to do journalism,
and I definitely did not want to work in government.
I think I knew that clearly pretty early on. I've
(18:03):
never really been much of a follower. I just I'm
not really a big fan of joining a team, so
to speak, and so the idea of being a part
of a political party as a you know, political strategist
(18:24):
or worker of some kind or definitely not a politician,
that just was never appealing to me. I think I've
always loved the sort of outsider role, the place that
journalism sits that is somewhere between the two party system
that we have, where we have the ability to kind
(18:46):
of probe into the teams, so to speak, and just
have a different relationship with our political system. So it's
never really been. I just I knew I have no
interest in actually being in politics in that way.
Speaker 1 (19:02):
Right, Yeah, like you'd rather play tennis not soccer.
Speaker 2 (19:05):
Yeah, I guess you know, you're like, I don't want
to have.
Speaker 1 (19:09):
To necessarily go where everyone's going.
Speaker 2 (19:11):
Yeah, I guess that.
Speaker 1 (19:12):
It's interesting the way you talk about journalism. It strikes
me that it's really it's a kind of engaged participatory voyeurism.
It allows you to do two things at once, because
you observe and you also really get involved, and then
you move back to the observing And in a way,
(19:33):
the position of watching to glean information and be able
to translate all of it into a story allows you,
I would imagine, to be welcomed into certain spaces that
had you gone into traditional government work, you wouldn't be
able to.
Speaker 2 (19:52):
Absolutely. I think that's a great way to put it.
I mean, I think journalism is apart from the the arena.
You're not in the arena in the same way that
political actors are, and we are in an observation role
to some extent. But I think the participatory part is
also really important because we are a player, a key player.
(20:16):
I mean, the First Amendment is the First Amendment for
a reason, because you literally cannot have a democracy without
a free press. And I do think that as a
journalist we do have responsibilities, and one of it is
to the truth as far as we can ascertain it,
(20:37):
and the other is, I think to the public, to
the citizen, and the citizen, in my view, is who
we work for. That's who we work on. Behalf of
that is who we sometimes are in a position to
speak for. That is who voices we are responsible for
(20:59):
las or illuminating. And so that responsibility is massive, but
it also has incredible impact. I mean, one of the
reasons I was decided that journalism was going to be
what I did was because when I was looking back
(21:20):
and studying the Civil rights movement, it was so clear
to me that that era would not have had the
impact that it did had it not been for the
role of journalism in bringing these stories to life, in
literally going to the places and saying to you know,
some family in Ohio, this is what it's like in
(21:43):
you know, the Mississippi Delta. This is what it's like
in the places where black people can't even drink from
the same water fountain as white people. And there were
so many Americans who had no idea what was happening
in their own country, and so the role of journalist
in just talking about those stories and putting it on
(22:05):
the front pages is massive. And that's the active part
of this democracy that we are participants in. We don't
have to be on a team in order to play
a role, and I think it is important actually for
there to be journalists who really aren't on a team,
(22:26):
because I know that right now there are a lot
of journalists who they their liberals, their conservatives, and that's fine,
but I also think that there is a need, a
necessity for there to be people who are not doing that.
Speaker 1 (22:40):
It's so important to pull back and remember that being
impartial can be a requirement for clear communication. And that
also feels really hard, you know, on my end, as
a very engaged citizen, you know, I know, spend more
time in the sort of news cycle and on the
(23:03):
political stuff than a lot of people can or want to.
By the way, no harm, no foul, but it makes
me feel crazy. You know. For example, you talk about
journalists working for the people. Yes, you know, our courts
are supposed to work for the people, and we currently
are in a time with this current administration where fealty
(23:25):
to the administration is being demanded. You know, you see
shifts at CBS, you see people getting fired, you see
anchors being pulled off the air. You see news organizations
paying the president even though they told the truth. Like
your alma mater, Harvard is in this thing with Trump
and they're going to pay him. Like when you know
(23:45):
that that impartial requirement matters for how communication is done,
how do you make sense of all this stuff that
is so impartial. Do you feel like these institutions are
being captured or do you feel like we're just midway
through a chess game and people are trying to figure
out how to get to the other side of the board.
