How to Fix Democracy | Carol Anderson

[Music] [Music] chilly heart of the Emory University campus Emory University being Atlanta's finest what do you think is the relationship in terms of the Resurrection or reinvention of American democracy between the universities and the revival of a civic kind of consciousness I think it's absolutely essential I think it's essential in terms of the work that universities do in terms of their research in terms of racial inequality gender inequality I think it's essential in terms of the work that they do in terms of laying out the actual the scholars laying out the actual history of how we got here so that we're not continuing to replicate the bad policies based on myth I think it's essential in terms of the ways that our students engage you have to have that kind of education in order to be able to have a fully engaged citizenry in American democracy the kind where you've got the kind of critical thinking skills where when somebody just throws out some kind of slogan that you just don't accept the slogan but you start asking the questions for instance make America great again ask the question okay so if it's again when was it great because that then gives you an ability to begin to pull apart what the real foundations of these slogans are so that you begin begin to interrogate interpret and then move forward democracy requires a fully engaged citizenry and the role of the university is essential to that Carol Anderson professor of African American Studies at Emory University and best-selling author some of your books one National Book Awards Carol are you nostalgic for an American democracy that was more can since you polite nostalgic for for the kind of democracy that disfranchise 97% of black folks in the south nostalgic for I don't understand that question I think this is a sort of sense among some people in America that democracy here has gone off the rails that people scream at each other all the time and then there was a period maybe back in the 50s or this another 60s but the 50s or even before the 50s when people were more polite more respectful that was a sort of a consensual Center is that a delusion and illusion yes that is a delusion that is a that is a misrepresentation of history that part of what has happened in American democracy is that when you saw consensus it was a consensus built on the subjugation of black voices minority voices women's voices as those voices came to the fore in the 60s Oh from years and years of struggle that consensus began to to break apart and so you saw this kind of shifting these political shifts that are happening in the two major parties so you get this movement of these kinds of right-wing southern Democrat conservatives out of the Democratic Party because now they're saying hey there's no place for us in the Democratic Party because the Democratic Party after the 1964 Civil Rights Act the 65 Voting Rights Act that that this is a party that says it wants to put the power of the federal government behind enforcing African American citizenship rights there's no place for us in this because we believe in white supremacy they were wooed into the Republican Party and when that toxin of white supremacy moved into the Republican Party it drove out the moderates in the Republican Party so you've got this extremist right-wing Republican Party masquerading as a kind of centrist regular normal operating party but it's not and so when they're talking about this kind of nostalgia it was a nostalgia that was based upon having greater diversity within both parties but that that initial consensus dealt with the subjugation of black political voices are you suggesting then that American democracy at least has always been defined by race yes when you look at the Constitution for instance this incredible founding document that has the three-fifths clause in there so that it says that when they're dealing with issues of representation in Congress and the South was concerned that it would always be out voted by the north that it wouldn't have the political power because it wasn't as big as say in New York and so what they came up with to keep the South in was that they could count their enslaved people as three-fifths of a human being for issues of representation so you have slavery built into the Constitution what you also have though are these kinds of aspirational clauses in the founding of America and that is where marginalized folk that's where African Americans that is where Hispanic Americans that is where Asian Americans that is where women have fought to make America what it says it's going to be what it says it is it's in those aspirations but the founding document has racism and slavery built into it why do then people talk about America some people at least talk about America as being the first and the greatest democracy you know that it is that sense of the city on the hill American exceptionalism we have the oldest and you know the oldest Constitution the oldest democracy and it becomes part of the narrative of American exceptionalism but what that narrative does then and this is part of the battles that you're seeing now what that narrative does is that it elides just just just tramples over it silences slavery it's silences the genocide of Native Americans its silences the anti-immigrant policies of the United States its silences the the kinds of policies that were racially discriminatory ethnically discriminatory it elides over all of that and so you get these narratives that then lead into policies that continue on with the lie do you think that the this this Madisonian principle of a division of powers is that taking out that leaving aside that the discriminatory nature of early American and maybe you know what American history do you think that's a viable principle in democracy the idea that we're not angels and therefore each branch of government needs to sort of balance the other I I think is brilliant when it works has it ever worked yeah what we're seeing right now in America is what happens when you have when you when it's really not working when you see a legislative branch that has capitulated its authority its power its constitutional duty to the executive branch and has therefore failed to provide the