Time magazine's "40 under 40" Bakari Sellers, THE MOMENT: Thoughts on the Race Reckoning That Wasn't and How We All Can Move Forward Now
[0:02]Hi, I'm Zippy Owens, and I am the host of this podcast, Mom's Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[0:08]I am also a newly minted USA Today best-selling author of the novel, Blake.
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[0:26]or join the community at Zippy Readers.
[0:31]Bakari Sellers is the author of The Moment, thoughts on the race reckoning that wasn't and how we can all move forward now.
[0:37]Bakari Sellers made history in 2006 when at just 22 years old, he defeated a 26-year incumbent state representative
[0:45]to become the youngest member of the South Carolina state legislature and the youngest African-American elected official in the nation.
[0:52]In 2014, he was the Democratic nominee for Lieutenant Governor in the state of South Carolina.
[0:58]Bakari is a CNN political analyst and served in the South Carolina state legislature.
[1:04]Recently named to Time Magazine's top 40 under 40 list, he is also a practicing attorney who fights to give voice to the voiceless.
[1:11]Welcome, Bakari. Thank you so much for coming. On Mom's Don't Have Time to Read Books,
[1:15]discuss the moment, thoughts on the race reckoning that wasn't and how we all can move forward now.
[1:21]Congrats.
[1:22]A lot of words. I'm sorry about all the words on the title.
[1:25]Did you want less? Did you want fear?
[1:27]No, it was necessary. It was necessary.
[1:30]First of all, I know a lot of the book takes us back through your family history and the history of black people in general and what we can do going forward and all of that and your sort of call to action.
[1:44]But I love the embedded story of your personal family throughout.
[1:49]So I just wanted to hear a little bit more and you can tell listeners all about the book and everything.
[1:55]But it sounds like you went through a lot with the birth of your twins and your wives near fatal delivery and liver transplant.
[2:05]And anyway, can you just tell me a little bit more about your family?
[2:08]Because now I feel very attached to everybody.
[2:10]Thank you so much. And when you write books, you have characters and you have scenarios and you have stories to tell.
[2:15]And for me, it was important for everybody to know who I was completely the full me.
[2:21]And that means that I'm a husband and a father and my wife, we had an amazing pregnancy and we had an awful birth.
[2:28]She nearly died during the birth of the twins, Sadie and Stokely.
[2:31]She lost seven units of blood.
[2:33]And I believe they said somebody her size only had about nine units of blood.
[2:37]She hemorrhaged we pull back the sheet. It was nothing but blood everywhere.
[2:40]And she spent the first 36 hours of the twins life in ICU.
[2:44]That's first and second.
[2:46]You know, Sadie was still a little John to sit three or four months.
[2:49]And at 10 months we had, you know, we ended up at four months going into full liver failure.
[2:56]You know, 10 months she had a transplant.
[2:58]And so we've been able to see the kind of inequalities and the discrepancies we have in our,
[3:04]and a bias as we have in our healthcare delivery system up close and personal.
[3:08]I'm from the big city of Denmark, South Carolina, where we have three stoplights in a blinking life.
[3:12]And, you know, my mom was a part of the desegregating class of her high school.
[3:17]And my dad was a founding member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in March with King.
[3:22]And, you know, was shot in the Orangeburg Massacre February 8 of 68.
[3:25]And so all of these characters make up my life.
[3:29]This is all family. And for me, it is an amazing, an amazing, amazing American story.
[3:36]And it gives me the ability to challenge the country to be better than she is because the blood of my family literally runs through the soil of this great country.
[3:43]And we've lived through so much.
[3:46]And so we just want, like I tell everyone, I just want tomorrow to be better than yesterday.
[3:51]It's amazing.
[3:52]In the book, you say that every black person has post traumatic slave disorder.
[3:57]Can you talk about that?
[3:58]Yeah, I mean, it's generational trauma.
[4:00]And people oftentimes like to challenge me and say, well, you know, the Voting Rights Act and Civil Rights Act passed in the mid-60s.
[4:07]So you had 60 years. And I'm like, well, I hear you.
[4:10]But this country wasn't a full Republican until everyone had rights, such as those.
