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Pro today. Americans

14:00

a clearer view of what the world

14:02

thinks of Americans than Americans might have

14:04

had if not for Donald Trump. You

14:06

know some people didn't like American policy

14:09

overseas or in the Middle East or

14:11

whatever the case may be but generally

14:13

thought that having a cop was better

14:15

than not having a cop on the

14:17

world stage and at least America wasn't

14:19

deliberately at all times trying to break

14:21

all the China and then Donald Trump

14:23

shows up and has some remarkable ability

14:25

to upend every convention we think about

14:28

every norm that we understand. So on

14:30

one hand Donald Trump helped because he

14:32

caused Americans to say oh my god

14:34

they're looking at us like we're a

14:36

little bit crazy. On the other hand

14:38

Al Jazeera realized that if

14:40

this audience at MSNBC doesn't

14:43

understand some of the things that

14:45

audience understood then it it's

14:48

on us to make that clearer. You know

14:50

cut the piece of pie in a thinner

14:52

slice so that people can absorb that. People

14:55

are not to be faulted for not understanding

14:57

everything they don't understand and not reading the

14:59

books they don't know that they might be

15:01

reading. Look at after George Floyd died the

15:04

hunger there was after George Floyd was murdered

15:06

let's be accurate that the hunger there was

15:08

for people to understand inequality. Liberals who thought

15:10

this place was pretty equal they didn't know

15:13

the books they hadn't read and then so

15:15

many of us came to read those books

15:17

together. That's how I see it right that

15:19

I went in there saying there are things

15:22

you need to understand about the world and

15:24

our place in it and let's

15:26

go through this together. Let's learn them together.

15:28

Let's not be condescending to our audience. Let's

15:31

not be condescending to those who don't know

15:33

the things we as journalists as generalists should

15:35

know. I love talking to academics and really

15:37

getting into the work that they do and

15:40

getting into these thin slices and my audience

15:42

has beautifully given me the permission to keep

15:44

on doing those things. Then in

15:47

TV land sometimes doesn't seem sensible but

15:49

if we're all just getting smarter and

15:51

able to make our decisions better because

15:53

of the things that we learn and

15:55

again Jason I've been in cable

15:57

for a long time and I think we contributed to some

15:59

of this. polarization in society so toward

16:01

the end of my career i'd like to

16:03

do some things to fix that and this

16:06

common understanding of the problems we face together

16:08

is one of those areas that i lean

16:10

into. What a highlight

16:12

this because this is a critical

16:14

moment not just in the book with honestly

16:17

i think in journalism and sort of american

16:19

political history you talk about like the three

16:21

steps to fully becoming a citizen and you

16:23

tell some amazing story. About

16:26

getting shot while covering the protest about george

16:28

floyd and how that was like a moment

16:30

of clarity for you about how journalism work

16:32

and everything else like that just tell us

16:34

a little bit about that experience. First

16:37

of all i got shot below my knee

16:40

with a rubber bullet which sounds serious except

16:42

their bullets covered in rubber they're not there

16:44

are no you know what's but. I

16:47

was walking with protesters there

16:49

was no violence involved at all there was

16:51

no provocation at all and all of a

16:54

sudden into the intersection in front of us

16:56

came national garden state police in minneapolis police

16:58

and they literally open fire they started shooting

17:00

tear gas and flash bangs and rubber bullets

17:03

all over the place so that was weird

17:05

because. You know that the general

17:07

thought is when people are rounding up protesters the

17:09

protesters must be doing something really bad and

17:12

i was there to bear witness i was

17:14

there to tell you that is simply not

17:16

true number two. As journalists people

17:18

say to you a great job

17:21

you got a front row seat everything that's happening

17:23

in that moment i realize this is not a front

17:25

row seat we're in the arena we are in it.

