The Daily Beast Podcast - Zerlina Maxwell: Republicans Know Dems Suck At Messaging to Black People

Episode Date: December 20, 2020

Political pundit and author Zerlina Maxwell was booed and hissed at during a Politicon a few years ago (which is “a Comic Con for political nerds”) because she said that if Bernie Sanders ran in 2020, which he did, he’d have to improve his messaging toward communities of color. Fast forward to this year and Maxwell has a book out on the subject and stands by her statement. “It seems like I was psychic or something, but really I was just saying a thing that seemed to be an obvious point that somebody needed to say, and I think Republicans understand this,” she tells Molly Jong-Fast in this bonus members-only episode of The New Abnormal. “That's one of the reasons why they try to suppress voters of color and they try to pack power in, in the court system. You know, they understand the demographic shifts in a way that I feel like Democrats needed to.” What does she think of Biden’s cabinet? Molly points out that some have criticized the president-elect for not enlisting more Black women. But Maxwell is OK with his choices, despite the bar being incredibly low thanks to Donald Trump. (“I mean, we're already doing a lot better than we were just a couple of weeks ago.”) Speaking of Trump, Maxwell shares the one thing she can’t quite wrap her head around: “I look around and I can't believe that there's 70 plus million people who are getting duped by somebody who's not intelligent,” she says, both in general and with the coronavirus messaging. “We lie to ourselves when we say that we are exceptional in particular ways in which we are proving to ourselves in this last year, we are not,” she adds. “Like, if you asked Americans to do something mildly inconvenient, uh, to protect their neighbor, they're going to sue them.” Plus! Jong-Fast asks Maxwell what white feminists can do to be more intersectional, and frankly, better to Black women and causes. To start, she says, aboriton isn’t the only cause feminists should focus on: “They need to really lean in to the fact that racism is a problem they need to care about too.” Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello and welcome to another the new abnormal special bonus episode, and we're so excited to have you. Zerlina Maxwell is the host of The Zerlina Show on Peacock TV. She's also the co-host of Signal Boost on Sirius XM and the author of The End of White Politics. First, let's talk about the end of white politics because, you know, just tell our listeners a little bit about that book and why you decided to write it. Well, it's so funny to sit here now and think about why I decided to write the end of white politics because I did. anticipate that some of the things I was talking about in the book would happen so quickly. Yeah. But if I could take you back to Politicon, which I'm not sure if you've been to Politicon.

I've never been, but I've heard. A little bit of a hot mess. It's sort of like if you, it's like Comic Con for political nerds or cable news. It's very odd bunch, you know, Dennis Robin and N. Coulter in the same room. James Carbill's over there. You're like, why it's happened? And so I went to Politicon and I was on a panel, which was like, what now, liberals? and it was in 2018 before the midterms,

before the Mueller report came out, all of that. And it was like, you know, progressives who supported Bernie, a couple Hillary folks, Marcos Molitz was on the panel. Like it was a good cross-section of people on the left sort of unpacking why we lost in 2016. Yeah.

But it turned into a complete dumpster fire. When I made the point to one of the Bernie Sanders supporters that if he were to run again in 2020, which he did, he was going to need to improve his messaging towards communities of color, specifically how he engages black women. Because black women are the base of the Democratic Party and you can't run without us. And I made that point, which now seems like, yeah, everybody can agree with that after what we just

watched. But then I guess it was something they didn't want to hear. So I got like booed his, you know, it was a little dramatic. Right. And I realized, I mean, it was luck, right? The book editor, Chrison Trotman was in the audience from Hachette. She was like, You should write this book. This is a book. You have something to say about the left. What just happened? There's a lot there.

And so I really just took that sort of moment and used it as, I don't know, a jumping off point to sort of speak to my people on the left and really get them to understand that the demographics in America are shifting towards a reality where white voters are going to be a minority of the electorate. And that's not true yet, but in a lot of places, because of the pluralities and in some cases, like in Texas, the majorities, that people of color and the coalitions, they can create, you know, they can win elections. In hindsight, I was on to something. Oh, yeah. Because we just witnessed the 2020 elections where I didn't anticipate we were going to flip Georgia so quickly. I knew that was possible. I talk about Stacey Abrams. her playbook that she ran in her group in a choice by engaging all different swaths of the electorate and going directly to voters of color and talking specifically about identity and policy solutions for

