What Does It Mean to Be "White" in America Today?

[00:00:00]What's your sense of where we're at right now and where we're heading? On the line with us is Karen Hunter. Karen Hunter has a show on SiriusXM's Urban View channel. Uh 3 to 6 p.m. Eastern time daily. Karen Huntershow.com, just spelled just like it sounds. Uh is the website. Uh Karen Hunter at Blue Sky. And I've always thought of Karen.

[00:00:25]My experience of Karen has always been that she is one of the most brilliant, insightful, thoughtful, deepinking people in in the media. Frankly, uh I think she's one of the best hosts on SiriusXM. If you're not familiar with her program, as I said, it's on the Urban View channel, not on the Progress Channel, which I'm on. And uh it's really worth checking out. And I just I we were talking the other day about my new book and and uh I I I I I just wanted to extend the conversation.

[00:00:54]Karen, welcome welcome back to the program. I know you've been on our show before, but it's been a while.

[00:00:58]>> Um >> Wow.

[00:01:00]>> What an honor. What an honor.

[00:01:01]>> So nice to have you with us. So I I I I'd like to start out by just taking your temperature here or asking you to take the temperature of this country. I mean, what what's your sense of where we're at right now and where we're heading?

[00:01:16]uh critical condition.

[00:01:20]Yeah, she has a fever and uh she might be terminal. She might be terminal, you know. Um yeah, if I'm taking the temperature of the country, she this is this is an inflection point. Uh this is a particular time in history I think will be remembered forever and we're in it. We're in it. Um and this period will determine whether or not we have a country.

[00:01:40]>> I think I think you're absolutely right.

[00:01:42]I I think this election if the Republicans continue to cowtow to Trump and they they figure out a way to to rig these elections and they're certainly doing everything they possibly can that um you know uh people like you and I might be in prison a year from now and I'm not exaggerating.

[00:01:58]>> I will not be in prison. There's far too many countries that will take care of Hunter. Uh there I will be out. I will not be playing the violin when this thing goes down. The iceberg has been hit. So if if you were advising the Democratic party right now, what would you suggest that they be doing?

[00:02:15]>> Listen to black women.

[00:02:17]>> Yeah. Listen to black people, period.

[00:02:19]But in particular, black women. We uh 92% of us said, "Hey, hey, um you know, none of these people are perfect, but I know for sure that Kla Harris is better than this guy." 92% of black women said, "Hey, there's a problem." Almost 80% of black men said, "Hey, there's a problem."

[00:02:35]>> Yeah. Clearly, we knew that there was a problem. Grant Grant Platner, we were like, "Hey, wait a minute. You know, that Nazi thing on his Yeah, that tattoo is probably, you know, it indicates, yeah, he was young or whatever, but no, that's a willful decision to etch something and ink on your body permanently."

[00:02:52]>> Yeah.

[00:02:53]>> Um that that speaks to your soul a little bit. He could be a problem. I had uh John Federman on my show. After interviewing him, I said, "He's a problem."

[00:03:01]>> Yeah.

[00:03:02]>> Something's wrong with him.

[00:03:04]Something's wrong with him. Yeah, we kind of We're the canary in the coal mine. We're going to tell you something's wrong.

[00:03:09]>> I I think he's he's the Yeah, he's the Joe Mansion or Christian Cinema that we've that the Democrats have to deal with now every every cycle. It seems like the Republicans find one Democrat or two Democrats that they can buy off or threaten or or suck up to or whatever. Um >> Yeah. But I I think I think we're missing this is not about Democrats and Republicans. Yeah. And I think that that's why we get hemmed up because we're like, "Oh, I'm a good Democrat or this is a good, you know, we're Democrats and we, you know, this is this is there's something deeper going on in this country and it's beyond ours and deeds, right? We wouldn't be here on the precipice of worrying about a stolen election if people actually cared about other human beings and they weren't so selfish and they weren't lying about their Christian values. if they really confronted the hate that's in their heart and decided that, you know, if they moved out of their comfort uh of of segregation, right? If they moved and actually became familiar with other people, we wouldn't be here right now.

[00:04:03]So, it's there's a deeper ill.

[00:04:06]>> There has not been a majority of white people who have voted for a Democrat since Lyndon Johnson signed the the Voting Rights Act and the Civil Rights Acts in ' 64 and ' 65. And, you know, they're they're that I I always assumed that the racists that I knew when I grew up in Lansancy, Michigan, the people would just casually use the n-word and you know whatot um were a small and frankly stupid minority. Um, I have come to realize, particularly from doing this show for the last 23 years, that it's probably somewhere between a third and and maybe even twothirds, probably in the neighborhood of half of all white people, um, are are somewhat or deeply racist? How do we deal with this as a nation?