17:28

Number three is my

17:31

parents arrived on these shores in

17:34

canada more than fifty years

17:36

ago thinking that they're. At

17:38

that point seventy five year family journey to

17:40

find democracy and liberty and equality was done

17:42

and i fully grew up with the privilege

17:45

of thinking that was done and in that

17:47

moment i realize that is not my privilege

17:49

that is not my right to think it's

17:51

done that is not my right to think

17:54

i'm not part of a. Linkage

17:56

to my ancestors and other people's ancestors

17:58

and that. When we are not all

18:00

free, we're not free. And

18:03

so it was that moment in which I

18:05

realized I need to suck up the idea

18:07

that being a citizen is not just about

18:09

the things you get. It's about the things

18:11

you have to do. And being a citizen

18:14

and a journalist means I have work to

18:16

do to let my fellow Americans know more

18:19

about what's going on in the streets of America and

18:21

how we can fix it. We're

18:26

going to take a short break and we

18:28

come back. We'll talk more with journalist Ali

18:31

Velshi about his new memoir, Small Acts of

18:33

Courage. This is a word with Jason Johnson.

18:35

Stay tuned. You're

18:40

listening to a word with Jason Johnson.

18:42

Today we're talking with journalist Ali Velshi

18:44

about his new book, Small Acts of

18:46

Courage. You know, Ali, one of the

18:48

things that really drove me and impressed

18:50

me in this book is you talking

18:53

about race. You said this really fascinating

18:55

thing when you talked about growing up

18:57

in Toronto and growing up in a

18:59

really multicultural environment. You said you

19:02

realized, or from your perspective, there was

19:04

a difference between growing up

19:06

in a racist country, like your older

19:08

sister did in apartheid South Africa, versus

19:11

Canada, which is a country that just happens

19:13

to have some racist. Which would

19:15

you describe America as? Would you say America

19:17

is a racist country? Or it's a

19:20

country that's got some racist in it. It's

19:22

got some loud racists in it, that's

19:25

for sure. It's got some racists in

19:27

it who are feeling either

19:29

empowered or super threatened. And

19:32

I'm not sure, and maybe it's both. I

19:35

want very badly to believe that it is

19:37

a country that's got some racists in it.

19:39

I'd like to reclaim the idea that we

19:41

are not a racist society. We do not

19:43

have to be a racist society. There may

19:46

be racist among us. That's what a pluralistic

19:48

society has. We have to be able to

19:50

remember that we have ways of

19:53

making sure that that doesn't take over

19:55

who we are. And one of those

19:57

ways is the vote. One of those ways is registering.

20:00

is fighting injustice. And what we've seen in the

20:02

last couple of years, Jason, is that in America,

20:05

people have looked at stark

20:07

injustice and said, I'm going to do something

20:09

about this. I'm going to mobilize. I'm going

20:12

to vote. I'm going to protest or do

20:14

whatever it is you do. I don't think

20:16

we've got the final say on who wins

20:19

this thing, but I would like to

20:21

stake out the claim that America is not

20:23

a racist country. But like everything else in

20:25

my book, in order to make

20:27

that true or to keep that true, that

20:29

takes work on all of our part. We

20:31

can't let our guard down. We can't just

20:33

make that statement and say, America is a country

20:35

that has racists in it, but it's not a racist country. So I'm

20:37

good. If that is true,

20:39

if what I'm saying is true, that means we all

20:42

have to work to make that true. Your

20:44

family history is replete with

20:47

amazing stories of dealing with both

20:49

institutional and personal racism. You said

20:51

something fascinating in a book about

20:54

despite all of the racism that was

20:56

experienced in different places, being kicked out

20:58

of countries when Edie Amiens said, Hey,

21:00

I don't want any more Indian people

21:02

in Uganda. But you said your

21:04

family didn't get angry. Talk

21:06

a little bit about how they weren't angry, how people didn't wake

21:09

up every day and say, I hate this kind of people. I

21:11

hate that kind of people. Well, one of the things

21:13

I write about is the day I watched

21:15

Nelson Mandela come out of prison. I was obviously

21:17

a student in Canada at that point. And

21:19

I, two things stand out to me is that when

21:21

he, you know, the pictures we all had of Nelson

21:24

Mandela until that day was he was a chubby guy,

21:26

he was a boxer. And he came out real thin

21:28

and smiling. 27 years incarcerated.