kind of accountability that needs to happen and so you have an executive branch that is running hog-wild and it's barely barely stopped by a judicial branch that is being infected with extremism by the executive branch and the capitulation of the legislative branch so there have been periods where democracy in America is healthier than than it is today is that fact yes that is very fitting in 63 you know is when you get the the march on Washington and this is when you have a quarter of a million people in the on the National Mall and you have a series of civil rights speakers demanding democracy I mean this is where you get the King's Speech the I have a dream speech but that speech was more than I have a dream it dealt with the deficiencies in American see that must be addressed and they were I mean from battle from bloodshed 1964 you get the Civil Rights Act 1965 you get the Voting Rights Act and that Voting Rights Act really dealt with opening up this democracy by putting the power of the federal government behind American citizens right to vote saying that these states these jurisdictions that had a history of systematically discriminating against their citizens right to vote that they would now have to go before the US Department of Justice before they implemented you've got that photo is that of yes this is the march on Washington yes so what you're really presenting King as is a sort of as much a founder of American democracy as Jefferson or Madison or Hamilton I would say that King was one of the major foot soldiers part of what we miss in the history of the civil rights movement is that we make it about King hmm and King was important but if you don't have that kind of grassroots mobilization so like the women in those in this representation exactly exactly so it's like Vera piggy in Clarksdale Mississippi who used her beauty shop as a site of resistance where women could come in and begin to strategize and organize about how do you break open an oppressive system if we don't have that we don't have King what about the the whites who agree with you what's that place in American democracy their place is absolutely essential and important and and what I mean by that is since 1964 with the Civil Rights Act the majority of whites who have voted in the United States have not voted for a Democratic candidate for president since 1964 the majority have not and that remember that is when Lyndon Johnson a president who was a Democrat signed the civil rights bill this is a 65 we get that as I said the Voting Rights Act and so it's saying that there's something in the system that whites find warrant about the federal government acknowledging the citizenship of others so are you suggesting that this ideological distaste for the state for the government in America is itself sort of driven by race and racism you know there has always been a concern about the size of the government that that is that is traditional it has taken on a heightened sense though after the the rise of the Great Society after the the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act and it is you know I think Obama about and I'm gonna paraphrase him he said if you weren't concerned when the federal government provided electricity to the rural areas in the Tennessee Valley if you weren't concerned when your parents were able to buy a home with an FHA loan when if you weren't concerned when you know and he's going through all of the things that government provided like via the New Deal that put the heart the the force of the federal government really behind uplifting whites who are just being beat down by the Great Depression if the you weren't concerned then but now you're concerned when african-americans and Latinos are trying to use those same programs in order to begin to to gain access then maybe the issue isn't the program the issue is who's using them and what I lay out in white rage is that we often think of rage as a clan cross-burning or we think of rage as the tiki torch tiki torches in Charlottesville but what the white rage I'm talking about are those very smooth clinical methodical bureaucratic policies that are put in place to systematically undermine african-americans advancement access to civil rights and we've seen this at these key moments where african-americans have scored a major achievement in terms of gaining access to those rights after the Civil War with the end of slavery the great migration the brown decision that legally destroyed Jim Crow the civil rights movement where we get the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act and the election of Barack Obama each one of those moments those key moments has been followed by a wave of policies to undermine the the advances that african-americans have made in those times so at least in your reading of things American democracy is wrong the title of this series is how to fix democracy so let's share our audience could be really terrible about American democracy how do we fix this you know in the way and I think we're beginning to see that we see for instance in that 2018 election that there were a series of ballot initiatives so for instance in Florida you know you've got the felony disfranchisement laws what in Florida was one of the few states that had permanent felony disfranchisement in the United States six point two million people were not able to vote because they had a felony conviction 1.7 million of them were in Florida alone oh my girl so a ballot initiative and this is people driven came up saying this is wrong people have served their time they've paid their debt to society you are creating civic death you know where they can no longer fully participate in American democracy and that is wrong so it didn't come from the politicians it came it was generated by the people put on the ballot and it won so now one point four million Floridians have their voting rights back so the voting rights stuff can be changed on on a state level rather than the federal level it can be changed on the state level it is a battle but we also in but in at that state level what also needs to happen is that as these pieces begin to shift as they begin to move for instance issues of gerrymandering gerrymandering is when the the Constitution says after