Speaker 2 (24:06):
You know, I think it might be just that that
we are in the middle of We're in the middle
of a moment, and it's a very significant moment, and
I don't know really how it's going to end. I
don't think the story is over the you know, I
don't think the game is done. I think we're just
we're right in the middle of it. And you know,
(24:28):
if there's anything I learned from my studies of government
is that the structure of these institutions really matters, and
we live in a society where we have all these
layers of these layers of structures that are intended to
protect democracy, and sometimes we find gaps where there are
(24:53):
they're just blind spots, where there are things that the
framers didn't even envision that are happening that we're dealing with,
and where sometimes many layers of those structures are being
captured all at once and we don't know what that
(25:14):
means because it's never happened before. So that's how I
kind of look at it, is that we are still
seeing how our institutions and our democratic structures hold up
in this moment under probably the most concerted effort to
(25:36):
control and restructure them that I think our democracy has
ever seen. And I don't know how it's going to end,
that's the truth. But I do think what I've seen
is a bit of a mixed bag, and that's good. Actually.
I think that it's meant to be that way, that
(25:57):
the system is actually meant to produce a lot of
different outcomes and it averages out to something in the end.
But I think it is a good sign that you
can see that sometimes they win, sometimes they lose. That's
what it's supposed to be. Like if it were that
(26:18):
one team was winning one hundred percent of the time,
that would be a different story. And I know that
sometimes it feels that way to people, but I think
it is not that way. Based on the fact that
I follow a lot of this stuff very closely, I
think it is still a mixed bag. And I think
what that tells me is that we still have this
really kind of brilliant system in which there are so
(26:41):
many different checks and balances on power that no one's
ever really able to run all the way to the
end zone without encountering resistance. And that is the way
that this place is supposed to operate, And as long
as that continues to happen, I have a lot of
(27:01):
confidence still in the way that this country is set up.
And on the impartiality question, I mean, I think that
this has been one of the most hotly debated things
right in journalism. Is it possible even to be objective?
Is it possible to even be impartial? And sometimes I
(27:24):
think that's the wrong question to ask. I think the
right question is are you approaching every story with openness
and empathy? And I think that if you can do
that you. What that requires is an acknowledgment of who
you are and some of the things that you bring
(27:45):
to the table because of who you are and where
you come from and what you know, and also what's
in front of you, recognizing that what's in front of
you might be different from what you know, and being
open to what you're hearing and you're seeing. And I
think that is really that's the real challenge of journalism,
because I think for too long people have thought that
(28:06):
they were burying their biases, and they weren't. They were
just trying to present their biases as impartiality when it
was not. And I think that just being upfront about
how you come to a story and also being open
(28:27):
to what is actually in front of you, that is
the real test of journalism. That's why it's so important
to go places and actually talk to people, because when
you talk to people, you receive what they are telling
you that is sometimes different from what you might believe.
Speaker 1 (28:46):
And now a word from our sponsors. I think one
of the wisest adages I've ever heard is that you
read things as you are, not necessarily as they've been written,
(29:08):
you know, And I think that's incredibly true for the
political discourse. When you read someone's comment under an Instagram
post of a news story, or someone retorts to you
on a social media platform, you're not having a real conversation.
And I think one of the great privileges in my
life that I think overlaps with my very favorite profession,
(29:29):
which is yours, is that we get to travel a lot.
And so for me, even with political advocacy or working
on things like paid leave for all or trying to
get better health care protections for people, sometimes people don't
understand why I'm really passionate about that, And it's because
I spent ten years surrounded by union workers in North Carolina,
(29:49):
and you know, time in Ottawa and Vancouver and small
town New Mexico and Texas and upstate New York and
in California and this enormous city we're in today, And
like everywhere I go, I learn people's stories, and I
learn about their families, and I learn about why they
do the jobs they do and the ways they're protected
(30:11):
and they aren't. And so those stories feel important for
me to carry. And I think for anyone who has
a mission of advocating or telling the truth somewhere, you
carry people's stories with you.
Speaker 2 (30:30):
Yeah, and I think that when you talk to people,
you see how multi dimensional they are. Yes, And I
think that is the That's a thing I'll think a
lot of people don't understand about just voters out there,
that yeah, they have a lot of contradictory views on things,
(30:53):
and that's because people are complex and they see different
parts of their lives in different ways, and being open
to that is really important because again politics Sometimes in politics,
it's the job of a political party to have all
these things that they believe in, and most people who
(31:15):
align themselves with that political party probably believe in a
lot of those things. But there are many, many people
who take a little bit from over here, from the
left and a little bit from the right, and they're
somewhere in the kind of weird, bizarre middle and it
doesn't really make a lot of sense to you, but
that's okay. And giving voice to those people is super
(31:35):
important because guess what, those are the people who actually
determine how elections go in this country. They're the ones
with the kind of strange, weird points of view on
all these different issues, and you don't know exactly where
they're going to come down, Well, guess what, they're the deciders.