21:30

And he came out smiling. If I've been

21:32

incarcerated for 27 hours, I might be

21:34

mad for the rest of my life. Number one. Number

21:36

two, I spoke to a lot of family members who

21:39

some are angrier than others,

21:41

right? It has stuck with them. I

21:43

think the reason my immediate family didn't

21:45

get angry is because they very immediately

21:47

channeled what would have

21:50

been the anger into civil society,

21:52

into politics into feeling like,

21:54

okay, we're going to let our new

21:56

society meaning Canada, our impressions of it

21:58

be governed by whether or not they

22:01

allow us a seat at the table. All

22:03

my parents ever wanted was a seat at the table.

22:05

Most people who fight injustice are not looking for the

22:07

whole enchilada, right? Not everybody says I

22:09

would like absolute freedom for everybody all the time.

22:12

They would like to improve on this particular set

22:14

of rights or infringements. So my

22:16

family really wanted to see how close to the table

22:19

they could get in Canada. And it was very early

22:21

on. And we got there in 1970, 1981, my

22:25

dad decided to run for office. And he told

22:27

an incredulous group in my living room that he

22:29

was gonna do that. And they all

22:31

thought that was ridiculous. They said, you're not gonna

22:33

win. And he said, we won't know

22:35

if I can win or not if we don't try,

22:37

if we don't test the system. So he tested it

22:40

and he lost. He subsequently won

22:42

in another election. But apartheid

22:44

was so full of petty BS, like

22:46

my sister not being able to ride

22:48

a horse because she's not white at

22:51

the zoo, a pony ride, like these

22:53

weird restrictions they had on my parents'

22:55

businesses. It was this petty racism. What

22:58

we have to worry about more in our society

23:00

is the stuff that's generally speaking

23:02

more sophisticated than that, right? The stuff that

23:04

feels like exclusion and racism and sexism that

23:07

operates on a level where people don't say

23:09

the things they used to say in apartheid

23:11

South Africa. And that's the work that

23:13

we now have to do. I will say it's a little

23:15

surprising to me in 2024, we've got

23:17

some of that petty racism that my parents grew

23:19

up with in apartheid still in America. I'm sort

23:21

of fascinated by these people who utter racist things.

23:23

I'm sort of fascinated that one of them is

23:27

a leading candidate for president right now. Good people

23:29

will say, that's not who we are. The problem

23:31

is all the insidious stuff, right? All the stuff

23:33

that gets through the court, all the little rules

23:35

that keep people from being there full of cells.

23:38

So the story about my sister riding a pony

23:40

was really just a story about a little girl

23:42

who wanted to be her fullest self and was

23:44

told one day at a zoo, you can't do

23:46

that. That's a story of many,

23:49

many Americans. I

23:51

wanna talk about your TED Talk. You delivered a

23:53

TED Talk about how fake news and alternative facts

23:55

are gonna undermine our society's

23:57

ability to have functional conversations.

24:00

My first piece of advice to you

24:02

is that if you wish to avoid

24:04

the purveyors of fake news who live

24:07

in dark alleys, stay

24:09

out of the dark alleys. Trust

24:12

and support traditional journalism,

24:15

which is devoted to research

24:17

and fact checking and in-depth

24:19

investigation of issues, the very

24:21

journalism that is under attack

24:23

right now. And

24:26

that was in 2017. It's

24:29

now been seven years. You've referred

24:32

to the fact that social media

24:34

can flatten conversations and intensify polarization.

24:38

Where do you think we are now? Has

24:41

the worst nightmare that you were implying in your

24:43

TED Talk, has that come through? Because I'll be

24:45

honest, I've seen some deep fakes this year that

24:47

have terrified me. I was

24:49

so naive in 2017. In

24:51

fact, most of that TED Talk was around the

24:53

idea that this was an economic venture. Fake news

24:55

would proliferate because it was cheap and easy to

24:57

get people to click on something and you get

24:59

a fraction of a cent for it and people

25:01

would just do it to make money. I didn't

25:04

realize people would do it to wreck the world.

