Bakari Sellers, welcome to The Daily Social Distancing Show.
Well, thank you for having me. It's an awesome opportunity.
I like how your beard has come in.
It's a very majestic, professorial...
You've got, like, a, like, the full corona beard going on.
This is Denzel-ish.
That's what I like to call it.
(laughing)
Um, let's-let's jump straight into talking about your book,
which, unfortunately, feels more timely than ever.
You've written a story that is a memoir of your life,
but in many ways it feels like it's also the story
of America as well.
My Vanishing Country.
Tell me what the title of the book means,
and if you really feel that way about America.
Well, sure, I mean, my life has been bookended by tragedy.
I say that with a heavy heart.
Um, from the Orangeburg Massacre
and my father being shot in 1968
to the Charleston Massacre.
Um, and throughout the book, we talk about different, um...
different traumas and different heartaches
and different systems of oppression
that people of color have to live through,
that I have lived through.
And so now, with coronavirus, and it ripping the Band-Aid
off the health care disparities we have,
I'm able to parallel that with growing up in a community
where we don't have clean water, where we don't have a hospital,
where we live in a food desert,
and then you layer that with, uh, the sad case
of Ahmaud Arbery, um, and you just talk about the...
the perpetual trauma that people of color,
particularly black men, have to live through.
And so My Vanishing Country, it means a few things,
that we give the word "country" some meaning,
being a boy from the dirt roads of the South,
but, even more importantly, those... those truths that we...
that we hold to be something that all Americans can realize
seem to be fleeting, especially for poor people,
immigrants, and people of color in this country.
Yeah. You would think that people would just go: Yes,
this is America's history and these are some of the effects,
the systemic problems that still affect black people today.
And yet, it seems like people disagree on it more than ever.
If somebody is saying to you, in good faith, really,
"Hey, Bakari, I don't understand why black people seem to think
things are bad in America when they've gotten so much better,"
how do you respond to that person,
if indeed, genuinely, they don't see it
and they're trying to see it?
Well, this is a... First of all, this is probably
the most difficult conversation that this country has to have.
It's a conversation of race.
And take, for example, the Ahmaud Arbery case.
Um, this is not a Trump era phenomenon.
This is not something that just started to happen
with the racism that emanates from the White House.
Instead, I think about Medgar Evers,
I think about Emmett Till,
I think about Jimmie Lee Jackson,
I think about the four little girls in the...
in the Birmingham church.
Um, and so, when you think about the totality
of these circumstances, you realize, um,
that we've made a lot of progress,
but we still haven't... we still haven't reached
that "mountaintop," we have not made it there.
One of the funny things that people like to bring up is:
"Oh, my God, we had Barack Obama elected president.
You guys have made it."
And that's not the case.
When you talk about these layers,
I'm not concerned about somebody calling me "nigger." I'm not.
I'm more concerned about the systemic, um, levels
of oppression that people of color live in today.
A broken health care system.
A broken environmental justice system.
A broken criminal justice system.
A broken educational, uh, justice system,--
because in this country you're punished
because of the zip code you're born into.
And all of these pressures, um...
just-just... they just rest on you,
and they build your anxiety, and now we have corona,
and now we have these never-ending traumas.
It seems like you're just trying to breathe sometimes.
What do you think it says about America
that so many people used the video of Ahmaud Arbery, um,
in that empty house, the house that was being constructed,
as a justification for his death?
Or his killing, rather, I should say.
Ahmaud Arbery did something that people do all the time.
Hell, me and my wife do it.
He-he walked into an empty home.
He-he was looking around an empty home.
That's not a crime that... that requires the death penalty.
But even more importantly, those-those two men
who were on that good old-fashioned,
um, south Georgia father-son lynching,
they looked at him as less than human.
And that's-that's the hard part for me
in raising twins.
Um, in raising a 14-year-old daughter,
and I have 16-month-old twins.
Um, teaching them that they can be a doctor,
that they can be a lawyer,
that they can be the host of The Daily Show
but also telling them one day
that, you know, they-they have to be cautious
about the way they interact
because there's a segment of this... of this public
that doesn't believe that they're human
-and doesn't want to give them dignity. -Right.
And that's something that I-I was intrigued to read
and-and understand from your point of view.
Because I wondered, how do you talk to your kids
and say to them, "You can be anything you want to be.
