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Akari Sellers, welcome to The Daily Show.

Thank you for having me. I'm glad to be here in person.

Yeah, in person, right?

There's a lot of people I'm meeting now for the first time and I go like, I've met you.

It's like, oh no, I met you virtually.

You look much more handsome in person than virtually.

Thank you very much. Thank you. You're much taller than I thought you were.

You could have said handsome. I mean, I don't want to give the compliment back to you. Okay. Fair enough. You know what I mean? It feels, then it feels like I'm recycling. So I was trying to think of another thing I noticed about you that wasn't looks related. Welcome to the show. I'm glad to be here. You've lived a really interesting life, you know, because there was a moment in your career where people genuinely thought you were going to be one of the next new faces of the Democratic Party in this country. You know, you served for, I think it was eight years in the state legislature, and people were just like, oh, this guy's going all the way. We see what he's doing, you know, he's from a civil rights family. He's really in tune with what's happening. And then you were like, nope, I'm done with this. What happened? I don't know if it was, I'm done with it, but I think that having an opportunity right now to be a father and be a husband, I've realized that are my two most important jobs. And then being able to utilize my platform to lift people up and write books now. This is my second book.

It's my second opportunity to be on the New York Times bestsellers list. There's just so much that

I can do. And when that opportunity presents itself, you know, when Jim Clyburn retires, maybe,

well, I get back in that political scrum, maybe. But, I mean, Trevor, would you want to go to Congress

and serve and have less seniority than Marjorie Taylor Green or Matt Gates or Madison Cawthor?

Like, this is not an appetizing thing when you think about the American political system we have today.

So I think I may get back out there, but right now I just want to take care of my kids and my wife.

Let's talk about the book. Who Are Your People? A wonderful title that could be interpreters the wrong way. You know, because in America, at least, it's very uncomfortable when people say, like, where are you from? Who are your people? Because people have used it as, you know, as, you know. Down South is a colloquialism that when you meet people for the first time, like, when I met my daughter's boyfriend, she's 16, you're like, who are your people? Because you get the know, you want to know where their family is from, where they, what type of stock they come from. Right, right, right. And so who are your people is just trying to get people to understand where you come from. And I wrote this book because I wanted, personally, I was sick and tired of my twins having to see purple people or blue people on TV. I wanted them to be able to see people that look like them, like the movie in Conto, for example. And in this book, they're able to see them and their people and have a sense of pride. And I think when young black and brown kids read it, they'll get a sense of pride. When white kids read it, they'll get a sense of empathy. And to your point, earlier in the conversation, we live in a country where we have an empathy deficit, where people no longer care about the struggles and plight of others. And maybe this is some utopia that I'm living in or youthful naivete, but I firmly believe there's more that brings us together than

divides us, but we have to embrace those differences. In the book, you know, when they said, okay, Bacari's coming on with a book, I was like, okay, great, I love his previous book. I had pictures for you. And then they were like, there's pictures now. I was like, oh, it's a kid's book. And then I And then I started reading through it.

And then I was like, wow, it's a kid's book.

But I mean, there's parts of the book where, you know,

black people are sitting at like the lunch counter and they're just getting shouted at and the signs that say no Negroes. I was like, wow, this is one hell of a children's book. And then I started thinking. I was like, two things. One, I was like, you know, some people might be like, oh, man, is this what you want to teach kids?

And the other people might go, oh, you know this book's going to get banned in a bunch of places soon, right? Well, that image that you're talking about is one of my two favorite images. It's actually a real image from February 1, 1960 at the Woolworth Lunch Counter where students from North Carolina and Tate University's kicked off the sit-in movement. And I wanted to have that history and those lessons in the book. And maybe if you're an adult reading it, it refreshes your memory. You can teach more about it. But yeah, I mean, people are, they're banning Michelle Obama's books in Texas right now. Wow. I mean, you know, people are talking about this book, a picture book, being critical race theory. It's absolutely

not critical race theory, but is getting caught up in all of this utter anti-intellectual BS

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