the census the legislative body is to redraw the districts to take into account the shifts in population well what has happened particularly after the 2010 election and gerrymandering has been around since the founding of this nation the Democrats had just in some ways as responsive as the Republican absolutely it's so one of the key ways to solve this are these nonpartisan redistricting commissions where it's not that Republicans drawing the districts it's not the Democrats drawing the districts but it is a nonpartisan group looking at the population looking at how many elected officials they have based on their census population and drawing the district's accordingly so you get one-person one-vote and so you don't get the kind of imbalance we had for instance where in North Carolina Republicans receive fifty point three percent of the vote in 2018 and 77 percent of the seats what about the role of Technology in either the fixing of democracy or the problems with democracy we of course have had movements like the black lives matter movement at the same time we have social media and the racism and hostility and hatred on that how do you in terms of your narrative what what is the the role or the potential or the problems of the digital revolution technology is not a panacea I mean in and to somehow think that it is that Wow now we have like body cameras and so now we can see what the police are doing you know I look back to the Rodney King beating Rodney King in the early 1990s his beating by the LAPD caught on tape and I mean it was just horrifying as you're just watching and that was pre-internet yeah a pre-internet pre any of this kind of big you know the kind of media that we're talking about digital media that we're talking about but we had in our videotape and the people who beat him were found not guilty so it's not the technology is going to rectify this save this prevent this it's the way that the technology is interpreted it is the way that it is used it is the way that it's deployed so the issue isn't the technology as technology it is what is happening with the people who are in this democracy and the way that they are deploying it so on one hand you see for instance social media being a key site for organizing for getting marches and movements and boycotts going but you also see the kind of toxicity the racism that is hurled about your popular on social media well whatever do you mean I what I do is I don't you know I even have it in my Twitter handle but you do use Twitter oh absolutely absolutely but I have it in my Twitter handle I will not engage foolishness if we want to discuss the issues then we're going to discuss the issues but the moment that someone comes into my Twitter feed with an insult whatever happen all the time with no kinds of engagement about racism yes yeah you know oh you know black races Lib oh dude or whatever right I just block because I'm not that you know there's no engagement there with the issue and and it's a waste of time it's a waste of time but and I've got to say this what when I found what I have found is that there are those who are willing to listen and that is where the hope and democracy lies I mean when you look at for instance in this last 2018 election the voter turnout rate was record-setting I mean it was higher than it has been since the 1920s that kind of engagement in democracy and one of the things that is happening in social media I'm finding for instance on Twitter is that you have people really engaging about okay American democracy right now is sick it is not healthy what will it take to make this society healthy having those kinds of engagements with people from across the nation that's good that's good because I think one of the things that happen you know we talk about that American exceptionalism is that had been a complacency there had been a kind of sense that uh America is just gonna kind of roll down the tracks on the you know it's just gonna be fine so it's gonna be fine I don't really have to engage don't have to think about it I can just go on and do my thing and it doesn't work that way democracy requires engagement and so that is one of the things that I'm seeing on social media and the use of social media so really when it comes down to it Carol you're as American as anyone you're an optimist oh yes you cannot be black in America I mean you know think about it you know my ancestors were enslaved if if if you get mired down in Lord this is only as good as its ever gonna get my ancestors would remain enslaved my father fought in a Jim Crow Army in in World War two if he believed that you know there's no sense in fighting for democracy Wow if all of those black veterans believe that if when they came out of that war and they faced mass lynching and they faced Jim Crow they faced the the the doubling down of white supremacy if they didn't organize when you look at the civil rights movement you find black veterans all up in that medgar evers Hosea Williams Reverend Francis Griffin I mean they are all these veterans are in the front lines back lines all over that fighting for democracy that hope is what has gotten us this far and it is that hope mixed with the kind of hard work the the battle for democracy that's what we saw in Mississippi in Alabama in the doug jones battle it would have been really easy for those folks in the black belt to say well you know Roy Moore is going to win and you know that's the way it is and yeah they shut down our polling places they got this racist voter ID law there's just nothing we can do but they didn't do that they instead did everything they could to lift those those those burdens off of to lift those barriers move them out of the way to say I as an American citizen have the right to choose my representative that's what they did so yes you cannot be black in America without hope [Music] [Applause] [Music]

Channel: Bertelsmann Foundation

Views: 13,376

Keywords: Carol Anderson, andrew keen, democracy, how to fix democracy, american democracy, civil rights, voting rights, american civil rights movement, grassroots politics, one vote, elections, flaws in democracy, emory university

Id: M64M06YrW6U

Length: 24min 9sec (1449 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 15 2019