This week, Farai Chideya and her guests dissect political news across the country, from the Senate races in Georgia to the violence in our nation’s capital. And we welcome new contributor and legal analyst Tiffany Jeffers. Impact investor Nathalie Molina Niño takes on the exclusion of women of color in finance. Business reporter Ruth Umoh takes stock of corporations’ promises to invest in racial equity. Former journalist Carla Murphy tells Farai about her mission to understand why other journalists of color leave newsrooms. Plus, the leaders of the Guild of Future Architects on what work will look like decades from now.
EPISODE RUNDOWN
0:45 Farai Chideya asks supporters of President Trump why they came to DC on January 6th.
2:41 Legal analyst Tiffany Jeffers breaks down the different legal and ethical questions behind Trump’s call to Georgia’s Secretary of State.
4:46 Political contributor Errin Haines and Tiffany Jeffers dissect what the insurrection means for democracy in America.
6:16 Jeffers explains how white supremacy is baked into the country’s legal systems.
10:00 Haines describes what the group of reluctant Trump supporters will mean for the incoming Biden-Harris administration.
13:09 Impact investor Nathalie Molina Niño talks about her background in tech, and her increasing interest in political financing.
17:45 Niño explains the importance of investing in women of color, one the most entrepreneurial and innovative groups of businesspeople across the globe.
19:37 In order to get more money in the hands of women business owners, we have to invest, loan, and buy from this same community, Niño says.
22:27 The Covid update looks at the upward trend of confirmed cases and deaths due to the coronavirus, as well as the implication of the newest variant of the virus.
26:11 Our Body Politic contributor and business reporter, Ruth Umoh, looks into corporations’ promises to invest in racial equity.
28:07 The mechanism behind diversity initiatives differs from company to company, leaving it up to reporters to hold them accountable, Umoh says.
30:17 Umoh suggests that companies should first define what they mean by diversifying their company, before trying to hit unknown targets.
32:38 Carla Murphy, a former journalist, has stepped out of the profession and now focuses on why others are leaving the industry.
34:56 The reckoning in journalism is being shaped by the social movements of the last few years, Murphy explains, like Occupy Wall Street and #MeToo.
36:32 Murphy says it’s very difficult to succeed in the media industry without having independent financial support as an early career journalist.
37:24 Organizing for a living wage is imperative in the journalist world, Murphy says.
39:55 The SPEAK platform records callers’ voicemails and gives a prompt for listeners to participate in Our Body Politic.
41:46 Sharon Chang and Kamal Sinclair of The Guild of Future Architects return to examine how we can better understand the role work plays in our lives.
45:50 Sinclair suggests society should invest in unlocking human potential by not only valuing people’s work output, but by valuing the creativity and passion within their work.
49:30 Chang explains why she thinks the word retirement should be abolished altogether.
Farai Chideya:
Thanks for listening and sharing Our Body Politic. As you know, we’re new and creating the show with lots of input from listeners like you. So I want to ask you a small favor: after you listen today, please head over to Apple Podcasts on your phone, tablet, laptop--or anywhere you listen--and leave us a review. We read those because your ideas matter to us. Thanks so much.
This is Our Body Politic. I'm the creator and host, Farai Chideya. On Wednesday, the day Congress was supposed to certify the Electoral College victory for President-Elect Joe Biden, I decided to go interview protesters near the White House. Thousands of people had come from around the country for a series of rallies to support president Trump's unfounded claims that he had won the election. Jay came from Massachusetts, he's Black and he's 26 years old.
Jay:
I just feel, from my personal perspective, that the media has portrayed him to be this disgusting, misogynistic, racist bigot and I just don't see it. You know what I mean? I don't like to be taken advantage of in that way. And that's why I came out to support him just from that simple fact alone.
Chideya:
I saw peaceful protesters, but later that afternoon, White nationalists and other Trump supporters, invaded the Capitol buildings and a woman was shot dead. The nation was left shaken, but the vote was eventually certified in the wee hours of the morning on Thursday. Before that, the country had been riveted by the Senate runoff elections in Georgia, where two Democrats won, tipping the balance of power in Washington. We'll start with Errin Haines, our political contributor, whose invaluable insights have helped shape Our Body Politic. And I'm thrilled to introduce you to Tiffany Jeffers, our new legal analyst. She's an associate professor at Georgetown Law in Washington DC. She'll come in regularly to talk all things legal and constitutional with me.
Chideya:
Welcome Tiffany.
Tiffany Jeffers:
Hi Farai.
Chideya:
Hi Errin.
Errin Haines:
Hi Farai.
Chideya:
So it is a majestic moment that we get to do this as a trifecta, and I'm so thrilled that you're with us Tiffany. Recently, you know, the president asked the Georgia secretary of state to find him 11,000 more votes, what is the law behind a president asking a secretary of state to find votes?