25:06

Social media is a much more dangerous and

25:09

unsavory place than it was in 2017 when I gave

25:12

that talk. And it all comes

25:14

down to the idea that social

25:16

media works

25:18

against a well-informed electorate.

25:20

It plays into all of the emotions

25:22

that politics has always played

25:24

into. There's no question. They have fiery

25:26

speeches and newspapers were owned by political

25:29

interests. But we now have an ability

25:31

to spread horribleness

25:35

with velocity that we can't

25:37

fight. It's velocity that

25:39

journalists like you and me can't push back

25:41

on because it just happens at too great

25:43

a speed with technology that is not at

25:45

our disposal, but it's at somebody else's. I

25:48

remember when I first started talking about

25:50

the social media platforms censoring themselves, especially

25:52

when it comes to guns and shooting.

25:54

This was after the Christchurch massacre in

25:56

New Zealand. I actually got

25:58

tweets and messages from. parents

26:00

of black children in America who

26:02

said, that'd be the worst thing

26:04

ever if you stopped them from broadcasting, live streaming just

26:06

because a gun showed up, because I'm actually hoping that

26:09

that's the one thing that saves my boy's life. I

26:12

got messages from people around the world who said,

26:14

we have revolutions that exist on the basis that

26:16

we can live stream the fact that the government

26:18

shot into a crowd of unarmed people. So I

26:20

don't think the world without social media is the

26:22

answer. And I don't want to get away from

26:25

a world in which we enjoy the freedom of

26:27

speech, but there's gotta

26:29

be something in there that addresses

26:31

the velocity with which dangerous untruths

26:34

can spread. And I don't know

26:36

that I'm smart enough to know what the answer is,

26:38

but I know a lot of people think about this

26:40

every day. And I know that government has to have

26:42

a bigger role in how this works. We

26:46

are staring down the barrel of

26:48

a rematch where you have Donald Trump

26:51

running against Joe Biden. None

26:53

of us like to get into the speculation game, but

26:55

I do want to ask you this. Do you think any

26:59

of us collectively in

27:01

journalism have learned our lessons? Do you think

27:03

the 24 hour cable network specifically have learned

27:05

the lessons of 2016 and 2020? Or

27:09

do you think that everyone is sort of just dancing

27:12

to the same rhythm of the past because, hey, that's

27:14

what gets ratings and that's what gets numbers. I

27:17

think that in 2016, we weren't clear on A, how

27:21

potent and dangerous Donald Trump would

27:23

be. And now with

27:25

the Georgia indictment and the Michigan indictments

27:27

of the fake electors and the Arizona

27:30

indictments, this wasn't a bumbling

27:33

clown car. This was a super

27:35

sophisticated plot to overturn the will of

27:37

the American people. So number one, I

27:39

think the stakes are entirely different than

27:41

they were in 2016 in hindsight. The

27:45

other thing is that I think

27:47

we think we should do things better, but I'm not sure

27:49

we know what better looks like. Not

27:51

running Donald Trump's rallies

27:54

does give people a permission structure to ignore that

27:56

Donald Trump is saying things that would make 2016

27:58

Donald Trump. blush, the

28:01

racism, the sexism, the anti-democratic stuff that

28:03

he says needs to be out

28:05

there, but it needs to be out there

28:07

in context. And context with Donald Trump is

28:10

always very difficult because of the

28:12

speed with which he lies, the way in which he

28:14

does it. But I increasingly, I mean, a lot of

28:16

journalists who say, you got to

28:18

listen to those rallies. People should go to them

28:20

to understand what you're up against. It's not normalcy.

