We Are Not Your Superheroes

and broadcasting live. We are living in such unstable, uncertain and just remarkably volatile times when you feel like the only thing that you can do is this kind of act, which monks have done, and we've reported on this show. You know, just a couple of months ago, another protester in front of an embassy Israeli embassy in DC did the same thing.

quite some time. And what I will say about this moment is that an astrologer that I follow, who is also a friend, Channy Nicholas, who has an incredible app has said that the astrology of this moment, this time that we are living in mirrors the astrology from the nineteen sixties and what was happening, and like you know, the eclipses, the just astrological conjunctions and all of these things, the return Jupiter Saturn, like all of these things that

are happening. I continue to say that we are at an inflection point. The world is essentially a tinderbox, and you know it is necessary, necessary, necessary, necessary to slow down, to have grace, to give yourself grace, to give those around you grace, to take a beat. I will be very transparent that last week I had an absolute breakdown. Couldn't really pinpoint the reason why, but I was feeling very erratic, feeling just very unhinged, lots of tears, just exhausted,

emotional like, just feeling out of sorts. And I urge you all that before you get to that moment of bursting. And maybe sometimes the bursting is necessary, it's part of the process. But when you start to feel yourself spinning

in any which way, find ways to ground yourself. If that is meditation, if it is prayer, if it is going for a walk, if it is playing with a pet, if it is calling a friend, if it's dialing up your therapist, if it is gardening, you know, if it is music, whatever it is that grounds you reach for it in abundance because the times, folks are just wild a f Coming up next my conversation with my friend

and just brilliant mind, professor doctor Christina Greer. Is this episode just chop full of black girl magic and brilliance and analysis and just the most So I hope that you enjoy it, folks. I am so excited to welcome back to WOKF Daily, doctor Christina Greer, Political scientists, Associate professor at Fordham University, author of Black Ethnics, and co host of FAQ NYC, host of The Blackest Question. She is the blackest person, Brooklynmon. I love this for all

of us. It's so great to have you. It's so great to have you back on. There's been so much that has been playing out in the news as of late, and so I actually let us avoid the conversation around Trump at least for the beginning first part of our conversation. You know, the NCAA Women's tournament just ended incredible. I mean incredible season for women's basketball. What I will say to my woll Gay Up listeners is that I am

a newbie. I have always enjoyed basketball, but over the last year I really got into women's basketball because of my girlfriend, who's a big fan of the WNBA. We went to a bunch of games and just like got into it. And so this season of women's college basketball has just been incredible. What's also been incredible is the media coverage that has really showed America's ass in so many ways as it pertains to misogyny, as it pertains to patriarchy and race and racism. Missagy Noir, I mean,

you name it, I'm gonna throw anti anti blackness. We have just seen it play out with the matchup of these teams that we have seen with Iowa, you know, and and and uh Caitlin Clark and you know, a largely you know, majority white team and the mid you know in the Midwest that the media wanted to portray as America's sweethearts versus you know, LSU right, a black team led by Angela angel Reyes and Flage and who

are unapologetically black. You go to the finals and you have uh, South Carolina going you know against Iowa South Carolina, black team headed by a black woman again, unapologetic black woman coach. And the way that the media, Christina has framed this has been so disappointing, but so you know expected, right, But I think that for a lot of people again, you're having meal, tens of millions of people tuned in, right, And I wonder from you just you know, you were

watching the clips. You're a big fan of Dawn Staley, you know, because she's Philly, Philly bred and born and just a superstar you know, has been. She was a superstar when she was a player, she's been a superstar as a coach. What did you make of the media brew ha ha over the.

they need a white savior in this like growingly black sport. Now, the conversation was always, Oh, we don't pay women anything because no one watches women's sports. That's out the window. Yay, because they've posted the numbers. The proof of ism is in the pudding, you know, even when the Liberty made it to the playoffs last year, record numbers, record and so stop with the excuses. We sort of started happening this conversation when Britney Griner was detained in Russia, yep,

and the conversations and why was she in Russia? Right, because she doesn't make any money in the United States. Can you imagine, you know, basically looking at her CB, It's like Steph Curry's like, I got to go to Russia to make a little bit of money in the off season. No, you can't, right, And so how we treat women period, not like just female athletes. To remember a few years ago, we saw their workout and it was like some yoga mats and a dumb bell set.