"You do have these opportunities.
"But at the same time,
"there are certain things that are gonna hold you back,
and there are gonna be certain things to be afraid of"?
Like, which-which part do you take as a parent?
Do you... You know, do you say to your kids,
"Hey, if you see the police,
"just try and be as calm as possible.
Try not to engage. Try not to..."
Like, which talk do you have with them?
'Cause some people go like, "You know your rights.
You fight for your rights."
Others say like, "Hey, man, now's not the time.
Now's not the time to fight about your rights."
Which-which attitude have you taken as a parent?
I mean, I-I come from... And one of the...
one of the things that I talk about in the book
is I'm a child of the civil rights movement.
My father was a member of SNCC.
Um, he was shot February 8, 1968, by law enforcement,
protesting in the Orangeburg Massacre.
And, so, my father always taught us growing up,
I think having to do with his interactions
with law enforcement, that you should always...
Uh, you know, you never... you never stop in a dark area.
You always drive to the next exit.
You always go to a well-lit area.
We'll-we'll fight those battles in court.
Um, for me, with these... with these twins now,
my job is to hopefully, uh, make sure
they have a better America than the one that I inherited.
It's the same dream my-my father had.
The trouble that I have,
and the reason that I wrote My Vanishing Country--
I talk about it in one of the lat-latter chapters--
is, you know, five years ago, almost five years ago,
I was standing in front of a church, Mother Emanuel.
Clementa Pinckney was a friend of mine.
He actually let Dylann Roof into his church.
They had a full hour Bible study,
and then Dylann Roof killed nine people
because of the color of their skin.
I was standing in front of that church
about a week later with my father,
and tears were rolling down my face
as I was explaining to the country
that we were having many of the same shared experiences.
He was 30. I... Excuse me. I was 30, and he was 70.
-Mm-hmm -And, so, for my twins,
what I have to do, what we have to do,
what everybody watching has to do is continue to work
to make sure that they inherit a better country
than the one that I did, and right now, that's tough.
Those conversations are tough, because as their eyes sparkle,
you do know that racism is real.
Systems of injustice are real.
Not getting the benefit of their humanity is real.
And I just don't want them to be on the front of a T-shirt
or us to have to wear another hoodie to march for them
or us to have to, you know, get Arizona iced tea and Skittles
or us to have to jog two miles for them.
You know, I'm living for all of those people
whose lives were cut short
so one day, my children can be free.
How-how do you feel about the discussion
in and around sharing these videos online?
'Cause there's... there's clearly a rift.
-Yeah. -Some people think these videos should never be shared
because all they do is further the-the...
you know, the-the, almost, joy of lynching
that white supremacists may engage in
in seeing the videos.
It furthers that narrative.
Others would say, "No, without the videos,
then, oftentimes, there is no justice."
And it-it feels like the-- an argument
where nobody's wrong but-but an argument
that people are having nonetheless.
Do you have any thoughts?
Yeah, no, I think we have to show those videos.
I mean, there-there are a couple of things.
First, let's just deal with the Arbery case,
because if we did not see that video--
See, they saw the video.
It took 73 days for the arrest not because of their video.
It's but-but because we saw the video.
The American public saw the video.
And so I think that that's necessary.
Um, I remember the Walter Scott case,
the young man in Charleston, South Carolina,
who was shot in the back.
But for that young man who was at the barbershop
filming that incident, there would have been no arrest.
And so we have to make sure we do that.
But it-it-- again, that parallel with the civil rights movement--
there's one glaring image that people remember.
It's the picture of Emmett Till,
who allegedly whistled at a white woman.
And I challenge, for those individuals who haven't--
who haven't seen that picture, to go google it.
His-his face is beaten,
and he literally has no bones left in his body.
And that picture, that image, before images could go viral,
it stimulated a whole generation.
And so I think those images are necessary,
not necessarily for justice
but just so that we can have transparency
and-- to be completely honest--
to make white folk uncomfortable.
Because we have to be uncomfortable
to have this discussion.
And unless white people literally see these injustices,
sometimes there is a connection that they don't really happen
-and they do. -Hmm.
Bakari, thank you so much for your time.
Uh, congratulations on an amazing book.
And, hopefully, we'll have you back on the show again soon.
Thank you so much, my dude. Have a good one.
Thank you.