And so those types of people I encounter all the time,
(31:56):
and I think they probably could be better represented in
our public discourse. I mean, I also think that, you know,
when we talk about characteristics of different people. And I
remember a couple of years ago, I was in Kansas
doing a story after the Dobbs decision, and I went
(32:20):
into this working class Latino neighborhood and was talking to
people about it because there are actually a lot of
Latino voters in Kansas that were actually very significant in
those elections. And you know, the thing that I think
a lot of people don't see is the way that
(32:41):
Latino voters are, many of them deeply religious people, and
they're hard working, and they have personal views that are
actually very strong about things like abortion, but their political
decision making is different from their personal views, and that
(33:05):
viewpoint doesn't really get represented all that much. And voters
like that are why in Kansas they protected abortion rights
in that state. And so when we fail to surface
those viewpoints, will miss those stories that diverge from conventional wisdom.
(33:26):
And that's why it is so important to not only
go out and talk to those people, but to also
really kind of unveil their complexity to the public so
that people understand that people are not parodies. They're not
like you know, they're not cardboard cutouts. They're real people
(33:47):
with all these depths to them. And that is what
creates sort of a dynamism in our political system that
I personally find super interesting.
Speaker 1 (33:57):
Well, and it's also so refreshing to hear you speak
about people that way, because it's a great reminder that
no person is a stereotype, no person is just a
data point. You know, that that kind of dynamic, and
I would say very human reality of saying I believe this,
(34:17):
but I don't think my beliefs should legislate everyone else's lives.
That's that's a powerful example, you know. And I and
I think when we when we consider, as you were
saying earlier, that right now we are making marks that
people who come after us will look back at. Those
(34:40):
are the kinds of marks I hope we get to make.
That we figure out how to show up and allow
people to be fuller humans and listen before we judge,
and perhaps advocate for the best outcomes for the total
of us. You know, you hear a lot lately about
how people are focusing on the wrong one percent, and
(35:01):
I'm like, you think and it it really does. When
I think about it, it feels like we've gotten people
really hyped up about some of the wrong things and
missing we're missing our legacy and we've clearly forgotten some
of our history. And that's why I'm so excited about
(35:22):
your book, because I feel like a broken record at
this point, being like, is anybody paying attention to the
correlation between what's happening now in Germany in the nineteen
twenties and nineteen thirties, And it's like the history nerd
in me is just flipping out all the time. And
you gave me another gorgeous piece of history to dive into,
(35:42):
you know, elements of which I've studied. And there's things
in your book that I learned for the first time.
And for our friends who are going to watch our
little clips, yes I have it here, and yes, I
also brought a sharpie so I can ask you to
sign it for me later. And I did the thing
because I'm so excited about this, where I prepped for
the podcast, reading the pdf, making notes on my iPad
(36:04):
because I didn't want to absolutely destroy the call of
the book, because I can never read a book and
then give it to anyone. They're just like, what is
what is this?
Speaker 2 (36:13):
Like?
Speaker 1 (36:14):
What is this Gray Gardens thing? You've handed to me
in tatters?
Speaker 2 (36:17):
But I love it. You're a close reader.
Speaker 1 (36:19):
Yeah, so I I really I've been so excited about
this and I I'm just so curious. You know. You
you take us back through Jesse Jackson's presidential campaigns in
the nineteen eighties. Yea, and from this moment this time,
you know, ten years into trump Ism and the the
(36:43):
intensity of the firefights we see in the digital world,
particularly over politics.
Speaker 2 (36:50):
What was it.
Speaker 1 (36:51):
About this story for you that made you say, this
is what I want to put out into the world,
and this is the time that I want to do it.
