This week, Farai is joined by Washington Post investigative journalists and co-authors, Robert Samuels and Toluse Olorunnipa to talk about their new biography His Name is George Floyd and why they chose to document George Floyd’s life, legacy, aspirations and the systematic marginalization that derailed him from the American dream. Then Farai interviews writer and visual artist, K. Ibura about her debut youth novel, When the World Turned Upside Down, that explores overcoming adversity with the help of community during racial reckonings and COVID. And on the weekly segment Sippin’ the Political Tea, Breya Johnson of the Black Women’s Health Imperative joins Farai to discuss the fallout of the Supreme Court decision on abortion rights and what it means for all women and birthing people.
Farai Chideya:
Hi, folks. We are so glad that you're listening to Our Body Politic. If you have time, please consider leaving us a review on Apple Podcast. It helps other listeners find us, and we read them for your feedback. We're here for you, with you, and because of you. Thank you.
Farai Chideya:
This is Our Body Politic. I'm Farai Chideya. George Floyd's death at the hands of a white Minneapolis police officer was a flashpoint for the struggle for racial justice in America. Of course, later ruled a murder. It sparked nationwide protest, demands for change. And in the two years since then, there has been a lot more talk about police reform and systemic racism, but not as much about George Floyd himself. In their new biography, His Name Is George Floyd: One Man's Life and the Struggle for Racial Justice, Washington Post reporters, Robert Samuels, and Toluse Olorunnipa, look back at the life of George Floyd and how the systems he faced shaped both his and his family's fate, and of course, how his story shaped the world. I talked to the authors to learn more. So Robert, welcome.
Robert Samuels:
Thank you for having me.
Farai Chideya:
And Toluse, welcome.
Toluse Olorunnipa:
Thanks so much. It's great to talk to you.
Farai Chideya:
So I was really impressed with the warmth of this book. And in the acknowledgements at the end of the book, you start out by thanking the family members who answered all the tough questions to help you write the book. Let me ask both of you this: how do you ask the right questions of people who are grieving, in this specific case, people who were grieving the death of a man who was killed in plain sight, and who was a loved one of theirs, and who the world created a whole story about which may or may not have been the story of the man that they actually knew? How did you come up with the right questions? Starting with you, Robert.
Robert Samuels:
Before we even spoke to them, I had to have a pretty serious conversation with myself and the people who were working on the project. Originally, it was a project that started at the Washington Post. And the first idea that we had was how can we move from a spot where I'm working as an interviewer to a spot in which I'm joining them and helping them tell a story that they felt would be valuable to the public. I had resolved that I would not ask them about the video because I knew the entire world had asked them about that. And then I started to tell them, "We really want to understand George Floyd. We want the world to see him in the way you saw him."
Farai Chideya:
Yeah. And Toluse, how did you make those choices about what to ask under the circumstances?
Toluse Olorunnipa:
Well, it was also important to me to allow George Floyd's loved ones to talk about him in his moments when he was alive, not in his moments as he was dying. It was important for me to ask them to tell us stories about what he was like as a person, his humanity. For so many millions of people who got to see him in his final moments, that was just a snapshot of seeing one person in their worst, final minutes of their life. And George Floyd was so much more than that. So we wanted to hear stories. And that was one of the things that allowed a number of his loved ones to open up and to even openly grieve, but also have some laughs as they remembered the good times that they had, they remembered the humorous parts of his personality. And just allowing them to tell us those stories allowed us to get a sense of his soul.
Toluse Olorunnipa:
It was important for us to tell his loved ones that we were not just telling the story of police brutality, but we were telling a story of his experience navigating a number of different systems over the course of his life. And we knew that those systems were unfair from the housing system to the public school system, to the criminal justice system, and the healthcare system. And we wanted to show how all of those systems impacted him and impacted millions of other people like him.
Farai Chideya:
This work of yours comes out of a series; George Floyd's America that won both Polk and a Peabody. And so I was struck by the ways in which you pulled in an exploration of what his life was like with his friends and his dreams for himself. You bring in a lot of different pieces of the tapestry. So considering that this is coming out of an award-winning body of work that already had been recognized, what made you, Robert, starting with you, decide this really needs to be a book?
Robert Samuels:
Sometimes as a journalist there's more work to be done. And one of the things that became so clear to us as we were writing was that the series, while good, it did not allow readers to really see the fullness of George Floyd. And when we started to learn about him, his ambitions and his almost unceasing optimism that he could do something one day to touch the world, we knew that his character could help readers understand just the way so many systems interact and work with each other to hobble those dreams and ambitions. It gives readers a new sense of people who they might have dismissed or people who were told to dismiss. You know? George Floyd was a boy on the corner. And we thought that the book would be able to do that.
