Hey Michael Steel Podcast listeners, Michael Steel here with another quick take from the

Michael Steel Podcast. Check out what's going on right now.

We're having a fascinating discussion with the director of the Fellows program at the

Brennan Center for Justice. His new work, his debut work, his book, when the stars begin

to fall over coming racism and renewing the promise of America is out now. We're talking

with Theodore Ted Johnson for Black people in particular. You turn a corner on page 76.

You turn a corner where you say the black American demand. I love the power and the use

of the word demand here because it's something that sticks at my crawl, which you'll find

out about in a second. The African American, the black American demand for full citizenship

is a function of a burning desire for racial equality. For me, the demand piece is so important.

What are we demanding in this relationship, in our understanding of the country we built?

Not the white man's understanding of America, but our understanding of the country we built.

That for me is that question centers on this one word demand that becomes, that feeds

everything else. Equality, boom, boom, boom, because you've got to demand it. When I

read that, I thought back on so many conversations with people, since George Floyd's death, in

which that idea of demand was a big part of it. You could hear it, even though they weren't

using the words. You could hear it in how they were talking about policing in the black

community, how they were talking about the economics in the black community, the wage

discrepancy, the healthcare discrepancies, the educational discrepancies, that the demand

was, we tied it, is shit. They were ready and their folks were ready to begin to link their

history up with that demand. What was the white response? Well, the 1619 project is a load

of crap. That's not real history. When we started to tell our history, or make our demands

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