28:23

It's not the same as listening to a

28:25

Joe Biden speech, whatever you think of listening

28:27

to a Joe Biden speech. So I don't

28:29

know that we've got a collective answer as

28:32

to how does presenting Donald Trump to

28:34

our audiences in 2024 look different than 2020 and 2016? I

28:36

certainly don't know that I have a

28:40

full answer. I do tend to talk

28:43

a lot about the things Donald Trump says and

28:46

parse them with experts, experts on

28:48

authoritarian, experts on democracy to say,

28:50

what is he saying here? Should

28:53

we be alarmed by this or do we

28:55

write this off as more Donald Trump? I don't know what the

28:57

answer is to that. What's

29:00

the one thing you want people to take from

29:02

small acts of courage? What's the thing where it's

29:04

like, man, I want to make sure that people

29:06

take this away when they're done reading this book.

29:09

So when you open the cover, the first thing

29:11

on the jacket says small acts of courage matter.

29:13

Sometimes they change the world. I

29:16

want people to take away the idea that

29:18

my grandfather thought he failed. He

29:21

would never have imagined that his son lived

29:23

in Canada and would get

29:25

elected to major elected office. He

29:28

never knew me. I looked just like him.

29:31

He would never have imagined that you and I

29:33

would be having this conversation. That there's

29:35

nothing about this conversation that would have made

29:37

sense to my grandfather, right? Who

29:40

we are and the color of

29:42

our skin and a national audience

29:44

talking about politics and asking questions

29:46

about society. And he died thinking

29:48

he failed. Society actually

29:51

left South Africa in 1913 thinking

29:53

that that experiment failed. You

29:56

will plant a tree in whose

29:58

shade you will not rest. but

30:00

somebody will. Somebody will eat the

30:02

fruit from that tree. You will influence someone. I

30:05

guess my point is it doesn't have to be

30:07

big. If we all do small things, if

30:09

we all take one person to vote, then 100% of

30:12

people will vote, right? Voting is

30:14

a price of admission. That's not a heroic act

30:16

for a citizen. You should be allowed to vote.

30:18

You should be encouraged to vote, but do something

30:21

else. And that something else can be making sure

30:23

you have a library card, making sure you support

30:25

your librarians, making sure you go to your kid's

30:27

school, making sure that you, not the state, determine

30:30

what your child will read in

30:32

school, making sure you show up for

30:34

every municipal election, every school board election.

30:37

Then if you want, after all that, you can decide

30:39

you might want to run for office. And

30:41

you might lose. And understanding what losing looks like

30:44

and feels like and saying, maybe I'll try again,

30:46

but I'm giving the voter an option. Do you

30:48

know how many districts in the South in this

30:50

country, people run unopposed? Unopposed

30:53

in an election. I

30:55

mean, even if you ran in some of these gerrymandered districts,

30:57

you might get 25 or 30% of the vote, but

31:00

at least 25 or 30% of the people had their say. They

31:03

got to make a choice. So there's a lot

31:05

you can do that does not involve

31:07

boiling the ocean. And that's why

31:10

the title matters more to me than anything

31:12

else. We can fix things around us. And

31:14

that to me is the answer. Ali

31:18

Belshi is an award-winning journalist and

31:20

host on MSNBC. His new memoir,

31:22

Small Acts of Courage, A Legacy

31:24

of Endurance and the Fight for

31:26

Democracy is available now. Ali,

31:28

it has been an absolute honor. Thank you so

31:30

much. Please come back anytime. Thanks for coming on

31:33

the work. Thank you

31:35

for taking such great care of me

31:37

here and for delving so deeply into

31:39

the book. I'm deeply appreciative. That's

31:43

a word for this week. The

31:45

show's email is awordatslate.com. This

31:48

episode was produced by Ayanna Angel.

31:51

Ben Richmond is Slate's Senior Director

31:53

of Podcast Operations. Alicia Montgomery is

31:55

the Vice President of Slate Audio.

31:58

Our theme music was produced by. I'm

32:01

Jason Johnson, tune in next week, for

32:03

Word.