Farai Chideya:
And Toluse, you have this book in three parts. The first is Perry. And that's the name that George Floyd was called by his close family and friends. Maybe you can just describe who Perry was, where Perry came from.
Toluse Olorunnipa:
Perry was born in North Carolina in Fayetteville, the son of a hardworking mother and his father was a musician. His ancestors had worked in North Carolina for generations, hundreds of years, all the way back to the days of slavery. And he came up in a proud family, a proud family tradition of growing up in the South as part of a large black family. That family had worked hard, but was impoverished in part due to the racism of the past. And his ancestors had amassed some level of wealth, but had it stripped away in part due to racism at the beginning of the 20th century. And so he grew up sort of poor and knowing that any mistake could lead to having everything taken away. And despite that, he was a child who was described to us as happy, cheerful, a careful child, because he started to get large from a young age. And he knew that with his size, there would be some stereotypes put on him and some intimidation that some people would feel.
Toluse Olorunnipa:
So he would always go around telling people that he loved them. He would go around shaking people by the hand as he walked into a room just to put people at ease. He was a jokester. He was playful. He was someone who would try to take his friend's minds off of the hardships of growing up after he moved to Houston's Third Ward, where there was a lot of trouble and crime and poverty and all kinds of different issues. He would be the person to try to make people feel better in the midst of all of this. He would be the person trying to break up fights between people. And he was someone who had ambitions from a very young age.
Toluse Olorunnipa:
He wanted to be a Supreme Court Justice when he was eight years old. And we document in the book how a number of those dreams from wanting to go into law, to wanting to go into athletics, and wanting to go into music, those dreams were deferred and derailed. And he ended up running into roadblocks as a result of the various systems and the poverty that he was born into. But despite that, as Robert said, he was someone who had an unceasing optimism and always wanted to touch the world. He told his sister when he was 13 years old that he didn't want to rule the world or run the world, but he wanted to touch the world. He just wanted to have an impact. He wanted to be somebody who was known for spreading positivity.
Farai Chideya:
And either of you might be able to pick up on this. You mentioned his family's history dating back to slavery. I think a lot of people, to be honest, get really tired of slavery bingo, where like slavery shows up as an answer in all of these different occurrences. But the reality is it does. It was a pretty darn foundational institution which shaped everything in America. But sometimes, I think people are just getting tired of hearing slavery. In that context, how do we understand slavery, I'm going back as you can see, as part of his narrative?
Toluse Olorunnipa:
Well, it was incredibly important for us to write his story as an American story. His family is an American family that has worked and been on this country for more than two centuries. We saw that George Floyd's great, great grandfather was born enslaved. He received his freedom after the Civil War and worked really hard, despite being freed with nothing and no benefits that the land of opportunity provides to people. And he worked hard and he amassed 500 acres of land working with his large family. And we saw and we documented in this book how all of that land was stripped away from him and how he was unable to pass that wealth down to his descendants, which eventually included George Floyd.
Toluse Olorunnipa:
And what we did in this chapter of the book was we also documented how the family that owned George Floyd's ancestors were able to build great amounts of wealth and influence over the course of several generations, despite coming to this country, just as George Floyd's ancestors had, with nothing. They came voluntarily, of course, while George Floyd's came in slave ships. But they were able to amass generational wealth. They got here, the doors of opportunity were open to them. And decades later, generations later, they are businessmen, they are city counselors. They're people who are executives in this society, whereas George Floyd, even though he had an industrious ancestor, came into the world poor because of slavery and because of all of the racism and racial terror that happened after slavery, because that was also a big part of this country's history.
Toluse Olorunnipa:
So it was important for us to show that even though as many people say slavery happened a very long time ago, it continues to have reverberations even into the 21st century.
Robert Samuels:
And if I could add something to what Toluse had masterfully laid out, I actually get this slavery bingo question. It reminds me of an episode of black-ish that I was watching where Anthony Anderson's character is in the room and his CEO, the head of the company goes, "Oh, you're not going to bring that up again."