Speaker 2 (36:59):
Yeah. You know, I think that this story actually has
a lot of lessons for where we are right now
in this country, because I do think we're in a
moment of kind of backlash against the growing diversity of
the country. I think that there's also an active fight
(37:24):
going on about who can speak to and appeal to
the working class, and both of those themes are kind
of at the heart of what was happening with Jesse
Jackson's campaigns in the nineteen eighties as well. One of
the key lessons that can be taken away from his
(37:45):
campaigns is the way that he argued in favor of
seeing people with those multiple dimensions. That we were just
talking about the way in which people have all these
different desires and all these different motivations, and that even
though we might all look different, we might be black
(38:07):
or white, or women or men, or farmers or city
workers or whatever it is, factory workers, we share a
common desire to have a better life, to have a
government that works for us, to have a society that
feels like it is invested in its citizens and not
(38:30):
in other pursuits. And that was a lot of what
he campaigned on in the eighties. And I think that
one of the unfinished pieces of this is actually what
do we do in this moment of division where it's
actually very effective to divide us along all of these
(38:53):
different identities, and can candidates figure out how to do
the opposite, how to actually bring people together, not by
ignoring who they are, but by saying, I see who
you are, and I acknowledge it, but also let me
show you what we all have in common. I think
(39:15):
that that is that I call that unfinished business, because
I do think that is still yet to be done.
And I think there is a lot in Jesse Jackson's
vision for politics, his dream, so to speak, that I
think is still worth contemplating today. Can it be done?
(39:36):
And in a way, both parties are kind of engaged
in that conversation to some extent, or at least it
seemed to be in the last election, where you know,
in twenty twenty four, despite all the rhetoric, I think
(39:56):
the Trump campaign actually they were carrying out like a
get out the vote strategy that was geared toward all
these different groups and had some success in chipping away
at the Democrats diverse coalition. And so I do think
that that reality, plus the fact that the Democratic Party
(40:17):
does right now have as its base a very diverse coalition,
means that there just seems to be a sort of
refocusing on what does it really mean to craft a
message that can actually speak to all Americans, that doesn't
slice and dice them along their different identities, but finds
(40:38):
the unifying ties. And you know, Jesse Jackson used to
talk about the country as a quilt. He used to
talk about his grandmother using scraps of clothing because they
grew up very poor in South Carolina, and to make
a quilt that would keep them warm in the winters.
And he would talk about all the different parts of
(41:00):
this country as being a part of a quilt. And
I think that is still for so many of us
who really do believe in the beauty of this very
diverse country, that is still something that is worth aspiring toward,
regardless of your political persuasion. And I still think that
(41:20):
there is a lot of work that needs to be
done to bring our politics to a place where that
really we can say that that really is true.
Speaker 1 (41:29):
It's interesting because that took my breath away. It's a
metaphor that my best friend and I use a lot
about communities that we want to connect and connect with
and sort of coalitions of support that we are always
working to network across the country, and we talk about
this quilt all the time. It feels so imperative to
(41:52):
do the thing you're talking about to remind people that
what we have in common. I mean, we're literally each
other's name, right, And I think his messaging was so
effective at the time, and to your point, when you know,
we were only fifteen years after the fever pitch of
(42:14):
the civil rights movement. I won't say the civil rights
movement because it's not like it ended. But one of
the things that struck me is that in the eighty
four and eighty eight runs, his candidacy really pushed the
Democratic Party to acknowledge that black voters are indispensable.
Speaker 2 (42:36):
And it's so.
Speaker 1 (42:38):
Important that it was said, And it strikes me as
one of those things that also does what you're talking about,
which is if everyone gets bucketed by their identity. You know,
Latino voters who carry personal beliefs but will vote to
protect you know, reproductive rights access, black voters, Black voters
in the South, black voters in the North, you know, women,
(43:01):
collegiate women, you know, whatever. All the ways we get
kind of siloed. The silos can be destructive, but the
recognition of people's identity and what they bring to a
conversation and their lived experience and their expertise based on
their diverse identities is also so imperative. So how do
(43:23):
you make sense of.
Speaker 2 (43:25):
That? Seesaw? Yeah, it's both of those things, and it's
such a It is a nuance, right because I think
that sometimes when people talk about identities, they want them
to disappear, as if they don't exist. But I think
that is that's one version of doing it. The other
(43:46):
version of doing it is to say, I recognize who
you are and your individuality, what you bring to the table,
what matters to you. I'm saying that you can take
your individuality and hold hands with someone else who has
(44:06):
a different experience, and you can have a shared sense
of purpose. And in a way, I do think that
that actually comes out of Jesse Jackson's experience in the
Civil Rights movement, because when you really think about what
that movement did, it actually helped spur change not just
(44:29):
for Black people, but for all kinds of other people,
for women, for LGBTQ people, for Asian Americans, for Arab Americans,
you name it, Latino Americans. I think that that movement
gave all these other movements sort of language and power
in the political system. And the civil rights movement has
(44:53):
not ever just been liberation and justice for black people.