[00:04:54]>> First, uh, we don't sit it at the feet of quote unquote white people.

[00:04:58]>> We have to ask the question like like I do quite often, what makes you white?

[00:05:03]Very very few people can answer that question. I get being Polish, Irish, Italian, German, French. What's white?

[00:05:12]And if you can't answer that, why is that your driving identity?

[00:05:19]So, and it's not just white people. You say it's twothirds, maybe a half of whites. Black people, immigrants are anti- other people because that's the way that you become white in this country. M >> so if we can identify properly what whiteness is then I think we can start to you know it's like you you ask what what else America uh take the temperature first we're misdiagnosed >> yeah well that was >> the proper diagnosis >> yeah that was the key to uh oh I forgot who wrote the book but um oh man um >> anti-racist what >> yeah it was just a major bestseller came out about a decade ago um by a black woman writer um and you know it was the 17 or the uh the 16 whatever it is >> 19 project 1619 project. Right. Exactly.

[00:06:12]And and her point was that this that whitism was kind of essentially in invented as a result you know as a as a as a lazy way to have a cast system essentially.

[00:06:24]>> Yeah. Yes. I mean, but it's obvious, right? Because if if you have Italian boots, y'all know y'all know how you came through Ellis Island. They changed your name, treated you like trash when they put signs up that said no blacks, no Jews. No, y'all either they had names for you. You couldn't get jobs.

[00:06:41]>> Yeah.

[00:06:41]>> You weren't white. The Irish before you were not white.

[00:06:45]>> Y >> So, when did you become white?

[00:06:48]>> Yeah.

[00:06:49]>> And why? Like, there has to be some reckoning. But but the real problem, Tom, is that even if you don't have teeth, health, health care, money, cuz the poorest counties in this country vote against their interests, the poorest counties don't get served. They their last in education and health care and the the wealth gap is large in these poor counties that are mostly white.

[00:07:13]Most people on welfare are white, >> but they keep voting for people who don't give a damn about them because somehow you're still better. And Lyndon Johnson said this than the average black person in your mind.

[00:07:26]>> So how do we how do we get that? So that's the biggest problem that people are voting their color which hasn't served them at all.

[00:07:36]>> Yeah, it you know I I remember the era of busing. Um I'm I'm a bit older than you and um I think there was a there was a genuine effort there in the late '60s and early '7s to try to integrate America essentially and and and certainly you know since in the years since then we've successfully done that with the military um and and the civil service although Trump is trying to reverse that. I mean hundreds of thousands of black women being fired from the civil service. I think that was the main agenda of the whole uh you know Russell vote Elon Musk thing and I'd love to get your thoughts on that but um how but we're more segregated now than we were in 1965. How do we how do we get out of this hole, >> man? That that that is the question.

[00:08:26]That is the question. I um I do have thoughts, but it's hard.

[00:08:31]>> Okay. Um again, everybody listening should confront the anti- black anti-im, you know, because we we we have blacks and immigrants as avatars for why you're not successful. And it makes it real easy for you to point to the person that just came in in flip-flops that walked 1100 miles through rough terrain across barb wire to escape horrors that usually you know this country helped faux men in their country. It's easy to blame them, right?

[00:09:04]It's easy to blame that black person that's driving a Lexus because you don't have a Lexus, you don't have a Mercedes.

[00:09:09]So the black person must be DEI must they must have gotten this wealth because they you know because they're handing out jobs for blacks. But you don't do a modocum of research to know that affirmative action helped more white women more white men. And we're seeing now that white men were helped dramatically from affirmative action because now that it's even fewer white men are getting into college.

[00:09:30]>> Yeah.

[00:09:31]>> If it's just on merit, you're not getting into college. So clearly that affirmative action was helping you too.

[00:09:37]But if if you have to now work on yourself, Tom, that's a hard thing. And me even saying that is making some people mad.

[00:09:45]>> Yeah. How dare how dare you. Yeah. No, you have to be a better person.

[00:09:48]>> No, I I I get it. And and and um by the way, we've got about two minutes until I've got until I hit a hard break. I can't stop. Um I get it that, you know, we we all have to do that work. And I I'm calling for it every day on this program. And but it seems like there has to be institutional structural ways that we can change things in America and and you know I I DEI frankly in my mind is a large step forward in doing those kind of things.