Robert Samuels:
But one thing that we experienced as reporters, and it really hit me, we understand that the country has moved on from slavery. We understand that it's sort of seen in black and white or sepia tones. But when we spoke with George Floyd's aunts and uncles, and they would tell us stories about the things that would happen to them and the exploitation they felt as sharecroppers, it opened my eyes to this other truth. Right? These were not people who are in their 80s and 90s who are talking about the exploitive actions that stripped wealth away from them even though they were working hard. They're people who are living active lives who are still working. And that, to me, when you get to see real live people of flesh and blood, who listen to the same music that we do, who voted in the same elections that we do, talk about the reverberations of that from times when they can remember, it has a completely different sort of impact.
Farai Chideya:
That's Washington Post investigative reporters, Robert Samuels, and Toluse Olorunnipa. They are the authors of the new biography, His Name Is George Floyd: One Man's Life and the Struggle for Racial Justice.
Farai Chideya:
Coming up next, we continue our conversation with the authors of His Name Is George Floyd, plus author K. Ibura on her debut novel for young readers, When the World Turned Upside Down. Plus, on Sippin' the Political Tea, we've got the latest on abortion law. That's on Our Body Politic.
Farai Chideya:
Welcome back to Our Body Politic. If you are just joining us, we've been talking to Robert Samuels and Toluse Olorunnipa, Washington Post reporters, and co-authors of the new biography, His Name Is George Floyd: One Man's Life and the Struggle for Racial Justice. For their book, the pair interviewed Floyd's family and friends on his impact on his community prior to his murder, the kindness that Floyd always shared, as well as lifelong struggles that he and his family faced living under systemic racism. Here's more of our conversation.
Farai Chideya:
Robert, I was really struck by the ways that you connected structural racial issues to George Floyd's story himself, but maybe give us a little piece of just when you had a click moment where something just clicked into focus; you were interviewing someone or you found a document or looked at some piece of coverage, and you said, "Ah, this fills in a puzzle piece."
Robert Samuels:
The first thing was when I learned about John Henryism, which is a sociological term that comes from a public health researcher named Sherman James, which talks about black people often having to work twice as hard as whites. And what one of the researchers said to me was that the black experience in this country is that everything piles up. And yes, this happens with white people and other people of color as well, but there was something so fundamental in believing that, "I need to do so much more. I need to do extra to make up for a mistake, to compensate for a stereotype or a prejudice," that lived with George Floyd. And that was one of the moments when I knew that if we could tell this story fully with all the context and nuance that we might be onto something that could speak to a lot of people.
Farai Chideya:
Yeah. Toluse, anything that just sort of sparked connections for you?
Toluse Olorunnipa:
Yeah. This is a great question. I mentioned in chapter five, which was titled, The State of Texas versus George Floyd. It's a chapter about George Floyd's experience in the criminal justice system in Texas. And one statistic that jumped out at me as I was documenting Floyd's time in prison and his experiences with the police was that between 1986 and 1999, young white Texans imprisoned for drug offenses, the number declined by 9%. And the similar number for young black people in Texas grew 360%. And this is despite the fact that a ton of studies show that blacks and whites possess and use drugs at the same rates. It was a clear example of the disproportionate use of force and punishment on black communities for the same thing being done in white communities. And we saw that in George Floyd's life. He was picked up over and over and over again, often for petty drug possession arrests.
Toluse Olorunnipa:
And it was clear from the people we talked to in the community that police officers were just going to George Floyd's neighborhood in Third Ward, Houston to pick people up, arrest them, sometimes on false charges. And another statistics that jumped out was that George Floyd was arrested, detained more than 20 times in his life. And at least six of the officers who detained him were later charged with misconduct, corruption, in some cases, false arrest. And you have to think about what it means for one person to interact with so many corrupt cops in the course of a lifetime. Some people never interact with any cops in the course of their lifetime in terms of being arrested. But George Floyd was arrested multiple times and often by officers who were charged with misconduct.
Toluse Olorunnipa:
And that speaks to the disproportionate use of punishment for people like George Floyd, people who society looks over and looks past and is so willing to lock up and throw away the key. Just seeing it in one person's life and seeing how it played out over the course of several years and the compounding effect of spending all this time in prison and having this relationship with the police, which was so fraught and so negative, that it made it more clear for me when I watched the video and I saw George Floyd so terrified when the police officer came up to him and so terrified about being put in handcuffs, it clicked. And it made sense to me why he would have that kind of reaction.
