The Urgency of Now

produce a hundred and six page manifesto and take their lives. Where we can spend the weekend pontificating on whether or not these things are racially motivated, or whether or not Republicans and their violent rhetoric has anything to do with the outcome of where we are today. I am in conversation with my friend and friend of the show, doctor Christina Greer, Associate Professor of Politics at Fordham University, and our conversation that you will listen to today came prior

to the shooting over the weekend. Folks, I can't express to you that where we are as a country and where we are going, and the path that we are on is not good. It is dangerous, It is heartbreaking, it is tragic, it is trauma inducing, it is triggering.

So I hope that you will glean from this conversation with Christina some sense of honesty about the moment that we are in, some ideas about how we move forward, how we deal with our own emotions and the emotions of this moment, how we stay sane and also recognize, without putting our heads in the sand, the urgency of now. So coming up next, my very in depth conversation with our friend, doctor Christina Greer. Please do tell me in the comment section below how you took the news this

past weekend. I was on TV but before the shooting took place. If you're following me on TikTok, then you know my immediate reactions. But I want to hear from all of you, folks. I am so happy to welcome

back to woke f Daily. It's been a long time since we've had doctor Christina Greer, Professor of Political Science, Associate Professor at Fordham University, and you see her very often on MSNBC and other outlets talking about, you know, the demise of our democracy and the constitutional crisis that we're in Christina. I want to start off today just asking you. We've had the Scotus leak that tells us that abortion is going to be gone from this country

for the first time in fifty years. We have more mounting evidence against this twice impeached former president of the United States. If I see one more breaking news headline about more evidence of criminal wrongdoing of hiding documents at Mara Lago of just I mean, lying, inciting violence, and still nothing is happening with the Department of Justice. How are you feeling about this moment that we are living in. Well, it's always great to be back to talk to you.

As you know. You know, my grandma, who's from the Deep South in town, a little town called yu LEI was had some of ninth she finished some of ninth grade. Right, I have a PhD. My sister is an indeed. But when I tell you she was the smartest woman I've ever met. And I'm starting off this conversation saying that she told me a long time ago when we were talking about kind of raise and white people. You know,

she grew up through a lot. She said, Chrissy, the only time you should be surprised is when you're surprised. And I've stuck to that for a really, really long time. I'm not surprised. Abortion isn't going to be like, let me rephrase, it looks like abortion will be outlawed legally, what abortions will not stop? Right, So safe abortions will be outlawed for most, but a lot of women will still be able with meetings. We'll still be able to find an abortion. Obviously, it's for women who are for

marginalized communities. They will still get abortions. It's just we're going to go back to the sixties and seventies and a back room abortions, and we'll see some horrible effects. But because I study American politics so deeply, I've always seen this country ebb and flow with progress and regress, and so when we're in a moment of regression, I'm not a surprised. And even though it's very scary, I will not lie the moment wherein it's very frightening on

a host of levels. We haven't even touched the environment, and that's kind of like some irreversible stuff, right, But I know that there are enough people who are working in their various fields to sort of protect us. Still. I mean, this country has been since its inception. Yeah, we've had some really great strides because a lot of people have worked really hard to move this country forward, and then we have folks who work really hard to pull it back. And so at some point, good meaning

white people will understand the capacity of white people. They don't just yet. We do. Our mothers and grandmothers told us what people are capable of in this nation. But I think a lot of white people just fundamentally don't understand what some of their own relatives will do to sort of take away from others, which will ultimately affect

them too. It'll come around. And so part of me just feels like I'm an ostrich where I'm like, you know, I'm rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic while we're looking at the glacier. But we kind of we've hit the glacier before and we found rafts, and sadly we do. We lose time, we lose people. But I think that I can't stay in a perpetual state of rage or panic because then I can't a do the work. I can't stay focused on what the work is I can't have clarity for young people where I need to be

a leader and help them devise new strategies. And also it's like life is for the living. They're gonna do what they're gonna do, right, So we have to figure out the tools to a keep ourselves healthy and sane so that we can work in our various pockets to move this country forward the way people have always done.