[00:10:19]>> No because it did it then gave people an excuse to say this is why these people are moving up past me not that I'm not working right. So, I actually don't I don't like those programs because they do create that. And I didn't like busing. We should talk about that, too.

[00:10:34]So, I think busing did a number on black education because it removed the the amazing black principles, the amazing black teachers that cared about the children and then bust black children into places that hated them.

[00:10:47]>> Yeah.

[00:10:47]>> Anybody that survived busting as a black person, you are an amazing human being because oh my god, I can't imagine going into a school system where people don't even see you as human. children, parents are telling them not to play with you at lunchtime. You're sitting there ostracized coming into a war zone. Ruby Bridges, that picture alone is like, who's throwing tomatoes at a six-year-old?

[00:11:06]>> Yeah.

[00:11:07]>> What are we calling?

[00:11:08]>> Yeah. Oh, yeah. Well, thank you for that. I, you know, I'd always viewed it from my own perspective, which was I thought these black kids coming into our school were kind of cool, but you're absolutely right. And, you know, thank you for flipping that around for me. So, if we don't have programs, what do we do? It's just education just wake people up.

[00:11:27]>> Um I think we need to hit rock bottom and be reminded. You you ask me. I think the people who are horrible need to feel all of the choices that they've made.

[00:11:39]>> Because I I come from a group of people that figured out how to make chitlins.

[00:11:43]And I I say that I use that as a metaphor. You're going to give me intrails, I'm going to make them delicious.

[00:11:48]>> Yeah.

[00:11:48]>> Um I don't want to eat the intrails, but if I'm going to eat the intrails, they're going to be delicious.

[00:11:53]I think people need to, you know, you have the Senate, you have the House, you have the presidency, you live in these Okay, go to break. Go to break. Let's talk about it.

[00:12:05]>> Okay. Yeah. Stick around, Karen. I want to continue the conversation. We got Karen Hunter with us. Uh she's on the uh the SiriusXM Urban View channel, 3:00 to 6:00 p.m. daily. What What What's the number on that channel, Karen?

[00:12:17]>> 126. One number below you.

[00:12:19]>> There you go. 126. We'll be right back.

[00:12:21]stick around and welcome back. So Karen, uh, we were we were starting to dig into this. You want to finish your thought here? I I I think we got interrupted.

[00:12:33]>> No, it's okay. Um, you know, I I think that a lot of people feel very good about the choices that they make because it doesn't require anything of them.

[00:12:44]They don't have to change. They don't have to examine themselves. they can go to church on Sunday and feel, you know, that they're going to heaven. Uh, but those choices, as I just was pointing out, the presidency, the House, the Senate, and the Supreme Court are all in the grasp of people who folk said this is what they wanted.

[00:13:05]>> Mhm.

[00:13:06]>> So, um, yeah, I think the consequences of those actions should be felt. Now, I know everyone there's going to be pain for everybody, but I think people are going to have to confront their choices and not have an out. And I think if like Obama came into office and many people blame his presidency for how we got here, >> the backlash, the white backlash.

[00:13:28]>> Yeah. Yeah. Oh, how oh, we can have a black president. Oh, no. Not on my watch.

[00:13:32]>> Yeah.

[00:13:32]>> But really, if you think about Obama's presidency, he was elected because George Bush had thrown us into the abyss. We were on the verge of having a an epic level uh uh crash of the markets not seen since the great depression y right if you remember the automobile industry the housing bubble had burst I mean we were on the brink of a disaster >> and you elect this man who puts it all together saves the auto industry saves the banks which he shouldn't have done you know >> save Tesla >> oh my god like just saved everything and then even gave us hope you know like there was a a uh a civility, a level of class, you know, some there was something that everybody could feel good about when he traveled to to other countries. We weren't embarrassed, >> but there was a faction in this country that felt that it was out of order. This is not the way this is not American. So, we got Trump, a a failed businessman, six times bankrupter, carnival barker, television star, apprentice, because they couldn't find a real businessman to to man that. These are facts, right?

[00:14:38]They couldn't find a legitimate business person to be on the apprentice and they found him, right?

[00:14:44]>> That's true. G GE, he was the only guy who' take the job because everybody else was actually busy running successful businesses >> doing business. So you put a man that has gone bankrupt six times as a business model who also claims to be a billionaire, which means he could pay his debt, but refused to rather go bankrupt and leave people without their paycheck that he promised to pay. You put him in oh family values. He got his second girlfriend pregnant while he was married to the first wife, right?