Jeffers:
So there's a federal statute and state law in Georgia that Donald Trump has violated with this phone call. You can't manipulate American elections. That's a federal crime. Solicitation of Georgian elected officials is a crime in that particular state. And so, proving that the act of the ask occurred, the solicitation, is broken down into two different components. You need to prove that the action, the solicitation itself, existed, but you also have to prove the intent and knowledge behind it. And this is under the state statute. And that's the difficulty in any dealings with Donald Trump. Because the way he uses words is clever. So he's making a case for relying on his belief. And if it's proven that he's relied on this belief, regardless of whether that belief is substantiated or not, then the state is failing to prove intent. And so that's the difficulty in a prosecution of Trump for this particular recording. It's so hard to legally nail him down because he talks in circular phonics and a lot of, I don't know, maybes, whatever, I thought, those types of words don't pin someone down, don't solidify, don't tie his actions, and don't ground him in any illegality. And that's what is going to make this case difficult. Proving intent and knowledge.
Chideya:
Yeah. Because this is front of mind at the moment, I want to go over the responses, so far, to what we can only call a domestic terrorist attack on the Capitol by Trump supporters. It wasn't a rally, it was coordinated. Representative Cori Bush tweeted that her first resolution in Congress would be to call for the expulsion of Republican Congress members who incited the attack. Errin, is that even possible, and is it appropriate for her to be asking that?
Haines:
Well, I think that in the wake of the insurrection that we saw, it is appropriate to talk about how we got here and who was responsible, or who encouraged what we saw. And so, I think that part of that, is for the members of Congress who frankly were among the most directly impacted by an attempted breach of our democracy, for her to be asking those questions, I think is certainly what the people who elected her to that office would probably be expecting of her in this moment. For folks who are concerned about the rhetoric and the atmosphere that has been fueled by the outgoing president and what that did to contribute to the events of January sixth, but also those supporters of the president in Congress who may have also abetted this behavior and this interaction. I think these are questions that we should all be asking.
Chideya:
Tiffany, let's widen the frame a little bit. When you look at the incredible events of the past week and all of the different legal and ethical questions they raise about the state of American democracy, how does the long shadow of race and, frankly, white supremacy, play into how the law is constructed to deal with these challenging moments?
Jeffers:
This is a really important question Farai. I think it's important to discuss the lens through which the law has been framed because our democratic system is built on white supremacy and property ownership, and often when we talk about the law, we don't bring that up. Without that framework, we're not providing context for how the law is meant to function. So when you think about people not being convicted of crimes, “white-collar” are not being penalized for crimes that seemingly don't hurt anyone. It's because we're protecting whiteness and we're practicing property as is institutionalized in our very foundation in the law. In addition to how the law was framed, we have to think about the lens of who is enacting the law, what's the purview? What's the life experience of the people who are executing the laws as they stand?
If that lens is coming only through whiteness, then you're thinking about Black Lives Matter protesters that are damaging property based on a history of systematic oppression and murder, but you're only seeing them, the law is only seeing them through the lens of dangerous, violent property destroyers versus the insurgents that scorched the Capitol Building. They're seen as protestors who are protecting whiteness. They're seen as protestors who are protecting “voting rights”, but remember, what is the foundation of voting rights? White male property owners.
So when you don't frame the law properly, and when you don't give meaning and context to the lens through which the law is being implemented, you're doing an injustice, and the law will never be implemented fairly. You'll never see justice being effectuated because you're not being honest. You're not being true.
Chideya:
You’ve got these Senate elections, and the Democrats took the day.
Haines:
Yeah I mean it’s huge. I think that this is obviously a testament to the many Black women organizers across the state who mobilized and galvanized and energized Black voters, particularly in the midst of raging coronavirus and voter suppression across the state and really expanded the electorate ton include people who have not felt not seen or heard previously in our democracy.
Chideya:
Wednesday afternoon, I went into Downtown Washington DC to talk to people congregating there. Now this was a very peaceful protest. When I talk about domestic terrorism, which, I will claim that NPR is using insurrection, you're using insurrection. I think that there's many different aspects, but I went to a peaceful protest of supporters of the president, closer to the White House. This was before anyone stormed the Capitol. And I spoke with several people and also Tara from Detroit. Let's hear a little from her.
Tara:
I don't travel, I don't take vacations, I don't do anything, but I had to come out for this because we have to fight for our freedom, and we have to really really get rid of Biden. Orangeman is not bad. He's good. He's good for us. He's good for America.
Chideya:
Tara appeared to be White and was really generous with her time, but she is not going to get on a page, I doubt, with a Biden presidency. And I don't know that many people I spoke to, no matter how nice they were, would. What does that mean for the incoming Biden/Harris administration, that there are people who will likely continue to stand up strongly for the president, whether it's peacefully or violently?
