Heather. Heather McGee is a brilliant researcher and the author of the new book The Some

of Us which is awesome an explanation of how race impacts pretty much everything in

this country and she had a really interesting thought on why one six the terrorist attack on this country by maggots, why one six

happened.

In my book I talk about the reconstruction era and in fact I talk about how there's a chapter called

never a real democracy. how there's a chapter called Never a Real Democracy where I remind myself and I remind my readers that from the beginning the really radical and beautiful idea of a representative democracy of

self-governments by the people has always had holes whittled into it in the pursuit of compromises with racism,

right? From the many compromises that the founders made with slave states in order to get

them to sign the Constitution including the electoral college which keeps sending unpopular

people into the White House right and at various times in American history you know there's there's been this

faction of usually white men who have really attacked the foundations of American democracy in order to hold on to white power.

It reminds me of a story that actually included in the book of the attack on the government and the courthouse of Colfax, Louisiana, which was the deadliest,

quote-unquote race riot, you know, in reconstruction where there was a sort of pro-reconstruction, the white governor who was elected,

and a white mob came, murdered a hundred of

their black neighbors who were trying to defend the courthouse where the

election was being certified and burned the courthouse to the ground rather than submit to a multiracial democracy.

I mean history is not just rhyming, it's singing. I mean we if we don't face the history like how

many people know the story of Colfax, Louisiana.

And you know, if we don't face the history and recognize how much the same impulse and

impetus and force is still in our society and be able to name it and reject it as soon as we see signs of it,

then we are doomed to repeat it.

This is far less of an anomaly you're saying then has been discussed so far? Yes, that's exactly right.

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