Podcast: Trump's Race Problem

TRANSCRIPT: Trump's Race Problem

Ian Bremmer:

Hi, I'm Ian Bremmer and welcome to the GZERO World Podcast. I'm the host of the weekly show GZERO World on Facebook Watch. In this podcast, we share extended versions of the big interviews from that show. This week I sit down with Columbia Journalism School Professor Jelani Cobb. Cobb is a historian, first and foremost, and he's become one of the most compelling voices on race, the police, and injustice in America. In this conversation, we discuss how racial tensions have flared since Trump took office, and how the impacts of identity politics at home have reverberated abroad, from Ferguson to the West Bank. Let's get to it.

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Ian Bremmer:

I'm with Jelani Cobb, professor of journalism at Columbia University, staff writer at the New Yorker, and really big thinker. Jelani.

Ian Bremmer:

So if we look at the things over the last months that have been really divisive around identity politics. So you look at the Muslim ban, and you look at the Charlottesville comments and the white supremacists. You look at the NFL flap, you look at the border wall in Mexico. If there's one that stands out to you that is most divisive, most aligned with the concerns, the troubled State of the Union as you suggest it is. It's what and why?

Jelani Cobb:

I think it has to be Charlottesville, because that was what should have been the simplest test of presidential leadership, which is to say, if you have any passing familiarity with the United States in the 20th century or with World War II, you understand that a President of the United States has to say that Nazism and people who are united in the Nazi cause are anathema to us. They don't represent our values. But there was this very strange hedging that came from the White House in which he would simultaneously say, "This is wrong, but it's not more wrong than what other people are doing."

Jelani Cobb:

And then it was interpreted, largely on the radical fringe of the right, as a winking acknowledgement of them. When you saw the aftermath of Charlottesville, I think one of the things that was a defining theme was the shock. Even people who had been concerned about Trump or people who had tried to maybe diminish some of the terrible issues that had happened during the campaign, they found themselves hard-pressed to explain how you could be confused about whether or not Nazis are completely abominable in terms of American politics or in American values and where we stand. And so at that moment, I think that people had at least a realization that we were in uncharted territory in some ways.

Ian Bremmer:

Do you think there's lasting damage from that episode, honestly, in the country, or have we recognized there's a new normal and the media cycle is so damn short that it just is, "Okay, he's just this one wacky guy."?

Jelani Cobb:

I think it's both of those things, right? And what I mean by that is this; in the moment we had this recognition that this was a turning point and it seemed like this was something that was really, really, frightening. It should be really frightening. And then we moved on from that. But I think that in retrospect, as the presidency plays out, as whatever larger crises on the horizon come to bear, I think we will wind up looking back and saying, "Nothing happened after Charlottesville." And this was a moment in which we had very little room to debate who it was that was in the White House or the values of this person or the mental outlook that the president possesses.

Jelani Cobb:

And so what happens in North Korea or what happens really anywhere else in the world, we're talking about American foreign policy, what happens with the United States and Mexico and with the alleged border wall? What happens with the fraying American alliances in Europe? Is anything surprising after what happened in Charlottesville or can we be surprised by anything that happens after that? I don't think we can.

Ian Bremmer:

How do you think we got here, in the sense that we have President Obama, eight years of a leader that a lot of people around the world believed was a moment of progress of the United States becoming a more equal society. Clearly really not the case. Do you think there were fundamental missteps under his administration? Were there things that were ignored that needed to be addressed? How much of this now white narrative of working class, middle class, "What about us," do you think really needs to be understood? Where do you go from there?

Jelani Cobb:

So I think that the Obama presidency was not perfect. It had shortcomings. But this insurgency that we saw afterward was not purely a product of an economic malaise in the United States. These were problems we'd seen in successive administrations, the problems in the Rust Belt of United States with the declining economies and the flight of industries and the lack of opportunity there. This was not just Obama, this was Obama and then Bush before him and then Clinton and then Bush before him. And going back to the '70 with Carter, where we started seeing these dynamics.

