Transcripts For MSNBC National Day of Racial Healing An MSNB

Healing town hall, live from studio being new orleans. Now joined now by chris hayes and join all right. Good evening, and welcome to our town hall of the national day of racial healing and event creating, 60 years ago by our sponsor of the w. E. Case kellogg foundation. The specialties held every year on the day after the dr. Martin luther king holiday. If you look around, you will see that we are in this glorious space, incredible room. It is part of a studio b which is a set of former warehouses turn to an Art Experience by the artist brandon be mike odoms, here in the by Water Neighborhood of the great city of new orleans. Our colleague jermaine lee who has been doing some reporting for this project is here with us as well and so is the young fellas the land where we unfortunate to be meeting tonight has made a Gathering Place and trading hub of different backgrounds and cultures going back centuries. And so we want to acknowledge, thank and honor the Indigenous People for hume this part of the world has long been home, like the chumuckla, the houma, dozens of others. In a meeting like this in the realm literally, we are drawing on the discuss practice of healing circles, the work we are here to do tonight is for everybody, wherever you came from and wherever you are going, you are all part of the story and you could not find a better spot on earth for our mission tonight, to explore the harm that racism is done to our society and to consider how we might heal from it. Now, in a time when those questions feel so urgent for this country, just this week another community is dealing with what appears to be a relationally motivated attack on a college student. Stories like these have become all too common and everywhere in the country, everywhere in the country so please have a listen. The town of southbury is now the latest to be targeted by White Supremacist literature. Gain racial slurs and words of antisemitism are painted in white. Someone scribbled hateful, racist rhetoric on the exterior walls and roadways. The anti black messages were scrawled with the marker inside a voice restroom. Racist graffiti at school, White Supremacy code angling over the highway, all this incident of hate taking place in this country just in the month of december alone. It is starting to feel like we have reached a Breaking Point the congresswoman appeared at a White Nationalist event on friday. Sitting members of congress openly aligning himself with White Supremacist leaders. Guess is an invasion of this country we have a little invasion of wallace matts is fighting over a border for 160 countries. Number of the l. A. City council caught an audio late last year using racist slurs a. Feels like we are backsliding and it is not just violent language, a woman from the philippines recovering tonight from a Vicious Anti Asian kept in yonkers. It is a hostile situation in a synagogue last weekend, a targeted terrorism of the jewish community. Police believe the suspect traveled more than three hours from here to buffalo to carry out the attack as an act of racially motivated violent extremism. The Justice Department naming racially motivated extremism as the biggest threat to our national security. Dozens of White Supreme Supremacist march through boston today, hate is on the rise in this country. And it is no longer just looking In The Shadows. What do we do . Now that racist extremists once again are feeling emboldened to march down our streets . What can we do to stand up to the hate . What can we do to heal . Joining us now are three women who have come face to face with the hate that is plaguing our nation. Cohen ochoas, Pulitzer Prizewinning reporter and creator of the 16 19 project, which will premiere as a jockey series on hulu. She is now Howard Universitys Night Chairmen race journalism, also here with us from the Antidefamation League which fights racism and antisemitism globally. And rachel, sorry Michelle Nation is the ceo of awaken. And, the author of the wake up, closing the gap between Good Intention and real change. So thank you all for joining us, part of the discussion. By the way, i just want to go ahead and say i am sorry that i bought any names, i do want to start with you, nicole, my friend. You know, im so glad that you are here. Because, when south africa did sort of a version of it, they tried to do it, they called the truth and risky conciliation in, turns out the truth part is as hard as the Reconciliation Part for a lot of folks. There has been a resistance to what you have brought to the table, which is truth. And telling the truth about this country, which for a lot of people is more than they can bear. I want you to talk a little bit about what it has been like to experience being a truth teller the way youve been, with the 16 19 project and what you have received in return on a negative side. On a negative side. Okay. I mean, first i just feel like, to lay the table we have to take stock of where we are. Which is, the city that was the largest Slave Trading City in the United States, and new orleans, most cities we would have one or two places where they would trade African People but in orleans there were 50 spots. If you look at new orleans today, half of black children In The City Living Powder Birdie compared to 5 of white children, so anyone want to talk about healing we have to talk about the truth