Haines:
You know Farai, Joe Biden is somebody who ran for president saying that he was in a battle for the soul of America, and that he wanted to unite the country, and that he wanted to be a president for everybody, including the people who did not vote for him. I think that both people, like Tara and also people like the insurgents that you saw at the Capitol, do not seem to be particularly interested in uniting, and they certainly aren't interested in recognizing Joe Biden as the next president of the United States. But I really think that the bigger question here is, what this means for our democracy, not just what it means for the incoming Biden and Harris administration. One of our greatest strengths as a nation has been the willingness of our democractic society to recognize that fundamental requirement to accept the results of elections. There is a critical mass of Americans who believe, as the president believes , that the election was rigged, are reluctant or refusing to accept Joe Biden and Kamala Harris as president and vice president. That does not bode well for either their tenure or the future of our fragile democracy.
Chideya:
The way i'd like the wrap this up is that, first Errin and then Tiffany, if what lies ahead is a continuing racial reckoning within a larger political reckoning, what might we be looking for, as citizens or residents of the US, or people in the world, as we look at how the US handles this moment?
Haines:
I think that certainly Joe Biden has said that systemic racism is one of the four crises that he believes that he and Kamala Harris will confront when they take office. And certainly one of the main places that Black voters and civil rights advocates are expecting them to confront that will be through a justice department.
Jeffers:
Looking ahead, we should be looking primarily to protecting voting rights across this nation, ensuring that all citizens have the right to vote, in unobstructed ways, in every single election, is going to be the only way we can continue to make progress.
Chideya:
Lots of food for thought. Thank you so much, Tiffany.
Jeffers:
Thanks Farai.
Chideya:
And thank you, Errin.
Haines:
Thank you. See you next time.
Chideya:
Errin Haines is editor-at-large at The 19th, a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom reporting at the intersection of gender, politics and policy. And Tiffany Jeffers is associate professor of law and legal practice at Georgetown Law. So great having you on. Thanks.
Coming up next...
Nathalie Molina Niño:
Less than 2% of all money worldwide is managed by women or people of color.
Chideya:
You're listening to Our Body Politic.
Nathalie Molina Niño is a one woman force for business innovation and justice. She's the daughter of South American immigrants, and she rose in the tech industry, then took on behind the scenes roles in politics. She's a technology expert and coder by training, and has worked on everything, from socially responsible investing to higher education, and now she's got a big idea for making finance more inclusive. Nathalie, it's great to have you on.
Molina Niño:
It's amazing to be here.
Chideya:
Why don't you just set the stage for us? And I want to know a little bit more about how you got into both business and politics. What was it that attracted you, maybe even as a child, to understanding these systems?
Molina Niño:
Well, the political awakening is definitely most recent. I come from a family of immigrants. My parents moved here from Columbia and Ecuador, respectively, worked in the sweatshops of Los Angeles, and then my father ended up starting his own factory. My mum, in order to make sure that my dad's entrepreneurial adventures, which, as all entrepreneurs and especially... Yeah, I would say immigrant entrepreneurs without safety nets, it's a risky proposition, and so, my mother ended up getting a union job, actually at a supermarket in Los Angeles so that we could have health insurance, so that we could have reliable safety nets. And it was that experience that led me to understand what it was to be an entrepreneur and frankly not know anything else. And when I was 20, I ended up starting my first .com.
Chideya:
So why did you pivot out of the technology industry? If I understand correctly, you're now off to other adventures, which you may or may not be able to talk about yet, but you've got pots on all over the oven, pots all over the stove top, but pivoting in new directions.
Molina Niño:
In my mind, I was taking a sabbatical. Everyone expected me to go away for a year and come back, but, in the back of my mind, I knew I wasn't coming back. So I expected to take a couple of years off. I went to Columbia. I both went back to school, but then I also started the Center for Women Entrepreneurs within Barnard. So my first pivot was just that. It was, "Let me leave tech and focus on paying it forward," and hoping that I can give a leg up to the next generation and make things hopefully a little bit easier for them than it was for me. And then while I was in New York and while I was in that world, it became really clear to me that all...
Molina Niño:
While education is important and all the education in the world will make a difference in the lives of many, the fact is, if we're really honest about what's at the root of the issue, and what's holding women, especially women of color, back, it's money. And so, after a few years of that, I became an investor. And that was about in 2016. And that's where I am now. I'm a full-time investor, and I'm constantly thinking of ways to give women, especially women of color and communities of color, an unfair advantage.
Chideya:
Yeah. Tell me why you deliberately chose the word unfair advantage.