Robert Samuels:
And when we were going through the research, one of the experts that we talked to said, "Black people did not intentionally become addicts." We understand that white suburban people became accidental addicts when they began overusing prescription pills. But what was happening in George Floyd's community at that time, when they started mixing prescription drug like Codeine or Robitussin or Dimetapp with Sprite, it was the same thing. It was the idea of escapism. It was the idea of trying to find some way to deal with all the stresses in the neighborhood. And it was also something that they did not fully know would be addictive.
Robert Samuels:
And yet, when it came time for the federal government to put dollars toward research and science and treatment about the opioid crisis, they looked to the suburbs while another crisis was happening in George Floyd's community and communities like George Floyd's communities that they entirely ignored. The Public Health Department and the CDC and the National Institutes of Health, they all say this. And that was one of those moments that clicked again. It's like, so often we'd hear people say to us, "Why are you writing about George Floyd? He was a drug addict." He had a drug dependency, yes, in the same way that many people in the suburbs have a drug dependency. But the way he was treated and the way it's translated and the image of it is so different because he was a black person growing up in a poor neighborhood and not a white person growing up in a `
Farai Chideya:
So both of you are black men, and this book is many things, but it's also about humanizing a black man who lost his life in the most brutal of ways. I was struck that it in the acknowledgements, Robert, you thank your spiritual support network and, Toluse, you talk about how your last name means "God is powerful." You know? And what is the role of faith in each of your lives as you do the work of being a journalist, being a witness? Toluse?
Toluse Olorunnipa:
Personally, it was important in George Floyd's life, as we saw him wrestle with his faith. And that was something that I could connect with. He quoted from the Bible, his friends quoted from the Bible. For me, this is difficult and sometimes traumatic work to be a journalist, to bear witness to some of the parts of the underbelly of the American promise. And George Floyd had a hard life. He had a hard and heinous death. And for me, knowing that there's a higher power, knowing that there's something deeper to be committed to helps to get through some of that. And it powers my belief that there's a power for good that can be done through journalism, through bearing witness, through telling stories.
Toluse Olorunnipa:
But I think it helped me to be able to connect with some of George Floyd's struggles with his faith and his constant striving to do better and to be someone who was more committed and more faithful. That was key to what I was experiencing in reporting this story and in writing. I wanted to make sure that he was humanized and told with his flaws and told with his strengths as well, because I think that was key to who he was. He was a full 360 degree human being. And it was important for us to show all of that in writing about him.
Robert Samuels:
Having faith was so helpful in the process and in every reporting process because it reminds me that we should have faith in humanity, that we're all children of God. But as we were doing the reporting, I kept on thinking of this poem I loved in high school called Yet Do I Marvel by Countee Cullen. And in the poem, Cullen says he has no doubt that God is good, well meaning, and kind. And he ends by saying, "Yet do I marvel at this curious thing: To make a person black, and to bid him sing."
Robert Samuels:
And I think about how empowering it can be to use my voice as a reporter to help tell good stories and meaningful stories, that despite all I've seen, to exclaim the faith and the optimism and the hope that I see within people. And I also think about George Floyd and how even at the end of his life he still was using the power of sing. He was still saying, reaching out and saying, "I love you" to people. And that opportunity that we received is one that we took very seriously to show, that despite all the bad things that happened, black people in this country still sing.
Farai Chideya:
Thank you, Robert.
Robert Samuels:
Thank you for having me.
Farai Chideya:
Thank you, Toluse.
Toluse Olorunnipa:
Thanks so much, Farai.
Farai Chideya:
That was Robert Samuels and Toluse Olorunnipa, Washington Post reporters and co-authors of the new biography, His Name Is George Floyd: One Man's Life and the Struggle for Racial Justice.
Farai Chideya:
Now we're going to turn to another recent title tackling racial reckonings and larger societal problems, but written for a very different audience. When the World Turned Upside Down is written for middle readers. Now, they're roughly middle school aged children and the author is writer and artist K. Ibura. She explores the need for community in the face of prejudice and ways we can nurture ourselves. When the World Turned Upside Down follows four main characters as they navigate challenging family dynamics, friendships, and social justice amid the pandemic and racial reckoning. I spoke with K. Ibura about her work and her writing process.
Farai Chideya:
You are someone who has worked in the world of Afrofuturism and speculative fiction and published your own short story collection. And this is a book for readers ages 8 to 12, and it felt very real. You know? It felt very grounded in the present moment. So how did you shift to working on When the World Turned Upside Down, given the other things you've written in the past?