So that's kind of where I am. You know, you're so salient in what you're saying, and I'm listening to you, and I'm realizing that this country has been through a lot, right, fortunate fortunate for us that we have lived through a lot of progress, right. And I think that what I find scary in this moment is that this is going to be the first time in my adult life where progress isn't even on the table, right, that we're in a full on regression to times that I've only ever

read about. And so the fear for me is is there enough strategy and tools to protect us at a time when these radicalized white evangelical Christian fascists are not only about turning back the clock on civil liberties, but they're also about inflicting pain. That's the thing that I feel like people are not getting. This isn't just about what they are taking away, which is serious. It is about the kind of pain that they want to inflict so people know that they are in charge. Yeah, but

they've always done that. That's the history of this country. And so you know when I would give talks a few years ago and I would talk about the Civil Rights Act, Voting Rights Act, Immigration Act, and I would say that they're triumphant of acts, and we cannot detangle the three. And if you sort of start to erode one, you erode all. We've seen this, right, we saw the gutting of the Civil Rights Act or the Voting Rights Act, and now we're seeing our civil rights and civil liberties

being yanked away. We've seen what's happening with immigration, which is just abhorrent. But this country has never been welcome to immigrants. You've got like eight different Chinese exclusion acts on the books. You understand nothing about chattels to say nothing about the genocide of Native Americans, say nothing about what we did to you know, sort of Mexicans and Spaniards coming from the South. I mean, like this country is long and deep, you know. And I didn't even

touch upon internment camps. And that's from FDR the good President, right, that was like from one of the good guys. And he put the internment camps in place. That also kept you know, Italians and Germans in there too. So this country has such a long history of inflicting pain, yep. And I think what was really key about what you said is like we're adults now, right, Yeah, Like it's time to put the big girl painties on, Like we

don't have the luxury anymore of being girls. We are grown ass women, and we're now in charge of protecting the democracy. Right when we see all these stories about black women, Fanny lou Hammer, Barbara Jordan, I mean, that's the book that I'm working on right now. So those

two obviously refresh in my mind. But you know, countless, countless black women how to be wells, aren't married church terrelle who literally put their lives in their bodies on the line to protect the people in this country, not just black people, people in this country. And it's like, oh shit, Mike, it's my time, Like I'm supposed to I'm supposed to use the tools that I have and the thing maybe the reason why I feel so it's not agnostic, and it's not immune, and it's not numb.

I feel a sense of calm in the sense that I do feel prepared. I feel prepared intellectually. I feel prepared with the community, the community that I've built in the connections of especially black women, but you know others. But like, let's just keep it black women right now. The partnerships and the friendships and the sisterhoods that I have people like present Company included. I am not fearful because I'm like, I have tools, you have tools. You

know people who have tools. I know other people have tools. And it's like and we'll come together because we recognize and like we can't count on the Democratic Party to save us. I mean, they're just treading water. And you know, as my grandfather, my dad's dad, you say, they're a lost ball in high weeds. But they're just you know, Jamie Harrison, what are you doing? Where's your strategy? I mean it all, but like but that's real talk talk,

christ real talk. It's like, what what are they doing? Well? Right, Like, why do they seem so suckless? Love that word? Well, I mean, here's here's the thing I said from day one when Chuck Schumer became Senate Majority Leader, and I'm from New York, you know, I live in New York. He is Senator. I was like, he ain't built for this moment. He's not because he also doesn't understand his colleagues. He and Joe Biden, you know, they were from the

