CIIS Public Programs Podcast

transcript

[Theme music begins] 

This is the CIIS Public Programs Podcast, featuring talks and conversations recorded live by the Public Programs department of California Institute of Integral Studies, a non-profit university located in San Francisco on unceded Ramaytush Ohlone Land. 

On each Tuesday of this month, in celebration of Asian, Asian-American, and Pacific Islander voices, we are revisiting conversations from our archives that feature AAPI writers, thinkers, artists, and healers. Today we are revisiting an episode recorded in October 2016 featuring author and hip-hop journalist Jeff Chang in conversation with novelist and poet Adam Mansbach on the cultural history - and future - of race in America. 

Because CIIS' history and identity is indebted to the wisdom traditions of Asian cultures, we are particularly called upon to stand in solidarity with the AAPI community. We hope that in hearing these episodes—again or for the first time—listeners are provided opportunities for connection and healing. 

[Theme music concludes]  
 
Jeff: Hey! [laughing] Thank you all for coming and thanks so much to CIIS and its staff for making this possible. 

Adam: I am going to move so I can see you, yeah. 

Jeff: Yes, you look like a... [inaudible] 

Adam: Continue. Please.  

[Both laugh] 

Jeff: Very colorful. Um, but yeah, thank you so much for coming. I don't know like our idea was just to come up here and talk crap like we always do. 

Adam: Things will certainly go off the rails almost immediately, but I do know I have a couple of questions for you.  

Jeff: Okay. 

Adam: The last time I interviewed you...  

Jeff: And I have a lot of questions for you.  

Adam: Yeah. Jeff and I do this fairly often. I sometimes joke that my job is to be in conversation with Jeff Chang, [Jeff laughs] which as jobs go is a great job. I would recommend it. I'll let you know if there's an opening, that fill, that needs filling anytime soon. Yeah, and the last time that we did this a couple of weeks ago, Jeff accused me of immediately just dumping him into the deep end of the pool by asking him a question that would take any rational human being about four hours to answer. And Jeff was able to answer it concisely and brilliantly in about 20 minutes, which is still a long time. [Jeff laughs] So, I'm going to take it a little easier and give you a simple one.  

Jeff: Yeah.  

Adam: All right, this is where I want to start tonight. You know, we talk often about the ways in which hip-hop, which is in many ways the cultural aesthetic and domain that we both grew up in, and came of age in, and that has influenced, you know the art and the politics of our generation, our cadre. But we don't often drill down about the specifics of how hip-hop has shaped our sensibilities.  

So, I want to start a little bit with that, because it seems to me that many if not, all of the people who to my mind are doing the best and the sharpest work and what we might call “secondary” or “second generation” hip-hop art forms, or forms that hip-hop remixed and re-envision journalism, pedagogy, activism. We come from a time when to be part of hip-hop did not mean to be a passive observer. There was no real conception of hip-hop fandom if you claimed hip-hop, it was as a participant who was conversant or expert in more than one of the art forms. You were DJ, a b-boy, an MC a graffiti writer, and you were a DJ. I don't know if you rhymed. There's no evidence to suggest that you rhymed.  

Jeff: [laughing] No. 

Adam: But I've seen you sign books, and you have a nice hand style. I don't know if you were getting up.  

Jeff: I was tagging for a while.  

Adam: Okay. Um, so I was wondering If you could talk a little bit about how DJing and crate digging and the whole culture of the music and of mixology has affected you as a thinker, as a writer, and maybe as an activist. 

Jeff: Okay, I'm going to answer that only if you answer that as well though. Because we don't actually, they don't have Rage is Back here. But the first sentence in Rage is Back is so it's like a page long, first of all, and it's so hip-hop, so, but do you also see what I'm saying about these heavy first questions? It’s like... 

Adam: That was an easy question.  

Jeff: [laughs] So I've been thinking a lot about this actually lately because we're getting to be of a certain age, shall we say. Um, we're getting up there. And you know, we have kids. My kids are, my older one’s in college and the younger one’s in high school now, and so you start thinking about these things, especially when they start leaving the house fast and all that kind of stuff. You just have a lot of time and nobody to yell at.  

Adam: You don't have any time, man. 

Jeff: Well, you know the model that I had for, I had, okay. So first of all, I'm not a trained like writer, I never got a degree in it. I didn't take classes in it at all even. I just kind of faked my way through the whole thing. 

Adam: Hmm.  