K. Ibura:
One of my main motivators was to look at how kids were exposed to so many things that we usually try to protect them from. You know? That the pandemic made it impossible for us to pretend that things were okay or were going to be okay, and kids saw all the rips and the seams. And I don't know how frequently they were able to process it or talk about it, or how much adults realized the kids were processing. So my goal and my hope with the book is that adults will read it and then want to talk to their kids. Kids will read it and then want to reflect and think about what they went through and kind of process that a little bit more.
K. Ibura:
We know how intense it was for us as adults. And if you think about it, for children, especially at a developmental age when they need their peers, they need more adults in their life, not less, and then their worlds were shrunk down, what does that mean to them? And I wanted to dig into that a little bit.
Farai Chideya:
Yeah. So a lot of this book is about human relations, friend to friend, parent to child. Talking about the immediacy of 2020, it was a world turned upside down like your book title. And you have this incredible list of characters: Ben, Liam, Shayla, Ai. And they all have different issues that they're dealing with. Ben is having to deal with his parent's relationship deteriorating during the lockdown. And I was like, "Wow, that's real." And then you have Liam who has to watch his younger sisters while his mom finishes the overnight shift. And he also has some pretty serious panic attacks. And I couldn't help throughout the book think about the cognitive load of mental health stress on kids today.
K. Ibura:
I think for all of us, kids and adults, the pandemic definitely brought mental health to the fore. And researching Liam's anxiety issues, I really came to see anxiety on a spectrum. Liam has chronic issues, which are debilitating, but all of us are having to, especially at this time of the pandemic, manage our mental health and manage our anxiety when the world is so anxiety inducing. And when I say confront, I don't mean change. Obviously you can't just think things away. He learns how to process it. He allows his friends to contribute to his regaining balance when he does have a panic attack. So he definitely has so much heart and so much love, and he's willing to confront his mental health issues in order to be a contribution to his family, to his community. And I really do love Liam.
Farai Chideya:
In addition to all of these characters and all of their issues and the pandemic, you also have the group addressing violence against black lives and what that means. And I couldn't help but think about the stories that we've done about banned books. So how did you and your editor or publisher think about like, "Oh, we're going to talk about violence against black lives and social justice in a time where books are being banned"?
K. Ibura:
I was, or am, maybe both, kind of low-key terrified about being banned. But basically, it's just a reflection of the world. We started this book before George Floyd was murdered. I'd already turned in the outline and it was already coming back to me with notes when George Floyd was murdered. And I sat with it for a few days. And I was like, if this is a snapshot of this moment in time, this has to be in the book. And there are things that I'm not sure if I said too much, I'm not sure if I said enough. I definitely felt a lot of pressure to get it right. I told the editors, "I'm concerned about this. We got some sensitivity readers." And they were like, "No, we're not going to write to the public that can't handle the conversation. We're not going to do that." And the editors agreed with me. One of my editor's perspective was that there's no topic that you can't discuss with kids. So they pushed it. They said, "Go." And I was like, "Okay, okay. Oh my God. Okay."
Farai Chideya:
Yeah, yeah. It's a lot to think about. I'm going to end with something that reminded me of you. Shayla's father is a tailor who finds himself short on funds when he's purchased a lot of fabric to do his work and then the world shuts down. And then he starts making masks. Shayla says to her father, "I'm your daughter. My whole life is extra work." And her father taps her on the head and says, "Now you're getting it. You're a black girl in America. You're always going to have extra work." And so putting dialogue like that in the book really makes me think about what we can and can't promise to young people, especially to young girls of color. You know? How do you, as a mother, as an author, think about what we can and can't say about the promise of the future to young people?
K. Ibura:
For me, it's not so much about promising anything specific, but about giving kids the tools to access those things. Now, if the world cooperates, if the world doesn't cooperate is not always in our control, but we need the mental health skills, we need the emotional skills to achieve those things, the belief in ourselves. And also the belief that just because we can't see what the impact of our actions are, does not mean there's no impact. We have no idea how something that was in our heart to do or say or create or connect, how that's going to impact the world. So really, our job is in the moment. And so I think making sure we're equipped to be in the moment is the best that we can do.
K. Ibura:
And I think that is a huge part of blackness, right? Because we have to be here under some of the most grossly violent diminishing destructive circumstances, all while being told, "That's not really what's happening," all while being expected to perform as well as if not better than other people. And so knowing that those conflicts exist, we have to find a way to situate ourselves in it and protect our mental health, protect our hearts, protect our spirits and our faith to keep living. That's what I want to invest in kids: the ability to be where you are and thrive where you are, whether or not the world is supporting you in that.