Senate of a different time. Yeah, where the agenda was different, but the pain, the level of pain that Republicans wanted to inflict on people was ever so slightly different, it was, and so they don't understand fully the moment they're in. I mean, they're removed, and it's it's interesting, you know, the older we get and we we go on vacations or you know, we do certain things and you realize, I just went on vacation with my family and we

sort of like rented a house. We sort of did something that really kind of celebrated, you know, my niece is about to go to college. And I was like, when you have a little pocket change, you actually don't have to interact with people. It's true, you don't. You can like we stayed we didn't stay hotel in my house, right like it. So we didn't do like a tour. We just like rented a boat, you know, like we

didn't and it's in it's COVID. So we did it deliberately, you know, we're like but we also we didn't hang out with people. We hung out with our saves, nine of us. We hung out with our family. But we spent money to do that. And I just feel like a lot of these elected officials, they're not in gen pop yep. Yeah, you know, they come and give speeches, but they went in, they got their their talks and like, yes, they are seeing the people that they represent, but are

you really with people? So when Katie Porter makes you know, a speech and says, let me walk you through the fact that like women can't buy groceries because you're know, women buying large are the ones who buy groceries for their family. Let me explain to you what inflation is

doing to a family. Because if I in my PhD tenured full salaried self goes to the grocery store and I'm like, fifty dollars barely gets me one bag of groceries, and I call myself, Yeah, I don't understand what people are doing with yeah, real families, and they got to make this check last if they have a check, right, Like, yeah, if they have a job. So I think that a lot of our representatives because it costs so much money

to get into office. And you know, we've talked about this for years, and you've come to my classes and you talk about because the type of people who can even think about running for office are already a certain level of elite. We don't have very rarely. Every now and again you have pockets, and you know someone can get through. But by and large, our representatives are not representative of the populaces. We don't have someone who's like, I'm a single mother, owned food stamps and I am

your new congresswoman. We have people who went to university have graduate degrees by and large, you know, when we look at sort of our senators and members of the House disproportionately, you know what Richie Torres from the Bronx, I believe is like one of the few, if not only, members of Congress who doesn't have a college degree. Most Americans don't, right, most college age Americans do not have

a college degree. Why is he either the solo or one of a handful, Right, right, And so when we think about who is actually representing us, it makes no sense. We got a whole bunch of lawyers and even some PhDs, sure, but like the vast majority of people are like, and let's be real, you and I also don't know what real poverty looks like. We don't We genuinely don't know. And so oftentimes when I'm in these meetings and at these tables, and my question is always where are the

people who we're talking about? Why are they not at the stable? Why are we sitting here scratching our hands trying to come up with solutions, and the people who could tell us what the problem is and most likely tell us what the solution is aren't even at the table. So this is where we have our representatives, especially Democrats, who in their hearts might want to do something great, but it's like, you don't even know what the real

problem is. So this is why Alexandrea Castio Cortez, you know, resonated and still resonates with so many people because it feels like and Cory Bush, right, Corey Bush being one of the Bush Yeah she's and what you said, yeah, yeah, you know, you're You're so right, because they are not representative, like they don't know real people, right and like and so if I'm pretty sure that if you were to ask those in Democratic leadership right now how much how

much a gallon of milk costs, they wouldn't be able to tell you, so right like that, I mean, that's that's the reality. And you know, and everyone's like, oh, gallon milk. It's like I care, right, A woman who has to be four children, she cares. I mean, but for an example, Danielle, you know, if you remember the mayor's race, the New York City mayor's race last year, when they asked the various candidates what was the average price of a home in Brooklyn? These kids eighty thousand dollars.

Eighty thousand dollars, But my grandparents in Florida, Like, who is buying anything in Brooklyn for eighty thousand dollars? I mean, then I don't think you can get a parking space for eighty thousand exactly, or your Honda civic, right because you know that they charge more for like SUVs. So I mean the numbers that these candidates gave Sean Donovan, who you know Obama's yeah, yeah, he was he was find he was the HUD secretary, that's right, And I mean I was just like, sir, sit on down, he

said something. I mean literally, he was like one hundred thousand dollars. I mean, you were the Hunt secretary. So you want to be mayor of New York and you have no idea, not even the fact that people are priced out and can't buy anything. But that means you don't understand what renters are going through. You don't understand people can't even get a place with one hundred thousand dollars down payment, let alone you think that's the price

of a home in Brooklyn, Like, sir, come on. So I think that I'm I'm eerily zen because I think that I understand just how long the road ahead of us is going to be. And when I played sports, I never liked doing that long distance run. I was always like, coach, can I please just do sprints while everyone's doing the mile, you know, around the field. Can