those communities, understanding that race is a factor and gender is a factor. And I just think that now it seems like I was psychic or something. But really, I was just saying a thing that seemed to be an obvious point that somebody needed to say. And I think Republicans understand this. That's one of the reasons why they try to suppress voters of color. They try to pack power in the court system. You know, they understand the demographic shifts in a way that I feel like Democrats needed to. Yeah. No, it's so interesting to me that Republicans seem to understand this better, even though

their want is nefarious than Democrats. I mean, it's just sort of shocking to me. It is very shocking to it. Talk to me about what you see in the cabinet. Like, I'm upset. I don't quite understand why Marsha Fudge shouldn't be. the ag secretary and instead should go to HUD. Like, do you, are you seeing, like, I feel like the Biden administration needs to do more

to put black women in his cap, in their, in his cabinet. Well, I think, you know, so far, the picks have made a lot of sense. I try not to be too cynical about it. I think, you know, at the end of the day, all the picks have one thing in common. They have a good relationship with Joe Biden. Right. So I think, you know, that may be the, that one thing at the end of the, list of, you know, check marks that he's trying to go through to select these folks.

I think that's the one that matters the most. It's weighted the most. And, you know, I think it's important that, you know, groups are being like the NWCP and the Urban League, you know, they're coming out and they're being outspoken about the fact that they want to be more directly consulted about some of these picks. Now, it looks like it's like family food fighting. But honestly, what I found the most interesting about the last week was that, The Biden campaign, you know, they have been talking to civil rights groups. It just wasn't the NACP and the National Iber League. It was color of change and other organizations that are newer and have younger leadership.

Which is actually good, right? Which is good. So, look, I think at the end of the day, I think the way it's going to shake out is like, we're going to like some of these picks and we're going to not like some of these picks. And we're going to have to work with it, work with within sort of that dynamic, which is a lot better than the last four years, certainly. But at the same time, I mean, I think, like, Marcia Fudge is, he can put her anywhere and she will do an excellent job. Right, that's true.

And so I do see, I do see why people are like, well, why would you put the same person, white man in charge of the department he was in charge in Georgia before? And he oversaw some things that weren't. Maybe controversial, yeah. That whole Shirley Sherrod situation was not great. But at the same time, it's like, again, it goes back to who Biden knows well and who he feels comfortable in those roles. And so I think I'm just going to defer to his judgment on that at this point. Because there's no pick that he's picked that I'm like, that's terrible. Yeah.

You know, like that's going to ruin it. Yeah. You know. And that's pretty good. And he's not picking like Fox News contributors or his kids. Yeah. Like, look, the bar is low. But certainly he's surpassing it, you know, in leaps and bounds.

And I think the fact that we can even sort of on a substantive level be like, well, this person could be better for reasons, X, Y, Z. I mean, we're already doing a lot better than me. We were just a couple weeks ago. It's certainly true. So you have a radio show, which I've been on full disclosure and like a lot. And you also have a television program, which I've also been on full disclosure and really enjoy. First of all, how do you do? I always think I do a lot, but you do a lot.

I think about this on a daily basis. How do I do it? I stick to a schedule. Yeah. It's the only way you can do it. And I still sometimes feel like I'm not doing either thing to the best of my ability because I'm tired. But that's my goal every day is to like, you know, I have two major things to accomplish. And, you know, it's almost like an athlete.

Yeah. Yeah. I look at it like I both. things require different parts of my brain and my sort of spirit. So each one requires different prep. Like in the morning, I sit outside on the porch. I look at the sun coming up because it's a morning show. So it's like when the sun's coming up, I have some caffeine. I read my AP morning wire. And I go through the New York Times. Like I do like, I have my like little rituals. And then in the afternoon, it is, it was a little tough because it starts at 7.m. and it ends at 7 p.m.

Yeah, that's, so it's like, it's sort of like the beginning and at the end. So that's been fun. But what I do is I sort of like have a little routine. I work out. I sort of put on some good music. I have to do my own hair and makeup because that's what we're all doing now in pandemic. Yeah. So that's a whole process for women that men and male hosts did not have to factor in.

