Jelani Cobb, welcome to The Daily Social Distancing Show.
(laughs) Thank you. It's good to see you.
Um, it is an interesting time to have you on the show
because you are easily one of my favorite... just thinkers.
You know, there are people who-who write,
and then, there people who think before they write,
and I consider you one of those people.
I really appreciate it.
Because whether it's talking about policing
or police reform, whether it's talking about politics,
whether it's talking about issues of race in America,
I always find that you-you... you tackle these ideas
from a really interesting place.
And so, as America begins this new journey
under a new president, in a new year,
my first question to you would be,
what do you think about America's future
as it stands right now?
I think that one of the things that came out of 2020,
if you can point to, you know, the small number
of really good things that did come out of that year,
was the fact that we had to think about our history.
Because it was reoccurring right in front of us.
You know, so much of it.
You know, people trying to overrun the Capitol--
that called back to, certainly for Black people
and people familiar with the history of race
in this country, you know, What happened after Reconstruction
and, you know, Wilmington in 1898,
where white supremacist mobs,
uh, deposed a government,
you know, because it was interracial.
And all those historical things were kind of piled up
like kindling, and then they just, you know,
burst into flames, and we had to deal with it in 2020.
-Right. -And so, I think that, you know, looking forward,
I'm hopeful, but I'm cautiously hopeful,
you know, that we can actually start thinking
about some of the problems that we have
and some of the mistakes that we made previously,
-and plotting a way to navigate forward. -Yeah.
Do you... do you think that there really is a way
to escape some of the mistakes that have been made in the past?
And I only ask that because I struggle with America's system
being a two-party system.
I feel like it's inevitable that you get another Trump.
And the only reason I feel like it's inevitable is because,
if you have one or two choices, I feel like, statistically,
it's more likely that people... it's gonna end up 50-50,
which means one side may win again.
I don't think everyone who votes Republican likes Trump,
but they may like a lot of the policies that are in the party,
but then, that enables another Trump to come up.
So do you think America can actually learn
if it maintains a two-party system going forward?
Yeah, I mean, well, here's the interesting thing about this
when we have this conversation, which is that, uh,
the founders of this country never wanted parties at all.
You know, they thought
that parties were gonna be destructive,
and that would be the quickest way that the republic would end.
Uh, and, you know, the two-party system
that we have has collapsed before.
It's collapsed twice in American history.
And, you know, some of those dynamics were present then.
And so, one of the things I think we have to bear in mind
in order to... The best hope
for avoiding that kind of situation is the reminder
of how fragile democracy is.
And also, the fact that you kind of win big or go home.
Uh-huh.
Republicans took a really big bet on Donald Trump in 2016.
And the lesson they could take is
that a demagogic figure like him could succeed,
uh, could be elected, you know, within particular constraints,
when against a specific kind of opponent.
Or they could take the fact that they lost the Senate,
they lost the House, they lost the White House,
they lost international regard
of virtually all of America's allies.
We've seen 400,000, and counting, people die
because of the mismanagement of a pandemic.
And all those things that, you know, could be warnings.
And you're right, though.
We have a disturbingly high possibility
that we could find ourselves in this position again.
I remember just before Donald Trump's ascendancy.
The Republican Party was having a conversation
in and around "we have to expand our tent."
Do you think the Republican Party will gravitate
towards a world of, once again, trying to actually appeal
to more diverse voters, or do you think
that they have now seen that there is enough,
you know, excitement and anguish and grievances
to maintain a vote and carry on the way they've been going
for the last four years?
That's the big question.
And the best I can tell is
that they have been confronted by this before.
In 1966, you know, it was just two years
after the '64 election,
where Barry Goldwater was just destroyed.
He lost by 430 something electoral college votes.
Uh, it just... You know, it wasn't...
If it was a boxing match,
they would have stopped it in the third round.
Uh, so... uh, one of the...
They did a report then that came out in 1966
that said, "We have to expand.
