John: The January 6 committee
will hold its next public
hearing on Monday morning.
And while the panel's focus is
on president trump and his
closest allies, future witnesses
are expected to draw a link
between the trump white house
and extremist groups.
Hakeem Jefferson is a political
scientist at Stanford
university.
Mr. Jefferson, thanks for
joining us.
The committee is describing
president trump and his false
claims about a stolen election
as the catalyst for these
events.
But you see a lot more going on
than just unhappiness over the
election.
Is that right?
Hakeem: Certainly.
I recall very vividly sitting in
the same exact spot, having
watched the images coming out of
D.C. On January 6, 2021.
And what was immediately clear
to me was that this was about
much more than a perception that
some election had been stolen.
This was a kind of racial
backlash, a kind of uprising in
the face of perceptions that
white people were losing status,
that power was being taken away
from them, and that Donald
Trump's loss of the 2020
election was but the biggest
sign of that loss of status.
John: Because you talked about
sitting and watching those
pictures.
The pictures were also a sea of
white faces.
Is that right?
Hakeem: It wasn't some kind of
magic that the faces that we saw
on the screens before us, the
faces of those who were climbing
barricades and attacking police,
were overwhelmingly white
Americans, white Americans whom
Donald Trump had told -- Donald
Trump and the other Republican
elites, both in politics and in
the media, that told these white
Americans that their country had
been taken away from them, that
they were being replaced in the
-- being replaced.
John: Do you see evidence of
these forces still at work or at
work since in the culture wars,
January 6 the social divide that
we have been having since the?
Hakeem: Almost certainly.
You can't understand the
movements of American politics,
certainly, and the spectacular
form that it took on January 6.
But you can't understand state
legislatures implementing laws
that ban certain kinds of books
or that make it illegal to teach
certain kinds of lessons about
America's racist past without
understanding that a lot of
white Americans, not all white
Americans, to be sure, feel that
their power is being threatened.
These battles are not merely
battles over what's being taught
to children in schools.
It's a battle over the power of
narrative.
And that's the kind of power
that white Americans have long
wielded.
John: You mentioned that the
racial makeup of the crowd on
January 6 was not random.
I've also been struck and I
wonder, is it random that so
many people are apologists for
January 6 make comparisons to
black lives matter protests?
Hakeem: I mean, this sort of
retelling of history, this
recreation of narrative is not
new in American life.
Right?
There is a retelling of the
period of enslavement still by
some.
So we shouldn't be surprised
that in the face of really hard
facts that are being rendered
again by way of the committee's
primetime hearings, that some
would tell different stories,
but I think the American people,
at least many of us, are
reasonable enough to find the
falsehoods very present there.
John: Is there a risk if these
factors are overlooked in the
analysis or revisiting of
January 6?
Hakeem: Race is the central
organizing feature of American
politics, and nothing else comes
close.
And what we lose in not
attending to that reality is
that we miss the core of what
we've seen, that these white
Americans aren't merely upset
that Donald Trump is not in
office.
They're upset that his defeat
symbolizes a change in the
racial order and the racial
hierarchy, that a multiracial
coalition of voters went out to
the ballot boxes and elected Joe
Biden, who said that he was
fighting for the soul of a kind
of multiracial America.
It is that reality, the reality
of race and American racism that
is at the core of January 6.
These other aspects of American
politics that we are observing.
John: Hakim Jefferson of
Stanford university, thank you
very much.
Hakeem: My pleasure.
Thank you.