They do not have to factor that in that it takes me an extra hour to look presentable in the patriarchy. Yeah. And so I just sort of have my little routine at night, get ready for the show so I can have the most amount of energy, you know, and really try to bring my best self to that too. It's kind of like I feel like I'm a professional athlete at this point. Well, you kind of are. Do you find that the news, because you really have this job, which is all about, you really see the news in the morning and the news in the evening. Are you shocked some days when you go on? Like, Do you think I could never have imagined this kind of stuff would happen? Every day. The day, the week I started was the week that Donald Trump was positive with COVID-19 and in Walter Reed and taking the helicopter, you know, walking out to the helicopter and taking it. And then that was the whole week where, you know, and weekend where he drove around, waved out the car with the secret service. I mean, so certainly I have the moments where I'm like, I cannot believe this is real life.

I mean, every morning I do some form of a rant. where it's like, I feel like I'm Michael B. Jordan and Black Panther where he's like, is this your king? Like, I feel like that every day, every day,

I'm like, because I feel, I mean, like, I feel like I'm a fairly intelligent person. I'm not the smartest person, but I, I feel like the way that my brain works and how I think about things.

Like I think them all the way through often to my detriment. Because, you know, with COVID, I was like, people can transfer this without symptoms. So I just assume everybody's a zombie. That's how you function.

And so people were like, that seems very extreme. And now doctors are like, well, asymptomatic spread is very problematic. And I'm like, I thought I was there in April. But I feel like, you know, every single day I look around and I can't believe that there's 70 plus million people who are getting duped by somebody who's not intelligent. That's the thing that actually I can't believe. Yeah.

That people are walking into maskless rallies in the middle of. of a pandemic with an airborne virus that's killed, you know, more people in one day than 9-11, which fundamentally abandoned our whole government. And we started multiple wars as a result. Yeah. And also one that was sort of a euphemism for a larger ongoing forever, you know, warrant terror. So I just feel like, you know, I can't believe Donald Trump was what sort of exposed America for some of the lies we tell ourselves. Oh, yeah.

It's true. But I guess that's how it's going to go. I mean, I think that we, we lie to ourselves when we say that we are exceptional in particular ways in which we are proving to ourselves in this last year, we are not. Yeah. And I wondered early on in the pandemic, like the messaging about masks wasn't going to work on us. Yeah. Because in the beginning, it was very easy to see that, oh, a mask is more so. So if you are sick, you are not transmitting it to others, meaning the thing.

the mask is a symbol of my care and concern for others. I was like, we don't do that here. Yeah, that's implied. We're not really about that life. Like, if you ask Americans to do something mildly inconvenient to protect their neighbor, they're going to sue that. They're not going to, like, you know what I mean? It's terrible, but it's true.

I know that, like, that's not the vast majority of us, but obviously it is a third or so. I really was concerned for us. So every day, I am supposed. by just what I am seeing revealed about the American people, the good, the bad, and the ugly, and the places in which we really have some work to do, because we do have a lot of work to do. I mean, there was another case this week of a black person killed by the police, Casey Goodson, who in Columbus, Ohio was on his way home from a dentist appointment, stopped to get a subway sandwich. The police were looking for violent fugitive, of which he was not, no criminal record,

nothing. They don't know what really happened because there's no body cameras on these police officers. And he was shot with the keys in his doorknop. They're hanging there in the photo. And they shot him multiple times, including in the back, to the point where he was hold, you know, his five-year-old little brother found him and he still had the sandwich in his hand. I mean, I just, so it's these kind of stories that like when they come back around and they always do, that's the moment where we have to do that introspection. And I think the pandemic allowed us some space to do that the summer with the racial reckoning. I was in all of the people who chose to risk their lives in a pandemic to protest what they knew was right. And I think, you know, that showed me that

there are at least another third of us that are willing to do the hard work of getting us to the right side of many of these issues. But it's going to be a long haul here. And I also think we're going to be completely traumatized. Oh, yeah. No question. after we sort of get to the other side of this pandemic, because I don't know that if you can have half million Americans die and that not fundamentally change our psychology. Oh, no question, I think. And also the people who are sick and have long-hold side effects.

I have a kind of complicated question, but I'm curious to ask you, you know, I grew up in this white feminist world of white feminists who, like, really, they didn't, I mean, I'm going to assume they didn't know what they were doing. But, you know, I hope that it's my hope that they didn't know what they were doing. But I'm curious to know, how do white feminists make it right? That's a good question because I, I too grew up in a world of white feminists. I feel like I'm in a unique vantage point because I started writing and blogging at feministic. That wasn't the first website I blogged for, but it was in the beginning before I even started writing for money.