Molina Niño:
We lost Ruth Bader Ginsburg last year, and I would say, when I say unfair advantage, I'm referring to the exact same logic that Ruth Bader Ginsburg was using when she was asked, "When will women chief justices be enough?" And she said, "Nine," right? We've had hundreds of years of all male chief justices. It's fine for there to be an all female group of justices. And I'm feeling the same way, right? We have, systemically, and we continue, right? People are obsessed with the history of unfairness and injustice from a financial standpoint in this country. They have to understand, right? And even the ones that don't pay attention, you have to understand that if you think redlining was unfair, how do you feel about over $500 billion being released to, quote unquote, small businesses in the last year, and 90% of that money not going to people of color, right? So redlining is happening right now. It's not a historical thing.
Chideya:
I have written about this and in my neighborhood, in Crown Heights, I actually ended up lending money, which I got back, to a Black small business owner because she had no way to get these loans. So it became very personal for me. And if she'd never paid me back, it still would have been fine, not fine for me, but not fine for the system.
Molina Niño:
Not okay.
Chideya:
No.
Molina Niño:
Not okay. Especially when you think about the fact that women are starting more businesses than men in this country, about twice the rate, and of those, 8.9 out of 10 of them, are women of color. So really, there were over $500 billion deployed into small businesses, and if you don't care at all about the community, and all you care about is just the math, then you should have focused on directing the majority of that money towards women of color owned businesses. And that's the opposite of what happened. And so, the amount of correction that will have to happen, right? The same way that someone might say, "Giving a woman a preference in becoming a chief justice, might feel unfair."
That is a correction that is well overdue and the kind of financial platforms and strategies and policies that I want to see put in place, that are needed in order to correct hundreds of years of injustice. Some people might perceive as unfair as well, but it's not even close to what's needed in order to truly level the playing field. We have so much work to do. It's not going to be done in my lifetime, or even in anybody who's currently alive this lifetime.
Chideya:
Where is the inflection point that you are most dedicated to right now? Because you're playing in very different lanes, politics, investing, entrepreneurship. If you had to pick the inflection point that you find most useful and most high impact, what would it be?
Molina Niño:
It's what my next company is going to be, and honestly, it's where I want to focus the rest of my life. And that is, we... and we rightfully should, worry about who is in elected office. And we worry about heads of state. And we worry about things that make headlines, right? Like the fact that very few women get venture capital, right? And if we look at women of color, women of color get less than 1% of all venture capital. There is no freaking way that, the single most entrepreneurial group and demographic in this country, has less than 1% of the good ideas, right? So it makes absolutely no mathematical sense. But if we look to more of a macro perspective and we look at all money, worldwide, less than 2% of all money worldwide is managed by women or people of color, right? People of color who represent over 70% of the global [inaudible 00:19:34] population have a say on how less than 1%... Excuse me... less than 2% of all money is distributed in the world.
And so, I want to step back from the details, and I want to think macro level. If I look at someone like Larry Fink at the helm of BlackRock, managing over $7 trillion, this is not someone who was elected, and this is arguably one of the most powerful people in the world. And I think about, for example, in the United States, if just African-Americans and Latinos channeled their economic power, it would be a $3.9 trillion economy, it would be the fourth largest economy in the world, if all we did is shop from each other, loan to each other, for either way you did to that small business, and actually transact with each other. We could harness the fourth largest economy in the world.
And so that's my focus. My focus is how do we build the Black indigenous people of color owned version of BlackRock? How do we make sure that, in addition to civil rights, and voting rights, and all of the other things that are really important, that we also focus on ownership? We need to own the hospitals, we need to own the insurance companies, we need to own the banks. Our communities need to be in positions of ownership, and we need something like a competitor to a BlackRock that has majority people of color owned.
Chideya:
Well, I can't tell you how excited I am to hear that that's your next venture, and I hope you'll come back, once it launches, to talk to us. Thank you, Nathalie.
Molina Niño:
Thank you. Anytime.
Chideya:
Nathalie Molina Niño is president of O3, a private investment company. The name stands for Outcomes Over Optics. Coming up later this hour...
Ruth Umoh:
There's public declaration, whether it's diversifying one's workforce or invested in Black-owned businesses. It really influences and forces companies to become deliberate, thoughtful, and strategic in how they're ramping up those diversity numbers.
Chideya:
Each week, we bring you the latest news on the pandemic and how people of color are fighting for survival. COVID-19 has now killed over 350,000 Americans, with over 21 million infected so far. More than 130,000 people are hospitalized with COVID, and the number keeps rising.
Robert Redfield:
December, and January, and February are going to be rough times. I actually believe they're going to be the most difficult time in the public health history of this nation.
Chideya:
That was CDC Director, Robert Redfield, during a live stream presentation, hosted by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation, last month. Meanwhile, there's a new variant of the virus that spreads more easily from person to person. It doesn't seem to be making people sicker, but experts worry it could make our infection rate much worse. The vaccines Americans started getting last month should work on the new variant. And in the coming weeks, we'll talk about the new administration's plans, to ramp up vaccinations, with the women of color in charge of it across the country. I also want to take stock of the economic impacts of the pandemic. According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, one in five Latino adults said their households sometimes or often, did not have enough food to eat. That number was nearly one in four, for Black adults. 25 million people are unemployed or live with someone who lost their job.