[4:15]And so you take 300 years of slavery, another 100 years of Jim Crow and oppression.
[4:20]And finally, you get, you know, full citizenship in the mid-60s.
[4:23]I mean, that's the first time that black folk were able to vote drink water out the same water fountains, go to the same libraries.
[4:29]And we acknowledge that in the book and the unique part about the book is that it's not just an acknowledgement of the past.
[4:34]But it is a prescription for where do we go from here and thinking about the future.
[4:38]And that's so important in asking ourselves, like, where do we go from here?
[4:43]And I try to lay out prescriptions.
[4:45]And the prescriptions, the reason being is because I don't want people to.
[4:49]You may not agree with everything that I say, right? And that's fine.
[4:53]But so many people are disheartened and so many people are on the sidelines.
[4:56]I wanted to have conversations to draw those people off the sidelines, reengage them in the conversation, not just a conversation about the past, but how do we move forward?
[5:05]So what, I mean, I know because I read, but what is your, what is your advice?
[5:10]Like, where do you, what do you think people desperately need to do aside from look at some of the inequities in the system,
[5:16]such as the healthcare system, which you dive into and there's lots of statistics and all of the bad facts.
[5:22]You know, I think that, you know, a lot of these systems in the country are broken and, and, and, well, let me say they work intended, but they don't work for everyone.
[5:30]And we have to reimagine our roles in those systems and reimagine what they look like and reimagine the image that fits all of us.
[5:38]And then, you know, the larger thing is nobody can do this by themselves, right?
[5:42]I want to take all of us and we saw some of that around George Floyd, the fact that people from all walks of life, Democrats and Republicans black white, those from the North South all around the world came out in the streets because they just saw with their own eyes, something that they felt to be so unjust.
[5:58]And, you know, for a moment, I thought that we were making progress and then I realized and we've realized since that time, we're just, we're not there.
[6:07]And that for me is a large, large problem.
[6:10]I believe and we, we, we articulate this in every chapter as we go through.
[6:14]I believe there's so much more that we can, that we can do in our daily walks of life to improve the plight of others.
[6:20]The number one problem we have in this country, Zibi, is that we have an empathy deficit and people no longer can put themselves in the shoes of others.
[6:29]And I wrote this book so that maybe you can put yourself or at least understand the shoes in which I walk.
[6:34]And then we can figure out how we finish and complete this journey together.
[6:37]I love that. Was it hard for you to write?
[6:39]Yes. I, so I'm a podcast a couple of years ago, I had an opportunity to interview Sisley Tyson on Monday and she passed on Wednesday and I love, love, love.
[6:47]And back to her book was one of the best books I've read in the past five years. There was a autobiography.
[6:51]And here she was, I want to say she was 92, 93. She might have been 94. I can't remember how she was, but I posed the question to her like, you're writing your first book.
[7:00]And autobiography, like in your over 90 years old, we miss this Tyson, like, tell me why now.
[7:07]And in her amazing voice, she said, because I was waiting until I had something to say.
[7:13]And you know, it's so powerful. And for me, it was just that, that was it. I wanted to have something to say. It's such a powerful moment that we were living through.
[7:23]And halfway through the book, I ran out of things to say.
[7:28]I'm sorry, I shouldn't laugh. But I wasn't like writer's block. It was like, but you can't have a five chapter book card.
[7:35]I tried that by the way, I wrote a book and I handed it in. It was 30,000 words. And I was like, here you go. My editor's like, I don't think so. That's like half a book.
[7:43]And I'm like, I think it's fine.
[7:44]Yes. So I, you know, I had my thoughts were everywhere and I, you know, I'm very disciplined in the writing process.
[7:51]And I learned that in during my first book, my vanishing country, because I had to finish my book by a certain time. So it could be released in May, because that summer, a young man named Barack Obama was issuing his memoir. We nobody knew when it was coming out with the last one.
[8:04]It was your book to compete with that, because that would not be much of a competition.
[8:08]But I dedicated myself to writing 15 minutes a day.
[8:11]Sometimes you write for 15 minutes. And sometimes that 15, or sometimes you don't write anything during that 15 minutes, or sometimes that 15 minutes turns into an hour.