Farai Chideya:
Thanks so much for joining us, K.
K. Ibura:
Thanks so much for having me.
Farai Chideya:
That's author and artist K. Ibura on her young adult novel, When the World Turned Upside Down.
Farai Chideya:
Coming up next, we speak to Breya Johnson of the Black Women's Health Imperative about the Supreme Court's abortion ruling. You're listening to Our Body Politic.
Farai Chideya:
Each week on the show, we bring you a round table called Sippin' the Political Tea. Joining me this week is Breya Johnson, the reproductive justice coordinator for the Black Women's Health Imperative. And this week, we're discussing the fallout of the Supreme Court decision in the Dobbs case, which overturns Roe v. Wade, and what this means for black women, women of color, and all women and birthing people. Breya, welcome.
Breya Johnson:
Thank you so much for having me.
Farai Chideya:
We are definitely so glad to have you with us. It has been an intense week on many of the different stories we follow on this show. In the House Committee Hearings about the January 6th insurrection, we learned that the president wanted to go directly to the Stop the Steal rally, key members of whom were heavily armed and preparing to storm the capital. According to sworn testimony, he tried to grab the steering wheel of a secret service vehicle when he didn't get his way. At the same moment in history, we're seeing a complete realignment of what women can expect from reproductive law and healthcare in America. I want to play a little bit of an interview that CNN did with Kanika Harris, the maternal health director of the Black Women's Health Imperative and someone who you know. She has a PhD and a master's in public health. And here is how she describes her personal journey around abortion.
Kanika Harris:
I never thought in my 40s that I would be in a situation where I would have to contemplate an abortion. I was married, I had children, substantially employed. And didn't know that I would end up in that situation. However, due to my previous pregnancies, due to experiencing trauma and racism during pregnancy and delivery, it was recommended that if I were to get pregnant again, that my uterine walls had stretched so thin from my pregnancies having two twin pregnancies, that it wasn't a good idea for me to move forward with the pregnancy. And despite our best efforts, my husband and I, we found ourself pregnant when I had one and a half year old twins. And we had to make the very difficult decision to pursue that pregnancy or terminate that pregnancy. You know? Living in DC, recognizing that black people in DC represent 50% of the population in DC but 90% of the maternal deaths in DC.
Farai Chideya:
And Breya, again, this is a colleague of yours talking about what it's like as a mature woman with kids, in a marriage, to have to look at abortion as a way to save her life, and the many women in the nation's capital who don't survive their pregnancies. You know? And of course, the nation's capital is governed essentially by the federal government with a local government that doesn't have the same powers in many cases as many local governments. We know that the majority of women who have abortions in America already have children. And this was a medical decision made against the backdrop of the deaths of black childbearing women and birthing persons. So what are you thinking about, Breya, as you look this moment in history in the face?
Breya Johnson:
We know that this is going to increase maternal death. It's also going to increase what we call patriarchal violence or femicides. That is essentially the murder of women, but specifically the murder of pregnant women. We're thinking about youth who for the first time in their life, they will be up against a possible national abortion ban. So Republicans have said that they are going after an abortion ban as early as 2025. I'm thinking about the people who actually do want their pregnancies, but they choose abortion because of other structural barriers in their lives, which is why reproductive justice is so important because it goes just beyond abortion access.
Breya Johnson:
And so we have to look at the many, many, many, many factors that make someone choose an abortion or not. I think both are important. And that's why I love the three pillars of reproductive justice, which is basically the right to have a child, the right to not have a child, and the right to parent our children in safe and healthy and sustainable environments. And so what I like to say is we don't just want women and gender nonconforming people and birthing people to have the right to choice. We also want us to have better things to choose from.
Farai Chideya:
I can't help but think about people who have come out with their various abortion stories. One of them has been representative Cori Bush. And she spoke out recently about feeling powerless that her political party, the Democratic Party, was not doing enough, in her opinion, to protect black women, women of color, women in general, and that it could have a blow-back in terms of people who were willing to stand up and support the party. What do you think that black women are going to perceive in terms of having good political choices?
Breya Johnson:
I'm seeing a lot of people turning away from the idea of voting at all because they're not seeing their material lives changing. There are people who truly believe it doesn't matter if I vote or not. I think a lot of people are like, "All right. You told me to vote. You told me to do this and I did that. And now so much is still on the line." Right? I think black people are feeling that. I think queer and trans people are feeling that. I think working class people are feeling that. They're really just like, "What is the point if under whatever party I still don't feel safe?"