Most of the jobs lost have been low wage and people of color have suffered the worst unemployment. One in five renters are not caught up on rent during the pandemic. Half of Black and Latino adults say they have trouble covering household expenses. After months of gridlock, Congress finally passed a new stimulus bill in late December. It provides enhanced unemployment benefits, $600 stimulus checks for most Americans, and money for small businesses. It also extends the federal moratorium on evictions. But safety nuts have holes. Not everyone is protected under the eviction moratorium and some landlords and housing court judges still allow evictions despite the ban. Louisiana man, Ferzell Shepard, told WAFB 9 News that his family has been living in a motel since he lost his job as a cook and they were evicted.
Ferzell Shepard:
I told my landlord that was my situation, and so, she still processed, to do the eviction. I just need a job.
Chideya:
The current eviction ban expires at the end of January. Lastly, we've talked on the show about how people of color are more likely to get sick from COVID because more do essential work and also don't have access to preventative measures. But there are disparities in treatment too. Research has shown that African-Americans are systematically undertreated for pain, for example, and doctors have been less likely to refer Black patients for coronavirus testing and treatment. Dr. Susan Moore recorded a Facebook video from her hospital bed in Indiana, where she said she received subpar treatment for COVID-19 infection because she was Black, even despite the fact that she was a physician herself.
Dr. Susan Moore:
This is how Black people get killed, when you send them home, and they don't know how to fight for themselves.
Chideya:
Dr. Moore died on December 20th. In next week's update, we're going to get into the long-term health effects of COVID on our bodies and on our minds.
Now it's time for Show Me the Money, our regular business segment with Our Body Politic contributor and business reporter, Ruth Umoh. Welcome Ruth.
Umoh:
Happy to be back. Happy new year.
Chideya:
Yeah. Happy new year. So we've talked about these pledges that corporations made for racial equity, particularly after George Floyd was killed. And you talked about the money put on the table. Can you give us an update on that? And also just what the pledges are adding up to.
Umoh:
We've seen over the last year, countless companies from those in the tech sector to those in the financial services sector, pledge and commit multi-billion dollar packages toward addressing racial inequity. And I believe the number has now totaled more than $35 billion in just the last six months of 2020. Some companies like SoftBank, for instance, are creating funds to invest in Black-owned businesses, in Black-led banks and financial institutions that service Black communities. What's interesting is that these pledges are far more comprehensive than any commitment we've seen from corporate America in the last decade. But we're seeing them create far more tangible strategies this time around, that address a host of issues that we haven't seen before, such as racial disparities in healthcare, job training, career re-skilling, and up-skilling for individuals in underserved areas. They're looking at operating support in investments for affordable housing and neighborhood revitalization. And the list goes on. We simply, weren't seeing this in years past, and so it's certainly a sight to see going forward.
Chideya:
Yeah. I mean, one thing that I'm curious about is who is tracking these? Is there any kind of common tracking mechanism or is it up to individual reporters to keep track of whether these efforts continue?
Umoh:
I think it's really up to individual reporters or the media watchdog to really stay abreast of whether companies are enacting these pledges and these promises. But I think that accountability is really key and the Black Lives Matter resurgence last summer, forced corporations to make these promises publicly and also to publicly earmark where those dollars are going exactly. It will be very difficult for them to retreat from such public statements. Some of them publicize concrete diversity goals. And so, it's much easier for the public, whether that's their employees, consumers, or even lawmakers, to say, "Well, this is what you said you were going to do in 2020. What metrics do you have to show for it?" And as we saw with Adidas, when it launched a campaign in support of Black Lives Matter, employees are increasingly speaking out to highlight the hypocrisy between what the company is doing internally and what it's promulgating externally.
Chideya:
You've also stated another approach where corporations index how they contribute, based on what they earn, or what cash they have on hand, tell us about Yelp and Netflix.
Umoh:
Yeah. So Yelp recently announced that it will deposit $10 million into financial institutions that support Black and underserved communities in the United States. That money is going to be divided among three financial institutions that are Black-led and Black-serving. And it'll really support their ability to launch and promote things like affordable housing initiatives, offer Black small business owners loans. But as you noted, Yelp, isn't an anomaly, Netflix is the one that really kicked this off in mid 2020. They promised to shift 2% of their cash pile, representing around $100 million, into financial institutions and organizations that service Black communities. Robert F. Smith, the private equity billionaire has also pushed for more large corporations and big banks to do the same, and so we're seeing some momentum there.