[8:20]And so I tried to either write or transcribe or dictate not transcribe dictate for 15 minutes a day. And this book actually was unique because we had some other voices been crump.
[8:29]And I remember in Dr. William Barber, I'm Joseph Darby and once he wrote my brother, my father, many other voices in this book that helped flesh out some of the ideas and narratives.
[8:38]At the end of the book in the acknowledgements, actually, you reference a dear friend of yours who had passed away from a blood clot. Can you talk about that?
[8:47]Yeah. I mean, it was one of the, it was probably something I would have talked about more if I wasn't near the completion of the book, but January 3rd.
[8:54]I got a phone call from his girlfriend. I was walking through the mall and he was just a, he was my best friend in the entire world, Brian Newman.
[9:02]I don't know. Zibi. I don't know if you watched the Alec Murdoch trial. That was the lawyer in South Carolina who killed his wife and child.
[9:09]And it was one of the biggest trials last summer. Anyway, his father was the judge in that trial.
[9:14]Okay.
[9:15]And then we went to, we went to college together, law school together, lived in law school together.
[9:21]We, we were biggest thieves as they say and he was just somebody that I loved and adored and, you know, losing him took a big piece out of me.
[9:30]He, we had just celebrated his 40th birthday a couple of weeks before and he on Thursday or Friday, it was right before New Year's.
[9:39]This was, it wasn't feeling well. It was felt something in his chest where I rather, it was having a little shortness of breath.
[9:45]Our other friend is a doctor and said, maybe you have COVID or whatever. You need to go Sunday.
[9:49]He went out. He was New Year's Eve on Sunday and went out and he left New Year's Eve earlier, which is something he never does because he is somebody who lives life to the fullest.
[9:58]The Monday came.
[10:00]went to happy hour with the boys.
[10:01]He said, he still weren't feeling well.
[10:02]Tuesday said, I'm going to the doctor.
[10:04]He went to the doctor and they told him that he had a blood
[10:08]clot and he had the opportunity to drive himself
[10:10]to the hospital or they could drive him.
[10:12]He drove himself, passed out, came to finish the drive,
[10:15]passed out right in front of the hospital, bumped his head,
[10:18]went in, the hospital coded and died on the table.
[10:21]Like 40 years ago.
[10:22]So it was a traumatic experience.
[10:23]And you know, for anyone who loses a loved one,
[10:27]I talked to his parents all the time.
[10:28]They're like my other parents, Dave.
[10:30]You know, they've had to go through the process of burying
[10:33]a child, which no one wants to do.
[10:36]You begin to live for them.
[10:38]And so he is somebody I now live for.
[10:41]I'm so sorry.
[10:42]That's a terrible story.
[10:43]I'm so sorry.
[10:45]Unfortunately, it is life.
[10:47]And it's what you do with that tragedy and how you overcome.
[10:52]Yeah.
[10:53]I know there's post-traumatic growth and all that.
[10:57]On the flip side, I've inherited trauma, maybe.
[10:59]I don't know.
[10:59]The only perk in the trauma universe.
[11:01]But I don't know.
[11:02]And I'm not sure if I had to.
[11:04]You know, I just like, do you ever stop breathing?
[11:06]Like, please somebody tell me when that happens.
[11:07]And you know, it's the answer to it.
[11:09]But we deal with it.
[11:10]And it's just it's tough to say the least.
[11:14]I lost my very best friend as well.
[11:16]I we were roommates all through college.
[11:18]And after college, and she died in 9-11,
[11:20]she worked one of the towers.
[11:21]And so.
[11:22]Oh my goodness.
[11:22]Oh, yeah.
[11:23]Yeah.
[11:24]So I know that gaping hole and, you know,
[11:27]her parents.
[11:27]And, but there's something about someone who keeps
[11:30]so many of your memories too.
[11:31]You know, all the things you go together.
[11:32]And then those just disappear.
[11:34]And anyway, I my heart just breaks for you.
[11:36]So maybe you're not going to write a book about that.
[11:38]Okay.
[11:39]Sure.
[11:40]People who go through it, yeah.
[11:40]Let me talk about it all there.
[11:42]Okay.