and we have to talk about how do we stop the harm that is currently being done, then we have to talk about repair and then we can get to healing. This is something we should start with first. So, what we know is that, and the reason we dont want to talk about the truth is that if we acknowledge what this country is actually built on, Vic Knowledge that the reason that Black Americans live in circumstances we do is not because of our pathology, but because of a country that was erected literally on extracting wealth from us, then we have to do something about it. So, the backlash that i have experienced, which as you know has been everything from the former president of the United States to sitting senators, to governors trying to legislate against the project, to personal threats, to me is probably my greatest honor. Because what it means is that the truth makes powerful people in this country mary scared. Im glad they are scared. [applause] rachel, we mentioned earlier this awful incident happened in Indiana University where we dont have all the details yet but it prepares to be a racially motivated hate crime directed at an Asian American. There is a really palpable sense in the reporting ive done the folks ive talked to, Asian American folks, of real visceral fear that something has changed or something feels more threatening in the atmosphere. How do you think about that moment right now, what it causes are and how we talk about it in ways that are honest and sort of bridge passed some of the cliches . Yeah. Thank you so much for reporting on the hate crime, i think that this is something that a lot of our Community Members are aware of in terms of the erasure of what continues to happen around ancient american struggles. I think we would be doing an injustice to all of our Community Struggles if we failed to connect the dots, back to the 1800s. This is not a new phenomenon, where we are living in a state of oppression. I think that for so long, because we are immersed in the narrative of mock minority mid, a lot of people think that Asian Americans communities at large of doing better than most. And i think that is such a harmful rhetoric that is invisible lies so much of the pain and depression that so many Asian Americans have been experiencing. Not only on the streets, but systemically. Whether it is a duck man black Asian Americans, there is a whole plethora of people Fighting Against oppression in different ways so i think it is an opportunity for us to broaden the scope of conversation and not just talk about the anti asian hate crimes that happened today but also more broadly, over the historical time period. In terms of how we have been oppressed in different ways and indifference fears. You know sharon, i want to bring you into this conversation because the thing about American History is that, there have been repetitive traumas that have played out within many communities of color. So you talk about the jewish community, you are a fascinating woman, your from iran and you are jewish. And so you are intersectionality embodied in a person right, so we have also seen along with the attacks on Asian Americans and along with the continued antiblackness, content particularly in education, and wanting to resist learning about things that have happened to people of color, there has also been the same kind of fight about the history of what happened to jewish people. There has been an arranger there to, and a push back. They are bending so kind race theory, theyre also banning books about the holocaust and we have seen an uptick in attacks on jewish people and jewish symbols around the country. So talk a little bit about how that works, and how, i would love for all of you to jump in and talk about how do we make these conversation up across groups, that we can support one another. So first of all, thank you so much for having me here. I am representing atl, the oldest antihate organization in america. So when we are founded in 1913, our founders understood, in order to fight antisemitism in the defamation of the jewish people we, need to also secure justice and for treatment for all. So 1913, our founders do that. And we knew that, before the holocaust. We knew that, what is happening to American Jewelry will be one that will affect all marginalized communities. Were all stuck in this together. So the antisemitic that we understand in america, we as atl measure through mechanisms that we have, and teams medic surveys of attitudes we, just released one for 2022, highest watermark in decades. We look at incidents of attacks, assaults against jews. Highest watermark in decades. Again, we look at online hey. We measure that and we see the jews, lgbt, api, those are the groups getting targeted online. That is what a deal does, we have the data that shows that we are in a dire situation right now. And town halls like this are critical to bring this attention to. All so you know, theres a sort of abstract sense and there is a political theory about how politics would happen in america right, theres an emerging democratic majority and that it is a country which is increasingly diverse unless white, there would be talked about this in the Obama Coalition he did see Asian Americans voting for barack obama, African Americans obviously, historic numbers of jews as well. But like, in reality and especially if you are around city politics, in the bronx, where i grew up erin orleans, there