Chideya:
Let's go to the workforce question. What are we seeing there?
Umoh:
Yeah. So as it pertains to the workforce, I mean, diversifying one's workforce is just the start, but one thing that I would caution that companies do, is to first define what they mean by diversity. Too often, we see companies say, "Okay, we really want to promote diversity and inclusion internally," and by and large, it benefits heterosexual, cisgender White women. So they have to create specific targets by gender, by race and ethnicity, and then also splice these numbers by ranking. Because again, you often see an influx of diverse entry-level hires in order to juice those numbers up quickly, but you don't see much diversity at the top of an organization, and that's where real change takes place.
Chideya:
All right, Ruth. Thanks so much.
Umoh:
Thank you.
Chideya:
Ruth Umoh is the new editor-in-chief of The Filament, a publication geared towards diversity and inclusion professionals in tech.
Coming up next...
Carla Murphy:
The thing that I really like is that it's all becoming more public, and the more these conversations become public, I think that it gives journalists confidence to keep talking and to advocate for themselves and for each other. And I think, some of the solutions require collective organizing and, not just journalists of color, it requires all journalists to come together and advocate, collectively, for structural reforms in this industry.
Chideya:
You're listening to Our Body Politic. I've been a journalist for slightly more than three decades, scary to admit, and I've had the most amazing adventures. I've been to 49 US States and 30 countries, and been underpaid and faced harassment of several types. I built this show with a team of women of color. We treat each other with respect and we get to do our best work. A lot of the time, what sisters in journalism share stays very hush for obvious reasons, but Carla Murphy has been working on describing the experiences of journalists of color in this complicated industry and bringing that wisdom into the open. Murphy is a former journalist whose work has appeared in The New York Times, The Nation and The Daily Beast. She now devotes her time to journalism reform and published Leavers, a survey of about 100 journalists of color, who left their careers in media, about what led them to their breaking point. Welcome, Carla.
Murphy:
Hey Farai. It's nice to be here.
Chideya:
I have really been so impressed with your consistent attention to media in so many different ways. And before we really dig into the big picture, tell us a little bit about yourself, what your journey has taken you through, and what's inspiring to you, including your own work.
Murphy:
Sure. Thanks. So I think the most important thing for me about my bio is probably what doesn't appear there. So I'm an immigrant from Barbados in the Caribbean. I came to United States when I was nine. I live in New York city now. Grew up here. In terms of journalism, I came very late to journalism. I started journalism in my late twenties. I've spent most of my career, I would say, in progressive spaces, writing for community papers, but I was always very focused on low-income communities, covering communities of color, and covering news for them, not just about them.
Chideya:
So you said recently that you couldn't imagine, even a few months ago, there being a real newsroom revolt around unequal pay and mistreatment of journalists of color. So what has changed, because a lot is going on, and what are we seeing today?
Murphy:
I would say the most important thing that's changed is the social movements and how the various social movements have affected how journalists see themselves as workers. And when I say the various social movements, I mean Me Too, I mean Black Lives Matter, I mean Occupy Wall Street. All of those, together, I think are the perfect storm. I think that a lot of what's happening and why there is a reckoning in journalism, comes from what communities outside of us are doing.
Chideya:
What you're saying, reminds me of a former student of mine, because I taught journalism for four years, who is a reporter today. And she came to the US as an undocumented immigrant from Latin America when she was quite young. And she talks about how her family has become more financially secure over time and gotten immigration papers, et cetera. But that, so many of her colleagues don't even pay their own rent. Their families are subsidizing their entire life as journalists. The money side of journalism is pretty bad for the most part, except for some people at the very highest echelons, and how does that affect race, and gender, and media?
Murphy:
So let me start by saying this, I am a visiting fellow at Boston College and I'm so grateful to be there. I'm teaching a class about class, in journalism, in the coverage, but also within the industry. But one of the reasons I'm teaching that class is because when I first started in journalism, and I was at a well-known publication in New York city, a magazine. And I remember working with one of the interns at that time who had come in, and during the course of this conversation, I realized that my fellow intern, her father was a huge Hollywood producer. And it's something that I found that journalism does not discuss openly, a lot of the steps that I needed to take in journalism. You need to be subsidized by either your family or you need to be subsidized by your spouse. These internships were often, definitely during my time, they were unpaid. And even if they were paid, they were poorly paid.
Chideya:
And this leads me on to a Latinx food critic at the LA Times, shared her story about what she describes as a Grand Canyon sized gap between herself and her White male counterpart for the same work. So have you been tracking all this and what do you make about what it says about journalism?
Murphy:
The thing that I really like is that it's all becoming more public. The more these conversations become public, I think that it gives journalists confidence to keep talking and to advocate for themselves and for each other. And I think, some of the solutions require collective organizing, and not just journalists of color, it requires all journalists to come together and advocate collectively for structural reforms in this industry. To get to that change, and to immediately help journalists of color, you have to find community. You have to find people who see you, and who believe in your work, and the voice, and the perspective that you bring to journalism. And I think that individual journalists of color need to find the place where they feel cared for.