It's been for making the country actually live up to
its promise to everyone. And so because of that tradition,
when he comes into the nineteen eighties and says that
(45:13):
black voters are going to lead the way, We're going
to use our political power to force the Democratic Party
to recognize all of us. I think that was just
a continuation of the story that began in the fifties
and the sixties in the height of that civil rights
movement that everybody now understands and knows, and it is
(45:37):
the black struggle has always been inseparable from the struggles
of all these other people. In some cases, he would
go to the South and campaign there and had a
lot of support from black voters, but he would also
be speaking to white voters and he would say to them,
(45:58):
it's really only the cynics and the people who are
full of hate who want you to believe that you
have more in common with the uber wealthy white man
than you do with the working class black man. And
the message was essentially that there are people who want
to divide you along race, but that's not really the
(46:22):
power struggle that you're fighting against. And I think he
was offering he was offering a handout in two white
Americans who at that time were not that interested in
listening to or voting for a black man, and essentially
saying that everything that you've been taught about race being
(46:45):
the dividing line between us is not really the thing.
The real thing is whether or not you have economic opportunity,
and whether I have economic opportunity, and that message I
think he took to the South, he took to the Midwest,
to farmers, he took to rural parts of the country,
(47:06):
to urban parts of the country, and it resonated because
there really weren't other people talking like that and openly
acknowledging that some people actually needed a little bit of
help getting past what they had always known, and a
lot of people listened. He had a lot of support
(47:29):
from white farmers, who he literally spent before he was
running a night between nineteen eighty four and nineteen eighty eight.
He would go and he would rally with them when
they were about to lose their family farms, and he
built solidarity with them through his actions, not just through
campaign speeches. And there is a lesson in that in
(47:53):
not giving up on people, not deciding that, oh, those
people are never going to be for you, so let's
not talk to them, not assuming that they have biases
that you can't get passed. I think he blew past
so much of that and never took that as a
(48:17):
given that somebody wouldn't listen to him because they were
biased against him, which they might very well have been.
But he was from the South, so he was used
to being around racist white people that he had grown
up around in the Jim Crow South, and so it
never that part never faced him. And I think that
(48:38):
in a way, we might need to remember a little
bit of that, because I think there are a lot
of people right now who want to just say, well,
they're bad people, let's not talk to them, and I
just don't. I don't know that our democracy can survive
that writing off people because you assume that they can't
be persuaded, or you assume that they can't be brought
(48:58):
into your column. I think the act of persuasion is
the practice of democracy, and you cannot write people off
if you say you want to practice democracy.
Speaker 1 (49:11):
I love that. And now a word from our wonderful sponsors,
would you say that's one of the greatest lessons of
working on this, because I get really geeked when I
(49:31):
think about the years you got to spend researching this
and interviewing everyone around him and being in his world.
You know, it's like a dream project, right, But I
wonder when I think of the size and scope of
it and the sort of you know, stories you're telling
about something as upper echelon in the world as running
(49:51):
for president, when I bring it down to sort of imagine,
you know, Abby at her computer, like, what do you
think the most surprising personal takeaways have been for you,
not just as an author, but as the total you,
the individual.
Speaker 2 (50:10):
Yeah, I mean it made me really think about how
history we'll see what we're doing right now. Because I
did spend a lot of time going back and reading
and watching the coverage of him at the time that
he was running, and seeing with twenty twenty five eyes
(50:35):
the biases that were sort of embedded in how he
was talked about. I think it really kind of crystallized
how important it is to be mindful of that and
not just there were plenty of I think racial biases
and how he was covered, for sure, but even biases
(50:58):
in terms of when we see something different come out
in the political sphere, the media has a tendency to
dismiss it because it's unfamiliar. And that was true then
and it's true now. And I do think that openness
to phenomenon that defy recent history, that challenge the status quo,
(51:28):
that challenge what we know about politics is super important
because if you're not able to do that, you might
miss something that's extraordinary that's happening right in front of you.
And I do think that, frankly, a lot of journalism
missed this story in the nineteen eighties. They missed how
(51:49):
truly remarkable it was. And looking back on it, there
were so many moments that I was like, if that
had happened today, it would be a completely Banana's thing,
Like it would just be it would just like rock
the political world. Like the type of candidate he was.