[11:43]Sure.
[11:43]Yeah, I would love to.
[11:44]Why not add it to the list?
[11:46]Why not busy, right?
[11:47]We don't have anything to do.
[11:48]Yeah.
[11:49]OK.
[11:50]You're not like trying to change the world or anything.
[11:52]Yeah.
[11:53]Very good.
[11:54]How do you balance, like, I hate that word balance.
[11:56]I don't.
[11:57]Your question was presumptuous.
[12:01]No one can balance.
[12:02]That's why I stopped myself that way through it.
[12:04]No, I mean, I've prioritized.
[12:06]I mean, I'm a father and a husband.
[12:07]And so you go through those priorities.
[12:09]But in terms of balance, I don't have any.
[12:12]I try to sleep when I can and try to take care of myself.
[12:14]It just gets tough.
[12:16]Life is tough and raising twins is not easy.
[12:18]And I have twins too.
[12:19]I have five year old twins.
[12:21]Most time, I'm like, does anybody want twins?
[12:24]They're by one, get one free right now.
[12:28]And as opposed to people are like, oh, you have twins.
[12:30]I always want to twins.
[12:31]And I'm like, no.
[12:33]I mean, I love my twins so much now that I'm a 17.
[12:35]But it's a lot.
[12:37]It is hard.
[12:38]A lot.
[12:38]Yeah.
[12:38]I was like, nobody.
[12:39]No, you don't want twins.
[12:40]I don't want twins.
[12:41]The only people who want twins are people who don't have twins.
[12:45]It sounds good.
[12:46]Sounds efficient.
[12:47]I like efficiency.
[12:48]I do.
[12:48]Yeah.
[12:49]My goodness.
[12:50]So it said in the book, you wrote in the book,
[12:52]I should say that you were called to public service forever.
[12:56]This is you always knew you wanted to do this
[12:58]and give back and all of that.
[13:01]Is the actuality of it a little bit less glamorous
[13:05]than you thought?
[13:05]Or is it just, how is reality compared to your goals?
[13:10]It's changed.
[13:12]Right?
[13:12]When I first got elected, it was not a solo.
[13:14]I was, I got elected in 2006.
[13:16]I was 21 years old.
[13:17]I was the youngest black elected official,
[13:19]the youngest state legislature in the country.
[13:20]And to tell you about the timing,
[13:22]we barely had Facebook, no Instagram, no Snapchat,
[13:25]no Twitter campaigns, no text message campaigns, et cetera.
[13:28]But I remember those days.
[13:30]Well, a lot of black folk we looked up to devolve Patrick.
[13:34]It wasn't Barack Obama.
[13:36]Barack Obama was just somebody who gave a great speech
[13:38]and had seen in 2004, devolve Patrick was a two-term black
[13:42]governor from Massachusetts.
[13:43]Everybody was like, you know, this is the pinnacle,
[13:45]but this is who you like.
[13:47]But there wasn't a level of celebrity.
[13:49]It went with it.
[13:50]When Barack Obama got elected,
[13:51]that's when the celebrity kind of came
[13:52]and people wanted to be famous by going into politics.
[13:55]And now there's such a cross-section
[13:57]between entertainment, pop culture, celebrity politics.
[14:00]And it's actually created an atmosphere
[14:02]where the people who we elect are just not good human beings.
[14:05]And so I think that although I believe the task
[14:08]is still be noble, the people who you have to work with
[14:11]to effectuate change, making it quite difficult.
[14:15]Interesting, but still worth doing.
[14:18]That's a good question.
[14:20]I'll ponder that question every day.
[14:22]I would answer to the question as yes today,
[14:25]but as I go through and get older
[14:26]and matriculate throughout life,
[14:28]I don't know what that answer is.
[14:30]Interesting.
[14:30]What do you want readers?
[14:32]Particularly, like I know the book seems to be written
[14:36]as if the reader is also black,
[14:39]but I am obviously a white woman here.
[14:40]We are talking.
[14:41]You see me.
[14:42]I'm like not trying to hide anything.
[14:43]What can people who are not in the same situation
[14:47]do to help with this, with anything?
[14:50]What did you get?
[14:52]What did I get out of the book?