Because one of the things I found in my survey, one of the findings was definitely about burnout, stress, mental health. We can't hope to help them if our own mental health and stress... if we're breaking down, ourselves. So that's the first thing. I think the second thing after that is getting organized. Find people who have a similar vision of you for journalism, who have the same interest in organizing for a living wage, and work towards that together.
Chideya:
What really comes to mind for me, as you're talking about what journalists can do, is also just this larger question of why does this even matter? You and I know why it matters, but for someone who is like, "I don't care who reports my news," or, "The best people will rise to the top," how do you even explain to people who may not have any buy-in to these questions, why it matters?
Murphy:
You know what? I've found, when I'm on the street talking to people, they get why it matters that I'm supposed to be the newsroom. Actually, they're the ones who are telling me why I need to be in the newsroom, because they have been so jaded. They get why it's very important to have people who look like them in the newsroom, telling the news and informing the public.
Chideya:
Perfect place to end, Carla. Thank you so much.
Murphy:
Thanks Farai. I enjoyed it.
Chideya:
Carla Murphy survey is called Leavers. You can find a link to it on her Twitter profile, @carlamurphy.
Every week, I ask listeners to participate in the show by calling into our speak line. Last month, we asked you, "How were you coping with the pandemic?" Here's what some of our listeners called into share especially after I said, "Ice cream was my pandemic love affair."
Brittany Frankie:
Hey there, this is Brittany Frankie. I am 32 years old from Placerville, California, and I do love ice cream as well, running is a wonderful outlet, can just get out in nature, just gets your body moving...
Nate:
Hi, I'm Nate from Los Angeles and I have been coping with the pandemic through music. Since March, I have purchased a banjo, an accordion, a second harmonica, and I've just been playing piano, guitar, and everything else under the sun, and it is very therapeutic.
Chideya:
Thanks to all the listeners who called in. I'm now adding a yoga coach in four mile daily walks to balance out all that ice cream. And in any case this month, we're asking you a new question. We're inviting you to put yourselves in the White House. We'd like to know if this was your first day in office, what would be your top priority and why? I think the first thing I do is put a blanket under the desk, in the Oval Office, for when I needed a nap, because I know, I would be working 24/7. If you'd like to leave us a message called (929) 353-7006, that's (929) 353-7006, to leave us a voicemail, or go to ourbodypolitic.show, yes.show, and scroll down to find a Google form to respond in writing.
Chideya:
We're going to bring back our brilliant futurist contributors to talk about another topic you weighed in on, as part of the Speak Platform. Sharon Chang is the founder and creative director of the Guild Of Future Architects. Hey Sharon.
Sharon Chang:
Hi Farai.
Chideya:
And Kamal Sinclair is the executive director. Welcome back Kamal.
Kamal Sinclair:
Hello Farai. Happy new year.
Chideya:
Yes. Happy new year. And we have plans for the present and the future. And so we asked our listeners last month, as the holidays approached, the question that you had given us, "How would your day be different if you spent as much time on community, family, creativity and wellness, as you do on working?" Why is this question important? I want both of you to answer. Sharon, why don't you start?
Chang:
This question is important to me because of the way I look at how we define work. We look at work as distinct as a matter of survival, and we get into the framing of, "Okay, if you're lucky enough to find a job that also is your passion, good for you," but most people just have to do the job and have a hobby, and then in their spare time, go take care of all these other things that are actually essentially really important to one's wellbeing and to community, right? To the health of our entire world. So until the day we can really start to think about and really question, "How do we even come to this definition of work?" and start to integrate the idea of work and life, in a way that we haven't been able to do since the industrial age. And I find this question fascinating because it allows us the opportunity to really start to fundamentally question why we even follow this kind of mental model.
Chideya:
Yeah. Kamal, what about you? What is this calling up for you?
Sinclair:
Over the holidays, I got a chance to synthesize through all these Futures Writers' Rooms that we had run with people. And two themes came up pretty regularly. One was, do we really believe in the unique fingerprint of every person on this planet? Do we really believe that each person has something unique to contribute, that only they can contribute? And if that is true, why are we not designing our work and life systems to invest in that particular person so that they can unleash that potential for the betterment of everybody? And I think about this whole idea around how we're going to spend our time in the future, is very much tied to the shift from industrial age systems that are antiquated now, especially with the systems coming on board, that are supposed to supply an abundance of time, because of the future technologies like artificial intelligence.