Jeff: And started off writing for a hip-hop ‘zines in the early 90s, in the late 80s and early 90s, I actually wrote about graffiti. That was one of my first things because I tagged in high school and you know tried to piece a little bit. But I came to Cal and became an activist, but at night I was working at KLX and I was learning how to DJ from people like Davey D, Neon Leon, Ricky Vincent, all these legendary…brother [Inaudible]. All these legendary sort of left of the dial types of DJs.  

And then I moved to Sacramento to work in the state legislature. Because I thought I was on the political track, which is a whole ‘nother…and that, talk about getting off track. [Adam laughs] I ended up like being so bored and frustrated that I went to UC Davis to start a radio show there. And that's how I met a lot of the guys that became part of what we call the Suicides Crew, people like DJ Shadow, Blackalicious. If you don't have Blackalicious’ new album or Lyrics Born, he's got a new record coming out, man so good. You know Lateeth the True Speaker. These are the folks that actually push me to a higher level in terms of writing prose, doing journalism. And so, when I had the chance to do Can’t Stop Won’t Stop, I was pretty well-read because you know, like I was always a nerd, I was always a geek. But I really wanted to impress them. And so, like when I was writing I thought of it as consciously sampling. I was doing history, and so I was thinking of it as consciously sampling and then trying to flip it, and so I thought of sentences in a way as a producer might think of you know, sounds and loops, and I was going for that. And I read a recent review or something like that said, ‘Can’t Stop Won’t Stop was good, but it was kind of overwritten.’ [Laughter] I was like, ‘okay’. I mean it probably was you know in some parts, but I was really trying to go for that like that sort of whatever, DJ Premier, Be Rock, kind of like [Makes a loud sound]. 

Adam: Big sounds. 

Jeff: You hear yeah. You hear these samples and if you go back and you isolate them from the original records, you’d be like, ‘oh, I could see where they got that’, but then they're taking it to a whole different kind of level and they're doing drop-ins and mixing and all kinds of stuff. So that was my aesthetic. I was trying to impress literally like these folks who didn't read. They were DJ's, they were rhymers, they were graph artists, they were dancers—women and men. Those are the folks that I was trying to write for, and I think since then, I've come to think a lot more to practically about writing history as kind of re-mixing it and digging in the crates. So, you know the whole research process and that kind of thing. So, Who We Be was a book in which I was like, okay, I've dug in those crates. Let me go and dig in my own sort of crates. I'd like, I had all these things that I had saved up from college. I went to UC Berkeley during the culture wars, during that period of the culture wars, shall we say, [Adam: Right] in the late 80s and early 90s and UCLA as well, and I was working for CSU students and so I was very much a product of that of that era, the 80s and the 90s. And I felt like that part hadn't been written and I was also maybe short-shrifting the impact that my mentors had on me, because Can’t Stop Won’t Stop, in a way, was like a middle finger to them. It was sort of this it was born out of an argument about generational difference and this accusation that you know people who came up after the Civil Rights movement, after the Black Power, Third World Movement here in the Bay Area were less-than, were never going to be as good as folks who came of age in the 60s. And so born out of that argument, and I was writing against that. And I thought Who We Be, it's like but I need to go back to that. And so, it was re-mixing my own kind of, yeah, my own coming-of-age years, I suppose. But, but wait! But you have to answer that too, in terms of... 

Adam: We'll get to that later. But let me, so yeah, if I understand you correctly, one of the things that you're saying is that there's a sense in which Who We Be is a remix of Can’t Stop Won’t Stop? 

Jeff: Maybe, yeah broadly. I mean, yeah, it sort of came out of this idea of like, what was what what's the missing thing in this in this narrative? Where was I writing around? [Adam: Mmm], and I think I wrote about the culture wars, but I didn't write into where I needed to go. So, I feel like for me that was that was what I wanted to write into, was to try to confront like those days when I was young and so sure of the world, and so sure of who I was fighting against all the time. And what's weird. Is that it's all come back. Like students that were protesting this past fall that are still like organizing right now. They were raising the exact same arguments and list of demands that we had raised in the 80s and the 90s and that made me actually kind of sad. It makes me kind of sad. I teach, I'm on a campus every single day and it makes me sad to face these students that are now my son's ages, and say we failed we didn't we are leaving you with the same issues that we were fighting against because we weren't able to resolve them in any kind of a way. 

Adam: That's interesting because you know, maybe it is because of the place you want to leave the reader after the journey that is both of these books. But it's striking to me that you say that, because both Can’t Stop Won’t Stop and Who We Be end on a kind of triumphal note, or at least a hopeful note, an uplifting note. 

Jeff: It's interesting because you know Can’t Stop Won’t Stop definitely was a kind of triumphal, kind of note. 

Adam: Maybe the triumph is like I finished writing this fucking book finally. 