That was it from Target? Like that was it? I mean? And people were showing pictures of their home gyms, like I live in New York City. I got a better setup than they do, right, And I live in an eight hundred square for an apartment like that was what people were posting. So fast forward to twenty twenty four, you've got, you know, kind of these rematches, and even when South Carolina wins, they try and make the story about Caitlin right, and you see people online like, hey,

you can actually talk about the winners. You could still talk about these black girls, unapologized black girls who have made it to the final four. You know, you even have some of these And this is the problem with sports journalism. You very rarely can find a good sports journalist. You have a lot of former athletes who are employed talking about sports, but there's a real respect that we have for journalists, people who dedicate their lives to it.

So you have these former athletes spouting the same misogynistic, anti black rhetoric about black female athletes that you no longer have to have old white men saying. You've got young black men saying it. Well, if Angel Reives didn't want to, you know, get talked about that, maybe she shouldn't have come out and talking about It's like, what are you talking about? This young woman does not deserve the racist vitriol that she had to endure these past

few years. You and I know the hate mail that we get, so we can only imagine the scale in which she gets it. And we haven't had the conversation about the politics of respectability right out loud, conversation about these young girls with the nails, with the lashes, with the with the baby hair, with the weave, where it's just like they're doing their jobs and they may not look the way you think a black girl should look, they may not speak the way you think black people

should speak. But as we've seen, politics of respectability only gets us thus far. And you know, we've had this conversation about men when we think about Hank Aaron being perfect, and we see the way he was treated, Bill Russell being perfect, We saw the way he was treated. So these girls are like, you know what, I would be perfectly on the court. Everything else that's subject to your

interpretation and your opinion. So I'm gonna do me because me sort of presenting myself in the way that you want it is still not going to ever let you accept me. So why not just be authentic and represent where I represent? And I think someone like Don Staley as a coach, being authentically herself and genuine about not just her faith, but her struggle to get to where she is, you know. I mean, I have the pleasure of being friends with Gail Marquis, who was in the

nineteen seventy six women's Olympic team. They were silver medal. Okay, she's seventy years old, just I mean brilliant. And we went to a Knicks game together and she's telling me stories and we're cracking and laughing, but they're horrendous stories, right, So I was like, hey, Gale, did she ever think about coaching? She was like, girl coaches made like seventy five dolive Like. She was like, they didn't start paying

female coaches any money until recently. And she was like, and now you see, you know, male coaches coaching female teams because there's actually money there, right, But before, when there was no money, you didn't see any male coaches. So she was like, you know, she played overseas in Paris for many, many years because there was nothing for her to do here, right, I mean, she didn't have a basketball team in her ice, in her middle school.

She didn't start playing basketball until high school. I mean, so just even like the pipeline for women's sports, one of my godsisters played for Northwestern. She was a major star in the college circuit, but there was no WNBA at the time, so like she went front office in a lot of NBA sports, Like she couldn't work in her own field at the time. And so we see

the inequities still exist. But the way, you know, people try and talk about Coach Staley, I mean asking Coach Staley about transports, which is sure if you want to ask coaches that question, A, ask all the coaches that question. B. Maybe not ask him that question in the middle of the Final four, when you know the hatred and vitriol they're going to receive from even broaching that topic. And

Don Staley A answered it perfectly. But our facts gave a nod to the fact that, like, you do know that you ask me this question is going to detract from what I need to do, you know, and I know that my players, my black girls got to play against the players and the referees, right, because we do know that America needs this sort of Caitlyn Clark, right. We see this all the time. We see it usually in the Super Bowl when it's a matchup between black

quarterback and white quarterback. We see it constantly, and it's exhausting. You know, I saw the articles DNCE Daily had a fifty seven hundred dollars Louis vuittan jacket on when she was coaching. Well, you know what, she's just got a major bonus because she's taken them to the playoffs and she's taken them to the championship. And how she chooses to spend her money is how she chooses to spend

her money. I don't think that I've ever seen an article about the cost of tailored suits of Rick Patino when he's coaching or whomever, right college or otherwise. And so this we see it in politics all the time. How you talk about women's hair, how you talk about women's bodies, their weight, their clothing. You know, do they have kids and I have kids? Or they married or then you know, I mean we talk about the coach