If that's true, then what do we do? We can stop investing in human beings, just as cogs in the wheel of production, to investing in people from locking their human potential. And I think that human potential is not just tied to the particular service they do through their job, even though I think that should be very much tied to what their passion is and what they can contribute, but also how they are serving, in terms of community, in terms of family life, in terms of their relationship with nature, and in terms of making a meaningful life lived.
Chideya:
And so what are the barriers that women of color face? One of the things that I think about a lot was that my mum got a master's degree and then due to factors, including, I think straight up, race and gender discrimination, wasn't able to continue in her field of choice, which was journalism. And right now, we're seeing a huge crush of women who feel that it's impossible to make the right choice, in terms of working, finding childcare, during a pandemic. Kamal, maybe you can elaborate a little bit on how some of the futures you're looking at, might deal with what is this current crunch, and make it obsolete.
Sinclair:
I think that this goes to why we need to design economic system that is investing in the metric of success and human potential unleashed, rather than in just something like a GDP that is returning value to... in terms of corporate or capitalistic terms. And I think that, oftentimes, those two things are seen as binary. A lot of people think that, "Oh, that's a giveaway," or, "This is kind of a welfare state idea." But what I think that we're missing is if designed right, it actually becomes a shared prosperity in a way that we've not seen because we've never invested in people in this way. And I think women of color, you've seen the incredible potentials that have come out from.... I'm thinking about Stacey Abrams and what's happening right now with Kamala Harris in the political realm. Imagine if those kinds of potentials are unleashed on a much wider scale than just the kind of outliers that we're seeing now.
Chideya:
Sharon, I'm a big fan of reading research papers and pushing the limits of my understanding, and I got into a phase of looking at behavioral economics and how human beings may not always want shared prosperity. There's some evidence that we want advantage over equality. How do you factor that into how you look at your shared futures?
Chang:
There's a lot we don't know. And if we don't start to cultivate our instinct, the innate multiple modalities of knowing, that would take us through a very different place, which is, transitioning from the compulsion to categorize. But what about things that are beyond that? So I believe there really is a different model that's based more relational construct, understanding our relationship with living and non-living systems. Once we start to discover our relationships with those things, I think it opens up a very different kind of awakening. It's not shared prosperity versus competitive advantage. All of those things can be true at the same time.
Chideya:
Yeah. I'm going to end actually with retirement because one of the little twist was... The question again was, "How would your day be different if you spend as much time on community, family, creativity and wellness, as you do on working?" But one thing we got was a few people saying, "Well, I'm retired. So I don't have to spend my time working." Kamal, it raises the question of, does our society ask people to wait, to choose what to do with their time until they are retired, and does there need to be a rebalancing there?
Sinclair:
I absolutely think so. We tend to miss a lot of value, even from this fact that someone can go from being at work in a traditional sense of work, that's something that earns you money, to spending time in community and having a different relationship, and then bring that knowledge back into their work life. We miss a lot of... even the ways in which those things create value. And I think when it comes to retirement, if we identify work as, "I work myself to death, until I get to a point where I can just relax the rest of my life," versus a modality of, "From the beginning of my work life, all the way through to the end of my life, I have a relationship of making meaning, I have a relationship of learning, I have a relationship with my community that's supported by this ecosystem of resource generation that work does," I think that's a really exciting prospect.
Chideya:
And Sharon, I'm going to let you give us any further thoughts on whether and how retirement comes up in the work of the Guild.
Chang:
I think we need to abolish that term altogether. It's so incremental and everything is predefined and labeled for us when life really should be just a continuous spectrum of beauty. Because I think the very question of, "Am I doing the right thing? Am I in the right place now?" is what really limits everybody's potential.
Chideya:
Well, to our potential and to achieving it. Sharon, Kamal, thank you so much.
Chang:
Thank you.
Sinclair:
Thank you Farai.
Chideya:
That was Sharon Chang and Kamal Sinclair of the Guild of Future Architects.
Thank you so much for joining us on Our Body Politic. We're on the air each week and everywhere you listen to podcast. Our Body Politic is presented and syndicated by KCRW, KPCC and KQED. It's produced by Lantigua Williams & Co. I'm the creator and host, Farai Chideya. Juleyka Lantigua-Williams is executive producer. Paulina Velasco is senior producer. Cedric Wilson is lead producer and mixed this episode. Original music by Kojin Tashiro. Our producer is Priscilla Alibi. Michelle Baker and Emily Daly are assistant producers. Production assistants from Mark Betancourt, Michael Castaneda, Sarah McClure and Virginia Lora.
Funder credit:
Funding for Our Body Politic is provided by Craig Newmark Philanthropies and by the Jonathan Logan Family Foundation: Empowering world changing work.
Chideya, Farai, host. “The Power of Investing in Women Entrepreneurs, and a New Way to Grasp the Meaning of Work.” Our Body Politic, Diaspora Farms LLC. January 8, 2021. https://our-body-politic.simplecast.com/