I just do sprints until they're done? And the coach was like, no, you have to learn how to have endurance, Christy, And I was like, yeah, yeah, but I'm really good at sprinting and I can just do that, like, I can just do the burst, do the birth, and then I'll rest at the end of the game. And I never understood I hated long distance running. I am not a runner. Every time I see runners in my neighborhood,

I'm like, what are you doing? But I recognize that there is something to be said about resting so that I can be ready, you know, like the best way to be ready to stay ready. Sure, But at the same time, I believe in rest because, especially in academia, black women aren't lasting long. And we've got a good job relatively speaking. You know, we're not cleaning floors at three am in an office building and we're sitting here thinking and writing on our laptops. Yet we're dying at

these disproportionate rates. So I am not going to let this country take me out. And I understand that, like, I actually have a lot of tools and a lot to give this moment and this movement where I actually the best thing I can do is take care of myself and pay attention and take care of other women who were doing this work and and still do work.

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miss a new episode there. And you're right, and this is this is the this is the place that I find myself on a regular basis, which is oscillating between rage and rest, where I am so filled with rage that people are so asleep at the fucking wheel right are So you know, I just posted Joy Behart on the View just said like, I don't know what Americans are thinking right now, Like we are losing our rights

every single day. She's like, I get that people are focused on gas and inflation because those things matter, but like at the end of the day, we're about to lose everything, and y'all ain't paying attention, right, And so it's it's the it's the anxiety. I have to stay on screaming into the microphone, you know, every single day. But then I'm just like, well, shit, they gonna do what they're gonna do, like and I can't I can't

be taken out by this. I can't be I can't carry the emotional weight of this moment on my back. And you know what, Danielle, some people will only learn when they have nothing. Girl. They don't see it, you know, some people don't see how the immigration crisis is linked to them in their daily lives. They don't care. It's brown children, it's Longitian children at the border. They are unbothered. But they don't see how it's connected to a woman's

right to choose. You don't see how it's connected to the environment. They don't see how it's connected to their job right. So it's like, okay, so now we gotta it sucks, but we gotta wait until you catch up, which is what we are used to doing. So while you're sitting there knitting a pink hat, we gotta wait for you to catch up, girl, and understand the severity of the issue. But here we are. And then when

you come to the party, you're late. You're lad as hell, but you came, and then we're gonna get you up to speed and then we'll have progress and regrets. What are your students? You they You know, I gotta tell you. When I was sitting in my poly side class, you know, all that I was dealing with was you know, a precedent that got to blow job and lied about it, right, right, like saying that seems like a marital issue to me, that did not seem like I needed ken stars investedation

and like an impeachment trial. It seemed like you probably should get a divorce, right, um, And I'm not and again I am. You know, there were major things that were happening, but I'm talking about as a young person, that was the biggest thing, literally, And so these these young people that you're educating day in and day out, what like, what are they thinking about the world that they are being handed right now? The politics that they

are coming to understand. They're disgusted. They're disgusted that a lot of the people who are their age don't vote because they're just starting to vote in you know, now they're in a policy class. Like, I can't believe all these people don't vote, you know, when I explained to them that, like, you know, during Obama's election two thousand and eight, that was like one of the most participatory elections we had seen in modern history. Into the sixty

percent of the voting eligible population showed up. That was like, yeah, a barn storm, and they were like, wait. I was like, so, where's that other forty percent? When all we were talking about was we could have the first black president forty percent of the voting eligible population. It was like, yah, set this point out. So there are a few things.