Farai Chideya:
That's exactly the point that Representative Bush was making, like, you keep saying, "Tell people to vote," and it's like, "Vote for what? What are we getting?" So in your role as an organizer, how do you have these discussions?
Breya Johnson:
So I like to tell people that if the only thing that you do is vote, that to me is actually politically irresponsible and you have a greater responsibility in addition to that. Right? And so, yes, a lot of people don't want to vote. They're not really invested in that type of work. But there is a big, big, big, big, big source of energy for organizing. There is a big source of energy for what care communities can we create? How can we be communal? Right? A lot of people are feeling like no party, no legal system is going to save us. So what are we going to do for each other? And so I want to know, do people understand how to organize in their community?
Farai Chideya:
What you're saying is resonating with the findings that we've talked about on this show. But when you talk about a community of care, what does it really mean to set up a community of care?
Breya Johnson:
Yeah. So this could mean so many different things. If you're taking like a disability justice lens, it has its own different meaning, but I'm going to kind of focus on more of a communal care. That's basically saying that we are the ones that are responsible for keeping each other safe. We are the ones that are going to have to pull resources for each other. We are the ones that are going to have to resist this being only for ourselves or individualism and understand that the only way to get through the many, many, many crises, including Roe v. Wade, is going to take like a collective approach. All of us are going to have to be a part of it as black women. We do it together and we're going to keep doing it together.
Breya Johnson:
Right now, I've seen people who are basically saying, "What can we do to support people who are unfortunately going to have to carry out their pregnancies? What the support of motherhood and black motherhood and single parenthood look like? How are we going to support that process knowing that abortion rights have been restricted and could be completely limited very soon?" Have people who are thinking through that. Right? What does mutual aid look like for parents?
Breya Johnson:
Miscarriages are deeply traumatic. So what does it look like to care for a woman or a birthing person who's had or is experiencing a miscarriage? How do we reframe the way that we take care of each other? How do we reframe and rethink about childcare needs? Right? All of these things are questions that are on the table right now. Not just because Roe fell, but because of the state of the world, because of the economy, because of so many things.
Farai Chideya:
You're listening to Sippin' the Political Tea on Our Body Politic. I'm Farai Chideya. This week, we're doing a special conversation on abortion rights following the Supreme Court's ruling with Breya Johnson, the reproductive justice coordinator for the Black Women's Health Imperative.
Farai Chideya:
And so, Breya, one of the things that we really try to do on the show is deal with the lived experience of black women and girls and women of color and girls of color. And we have been really lucky to have so many brilliant minds on this show. And one of them was Tressie McMillan Cottom, sociologist. And I want to bring in an article that she wrote just recently for the New York times where she's a contributor.
Farai Chideya:
So she spoke with us when she came on the show about losing her daughter to medical negligence and medical racism. And that's part of the lens that she is able to bring to articles like this one. So in this article called Citizens No More, she talks about graduating high school and being asked along with other students to imagine what her career and salary would be like 10 years after graduation. And then she points out that no young woman can make career plans without access to reproductive rights and abortion. Breya, what do you think is going to change for young girls and women in the post Roe era in terms of pursuing their dreams?
Breya Johnson:
You can't answer this question without thinking about patriarchy. And so one thing that we know when we take a lens of understanding patriarchy is that child responsibility oftentimes does fall on the woman or the fem person. That ultimately is going to impact your career landscape, your career choices, your experiences in the workforce. I mean, most companies don't even have guaranteed paid maternal leave. And so we're looking at people who, for them, pregnancy is going to make them very financially vulnerable because of how expensive it is. And it's going to affect their career choices.
Breya Johnson:
Every single day, I hear someone who's like, "I was going to do this, but it was impacting my ability to parent or I didn't have childcare." And so women, especially black women, end up having to make completely different choices that maybe weren't their dream, but they're what they have to do in order to secure their family. And that's what happens when you take away a person's ability to self determine the structure of their own family, which is what happened when they struck down Roe. They essentially said, "You have no right to 'family plan.' The state does that for you."
Farai Chideya:
I'm going to go back along these lines into that article by Dr. Tressie McMillan Cottom. And she wrote about Starbucks, saying, "Months before the decision was officially handed down, Starbucks also issued a statement vowing support for employees who seek abortion care, but its statement adds that it cannot guarantee that benefit to workers in unionized stores. Potentially attaching support for abortion care to non-unionized labor is a perfect example of why corporations should not be arbiters of human rights."