[14:54]Yes.
[14:55]Oh my gosh.
[14:56]I mean, I've read a lot about this, obviously.
[14:59]But I got your perspective.
[15:01]I got your family story.
[15:02]I got your analysis of what we need to do.
[15:07]The places in society, you know,
[15:10]listed in one at a time, you know,
[15:12]taking us through how we, you know, anxiety
[15:14]and the health care and all of that.
[15:16]Like where we can do better,
[15:18]where we all have to do better,
[15:20]the gains that have been gotten
[15:22]and those that have not, and it's not okay.
[15:27]That's where I left off.
[15:28]Well, I mean, that is, you got.
[15:31]Did I pass?
[15:32]You passed.
[15:32]Okay, good.
[15:33]You passed.
[15:34]I don't really think there's a feeling in that question,
[15:35]but you passed.
[15:36]And I think that acknowledging that we've made progress,
[15:40]but we still have yet a ways to go,
[15:41]is the first real big acknowledgement
[15:43]that we're not there yet.
[15:43]There are a lot of people who want to say,
[15:44]well, we're here.
[15:46]Postory Show, we've made it.
[15:48]You had a black president.
[15:49]Congratulations.
[15:51]Do better.
[15:52]And I, you know,
[15:53]the first thing is acknowledging
[15:54]that we've made progress,
[15:55]but we still have so far to go.
[15:57]And the second thing is being willing to,
[15:59]at least listen to the stories,
[16:01]which you, by picking up the book
[16:02]and reading it and turning the pages,
[16:04]having that willingness to listen.
[16:05]And so maybe we can find some commonalities
[16:07]and the things that we both want to see.
[16:09]And I can understand the work you're doing,
[16:11]versus the work that I'm doing.
[16:12]And even by giving me a platform today
[16:14]to talk about this book,
[16:15]you are doing yeoman's work
[16:17]and bringing us further together
[16:19]and talking about ways in which we can join.
[16:21]And so it's little things like offering your platform
[16:23]or going back to,
[16:24]because what I tell people,
[16:25]particularly white college educated women,
[16:28]is that sometimes I might have the right message,
[16:30]but baccades always may not be the right messenger.
[16:33]And there are conversations
[16:35]that you can have with other white folk
[16:36]that I can't have,
[16:37]which may change perspectives or enlightened,
[16:40]or say maybe we need to think about this differently.
[16:42]And so hopefully this book will arm you
[16:44]with the tools to bring people out the sideline,
[16:48]have those uncomfortable and difficult conversations
[16:50]with your friends and peers,
[16:51]and maybe just maybe be hopeful enough
[16:53]and where tomorrow can get us
[16:55]that we work together towards that common goal.
[16:58]Amazing.
[16:59]I also read this weekend
[17:00]and come to our full conversations with a Jew,
[17:02]and I had a manual acho and for his other book,
[17:04]the first book rather.
[17:06]So I feel like I'm about,
[17:08]I'm having a lot of uncomfortable conversations.
[17:10]So just add this to the list, you know?
[17:11]You just pile it on.
[17:13]Yeah, as if you're not stressed out enough.
[17:15]Well, there is nothing more powerful than connection, right?
[17:21]And talking to other people and sharing stories.
[17:25]And I think that's something you do well in the book
[17:28]and that we all need to do a better job of in general.
[17:31]So I appreciate you taking time to write it
[17:34]and to share your experience.
[17:35]And I'm hoping it helps progress the dialogue.
[17:39]I hope so.
[17:40]I hope that I am a part of the problem solving caucus
[17:43]and not the problem caucus.
[17:45]That's my goal.
[17:46]Yes.
[17:47]And it gets easier having twins.
[17:49]It does.
[17:50]Yeah, it's easier.
[17:51]I need it then.
[17:52]All right, well, thank you so much.
[17:54]Thanks for coming out.
[17:55]Congratulations.
[17:56]Thank you.
[17:57]Thank you so much for your support.
[17:58]Have a blessed day.
[17:58]Okay, you too.
[18:01]Thanks for listening to momstone
[18:03]have time to read books.
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[18:06]And follow us on social at city Owens and at city readers.