"We have to bring different kinds of people into the party,
"and we can't go down the road of just appealing
to, basically, angry white people,"
who, at that point, were angry about the Civil Rights Movement.
But the other part is that they are really getting
an increasing share of a decreasing population.
About 80% of their voters are white.
And white people, every single election since 1996,
have been a smaller share of the electorate.
And so, the math is not on their side.
And so, one of the things that, you know,
political scientists think is that they make themselves into,
you know-- no pun intended-- a minority party.
Right.
You've always had your finger on the pulse
of law enforcement, for instance.
Not just criticizing police, but rather saying,
"Hey, here's a system that's broken.
"Here's how it needs to be fixed,
and here's why it needs to be fixed."
Is there a path to a world
where law enforcement becomes equitable?
A world where law enforcement no longer maintains its ties
to what it was meant to be from the past?
Sure. I mean, I think that that's possible,
that the things that we've seen,
you know, two things in particular--
George Floyd and that excruciating
eight-minute, 46-second video that we saw last Memorial Day,
-Mm-hmm. -and the storming of the Capitol grounds,
and how many off-duty police officers were involved in that.
And for people who are just kind of thinking
in a knee-jerk fashion, or, you know,
kind of accepting the slogans that, you know,
that the police are the thin blue line that divides us
from anarchy and so on, that's shocking.
Now for anyone who's actually looked at the data
around policing in the United States, it really is not.
The first people whoever talked to me
about defunding the police--
and they didn't use that language,
but they expressed that idea-- the first people whoever talked
to me about that were cops themselves,
-saying that they do too many things. -Right.
That they are involved in all kinds of actions,
that they are fundamentally not trained
to handle mental health crises, which is...
It makes perfect sense,
if someone's having a mental health crisis,
-you call the police. Why? -Right.
We wouldn't call the cops if somebody had a heart attack.
You know, a heart attack is not illegal.
-Right. -Uh, so, you know, they show up,
and situations go downhill, uh, predictably.
And when you're really talking
about creating different kinds of structures
and infrastructures in cities
so that 911 is not the only thing
that you call for every single problem
-of every shape, size or orientation. -Mm-hmm.
And so, uh, if we have a more kind of broadly-based system
of how we manage our communities,
that goes a long way to reducing the footprint of policing.
Uh, and, you know, in 1968,
when the Kerner Commission Report came out,
they said-- and this is 1968-- they said that we should think
about creating different kinds of ways of providing services
to communities, besides just police,
-especially... communities of color. -Right, right.
It's not new. We know... we know some of this stuff.
As somebody who writes about the present
and looks at it through the lens of history,
what do you make of the future now?
Are you hopeful at where America has gotten to now
on this day, or are you trepidatious
in considering where America still needs to get to?
I'm hopeful, but... as I describe it,
I have the optimism of a boxer going into the late rounds.
(both laugh)
And what I mean by that is...
you know, if you haven't been knocked out yet,
if you're still upright, the thing that kept you
throwing punches and-and staying in the fight
for this long, is the thing that will bring you
all the way to the finish line.
Uh, and so, you know, as James Baldwin said,
I have to be an optimist because I'm alive.
That said, I don't think we should underestimate
the scale of the problems that we're confronting.
The dynamics that produced Trump
are still very active in this society.
The anxiety around immigration, the anxiety around race,
uh, the ways in which those compound,
uh, you know, the economy that truthfully
-does not serve many people, uh... -Right.
...uh, you know, struggling just to get by from day to day.
Uh, and the way that that has been weaponized
and-and used, uh, you know, to-to fuel xenophobia
and racism and so on, those are very real dynamics
and very problems and they will not be easily defeated.
Uh, but I don't think that they are permanent.
And I don't think we have to always presume that we can't
surmount those obstacles.
Well, it's gonna be an exciting 12th round.
Uh, hopefully we get to chat to you again, uh, afterwards.
and we haven't been knocked out-- Jelani Cobb,
thank you so much for joining me on the show.
Thank you.