(52:09):
He was dynamic and interesting, and honestly, I went back
and I was talking to a lot of the journalists
who covered him than who I actually, some of whom
I know now, and you know, a lot of them
said to me he was the most interesting candidate they
had ever covered, just the most exciting candidate that most
(52:30):
of these journalists had ever covered. But they couldn't really
convey that because it was considered kind of naive to
say that, to express that he was capturing the imagination
of Americans with just how different he was for all
kinds of obvious reasons and other reasons like getting on
(52:54):
a plane and going to Syria and bringing back an
American prisoner of war, and you know, just doing things
that contravened conventional wisdom. And I think as a person
who's practicing journalism today, it is a reminder to me
that open mindedness is the job. That is a huge
(53:17):
part of the job, because people at that time, I think,
were not really listening to what voters were telling them
about what they were interested in and why they found
him so compelling, and they kept looking for all these
different reasons why they needed to sort of put Jesse
Jackson in a box. And that's a lesson for all
of us that we should probably do a little bit better,
(53:41):
and I think we are doing better, to be honest.
I think frankly, the industry is more diverse. I think
they're way more voices involved now and that's a good thing.
But that really struck out to me because I do
think that he's a type of figure that I think,
had he been placed in a different context, have ended
a little bit differently.
Speaker 1 (54:03):
And how do you think about portraying his contradictions right,
Because he had this visionary leadership style and he had
personal controversies.
Speaker 2 (54:18):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (54:19):
The reality is every human, even our best leaders are human.
You know, people fail, they're fallible, they're complicated, as you
mentioned earlier with even our you know, our voting blocks. Like,
is it a strange thing to admire someone and to
admire so much of their character and to have to
(54:41):
talk about their flaws.
Speaker 2 (54:43):
As a journalist? No, I mean I think that that's
what makes it a good story. Yeah, And I don't
even know that admiration is really the totality of it.
I think what it really is is that he is
a complex person, like pretty much all of our leaders, right,
(55:05):
every single one of them. And in order to tell
this story about why he was both a consequential and
extraordinary person but also why he came up short, you
have to explain where he fell short. You can't get
to that without explaining it. And some of it is personal,
(55:27):
some of it is actually also in his leadership style,
the way in which he had certain extraordinary gifts and skills,
but also certain weaknesses and shortcomings. And you just can't
tell the story without telling the full story. And we
do like to lionize people and pretend like they don't
(55:51):
have flaws in order to feel comfortable telling their stories
in order to Yeah, I mean, and I think that
that's we should just face that. Yeah, you know, as
human beings, I understand where that comes from. We want
people in our minds to be perfect in order to
be remembered. And that's not really how history works. That's
(56:13):
not really how human beings work.
Speaker 1 (56:15):
Does it strike you as kind of interesting though, that
that at least the men at this point are allowed
to be fabulous and flawed and the women are still
held to the perfectionism standard? Like what the hell?
Speaker 2 (56:28):
Yeah? Well, you know, I it's so interesting because I
do think that because there have just been way more
men like doing this thing, there is more of a
textured treatment of them, But because there are fewer women
who have done it, there isn't right.
Speaker 1 (56:51):
They're still flattened. More men are allowed to be a
little more.
Speaker 2 (56:54):
Threat But I mean, I also think that, to be honest,
I think that I sometimes I wonder whether women who
support women as I know that you do, are okay
with that, because you know, sometimes that means that the
woman candidate that you love is going to come under scrutiny,
(57:14):
that her flaws are going to be revealed and talked
about in the same way as her strengths. And I
do think you have to be both. In order to
be allowed to have weaknesses, you also have to be
willing to be critiqued for them. Yes, so both things
have to be true. And the critique that I would
give to a lot of my friends who I know
(57:35):
aren't just profoundly supportive of the few women candidates who
have tried to run for president, is that sometimes I
think there's an unwillingness to hear the critiques. And you know,
in politics, when you run for president, man, you've got
to have the thickest possible skin, right. And the thing
(58:00):
about these men is that they never let their flaws
and their weaknesses stop them from doing something. And I
think that that is still part of what women haven't
really been able to get past. Like I think we
hold ourselves women to a higher standard, a be the
(58:24):
world holds us to a higher standard. But also see,
I think there is this sort of willingness for the critiques,
even coming from from your friends, to be out there
and for it to not be taken personally and not
be taken as sort of the end of the world
(58:45):
and just taking it as part of the journey in
public life. I think we're still not there yet. And
you know, I think about I covered Hillary in twenty sixteen,
I've covered common Harris. I've seen how both of these
women have had a lot of fair and unfair criticism.