Jeff: [laughing] You know, like two books and like whatever 15 years, you know, like I'm not the fastest rabbit on the track. So yeah, that was definitely a triumph. [both laugh] There was definitely like a lot of relief in my household. 

Adam: Short-lived. 

Jeff: Yeah. Yeah, and we're working on another one where, I'm working on one now, we're working on it because everybody is supporting me in doing it. But I'm doing another one that's going to be much shorter that is due in March. And just trying to get it out this year and it's codenamed “the Polemic” [Adam: Right] because it's meant to be more of something that's like of the moment I suppose. And so, I'm trying to do one essay a week, each week this month. Which is why I'm a little tired. But what were you talking about man? [laughter] 

Adam: [laughing] I was saying that you need more sleep, [both laugh] you know, I was saying that both of the books end on kind of triumphal notes despite what you're saying now about feeling like when your students approach you, you realize that they are fighting the same battles that we tried to fight, and essentially did not win in the 80s and 90s.  

Jeff: Well, I think Who We Be is kind of a mixed ending, you know what I mean? I don't really want to give it away for anybody who hasn't read it yet. But it's um…it's meant to be. The last section of the book is called, ‘Dreaming America.’ And it's meant to be talking about the ways in which we dream of the future, you know, in so many ways like dreaming has been one thing that's been taken away from us in our incredibly mediated life/lives that we lead now. And so, to be able to like have a social imagination, a sort of you know, whatever national, global, sort of you know unconscious that is kind of awaking was sort of the idea that I was trying to get at. But you have to get at sort of what the dreams are of America now. The American dream so to speak, right? So, there's there are a lot of very dissonant notes in that, and the last ending, ending section is an event that I actually saw happen, but it's meant to feel unreal in a lot of respects. And so, there's a there is there's a weird kind of dissonant note. I think to the ending of the book and it speaks to the kind of dissonant kind of loud, the discursive, polarized environment that we are in now, I think. And so, thank you all for coming and not actually going to watch the debates. Although we can all go back to watching it on MSNBC. I'm sure they'll be like replaying all the highlights. [inaudible] 

Adam: You will be getting plenty of sound bytes. No, but that's a good segue way to the next thing I want to ask you about. 
 
Jeff: You didn't answer the question though. I wanted to ask you how this is… 

Adam: I'm just interviewing you tonight, man. 

Jeff: Nah, Nah, it's it goes two ways when you're working with me, man. [Adam:Yeah] So no, tell me tell me, a little bit like, Go the F**to Sleep. Right? Like, you know this is... 

Adam: Are we not cursing? Is that what’s happening? 
 
Jeff: It's podcasts? All right, Go the Fuck to Sleep is....  

Adam: Thank you. You know, it's one thing if this is like being printed in The New York Times. They can bleep it if they want. But you’re Jeff Chang you can say what the fuck you want. 

Jeff: [laughing] Thanks motherfucker. I was wondering, Go the Fuck to Sleep, like the greatest review I think from a friend was like, ‘it's a hip-hop parenting book’. 

Adam: Right, who said that? 
 
Jeff: I can't remember but it was like I was like, yeah, that's exactly what it is. I was just wondering sort of how that impacted you. You started off actually as a poet right as a spoken word poet in a lot of respects. 

Adam: Really as an MC before that. 

Jeff: As an MC yeah, and then when you started writing fiction, and then moving on up to parenting manuals. [both laugh] Like, what's the hip-hop through line there? 

Adam: The hip-hop through line is that I think one of the things I've always tried to do in my work is explore kind of you know, paradox and complexity on some kind of level. And that can take, and I think the desire to do that comes out of first understanding things like hypocrisy, which were first revealed to me through hip-hop. Hip-Hop was the first thing for me at the age of 10 and 11 and 12 growing up in Boston that shined a certain kind of spotlight on whiteness, which was invisible, and largely uninterrogated. And Hip-Hop dislocated it from that position of centrality and normality and made it something that you had to grapple with. That I had to grapple with as that anomalous white hip-hop kid at parties in an era of Public Enemy, and Boogie Down Productions, and then X Clan, and Brand Nubian, grappling with what it meant, that the white man was devil according to Brand Nubian, who were Five Percenters, and half of my friends were Five Percenters, and I was crashing on their couches five nights a week and smoking blunts with them. So, the personal and the political must have some kind of wiggle space between them or I wouldn't be here. So, you know hip-hop put me in touch with complexity and paradox, and race and class, and ethnicity and identity in the ways that these things are mutable and weaponized and that has been, I think, the through line in all my work.  

