Black History Month: Achievements, Change, and Justice. Special Episode

Let's Find Common Ground

USC Dornsife Center for the Political Future

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5 • 2.7K Ratings

🗓️ 10 February 2022

⏱️ 34 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Black History Month is a celebration of the remarkable contributions of black Americans to our nation. Some of our guests share their personal thoughts and stories about the lessons of history. We learn about the legacy of the civil rights movement, and recent calls for social change, justice, reform, and respect. This episode includes extracts from past podcasts and a Common Ground Committee public event. Podcast guests featured: Professor Ilyasah Shabazz, the daughter of Malcolm X and the author of the memoir "Growing Up X", Dr. Brian Williams, Associate Professor of Trauma and Acute Care Surgery at the University of Chicago Medical Center, Hawk Newsome, Cofounder, and Chair of Black Lives Matter Greater New York, Errol Toulon, Sheriff of Suffolk County New York, and Caroline Randall Williams, a poet, author, teacher and Writer-in-Residence at Vanderbilt University in Nashville. We also share moving extracts from a conversation between Donna Brazille and Michael Steele for a Common Ground Committee forum in 2018. As the first Black chairs of the Democratic National Committee and Republican National Committee, respectively, their views represented different perspectives. But in tackling essential questions of race and governance, they found many points of agreement.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is a special edition of Let's Find Common Ground for Black History Month.
0:05.5	The event which runs all through February is a celebration of the contributions of Black Americans.
0:11.0	In this episode, some of our guests share their personal perspectives on what Black History means to them,
0:17.0	how it's influenced their views of current events.
0:20.0	We include excerpts from podcast interviews and a Common Ground Committee public forum.
0:30.5	This is Let's Find Common Ground. I'm Ashley Melntite.
0:35.0	And I'm Richard Davies. In the summer of 2020, we spoke with Professor Ilyasa Shabazz, the daughter of Malcolm X,
0:42.0	together with trauma surgeon Dr. Brian Williams.
0:46.0	It was in the months after the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
0:50.0	First question from Ashley.
0:53.0	How do you think the national discussion about racism has changed over the last 50 years or so?
0:59.0	Well, I think that especially seeing the slow, horrific murder of George Floyd,
1:12.0	that people are certainly more open to hear about and learn about the injustices and the complaints that many people were against.
1:28.0	Even when we look at the phrase, Black Lives Matter, prior when you hear that, a lot of people that I know,
1:41.0	they would say, oh, come on, all lives matter.
1:44.0	But now they understand why people were saying that Black Lives Matter, because for so long, it just didn't seem like it did.
1:55.0	Brian, how do you feel things have changed? Do you agree with Ilyasa when she says that more people are open to this phrase, Black Lives Matter?
2:07.0	I definitely agree that people are more open to discussing racism in general.
2:13.0	And also what I think has changed is the variety of voices that you're hearing from that are condemning this act that happened with the murder of George Floyd,
2:23.0	and also connecting the dots to other incidents like that in the past.
2:28.0	Because what I've seen in past events is that they were always looked at an isolation.
2:33.0	We looked at Michael Brown as one in Freddie Gray as another incident.
	...

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