[00:15:12]Married her. Slept with a porn star while he was married to pregnant the one that Melania that y'all love so much.

[00:15:18]She was pregnant with Baron and he's sleeping with a porn star.

[00:15:22]>> Family values.

[00:15:23]>> Yeah.

[00:15:24]>> Um what are we doing here? Uh >> and he just he just paid 5.6 six million dollars for for now we can say Donald Trump is a rapist. You know, he's he's not accused of it. He's not adjudicated.

[00:15:38]He's, you know, he's paid the fine.

[00:15:40]There's no Yeah. And and yet uh I it just astonishes me that Republicans are still supporting this guy and and desperately. I mean, I'm watching these these hearings on TV right now where Todd Blanch, his professional suckup, is is dancing around this stuff and the Republicans are just, you know, gushing all over him. Karen Hunter is with us.

[00:15:59]Karen, I got this is just another one of these little breaks. We'll be right back in about I don't know 20 seconds or so.

[00:16:06]Um Karen Hunter is with us. You can find find her show on SiriusXM's Urban View 3 to 6:00 p.m. Eastern time daily. Karen Huntershow.com the website Karen Hunter over on Blue Sky. Stick around. We'll be right back. Karen, we've been talking about um we've talked about race, we've talked about, you know, the direction that this country is going. um you know, your plans to leave the country, my plans to go to jail, you know, if if if it all falls apart.

[00:16:32]Um and I I I am I'm I'm wondering from your your perspective and and and that of your of your audience demographically, I think our audiences are are are somewhat different.

[00:16:48]>> Pretty similar. Yeah, >> there are there are a lot of similar there's a lot of overlap, but there's also, you know, um and and what you know, I asked this before and and we we didn't really have an opportunity to get specific in the in the you know, roughly 3 minutes here we have until the end of this this half hour. Um, what can average people do with regard to the Democratic party given that we're not going to have any impact on the Republican party to the best of my, you know, that I can tell?

[00:17:19]>> I actually don't agree with that. Well, let me just be clear. I'm staying in fighting. You said something about jail.

[00:17:24]I'm not going to jail. I'm leaving first. But I'm staying in fighting even no matter what happens >> because that's how we build the world that we deserve is to stay and fight for it. Yep.

[00:17:35]>> I think one of the things and I'm this is kind of what I've I've never bought into Democrats and Republicans.

[00:17:41]>> Um, you know, I'm a Democrat. I'm a I'm a human being who lives in this country and I live in a neighborhood. So, what I'm challenging all my listeners to do is to walk their neighborhood. What's needed in your neighborhood? Politics is simply rights and resources. It's not your identity. You are electing people to represent you to go get the things that you need. But you have to first know what you need. What do you need in your community? And if you don't have it, you know, get a couple of your neighbors together. If it's, you know, the roads being repaid, if it's a better school, if it's your garbage is not being picked up. I had a uh a kid in my neighborhood that was uh selling drugs on the corner when I come home. I confronted him and um you know, he he spoke disrespectfully to me. So, I went to the to the police chief and I said, "Hey, we have a problem here." And then I had everyone in my building. I lived in a in a 16 unit condo. I knocked on everybody's door, gave them an hour to call the police and and they did every hour and every hour somebody would show up. And you know what I realized time?

[00:18:44]That the police don't want to be bothered. So they got that kid up out of the paint. Okay. They did not want to hear from us.

[00:18:52]>> Okay. Every hour. And I was willing to do that for a week. And it didn't take a week. It took one day.

[00:18:57]>> Yeah. of calling them every hour for them to come and get that kid from in front of our building and then period.

[00:19:05]>> Activism works.

[00:19:06]>> Yeah. It's not activism. I live there.

[00:19:08]There was graffiti. Somebody was painting graffiti down the block. I went to Home Depot, got some white paint, spray painted over the graffiti.

[00:19:16]>> I did that, right? There was a a bumpy road that my car kept hitting. I went to Home Depot, got a little gravel, put it in, and then the next week the city came and paved the whole road because at the end of the day, I live there. If I'm being inconvenience and and it's uncomfortable for me to be there, there's garbage. I went and got a little broom and a little dust pan and cleaned up.

[00:19:34]>> There you go. From the great Karen Hunter. I I Karen, it is always such a pleasure talking with you. Thank you so much for dropping by the program today.

[00:19:42]>> Thank you. Thank you.

[00:19:44]>> Great talking with you.