So, in Angry Black White Boy, I'm writing a satire about race, and Hip-Hop, and whiteness and the limitations of a kind of Afrocentric white kid in the 90s and his ability to be down, and it's a crazy book that takes absurdist turn. The End of the Jews is about the relationships between Black and Jewish artists writ very small, kind of through a peephole throughout much of the 20th century. Rage is Back is about graffiti, and art, and fathers and sons. The paradox in Go the Fuck to Sleep is very simple. It's the paradox that you can both love your kid to death and be willing to do almost anything to get out of that bedroom after about an hour. You know, like Don Corleone could walk in the room and be like, ‘I'll put the child to sleep. You may have to do a service for me one day, and that day will never come.’ You like, ‘whatever Don Corleone just take this baby’, you know! ‘We can work out the fine print later.’  

Um, so I think that's the through line is being willing to try to grapple with those things and being committed to doing it in places that are uncomfortable. Like saying things that are dangerous to say, dangerous personally, like trying to plumb certain depths and be honest. The reason Go the Fuck to Sleep worked ultimately is because it spoke something that was true but had thus far been unacceptable to say in public. And it gave people an outlet, they felt a certain kind of catharsis. So, in a funny way, it's very much in keeping with the rest of my work, even though it took me 38 minutes to write, as opposed to these novels it take years and you know as it turns out that was a stupid way to spend my time. And the hip-hop element of that too is, you know, following your kind of quirky, weird passions down the rabbit hole and seeing where they take you as well.  

Yeah, you know, it's funny because when the Macklemore record dropped, which was I don't know two or three weeks ago now, something like that. I got all these texts from everybody. Nobody was like ‘yo, you have to hear this song because it's incredible’. It was like ‘yo, you have to hear the song because somebody's going to ask you what you think of it’. You know what I mean? [Jeff: Right] And they were right, you know. [Jeff: Yeah, yeah] I should say first that Jamila Woods, who’s the vocalist on the song. The singer on the song is a friend of mine. And so, I have some kind of back-channel knowledge of how the song came about, the process by which it was stitched together. Macklemore and Ryan Lewis reached out to Jamila. There was another woman in Seattle who I think [Jeff: Hollis (inaudible)] who you know. I think who was involved so there was a certain process. Um, I mean, it's an interesting record. It's a frustrating record. It's a record that in some ways illustrates like the best and the worst and the possibilities and the limitations of this moment that you're talking about. 

Jeff: I mean just as…have you all heard the record…? Who hasn’t heard the record? [speaking to audience] Okay. It's actually he made it available for free on iTunes, and also on his website. And the first–it's eight minute long–you know, it's Pink Floyd long. And the first, you know, like two or three minutes of it are sort of him basically feeling really uncomfortable at a Black Lives Matter rally [Adam: Right] which…. 

Adam: Macklemore being a white rapper from Seattle [Jeff: A white rapper from Seattle, right.] who's been around a while and has sold a shit ton of records. And was last in the media for a non-musically related reason, when he felt so sad that Kendrick Lamar lost to him at what the Grammys. That he made this very public apology that was widely mocked, because it was like motherfucker just take your Grammy and go home, like Kendrick does not appear to be tripping just go put your Grammy on a shelf and shut the fuck up.  

Jeff: So, like, you know, there's this like Twitter thing, right? White tears, hashtag #whitetears, right, which is so funny to everybody because it's sort of like, oh wow, like here's the guilt thing. Okay, like, we have, we’re awkward now because we don't know how to feel about how we should be reacting to this, you know, sort of display of guilt and so it's funny to see this hashtag #whitetears because it's sort of releases that sort of like feeling, that awkward feeling that you have when your you know, white friend is bearing their soul. [Adam: mmmm] And, and so, it's sort of like you have to have the six minutes of white tears to get the impact of Jamila’s lyric, in a way [Adam: Interesting] But you also, like, have to go through those six minutes [laughter] [inaudible] 

Adam: Like on one hand, it's interesting to hear Macklemore cycling through all of these different issues, identities. He's working it out in real time or trying to, right? So there's his ambivalence and confusion about whether he has a place at a Black Lives rally, right? Like does he belong here? Is he in? Is he stepping over some kind of cultural line that he shouldn't, like is he violating in order to feel better and absolve himself? And then there's the layer of like is this song doing the same thing? And then he's occupying other voices and he's taking on the persona of somebody who's essentially saying I love you. You're the only rapper I listen to, and there's a racial dimension to that. And then there's a critique of other artists which is sort of a critique of himself, which is kind of you know, I mean and there's probably more that I'm forgetting and it. And is that pretty much it? [Jeff: That pretty much sums it up] you know, and it's on one level. Okay? Yeah. I just saved you like eight minutes, um, you know, and the beat drops out. I mean, he's really feeling himself like when a rapper goes acapella or Acapulco as we used to say, [Jeff: laughs] for like minutes at a time. That's generally speaking an egomaniacal thing to do. You know when you're just like, yo drop the beat. I just focus on my voice, like really Macklemore? You feeling yourself like that? On one hand, there's something inspiring about it, on the other hand, he's late to the party, and he should have thought about this shit years ago and he should be further along in his thinking. Macklemore, he's like my age dude. Macklemore is not a kid. 