Jelani Cobb:

I think that part of what was kindling for this to happen at this point in time was the dynamic of race. That many of the people that they are talking about, it wasn't simply their own economic condition, but the fact that they also tended to understand their economic condition relative to that of black people in this society. And so while their declining fortunes were cause for concern or political anger or partisanship or any of the other dynamics that we might have seen, I think it wasn't until the reality struck them of a black person being in charge of the entire country that they began to have this narrative of them losing ground.

Ian Bremmer:

I mean, how much of this is do you think is simple demographics and a feeling that, "At the end of the day, if you don't do something now, we lose the culture and ethnic identity,"? That certainly Steve Bannon represented a lot of that. Hard to know how much of that Trump actually represents.

Jelani Cobb:

Yeah, I do think that this is significant to Trump, and I think that in some ways it makes perfect sense that someone like him would wind up being at the head of this anti-immigrant nativist movement that wound up winning the presidency. The reason I say that is that Donald Trump is from Queens, New York, and that's a particularly important factor in his biography. I'm also from Queens, New York. During Trump's time, Queens was the whitest borough of New York City as a result of the 1965 Immigration Act, which the Trump administration would like to undo, as a result of that immigration act, the policies in the United States for allowing people into the country became much more liberalized. And we allowed people to come from places that had previously been prohibited. And the direct result, one of the most obvious places where you saw that change was in Queens, New York.

Jelani Cobb:

And so in about 20 years, Queens, New York went from being the whitest borough in New York City to being what it is now; the most ethnically diverse borough in the entire country, the most ethnically diverse county in the entire country, somewhere between four and 800 languages spoken. There is a population of white people from a certain generation in Queens, Trump's generation, that never got over that change. That rapid diversification of the population of their communities. Many of them moved out and thought that their communities were being taken over. There are people coming from Pakistan, from India, from West Africa, from East Africa, from the Philippines, from every place that you can think. And now there are these ethnic enclaves all over Queens. And so I think the politics of ethnic resentment that came to define American politics in 2016 were something that Donald Trump had been thinking about really all of his life. And he had been thinking about it because it happened in his community earlier than it happened in most other places in the United States.

Ian Bremmer:

Talk to me about the NFL thing. Because, I mean, there's certainly a story out there. Roger Goodell comes out and he says, "Actually, no. All of these NFL athletes should actually stand during the national anthem." I mean, there is a narrative out there that says Trump knew exactly what he was doing, playing to his base, picked a fight with the NFL, NFL took a knee, and now this is a win for him. You think this is a win for Trump?

Jelani Cobb:

I think it means it depends on how we define win. If we mean that he succeeded in riling up a disgruntled population that was inclined to vote for him, and then forcing a large institution to follow his lead, then yes. But if we think about what the bigger implications of this are for American society, then probably not. One of the things that's happened with Trump, and I think one of the more notable things about him, is that he has a particular disdain for institutions. And the United States, we think that our democracy is dependent upon us spreading power out through lots of different institutions so it doesn't accumulate in the hands of any one individual.

Jelani Cobb:

But we've seen Trump disparage the independent judiciary. We've seen Trump disparage Congress; not simply members of the opposing party, but members of his own party. We have seen Trump disparage members of the military family that lost their son, and we've seen him disparage John McCain who was a torture victim in Vietnam. And so all these kinds of places that people tend to revere have been a target for him. Most notably, I think he began by disparaging the citizenship of the president that preceded him. So there's that. And then we get to the NFL, which is a cultural institution. Interestingly enough, a major American cultural institution that is 70% or so black.

Ian Bremmer:

With the players.

Jelani Cobb:

With the players. The coaching staff obviously is overwhelmingly white. The ownership is overwhelmingly white...

Ian Bremmer:

The fan base.