of lsu Kim Mulki and her Shenanigans. Sure, but like we know more about her outfits, and granted, her outfits are wild and Owland is short, and she like, girl, are you trying to the court, But it's like, why are we talking about her clothes? I mean, I don't agree with her politics and a lot of the things that she says about, you know, anti vaxxing and you know, some of her conservative us she's crazy, She's she's an amazing coach, though, and so we spend a lot of

time talking about her outfits and not her coaching. And so I think that I looked at don Staley as a guide because she's a unbothered at least in the public facing. She clearly has a good team behind her that she can sort of decompress with. But I mean,

don't forget she's been a child star. I mean there are articles about her from when she was in eighth grade, you know, so she's unfortunately had to deal with the racism and sexism and the massage noir and the anti blackness because don't forget, she didn't go to fancy schools in Philly, you know, like she did go to school playing basketball and worked her way all the way up to where she is now. So I think that she's

accustomed to this. It doesn't make it right, but she's really good at I mean, her answers in some of these q and as has been from a woman who clearly knows how the media treats black women.

not afraid of the spotlight. But it is also going to be very real with people about what comes the good, the endorsements, the money, this that and the other thing, the Vogue shoot and the bad which are the death threats, right and the fear, and so I just, you know, I wonder Christina, like I feel like we have to do so much explaining as black women. It never ends on what it is to be in this black woman body and deal with a white supremacist, patriarchal society, right,

and like and the exhaustion that comes from that. And I'm like, I don't know, you know, for you, but at what point or will we ever get to a point where we're just like, I actually don't give a fuck, like what you think and what you're saying and what you're writing about. And I'm good and I'm gonna keep being good because you're all gonna keep being terrible, right, So.

of being your cleanup woman. Part of me is just sort of like I'm doing what I can do. I'm explaining to you what you should be doing, but I'm actually not going to do your job and I might have to just deal with the consequences. But as you and I have both seen the number of black women we know who go into early graves because we're doing everybody else's work. We're worrying about everybody else, and we're trying to figure out how we can make everything work.

And it's like, you know what, the sun God willing will rise again tomorrow without me, and you realize, you know, I told you, I've told you the story before. But the black secretary that was working at Fordham the very first day of school and I'm like, I need you know these syllabi xeroxton, I need my blue books and where's my classroom and blah blah blah, and she was like, I'm about to take off two weeks. I'm like two weeks at the beginning of school. What like, who does that?

You're the admin, right, And she was like, listen, these people are not about to rush me into an early grief, because of course that's when everyone's hysterical the first two weeks of school. And she said, look at here, this is my first day. She says, my name will never be on the outside of this building. And she just let it hang out there, and then she looks at me and she says, and neither will yours. So she's like, so, you can give these people your whole life if you

want to. But at the end of the day, the Lowenstein Building is still going to be named the Lowenstein Building, Okay. So, and I swear that has been my north star for a really long time, Like and Erica Badou, don't be naming the buildings after me to go down dilapidated. Like so, even if you do get a building named after you, and what then? What? So? I feel like that's part of me. I do this intermittent working thing. You know, I work really hard and then I take off. Okay,

you know I love a swimsuit. You know I love some sun. So I'm out next week. I'm out. I'm gonna bust my help this week until next Wednesday. Next Wednesday. You know, only people who know me know me, and they can reach me. Everybody else you'll get my lovely out of office reply. So that's two three. This is where we slightly different, and this is why I love black women, because we could be sisters and indifference. I support your analysis of Tis James one thousand percent. I

do not agree with your analysis of Fanning Mail. Okay, First thing my father told me. My first job airstep busy brown shoe store. Second job TGI Friday's Smiley people greeter aka hostis well, my dad told me, don't get your honey where you make your money. Come on and Fanny, we know that Donald Trump is the slipperiest of the slipperiest man. Yep. We know that he hires p people specifically yeah, to go after and find what your achilles heel is. He's done in his entire career because he

likes to cut corners. He likes to not pay, He likes to never pay the piper and face up to what he's done. He always deflects to flex the flex. You know this. You're smart enough to know this. You're a lawyer. You've had clients like it. You've never had a former president of the United States. So we unfortunately have to rest on what our parents told us from day one in kindergarten. You gotta work twice sorry to get half as much. You know that you will be