is lots of beef. It is not like everyone is like oh, were all fighting the same theres lots of beef, there is lots of beef in terms of how groups think about each other, the stereotypes that might have about each other, and i wonder how do you think about pluralism at this time where the threat is very real but there are also a lot of people trying to use pitting groups against each other as a crowbar to sort of pry apart that solidarity and pry apart those sorts of coalitions. That is absolutely true. We see it especially in new york, where you have different communities with fear and fearing the other. So jews on black, Black On Jewish assaults. And it is about going past the stereotypes, that is what our data. Shows a, lot of americans believe the Conspiracy Theories that they read on social media. They believe it. And theres no way to push back against it because the fear that we are all living in today, is the fear of the other. And no matter what the other is whether it is both marginalized communities or that is when the hate mongers men, kremlin translation, so we dont have our legislators really acting on protecting communities and really are the marginalized communities. I go back again to project of resetting the understanding of the images of the country, if you were to really upset our understanding we would have to talk about Chinese Americans and the exclusion of the groups that wanted to come into work but not to stay and not to become americans, or you want to talk about downtown, or as jewish people and black people who are thrown together and now when we start gentrified downtown it is black people being evicted in these groups are not being set against each other, there is so much intersectionality in it and i wonder as a professor, now as a as you are talking about these issues of the back struggle, how do we incorporate that wider story so that we are telling the korean story of across all of these groups. And Coalition Building . The problem is, we are all taught this history so poorly. Its not just that white americans are not learning the history, but that none of us are really learning the history. One of the things that we talk about in my class, its actually how its chinese immigrants and Black Americans who were considered the two groups who could not be assimilated. And before the Chinese Exclusion Act and then after the act, often, you would see black and Chinese People being written out of their rights in the law. In fact, the one group who did not achieve citizenship under the 14th Amendment were Asian Americans. And they would have to again. Again, a very early School Desegregation case in mississippi was a chinese family suing not to have their kids in the black school. They were not going to end segregation, they were soon to be counted as white. So its not learning these histories we do have the suspicions of each other. And i always tell, my students, who does the narrative serve . Who does the narrative benefit . And when you question that, then you begin to realize that there are powerful interests that dont want us to understand the history, that dont want us to understand the common struggle. And so we are out here fighting for and respect while the hierarchies maintain and stays in place. Im curious how you think about this in terms of [applause] in terms of identity, right . Because one of the things we are dealing with all the time is, like, many of these identities are both created and real, right . So Asian American from the philippines and from indonesia, there are people from korea and japan and china. Its not all the same place. But it is in the cauldron of its often in the cauldron of american oppression that that identity is forged. Thats right. How do you feel about this identity, Asian American or when aapi, at this moment, what is persistent feeling of threat is doing to them as a political i think its a complex identity. Because, like you said, it is a mix of so many different ethnicity, different groups, that are Fighting Against, essentially, White Supremacy. And up until the 1960s we were known as orientals. That is very recent. So this collective identity of this political identity of asian america really emerged recently. And i think we are still figuring out how to build coalitions within our communities, we are so much of this conversation can be east asian struggles versus really looking at so many different types of asian people, Southeast Asian people, and also even the under the category of asian struggles we will be talking about people who have been previously incarcerated. Are we talking about sex workers . Are we talking about undocumented people . Because these are all people part of the narrative that are not being visible lies. Also, when we are talking about building coalitions, we still suffer so much from the remnants of the political acts that have happened to position asian people as the wedge within the people of color communities, where we, when we go back to history and examine the origin of the Model Minority Myth, being a political weapon that was created by white conservatives to position us as better minorities, compared to people who are marching on the frontline during the civil rights era, who were predominantly Black Americans so really, the fundamental nature of the Model Minority Myth is resting on anti black racism. And so i think that is a really important detail that we need to be ad