Jeff: He did ‘White Privilege’ when he was like, he did ‘White Privilege’ 10 years ago.  

Adam: I agree, but I think that Macklemore is a little too satisfied to end in a place of paralysis. And I would like to see him and his army of advisors, you know, because he's not in this alone. He just but he clearly just started thinking about this pretty recently, and hasn't read anything, [Jeff: inaudible questioning sound] you know, is not, could not I definitively know that because I know the people who are he's talking to and getting reading lists from. [Jeff: Okay], you know what I'm saying, like not to you know blow the spot too much, but I don't give a fuck about Macklemore, so. And I say that not to make a personal critique of him but to say that there's a certain self-congratulatory look at me, I'm paralyzed, and I'm complicated and I just want to be given credit and love for that. That is a hallmark of like white engagement with white privilege. Right? [Jeff: Mhm, mhm] And it's also not for nothing a hallmark of rappers trying to get into that kind of like grown folks demographic, you know?  

Ten years ago, I said the same thing about Common when he was doing rhymes where he was like I want to be progressive, and respectful to women. But I'm also a drunk and an asshole, like can I get a pat on the back? And it's like no, you should really take that further and try to stop being an asshole and maybe like read something or like talk to somebody? You know what I mean, [Jeff: Yeah, yeah] like, and I think that white privilege among progressive whites is something that still for the most part we try to escape from and we make a flawed equation, which is that the opposite of white privilege is Blackness, and if we can find acceptance in a Black community, or a diverse community, or signal our politics by what we purchase, you know buy the progressive rap CD or whatever. Then we have jumped the fence and are absolved, right?  

You know, and I think that paralysis is just… What I'm what I'm fearful of is that a bunch of young white kids who are very confused about all this stuff, and very sincere, and very earnest and want sincerely to know whether racism is a thing of the past, or the present, because kids care about fairness and they don't know if the playing field is even or not, they'd like to think it is, they kind of know it isn't they want they don't want to feel indicted personally. I know this because these kids used to come up to me all the time and like ask me what I think of affirmative action and I could tell that they thought it would keep them out of college and their parents told them that and all this kind of stuff. Like there's a real chance I think that an army of white kids who are Macklemore fans who only know who Melle Mel, Grandmaster Caz are from the Macklemore video. That he didn't even let them rap in incidentally, which is my other problem with Macklemore. They're going to listen to that song and think that that is the vanguard of white engagement and sort of anti-white privilege work. You know what I mean? That like acknowledging your paralysis is as far as you need to take it. That's my problem.  

Jeff: Got it. Let's move on from Macklemore.  

Adam: Yeah. [laughs] Let's ask you another question.  

Jeff: Well, no actually, I want to I want to just like dwell on... 

Adam: See what this dude is doing? 

Jeff: No, I want to move on from Macklemore, but I want to get to the larger question because this is something that I tried to grapple with, I think, in Who We Be and I think I'm still grappling with in my activist work and all this other kind of stuff, which is how do you deal with privilege, right? [Adam: Yeah] And so for Asian Americans, specifically Asian Americans in the Bay Area, like there's a certain kind of privilege that we have here in the Bay, that we actually have to cop to, right? And I think that, that some Asian Americans a very small number, of very loud number, do it very, very, very badly. [Adam: Hmm] The anti-affirmative action suits against Lowell High School. It's a very small minority of folks, but they're very loud and they, you know, they sort of command a lot of attention because they fit a really nice sort of white narrative of like look, look at the poor minorities who are being like oppressed by programs for equality. You know for Blacks and Latinos, which is all bullshit.  