Farai Chideya:
It's really clear that black women and women of color are going to have to essentially negotiate with a number of different systems, local, state, and federal governments, employers, just also sometimes communities that may be hostile. So circling back to kind of where we started with communities of care, how do you see communities of care building and evolving to meet this current moment?
Breya Johnson:
Yeah. So there's so many different angles. There's the question of who cares for the folks who are going to do the proposed strikes, if that happens? Right? Who cares for the protestors who are going to go out and kind of do that type of action? Who cares for the abortion clinic workers in states where it's not restricted yet? How do we make sure that the people who are trying their hardest to support access to abortion are also not losing their total livelihood in the process? I think that's one way of thinking about how you establish community care is thinking about the people who risk themselves for you to have access to something or for you to have a right.
Breya Johnson:
Secondly, really, really getting serious about a return to communal culture. Maybe there's going to have to be some situations where we rethink the way that capitalism is making us believe we are supposed to live. You know? Maybe it's okay for single mothers to get together and all live in one home and support each other and take care of their children in that way. Right? Maybe it's okay to establish care networks in your own neighborhood where you learn your neighbors and you've developed relationships with your neighbors and you take care of each other. What are the mutual aid groups around you that can support emergency funds? And how do we pull those resources together? Rethinking how we're taught to care and where we're taught to put our money and resources to, that's going to be really important if we're going to say that we want a repo justice future.
Farai Chideya:
I want to play one last clip and wrap up with Vice President Kamala Harris, who also weighed in.
Kamala Harris:
Today's decision calls into question other rights that we thought were settled, such as the right to use birth control, the right to same-sex marriage, the right to interracial marriage.
Farai Chideya:
So the right to use birth control, to same-sex marriage, to interracial marriage. The Vice President identifies all of these as potentially under attack as the framework on privacy and on citizenship evolves in the courts. Do you see that? And how do you respond to that?
Breya Johnson:
Oh, it's not potentially. It's already happening. They may not have struck down particular court cases just yet, but you can look at places like Florida and other states that have put forth very anti-trans and even anti-gay bills. You can look at the uptick in anti-Critical Race Theory bills. That just mean anything black history, right? And then you see just attacks on anything that is not falling in alignment with their vision for the world. And I think it's really important to name that because when we talk about reproductive justice, we're very clear that this is a vision that we have for the world that we want to achieve. We say we want a repo justice future.
Breya Johnson:
On the other end of that are people who want the exact opposite. And that is their vision for the world that they are trying to achieve. And they're coming at it from all sides. We even saw a quote from Clarence Thomas, where he was like, "We should rethink the case that got us same-sex marriage, gay marriage." So they're already telling us everything. We're coming after everything. We've even seen some conservatives who have come out and said they're also interested in going after IUDs. They're also interested in going after contraception. They're also interested in going after Plan B's as well. They're essentially saying, "No, you do not get to self determine anything. We decide because we have the power." And that is what we are up against.
Breya Johnson:
This is a full fledged attack, and this is just where they are essentially starting. And that's why as organizers, we say, "If one of us isn't free, none of us are free." And we mean that literally, because once one person's rights are taken away, they usually want to keep going. It doesn't usually stop there, but I'll stop there.
Farai Chideya:
Breya, thank you so much.
Breya Johnson:
You're very welcome. Thank you for having me.
Farai Chideya:
That was Breya Johnson, the reproductive justice coordinator for the Black Women's Health Imperative.
Farai Chideya:
Thanks for listening to Our Body Politic. We're on the air each week -- and everywhere you listen to podcasts.
Farai Chideya:
Our Body Politic is produced by Diaspora Farms. I'm the executive producer and host, Farai Chideya. Our Co-executive producer is Jonathan Blakely. Bianca Martin is our senior producer. Traci Caldwell is our booking producer. Emily J. Daly and Steve Lack are our producers. Natyna Bean and Emily Ho are our associate producers.
Farai Chideya:
Production and editing services are by Clean Cuts at Three Seas. Today's episode was produced with the help of Lauren Schild and engineered by Carter Martin and Archie Moore.
Farai Chideya:
This program is produced with support from the Ford Foundation, Craig Newmark Philanthropies, the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Philanthropies, Democracy Fund, The Harnisch Foundation, Compton Foundation, the Heising-Simons Foundation, the BMe Community, Katie McGrath & JJ Abrams Family Foundation, and from generous contributions from listeners like you.