And one of the things that I did intentionally is, is go to a place where it was about intersectional feminism and about the fact that, you know, white feminists need to understand that you can't just focus on abortion. That's not like the only issue that is relevant for women, all women, frankly, but certainly not for women of color, because if you're not talking about racism,

if you're not talking about, you know, class and all of those intersections, then you're not doing it. So white feminists, they did do a lot of work between 2016 and 2020, frankly. And I think it's been important to see the ways in which, especially since the summer people have, I mean, I don't mind it when you're asking me for books to read. You know, a lot of people do that. But, you know, I think that the desire for people to become more educated on race is a step in the right direction. Like, there are some, you know, black feminists would be like,

roll their eyes and be like, I mean, now you finally, finally realize race. But, but I try, I try to be like, okay, like I could be roll my eyes at you and say like, it's about time. Yeah. But if not now, when. And I think that also I sort of use the show that I have in the morning, which is very different from the show that I have at night because I have a co-host who is a feminist, we're partners in feminism. And she presents as white, but she has Mexican heritage on her mom's side.

We always joke that she's secretly Mexican, but she moves throughout the world as a secret white woman because her last name is McIntosh. She and I have really, I think, uncomfortable, but frank conversation. about even how she witnesses how different it is for me to walk around in the world and the body that I'm in. And that when we would like, you know, do our little mini broad city episodes walking around New York City, going to our like, do our radio show and like go to our orange three classes, you know, we were like, we were literally her own episode of Broad City. She would see firsthand like what it's like, right? She'd just be, you know, because like most

people don't assume that two women of different races that are like standing next to each other are together. And so, you know, she'd watch people elbow me in the head or like caught me on the line. Like there was one day where like I was just waiting to get breakfast. I mean, I get yelled at a lot by older white people. And so this older white woman, she just started yelling. Just started yelling at me. And you just got to look. And so now she's, she uses, she's like, she flex with her white privilege and she'll yell back, right? She'll use her privilege in that moment. And I feel like if we could just all sort of be Jess McIntosh, And just try to use the privilege where it's possible.

And certainly, I mean, black people may appreciate it for real. If you're a white person and you see a black person in a store or online at the grocery store, you know, getting mistreated. If you see that, be an ally in that moment. I can't tell you how many times I've been mistreated and just looked around and the other people who are pretending not to see. Yeah. And I think that, you know, we've gone too long where.

white Americans have pretended not to see. They pretended not to see what was really happening. They pretended not to understand what the phrase Black Lives Matter means. Yeah. When you know exactly what it means, because you know, to everybody's shared that Jane Elliott video at the beginning of the summer where she asked a group of white students, you know, raise your hand if you'd like to be treated the way we treat black people and none of them raise their hand because you know that you don't want to be treated that way. And you know that there's a problem. And you know that if your child could not walk and get a subway sandwich without being killed by the police. And in addition, there is no accountability by the society because it's not just the violent act.

It's also that our society deems it acceptable as a status quo that I can walk outside right now, go jogging, be mistaken for a who knows what or just shot. And then the police know the lie to tell. They know the lie to tell to get away with it. They know the script to follow. And that's the problem. We all see what's happening. And so white, white feminists just sort of, they need to be about that life. They need to really lean in to the fact that racism is a problem they need to care about too.

And their white sister who are voting for cured immunity without a vaccine. Yeah. Because they're afraid of black people coming to the suburbs when the virus is killing you in the suburbs and your mother and your father who are in the nursing home. Yeah. So it's really just about listen to black people. women first, but really, you know, be more like Jess and touch, use those moments where you, you can identify ways in which you can utilize your privilege to benefit people who don't have it.

So they can get a little bit, you know, those days where Jeff stands up for me or, you know, at least yells with me back at the, because normally, if I'm getting yelled at my white woman, like, I'm holding up neck. You know, maybe in my 20s, I didn't yell back. I'm nearly 40. And I was, man, if I don't have. have any qualms in, you know, I can sort of read someone without even cursing pretty well. Yeah.

But it is nice to have a friend who can utilize her privilege. So I just encourage other people to find ways to do that. Yeah. No, I agree. All right, this was so good. I were, now I've gone over. On that note, we'll wrap up this episode of the new abnormal from The Daily Beast. In future episodes, we'll be talking with smart folks from The Daily Beast and beyond from media, culture, politics, and science who will help us understand what's happening to our country and the world. We hope you'll subscribe to us on your favorite podcast app and share the show on social media. We're just getting started and don't want you to miss an episode.

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