And so, to me it's about struggling through what it means to have an ethical engagement around questions of race, and I think I say that a lot too. Especially my Asian American folks. It's sorta like I know you grew up like getting spit on, getting punched, you know, getting treated badly. I know that your parents, you know, probably came here and took a job way below, you know what they had. I know that, I know that it's been hard sledding. You know, I know that many, many times there was not enough food to eat, and that kind of thing. But at the same time like, do you think shitting on other folks of color is really the way to go? You know, what do you want to see happen? What kind of world do you want to have? Do you want to live in a place where all of the best public resources are given a 100% to Asian Americans? What kind of world would that look like? And so, but I but I also realize that a lot of times folks are going to say stupid things, and they're going to make mistakes in an effort to try to try to you know be better about things, and that's where I appreciate, I think, okay. I said I wasn’t going to talk about Macklemore, but that's where I appreciated, you know, eight minutes of effort, and you know many, many hours and that kind of thing before that of working through with Jamila and Hollis and a whole bunch of you know, Black Lives Matter activists and organizers, particularly in the Seattle area. So, I just wanted to say that. [laughter] 

Adam: So yeah, duly we noted, legitimate. You know, let me ask you a question. Um one of the central arguments of Who We Be, is that culture predicts politics, that we can look at today's culture? Right? Is that fair?  

Jeff: Yeah, I mean just that culture, cultural change precedes political change.  

Adam: Okay. Yeah, that's a better way to say it. Um, so I guess my question is, what cultural change—two questions—what cultural change predicted and anticipated the crazy political moment that we're in right now, on the Electoral stage? And what cultural changes are percolating right now that are going to predict the political change of the next decade? 

Jeff: Um, it's tough. I don't, I'm not good at predictions, but what I can say is, and what the book is about in a lot of ways is the development of the culture wars that we've seen raging, you know now, minute-to-minute right on cable TV. You know Trump is in the same line. I mean he's using, we were talking about this. He's using the same lines that Richard Nixon used. He has at his rallies, he’s distributing signs saying the ‘silent majority stands with Trump.’ He is literally like evoking George Wallace from back in the day. [Adam: Yeah] You know just no on everything. 

Adam: Do you think he knows that? Or do you think demagoguery just is consistent. 

Jeff: I think I think it's planned. I think it's absolutely. Think about it.  

Adam: Right. I wonder if this, if that makes him better or worse that he actually knows that, knows...  

Jeff: It's actually worse. He's planned this right. If you go back to 2011. You gotta remember this is the guy who decided seemingly out of nowhere to send investigators to the state of Hawaii to try to uncover Obama's birth certificate. [Adam: Right] He was the one guy, right, who forced the standing President, unprecedented in United States history, to deliver his certificate, his birth certificate. To prove his birthright, right?  

And I know a lot of folks of color cried over that, because it was frustrating. It was humiliating. But Trump did that as a way to explore whether or not he should run for office in 2011 for the 2012 nomination of the Republican party. At that particular point he made the calculation that A: he had lost right? Obama produced the birth certificate, it said Hawaii motherfucker, and he was like, I still won because I forced him to do this, and then he retreated. [Adam: Yeah] You know because the moment wasn't right, and I think that he came back knowing that he had an opening as an outsider who could mobilize this kind of resentment to move forward in the party, right? So, to take a Republican party and sort of to completely trash the Republican party elite and have this complete outsider type of candidacy. So, I think he plotted this the whole time. I mean, this is the same guy who's in pictures with, you know, the Clintons with, you know, prominent Black leaders, business leaders, and that kind of thing. This is a guy who wants to be president and will stop at nothing to go there. Even if it requires setting the whole US into a tailspin. So, I think that he has studied history. I think that he knows like all of the buttons to push in order to kind of move, move the needle as they say. And that's what he's been doing.  

Adam: Yeah. It's interesting too, there's a series of incredibly disrespectful moments that are all kind of dog whistles for the Right that happened in the early years of Obama's presidency that we've almost forgotten about because, you know, the media cycle moves on, and there's a new outrage to examine. But you know, the birth certificate thing was certainly one. Representative Joe Wilson standing up and shouting, ‘you lie’ at the President. Governor Jan Brewer on the tarmac with a finger in his face. Things that would have been inconceivable for any other President in the history of the country, right? Imagine somebody trying to do that shit to W, you know, like they'd be waterboarded immediately. You know what I mean? Like Obama sort of stood for these outrages. We understood as early as you know, the beginning days of his run, that there was a tacit understanding among his supporters and his opponents and everybody else at the moment he became the angry Black man. He was going to lose. There was the speech on race in Philadelphia where he salvages a candidacy that was in dire trouble because of Jeremiah Wright. Who was put up there as this crazy minister as opposed to a guy with a profound legacy who was, you know, one of the most important religious figures in the country. In the speech on race, Obama among other things kind of makes a moral equation between institutional racism and white resentment, which allows him in great part to keep those white voters that otherwise would have, you know, left his coalition and gone to Hillary or John Edwards. Remember John Edwards? John Edwards was the presumed challenger to Hillary in 2007-2008. [Jeff: The haircut] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.  

