Welcome to another episode of Lurie Breaks It Down, a podcast where we dig deeply to connect the dots on the issues that shape our world.

I'm Lurie Daniel Favors, author,

activist, attorney, and host of the Lurie Daniel Favors show on Sirius XM's Urban View, Channel

126. Now, the question we are going to unpack a bit today is the following. What happens when

you need the people who hate you to also clean your water?

Now, to those of you who have been listening to the podcast for any length of time, or to those of you

who have been listening to my show on Sirius XM, you know that this much more simplified question

is a simplified version of a much broader question that I've been posing for the past several years.

When it became clear to me that the 1964 Civil Rights Act was on its deathbed

because Republicans hate the 1964 Civil Rights Act,

I began posing a slightly more complicated question.

Now, before I get to the more complicated version,

just a reminder that the 1964 Civil Rights Act is a piece of federal legislation that essentially

says, hey, white people, you can be as racist as you want to be at home and in your private

affairs, but if you own a hotel, you cannot

also prevent black people from staying in the hotel simply because you're racist against

black people. Or, hey, white restaurant owner, you can hate black people as much as you want to

hate black people, but you cannot prevent black people from getting served in your restaurant simply

because they are black and you hate them. And that's what the 1964 Civil Rights Act did.

It essentially said you could no longer be racist in your distribution of privileges,

opportunities, or services. You could no longer discriminate against people simply because of their race in hiring,

for example, in school admissions, or in any of the other points at which black people interact with

...