judged differently. You can't do what they do. You can't act like how they act. We know this the only reason why she's that successful because she had parents who told her that, and she listened to them, and that's how she got where she got. But I don't understand why she would think that having a relationship with someone at her job is something that the former president of the United States, that particular president, wouldn't find an exploit. And she kept saying rightfully, So I'm not the one

on trial. Except for Fanny. We talked about you and your sex life and Gorilla Grip and all this other stuff. For three weeks. We didn't talk about Donald Trump. We just talked about you. And all he had to do was sow that seed of doubt in Moderates, Independence Weeklaning Democrats and a lot of people. And so, yes, you may still be on the case, but it's tarnished now. And that's not necessarily his doing, it's his exploitation of it. But you're the one who did it. And so that's

my frustrations as a black woman. I support whatever she does. Sure, I know it's a lonely job, it's a huge job, it's a high pressure job. Things I don't know. That's not my job. But I'm like, you also know your foundation from your parents, because it's the same thing that my parents told me and your parents told you, because that's how we're where we are, not just surviving but thriving.

There's a difference. And so like you work this hard to get up there and throw it away for some like some d girl, like just wait or get it someplace else. It's Atlanta, Like you know what I'm saying. So my frustration is, we know who Donald Trump is.

She of all people, knows who he is and how shady he is and the types of people he has around him who will do nothing but find some girl who doesn't really like you, who wants to exploit it, find somebody who's a little jealous of you, who wants to tell your business all the things that we unfortunately saw on display. And so like, yes, she's strong, but it really it frustrated me.

here we are. What I did appreciate is the fact that, you know, I thought that she was going to walk into that space with her head coward, her shoulders slumped and be really apologetic and give them, you know what they wanted, you know, sorry, sir, I'll go back in my place, sir, type of bullshit. And she didn't, and so and so for that part, I was just like, well, you did it, you know, so you might as well just own it. And that's what she did, right. I just would have rather you not do it if.

that the ship is tight. Because dealing with a former president of the United States in an unprecedented manner, everything has to be super super tight. And that's for white boys prosecuting him. So you know, for a black person, you know, for a woman, you know, damn sure, for a black woman, it's gotta be air tight. I'm talking NASA level air tight. And it wasn't. And so it makes it look like, oh, even in the side position, you got you know, Shenanigans on the mind. And here

we are. Yeah, we didn't talk about Donald Trump for a long time. And now the Georgia case, which is probably the best case against him, is dead. To rights on the phone talking about giving these votes. It's that's a tarnished case. Now, yeah, it's not over, but it's delayed and it's tarnished. And November will come before Georgia.

But for whatever reason, whiteness, maleness, our obsession with wealth, the fact that the Supreme Court has bought and sold, the fact that federal benches have been bought and sold, Donald Trump is still a viable candidate for president. And you know, we're still in a place of fifty to fifty toss up. What do you make of what you are seeing right now? We're still seven months out in terms of the probability of Democrats being able to hold on.

like that's gonna help with wealth creation. You can actually buy your first home because you will be paying off old debts. You can actually start saving for new futures. Environmentally, is anyone perfect? No? But has he done exponentially more than any other president? Yes? Right? So for like issues that you know, being on the right side of history when it comes to a woman's right to choose, I still hate the fact that Biden and Democrats use Republican

language of pro life. Republicans aren't pro life. They believe in the death penalty. They believe in starving American children, they believe in starving children at the border, they believe in starving children internationally. They're not pro life. So stop using pro life. It's anti choice or choice? Do you believe grown women and young women should have a choice over their own autonomy? Right? Everything's economic issues. That's why people go to the polls. I would argue abortion is

an economic issue. Mm hm. I would argue everything that Joe Biden laid out is an economic issue. And unfortunately people to judge camping your best sarrogate and you're only Sarah Gate right, Like, we need to be able to talk about stop talking about this a morphous thing called the economy. People don't know what the economy is. People know how their pocketbooks feel. People know can I afford summer camp or not? Can I afford this gas or not? When I go to the grocery store fifty dollars just

to give me two grocery bags. Now it gets me fairly won like talk about it in that context, not in sort of abstract terms, because the economy sounds like Wall Street people, not regular people. So the language needs to change. What makes me nervous, very nervous, is this idea of international affairs. Now Oftentimes there's very little daylight between Democrats and Republicans when it comes to international affairs. But Americans don't really tend to care about international affairs