Jeff: He was like Biz Markie, he said I need a haircut and you got a haircut, and it was all over. [Adam: Yeah] I'm sorry. I interrupted you.  

Adam: [laughing] Nah, please. 

Jeff: Actually, here’s a good question for you. There's uh, there is sort of uh…well, this actually ties back to whole Macklemore thing, and I'm not going to bring the Macklemore thing back again, [audience laughs] but it has to do with, like what is it that whites can do around this type of thing? And so, you and Kamau Bell on Twitter launched this hashtag #whitesagainsttrump, right? 

Adam: We did yeah 

Jeff: And it's and it's been a grand success? A total failure? Like what's up?  

Adam: It was it was well; it was a success and I think it may have come and gone, but it was a very interesting moment. Basically, Kamau and I, I’ll rewind for a second. So, Jeff Chang put Kamau and I on a panel together about a year ago now. We had only barely known each other until then, but we hit it off on the panel and we started to hang out. We're neighbors in Berkeley.  

And I find myself increasingly frustrated with the kind of culture of the ‘hot take’ in media, you know. We live obviously in a 24-hour news cycle, spin cycle, everybody in the public arena is incredibly eager to like air their views on everything. Go on MSNBC and drop 30 seconds of hotness, which I don't know, will change their lives apparently. From the veracity with which people seem to chase that. There's a real tension in my mind between public and intellectual, and nobody really talks about it, because every public intellectual want to be as public as possible all the time. Which leads to a tremendous volume of kind of like ‘hot takes,’ something happens in the news cycle and everybody rushes to write about it on Twitter on Facebook, wherever they can, and whenever they can. To the point where I start to feel like, homie, like what is your real project? Like, what do you do when you're not just responding and putting out material all the time? And it's all very boilerplate, right? Because for the most part the responses do not delve very deep, and they don't expose anything that we didn't already assume you've thought about this thing. It's like I can read the byline and know what the piece is going to say for the most part.  

So out of a frustration with that, and a desire to kind of figure out a new way to do this kind of quick response ‘hot take’ thing. Kamau and I started writing pieces jointly, which were like exchanges of emails, and it started with Rachel Dolezal when she was in the news last year, you know. And clearly that was something that needed to be discussed, but I was unsatisfied with everybody's take on it because they seemed fairly narrow and shallow, and I didn't learn anything from reading them. And what the exchange of emails did was we each pushed each other to say things and think things that we might not have otherwise known that we thought, but also and just as importantly, to be funny, you know. Kamau is a funny dude. I try to be a funny dude, and when you're writing emails back and forth, you know you digress, and you go interesting places, and you ask each other questions.  

So, we started doing that and then Kamau had this piece that he put out on Facebook initially, which was like look Donald Trump is white people's problem. White people come get your boy, you know. Everybody else has to account for the idiocy of people who have the same, you know, who are you know, anything happened, you know, like Muslims are constantly being called on for no real reason to denounce Muslim extremism. If somebody Asian American pops off with some wild shit, you're gonna have to comment on it, denounce them. Ben Carson says some idiotic shit, Black people got to answer for him. Kamau was like let’s race white people and make them answer for Trump. And I thought that was a brilliant idea for a lot of reasons, and we wrote a long piece about it. And in the course of the piece, you know, and that's the answer to like what can white people do by privilege. Like, well, a little thing you can do is denounce Trump as a white person. Take on this kind of like he doesn't speak for me thing. Because Trump's constituency is the disaffected white working class and the white extremists. Like Trump is insanely popular among straight up white nationalists as outlined in a New Yorker piece about a year ago.  

So, we put this hashtag together as a joke. I was like this is all brilliant stuff. You know, this is a great use of white privilege but like it's not going to catch on unless we have a meme or a hashtag. I'm no good at that. You're good at that Kamau? He's like nah, I'm like, well, let's try hashtag #whitesagainsttrump. And in the Republican debate that happened to happen two days later Kamau at the beginning of the debate was like yo, if you're you know tweeting about the debate use #whitesagainsttrump. Lo and behold, it goes viral, and it becomes the number one trending Twitter hashtag during and after the debate. And it was really it was amazing, you know. People use it in much the way that we wanted them to, denouncing Trump while claiming their whiteness, and it and I think they people who are doing that felt empowered by it. The people of color who were like listening in and tweeting about it, seemed largely like enthused and relieved by it. And then about 12 hours later the like hardcore rock-ribbed racist community got a hold of it, and we started getting hate mail. I started getting like, you know, and of course us what you know, they revealed that #whitesagainsttrump was started by a Black and a Jew, which of course totally discredits it, cause the Jews aren't white, you know what I mean? You would think for a group of people who are so terribly concerned about white genocide, they would want to recruit as many people to whiteness as possible. You would think they'd be like sending me, you know recruitment letters, but nah, I'm discredited. 