(59:09):
But I also think that I also see how their
allies try to create a cocoon around them. And I
don't know that the cocoon is helpful, Yeah, because I
think that the peep the complexity of the person is
part of actually what needs to be revealed, communicated and communicated.
Speaker 1 (59:29):
Yeah, it's really interesting. I love thinking about that. And
it's a great point that you make when you talk
about the fair and the unfair criticism. I think because
so much of it is unfair and outsized, it makes everyone.
You know, It's almost like when your therapist gives you
the adage of how full is your cup? And if
your cup is really full, and then more is poured in,
(59:50):
it's spilling out everywhere. It's like the women get more
dumped in their cups and then what should be relatively
normal becomes.
Speaker 2 (01:00:00):
Outsized in a way.
Speaker 1 (01:00:02):
And I also think that's kind of to your earlier point.
The fault of a society that's not as used to
seeing women in these spaces. Is you know, if a
woman was running for president with three baby daddies and
an affair with a porn star, like, she never would
get on a ticket she just wanted. So it's like,
you can't ignore the double standard. And perhaps one of
(01:00:25):
the ways we change it is as you're suggesting to
just own our shit a little bit and be like, yeah,
I made a mistake and move on.
Speaker 2 (01:00:34):
Yeah, yeah, you know.
Speaker 1 (01:00:34):
That's that's pretty fascinating.
Speaker 2 (01:00:36):
And it's I get it it trust me. I'm not
suggesting that it's like, oh no, I don't think you are.
You know, snap your finger and you're done. There is
just like in the same way that you know, when
Chessie Jackson was running as a celebrity candidate who had
never run for office before, who was sort of had
(01:00:57):
this sort of larger than life personality and was an
economic populist, it was like, get out of here. And
then you know, fast forward thirty years later and then
you get Donald Trump. It seems just unfair, right, because
it's just a different standard in a way. So I
get that that exists at the same time that I
(01:01:20):
think what we're sort of striving for for women candidates
or not just women in the world is that their
flaws are not weighted more than anybody else's, and that
their dimensions are also capable of being put out there.
(01:01:45):
That we can be whole people. We don't have to
be perfect people. And I do think that it's going
to take someone being willing to sort of just say
so what. I don't know when, but at some point
a woman candidate is going to come around and it's
going to sort of blow through some of that, and
that's what's going to be necessary to sort of get
(01:02:07):
women into that final tier of American politics, you know, belatedly,
even though the rest of the world is already there
ahead of Yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:02:16):
Yes, please and now a word from our sponsors that
I really enjoy and I think you will too. When
I think about women in leadership positions, I often think
about the way you lead us on the news. You know,
(01:02:36):
your work on Newsnight is so valuable to me as
a viewer. I know to so many people you seem
to have really pierced the veil in certain ways, especially
when you get everybody around the desk and get people
talking like I just I love to see the way
you are shaking it up, and yet you are this
(01:02:58):
incredibly poised, trusted voice in our news media. And it's
not lost on me that, you know, especially after recent
shifts at CBS, like you're one of the few black
women anchoring a national news broadcast. So how does it
feel right now for you in that in that space?
(01:03:20):
Do you have these days where you go like this
shit can't be real? Or are you so you're so
on your game that you're like, and I will continue
through this crazy thing here and that crazy thing there.
Speaker 2 (01:03:33):
How do you do this?
Speaker 1 (01:03:34):
And and do you I guess it's a two prong question.
Do you also feel nervous because so much of people's
identities are being weaponized right now?
Speaker 2 (01:03:47):
Like? How are you doing this? All? That part of it?
I'm pretty used to, you know, because I think that
one of the things about being a black woman in
news and on television is that everybody knows you're a
black woman television, and there are plenty of people who
on a regular basis try to weaponize my identity against me.