One obviously, Roby Wade is something that they're just like, and they now see the connection between you voting for your senators and Roby Wade and the Spirit Report, and so now we can now Federalist fifty one separation of powers and checks and balances makes a lot of sense to them because it's like, well, the President nominates somebody, but the Senate confirms them, and then they have a job for life, and it's only nine of them representing

three hundred forty million people. So they're like, wait, I admit it. So they are now seeing the connections from the text to the front page of the New York Times when it comes to say Ukraine. And now, granted, I'm an American politics professor, and that's even though I teach interroid to politics, I teach it through an American politics lens. We all teach it through the lens that

makes the most sense for us. So a lot of my examples are American politics examples because we live in America, but we read the paper and we talk a lot about current events. So when it comes to Ukraine, a lot of my students, last majority of my students were like, listening, this is real, and this is dangerous, and Putin's a mess and we should pay attention. But a few things.

We just found eighty billion dollars under the couch cushion, and another thirty billion, and now another forty billion, And you tell me that you can't cancel these student loans. That's one two. And maybe these are just the types of students I attract because I am who I am. But they're like, we get it. What's happening in the Ukreane is terrible, and we should send some sort of aid,

we should figure it out. But when we started this semester, things were popping off in Yemen and Afghanistan and Syria, and ain't nobody really say a peep? And we didn't find eighty billion dollars in the couch cushion, and didn't have a whole American like, let's bring all the refugees, let's let's open up. We have space for one hundred thousand. How we have space for one hundred thousand, one thousand, but didn't have space for fourteen thousand Haitians at the border.

But who are just flood a country whose prime minister was assassinated and it's being ravaged by COVID and you know, oh, and we're responsible for the economic disaster that their country is in Boom and that earthquake that took out way too many people and storytowns. It's like, well, that's also an environmental crisis because they've had to cut down trees to sort of say all these things. Right, So they're like,

so now they're scratching their heads. It's like, well, so for the white refugees, we got all come, all the money and all the time, all the money and all four time and all the open arms, right, we got the flags. We got peopleting their nails like we have everything. But it was crickets up in this piece when it with Syria, Afghanistan, Haiti, you name it. So they're also seeing that and they're like, this doesn't make any sense

to me. I'm like, because it doesn't make anything. But if you know the country, it makes totals, it makes all the sense in the world. It makes absolute and total sense. And so then we talk about, you know, the project of whiteness and how it's tied to this anti abortion movement, how it's tied to allowing in Ukrainian immigrants, right, because it can't make any more white people. So now

we either got to like bring them in import them. Right, You've already let the Greeks and the Italians and the Portuguese become white and Jews and Germans slowly, maturely, begrudgingly, but you allowed that. But now it's like, okay, so now we've just got to make sure because of how we structured our racial dynamics, unlike Brazil and other you know, say, Latin American countries, it's like only a white lady can

make a white person. Y'all structured it that way. You said, one drop makes you not not in the game anymore. So a woman's right to choose is intrinsically attached to our white and the project of whiteness and the threat that Latinos will take over is the number one group. You know that twenty thirty two deadline, and you know whites will be come the second one. And I was like, first of all, we've seen what apartheid is, Like Latinos

could be the number two group. It's not that Latinos will be in power, like we can still have an apartheid regime. Whites could be the fifth largest group and could still maintain power in various ways. And so how they're seeing how we've taken away parts of the Voting Rights Act that's gonna limit people at the polls, which will assist the Republican Party, and the corruption and as you stated, all of the thuggery that we've seen. So

it's all interconnected. And I think what's been even in the midst of a global pandemic, keep them keep that in mind. We're still in the middle of a global pandemic. But what I've been really happy about with these students, and I really really like gen Z. I like them a lot. I've said that from day one, more so than the millennials, and I've said that one day two.

I like the way they connect the dots. They don't have as much, their parents don't have as much, so they're not as entitled and they're sort of like, we got to figure this out. We ain't got anhing. So there's a work ethic that is there in this new generation that did not exist with millennials. Yeah, um, you know, it's just also fascinating and depressing at the same time.

I don't know how I feel about gen Z I'll be honest, like, because I'm like, they are the softest group of people I think I've ever heard and seen in my life. Everything can't be a breakdown, like everything like some things, you must be resilient four you know what I'm saying, Like, yeah, I think those are still Millennials. I think I honestly think that the gen Zers are getting folded into the sort of like I was triggered child, you're at work, Like, right, girl, everything be agger right.