in the way that we should. I mean, we do wild things across the world, always have since since our inception. We are a bellicost nation. We can't stop being at war, whether it's at home or abroad, usually abroad where people are really paying attention. But that's where a lot of our money goes. So when things are tight, especially in a post COVID world. Folks are now actually sort of

allah the sixties with Vietnam, where's my money going? Because it seems like my money is going towards things across the world that I don't agree with. We didn't really see this with Iraq and Iran in Afghanistan. Excuse me with you know, the sort of we were growing up during Desert Storm. We heard about it, but like, yeah, it was like, oh, okay, well that's a war that's you know, worth fighting. I guess that's where it was framed,

and Democrats were fine with it. Similarly, post nine to eleven Iraq and Afghanistan, we know it's like the pretext seems real false, real shaky, and really a lie, but nobody was like, no, Democrats were holding George Bush. You know, they disliked George Bush. Fine, but like Republicans weren't holding into the fire. They were like, this is the world, make it moneys, where you going to do? And even when you know continues under Obama, it's like, shame on you, Obama.

You didn't close going down, But no one punished Obama the way. Yeah, it seems like Joe Biden has become the face of international relations, and it seems like people of color and young people and first and second and third gens, a lot of folks are like, I'm tired of having international relations conversations that aren't directly related to who we are as a nation. And it seems to be falling on the feet of Joe Biden, and he

does not seem to be doing a great job articulating it. Now, we know that the Republican Party will be exponentially worse abroad on a whole host of issues, whether it's Ukraine and Russia, whether it's Israel and Palestine, whether it's the entire continent of Africa, whether it's South America and their natural resources, you name it. We know that they will be whole worse. But the genocidal conversations about Joe Biden

don't seem to be going away. And so for us to be six months in and this is you know, we have a very short attention span, right, I mean, you saw all the Ukrainian flags. Now, I can bear the fight in the Ukraine right now. But this doesn't seem to be shaken off the way I think Democrats thought that it would. And I think the wishful thinking was well, by November, folks will just be like, let's

talk about the economy, let's talk about pocketbook issues. But I don't think that this is actually going away, and north do I think it should. But I do think that Joe Biden is being held to a standard that is trying to change the standard of how American presidents behave. But his competition will never change that standard. He'll actually

make it worse. He'll make the entire country worse. So here we are in this moment where we're trying to figure out how do we hold several really important and difficult conversations that really get at who we are as a nation and how we spend our money as a nation, and how we not only treat the people in this country but also how we treat people abroad. We've always had this disconnect. It actually hasn't been that much of

a disconnect. We treat people broad terrible, and we treat people in this country terribly, and I think people are just like, yeah, and it doesn't have to be that way. And so my concern, though, is there seems to be like and I'm going to show you Joe Biden that I'm not taking it right, which frightens me only because we are yes, we have multiple candidates, but it does boil down to a two party system at the end

of the day, is George Washington warned us about. And the alternative to Joe Biden is a frightening, frightening pop position to me, largely because the first term of Donald Trump was a dry run to see what he could

get away with. And now he knows where the keys to the castle are, he knows who not to let me not have any legit Republicans around me, because they'll just slow me down, let me actually like be the boy king that I wanted to be, and these Republicans are like, no, sir, actually there are limits to executive orders. No sir, Actually, we can't just you know, deport people because I don't like them. No sir, actually, we can't just like start selling things off and making money for

you and your family. But that's what he's done to every company he's ever had, and so now he's he's sort of seen this is how I can do it to the American people. I mean, he's already as his own party paying for his devents, right, so like, yeah, he's a grifter, we know it. So that's what worries me. We will become the shell of our former selves. And like, listen, we've been playing the shell game for a long time,

but we will really be hollowed out. It's like the mob, you know, like when the mob takes over your business, it's like, yeah, you might still have the lights on, but like internally, you know, we saw the Sopranos, We've seen good fellows, we've seen the Godfather. Like internally, your business is no longer yours. And I don't as complicated as this country is. And you know, we write about it, we talk about it, we rail against it, but like we also fight for it because we're black people and

that's what we've always done for this country. And I don't want to see it go down by the hands of someone like Donald Trump. My grandparents and great grandparents and the ancestors have fought and worked way too hard in this nation to have it sold off for parts by a man like him. A.