Jeff: Actually, see and that was with that was what I was going to get to is I thought that the premise of ‘white people come get your boy’ was right on point, but I also I thought the dope thing about it was that it was joint project was like this cross-racial type of project. You know what I'm saying? Because I feel like the one way that we get to the way we get to 2042, right? Which is the year that it all goes to hell. Is that we... 

Adam: You should explain 2042. 

Jeff: 2042 is the year that we become a majority minority US country, right. And so, it's the year that everybody's we're all going to hell. Right? And this is like actually, this is Trump's campaign right here. He’s saying you know you're all going to hell. You have a chance to do something about it right now, right? You can go after those Muslims. You can go after the Black Lives Matter folks. You can go after those undocumented, you know immigrants. You can go after on and on and on right? Here's the list of folks that you can go after. The politics of racial division, right?  

And so, to me the only way to actually counter that is not necessarily by only having white folks checking white folks, although white folks really do gotta do a lot more of that, but it's about trying to figure out how we all co-create this together. Like if we're all going to be minorities, we have to figure out how we create a new majority, right? And that goes electorally but also goes culturally. And I think that that's like the big bottom-line thing in the long run. And so, within that there's all of these different types of issues that we have to work through in our communities as well as individually, but also, as one big group of folks trying to struggle through it together. And I think that for so many years the Left has been about like it's race. No, it's class know. It's race. No, it's class. It's both. It's everything. It's all about, it's all of the above, right? It's race, class, gender, sexuality, it’s everything right? And I think that at the end of the day we have to figure this out. We have to create this new cultural majority. So, I don't know I just wanted to say that, like you guys like broke that wide open, and I think that I was thinking about it since the last time we talked, like the whole Black/Jew thing, you know, add an Asian in there. Yeah, you know add Latino. Add a native person. Add queer people. Add women to that, like suddenly you've got, you know, everybody against Trump, and the battle is won. I think, so.  

Adam: Yeah, and of course, we also had well-meaning white people. Well, they were white. I don't know if they were well-meaning, but they were definitely on some like, ‘why not humans against Trump?’ And I'm like really here we go again. Really, really? 

Jeff: Right, right. It's about rethinking like how do you get to that? Anyway, we should probably, like, open it up to questions. [Adam: Yeah, definitely] I mean if anybody wants to, or even any comments. 

 
Adam: Hold on, I have to say that every time 2042 comes up. I’m always am moved to to...  

Jeff: And by the way, you know, there's going to be a movie, like do you know how there's that movie 2012. [Adam: In world…] It's going to look like, you know, like the Warriors. It's probably gonna look like… [laughter] 

Adam: But I mean 2042 is clearly significant. It's a milestone. It is something that we can look at and look toward with interest and with passion, and I think everything you're saying makes total sense. But I also as a footnote to it, I want to point out that the history of whiteness and the genius of the perpetuation of whiteness, is that it's always changing and that rather than let itself be subsumed, and rather than become minority, whiteness will find new recruits. The Jews didn't used to be white, the Italians, the Irish, Slavic folks. So, you know, 2042 will not come without a struggle, and you know Asians might be next on the list. Hey, here's your invitation. Mr. Chang you’re now white.  

Jeff: There's a couple of Chinese Americans that are on that path already. Yeah, so on that note, thank you so much for coming. [laughing] 

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Thank you for listening to the CIIS Public Programs Podcast. Our talks and conversations are presented live in San Francisco, California. We recognize that our university’s building in San Francisco occupies traditional, unceded Ramaytush Ohlone lands. If you are interested in learning more about native lands, languages, and territories, the website native-land.ca is a helpful resource for you to learn about and acknowledge the Indigenous land where you live. 
 
Podcast production is supervised by Kirstin Van Cleef at CIIS Public Programs. Audio production is supervised by Lyle Barrere at Desired Effect. The CIIS Public Programs team includes Kyle DeMedio, Alex Elliott, Emlyn Guiney, Jason McArthur, and Patty Pforte. If you liked what you heard, please subscribe wherever you find podcasts, visit our website ciis.edu, and connect with us on social media @ciispubprograms. 
 
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