I think that's the Millennials. I don't think that's the gen Zers. Yeah, um, you know. I I worry for this generation coming up because I think that they are going to feel the brunt of all of the things. They're going to be living inside a Banana Republic. They're going to be hit with environmental historic environmental disaster after historic environmental disaster, And I'm like, what did their lives look like? What I have been educated in three years?

Like real, half of them have not really been in school for three years. But you know, it's like though, and this is where my optimism comes in. That's sometimes when we get the most creative solutions. Like I'm really wondering if this is what we needed as a nation to shake us up, to get us back on track, because we were in some status quote les fair, and it's like and we weren't perfect before this pandemic and

before Republicans really started wilding out. I think Donald Trump just exposed just how embedded this diseases in our country. But we were just kind of cruising along like it wasn't there. It was there. He didn't create these people. These people were always there. They were just sort of in the shop. As he said, we are the silent majority. And it's like, oh snap, I don't think they're the majority,

but there's a lot of them. And I think it's like, you know what, it's I do think that at a certain point in time, and I hate, you know, sort of it's scary to say this, but it's like this country needed to turn the lights on. Yeah, we have finally just turned It's like, all right, now we see it.

What's up. It's twenty twenty two. We were actually we got a lot more folks that are that one nineteen fifty two, and we were just pretending that they didn't exist, and we kept telling ourselves, Oh, they'll die off, they'll die off, right. I was, It's like, why do people keep saying like they'll die off? As if the people that were marching in Charlottesville in twenty seventeen were eighty five? They were they were twenty, right, Like do you know? Also?

And then I think Democrats fooled themselves to think, like, you know, demographics is destiny. It's like, oh, well, we'll get all these immigrants and you know, then we'll have the numbers. It's like, well, first of all, not if you get the Voting Rights Act, And second of all, you can look at voting patterns and say a place like Arizona, where you know there are a lot of Latino Republicans who are like, yes, I was an immigrant,

Yes I may have been an undocumented immigrant. I am up the ladder and I'm pulling it up, and I want to make Mosttonian rules for all the immigrants out there. So it's just like, you know, we've seen we've seen it now with the growing Asian American Republican population. We see it with all these black folks, you know, who were sort of skyrocketing to the front of the Republican party because it's like, well, if I'm a Democrat, then I got to wait in line behind all these people.

If I just say negroes are too stupid to you know, have jobs and homes and you know, excelling this kind, you can run for governor and get all the money. I'm looking at you, mister Kentucky. So I think that, you know, democrats underestimate the allure of the policies that Republicans sell to people. Yea, how there's a lot of money to be made in taking away There's a lot of money to be made in taking things away from people,

and they get it. They get it, and I think Democrats are still just like, well, shucks, let's you know, let's be kind and nice. It's like a last question for you, Christina. This conversation has just been so as always, so so invigorating, so so many, so many morsels, so many pieces are so filling for me because you make me feel not crazy. It's like, where where do I

go to feel like I'm not crazy? I come to you with all that is happening though with all of this pressure, with all of this regression, to me, I only see this leading to one place. Right, Like when you turn on all the lights, all of the cockroaches don't go away, right, They leave eggs, And so sometimes you need to bomb the home that has become infested in order for there to be the possibility of actually living there. That is how I feel about America. Are

we headed towards a revolution? Towards an uprising? Because I don't know how you control how nine people control three hundred and forty million and think that like we're all going to go quietly into the good goddamn night, back to nineteen fifty two, right. I think I'm of two minds. So one mind is, listen, of all the guns in the world, We've got a quarter of them in America, And of the people who have guns, the vast majority of them belong to one party. So let's just say

we take the violent route. I prefer not to because we are we are outnumbered and unarmed, and we also know that people in our armed forces and our military forces by and large, have white supremosis tendencies. So I would prefer not to not to broach that that road, because I think that it's it's not a road that ends up well for people like us. The other road is the more optimistic road. There are ways we've changed