Jelani Cobb:

... The fan base is mostly white. And so we have these kinds of dynamics. And in the context of this, there are athletes who are beginning to protest police brutality. It's almost possible to forget at this point why people began taking a knee. Mind you, this is an administration where Trump's attorney general has sent every signal that police brutality will not be regarded very seriously. The consolation that people have had about Trump is that he is unique and he is an outlier. And this was just a random, perfect storm of events that allowed someone like him to be elected to the presidency. But I think there's a much more damning possibility, which is that he's not simply a relic, that he's actually a harbinger that there is now, there used to not be a path to the highest office in the land that ran through stirring up tribal rivalries and disrespect the institutions and flaunting overt misogyny.

Jelani Cobb:

Now there's a playbook for that. That can actually be done. People know how to do it. And you're not necessarily going to be penalized for those things. The practices in customs and traditions that make democracy vital and sustainable were diminished by what we saw last year. And so I think that this could be the front edge of a much more tumultuous period about race in the United States. Not just race, but lots of other social fractures in the society with race being a very large one.

Ian Bremmer:

And if you had to... Okay, I'm a white guy. How do you not-

Jelani Cobb:

But you're woke.

Ian Bremmer:

Go where you want with that. But I mean, how do you want people like me talking about race in this country?

Jelani Cobb:

I think that we have to understand this historically, and we have to understand that this is not simply a matter of whether you and I get together and get a drink after this, or whether we have a good friendship or interact. I mean, that's fine, that's great. But we have a fundamental disparity in opportunity, and that has been since the founding of the United States. And I think that the further we go, the less tenable it becomes. Especially as we are looking at societies that are increasingly global, trying to be competitive globally, we really need to have a sense that everyone is equally included in the United States. There's a benefit to this. It's not simply, "Be nice to black people and say hello to the Latinos," but there is an actual benefit to the idea of an inclusive society that can be made more competitive globally. And I think that is one of the things I'd like us to think about when we think about race.

Ian Bremmer:

I think it's always a problem for Americans to think about the perspective of anyone else.

Jelani Cobb:

That's true.

Ian Bremmer:

And I mean, now you put that in the context of divisions inside American society...

Jelani Cobb:

That's right, yeah.

Ian Bremmer:

... And some of the most difficult, the most hurtful, the ones where when you look at it, it really feels like you're pulling off a bandage and you've just touched on it.

Jelani Cobb:

Yeah. And I think in some ways it's almost a mirror situation because I think the United States has such a gigantic footprint in the world that it's not always aware, very often its citizens are completely unaware of the ways in which their choices, their actions, their cultural preferences echo all around the globe and the implications of that. And so we tend not to think globally. We tend not to think a great deal about how we look to other people in other parts of the world. When we saw the fraught situation in Ferguson three years ago, that got global attention. There were people in the West Bank talking about what happened in Ferguson. The people in Tehran talking about what happened in Ferguson. There are people in North Korea who are aware of what's happening in Ferguson, and we tend not to think that way.

Jelani Cobb:

When we saw the ads that the Russians had during the campaign where they were pretending to be Black Lives Matter people, or launching these fake social media posts, which were expected to stir up the racial hostilities of white people and therefore drive them to vote for Donald Trump. I mean, they're intimately familiar with this particular fracture in American society and have been using it to their advantage for decades. So yeah, I think that's one thing that we should think about this in a global sense.

Ian Bremmer:

And what's interesting, I think, is they didn't have to spend that much money...

Jelani Cobb:

No.

Ian Bremmer:

... Precisely because they were able to play on those fractures that clearly already existed. People were very ready to believe those images in the United States. In the same way that they were willing to take advantage, I think there are a lot of people in power in the U.S. today that are as well. With that, I think it's clearly time for a beer.

Jelani Cobb:

Ah, that's a good one.

Ian Bremmer:

Good to see you, my friend.

Jelani Cobb:

Okay, thank you.

Ian Bremmer:

Thanks, Jelani.

Jelani Cobb:

All right.

Announcer:

The GZERO World is brought to you by our founding sponsor, First Republic. First Republic, a private bank and wealth management company. Imagine a bank without teller lines, where your banker knows your name, and its most prized currency is extraordinary client service. Hear directly from First Republic's clients by visiting first republic.com.

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