(01:04:09):
And the truth is you can't help that. So I
put that to the side. What I do on a
day to day basis is try to convene a conversation
that I don't think is happening enough in the country
(01:04:31):
where people from all different backgrounds have an opportunity to
talk to each other, to challenge each other, to have
their ideas heard, to have their ideas challenged, to be
pressed on the substance of the thing that they are
advocating for and not just the politics of it. And
(01:04:52):
it is hard. And you know, I kind of audit
myself and what I'm doing daily, you know, every day
I kind of think back on the last show and
I could have done this better? Or did I do
that right? Did I you know, am I approaching this
the right way? You know? All of that, Like that's
(01:05:15):
part of my practice because I don't see myself as infallible.
I don't want to be the center of that conversation.
I want to be the facilitator of it. And I
think that in these times like we have to constantly
be asking ourselves are we striking the right tone, the
(01:05:39):
right balance and doing that exercise? And I don't know.
I mean, I think the media business for my entire
career has been changing, it continues to change. I've never
taken anything for granted in this business. I've never I
didn't ever have the luxury coming into journalism thinking that
(01:05:59):
I would ever have a job forever. And so I
do not think that right now. That's not I approach
this as this is what I'm doing right now, this
is what I'm you know, asked to do, call to do.
I'll do it to the best of my ability while
it's serving a purpose in this you know, news ecosystem.
(01:06:24):
And there might be another challenge, it might look a
little bit different, it might you know, it might evolve
just in the same way our show has evolved. And
that's okay, because I think we have to evolve. And
so I don't I don't feel you know, I don't.
I don't feel nervous in that respect. I just try
(01:06:45):
to approach it with a sense of integrity every day. Yeah,
and that's all I can do. And I if I
know at the end of every show that my intention
was to have the most interesting conversation that surfaced the
(01:07:08):
things that I think would resonate with people at home,
that challenged our guests in ways that are important, that
raised topics that aren't getting discussed elsewhere, I'll feel like
I've done my job, and I'll do it as long
as I'm allowed to do it. In this crazy media
(01:07:29):
world that we're in, and people, I mean, they attack
me every day and it doesn't it doesn't matter, you know,
because I think we can sometimes overweight, like what happens,
especially on the Internet, so much more than it needs
to be. And when I go out in the world
(01:07:50):
and I encounter people randomly, like totally randomly, and they'll
be on the right and on the left, and they'll
be like, I love your show, you know, and they'll
be like, give Scott Jennings a break, and you know,
I mean, they just they enjoy the back and forth.
They enjoy the discussion. They enjoy the fact that it's
(01:08:14):
challenging for guests to come on. And I hear from
people who are like, oh, my extremely conservative grandmother loves
your show, and or my extremely you know, liberal grandfather
loves your show. And I just I love hearing those
stories because those are real people.
Speaker 1 (01:08:33):
In this moment, the show is going well. You're centered
in your purpose and in your family. You have this
book that is so beautiful, the culmination of years of work.
When you look forward in your personal landscape, what feels
like you're work in progress.
Speaker 2 (01:08:53):
Well, the elusive balance, right it doesn't really exist, but
you know, I mean you come into periods where you're
kind of like in the grind. And I definitely think
doing this book, getting it out the door and into
the world, that has been a major project, on top
(01:09:17):
of keeping a little child alive and well. And you know,
I do think that I look at my life as seasons,
and I see this season kind of coming to an
end and the beginning of a new season coming into being,
(01:09:38):
and I really hope that my next season has a
little bit more rest. But in my professional life, I
also want a little bit more balance in terms of
balancing the voices, the inside voices and the outside voices
and bringing them together a little bit more. And so
that's kind of what I'm meditating on right now, you know,
(01:10:00):
as this is sort of this project is sort of
wrapping up, it's just an opportunity for me to think
about what does it mean to sort of like take
in a little bit more of life and let that
kind of inspire more creativity in my personal life and
in my work, and also getting more out of real people,
(01:10:20):
because I think that is such a rich source of
creativity in my journalistic work, and it's really important to
figure that out, so I'm excited to try to do that.
Speaker 1 (01:10:32):
Amazing. Thank you so much for today. I really appreciate
you coming. I'm so happy for you, and the book
is so beautiful and I can't wait to hear from
all of our listeners about how they enjoy it.
Speaker 2 (01:10:45):
Well, thank you so much. It was so nice talking
to you too,
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Sophia Bush
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Robert Buckley
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Ding dong! Join your culture consultants, Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, on an unforgettable journey into the beating heart of CULTURE. Alongside sizzling special guests, they GET INTO the hottest pop-culture moments of the day and the formative cultural experiences that turned them into Culturistas. Produced by the Big Money Players Network and iHeartRadio.
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.