the Constitution several times. Think about thirteen, fourteen, fifteenth Amendment, think about the nineteenth amendment, the women white women. We can think about the twenty sixth amendment that you know, let younger people vote. We can think it about amendment. Think about an amendment to increase the size of the court. That's one of my final exam questions some years. You know, do we increase the size of the Supreme Court? And

if so, what's the number? You know, if we were increased it to thirteen, will we just have a six seven majority and just basically instead of five fours, we'll just have you know, seven sixes. Do we make it twenty one? Do we make it fifty? We know that they're transaction costs and conforming costs, and the more people you got, the harder it is, and so you know, things take longer. So there's some pros and cons to changing the system, but that doesn't mean that we can't

do it. And as my incredibly brilliant grandmother, you still always say, if we could put a man on the moon. We can figure this out. I mean, I gave a talk once at a transportation equity forum, and I was talking about how we can figure out a way to make transportation cheaper, if not relatively free, for poor people. We can find some metrics to sort of measure what is poverty and all these other things. But you know, we figured out for students and we get them a

metric card and senior citizens. So it's basically saying, like there can be some sort of means test for marginalized communities to help them pay for a public transit. This man in the audience just, no, that's impossible. You know, we can't do we can't. We can't, we can't, we can't. And so I gave him the line of, like we put a man on the moon, I think we can figure out how to give a poor person a bus pass. Right. It's not that deep. And I think that there are

a lot of ways in this country. Going back to your point about like this this new generation, I think that they will come up with some creative solutions that you and I just can't see. We've been in this institution our whole lives. We have been institutionalized me, especially in graduation, for so long, you know, and now I

work in an institution like Trust and Believe. I talked to my therapist about this all the time, like, why is it that I've chosen to be in institutions my whole life, the whitest of the white, the sort of you know, elitist, of the most elite and the most unwelcoming. Yet I signed up to keep doing it for a

future generation purposes. So I think though that this I don't know, I'm just feeling really good about some of the young many of the young people who we're like, we're passing over a shit sandwich and they're like, okay, Like all right, we'll figure it out. I really hope that they do. And I hope so that you continue to educate them and inspire them to do something create and innovative with that a ship that we are giving them.

That's my job, and I take it really seriously, you know, And I think the reason why I am not filled with rage, I am, you know. I'm definitely worried, sure, and I have my days where I'm like, ah, but I think because I have the privilege of seeing of a planting seeds and seeing sort of things bloom. They don't always bloom in that three and a half months that they're with me, but sometimes they bloom in three years. Sometimes sometimes I'll get an email from you know, Stupero

years ago. I was like, Hey, that thing you said, I finally it finally clicked. I finally get it, and now I'm doing X with my life. And so there's

that's the beauty of being an educator. I think that's like, that is the secret when people are like, I don't understand why these teachers, you know, you make no money relatively speaking, right, you were not respected by your principle or your school district, and like academics, it's like you won't went to all this extra schooling to make a few extra dollars more than a regular teacher, Like why

do you do it? It's like, because there is nothing that compares to planting a seed and a young person and then seeing it grow in front of your eyes and it's like oh snap, and recognizing you are then changing literally the course of history. So that's why I'm sort of like, all right, well, yeah know we are where we are, girl, We're gonna be where we at However, we're gonna I think we're gonna be okay. You keep planting, you keep planting, I'll keep oscillating between rage and rest,

and we need that now. We will make it to the other side. Dear friend, doctor Christina Greer, thank you so much, thank for this lesson, for this time. I love our conversations and appreciate you so much. Righty, hey, I'm David. Plots of Slights Political Gabfest. As another election season accelerates, it can be tricky to sort through all

the noise and the news. Each week on the Gapfest, John Dickerson, Emily Bathlona and I decipher the headlines, break down the races, and tell you what issues really matter. We do not always agree, we definitely do not always agree, but we always deliver thoughtful debate and we always have a good time. So subscribe to Slate's Political Gapfest, new episodes every Thursday. That is it for me today here, dear friends, it will be a fucking week. Buckle up.

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