Hosts
Jeremi SuriProfessor of History at the University of Texas at Austin
FEMALE 1: This
MALE 1: is Democracy.
FEMALE 1: A podcast that explores the interracial, intergenerational, and intersectional unheard voices living in the world’s
MALE 1: most influential democracy.
Dr. Jeremi Suri: Welcome to our new episode of This is Democracy. As part of our special holiday gift package, we have today the first of two mixes of voices from the last year. Voices we’ve heard and learned from and voices that have shared insights, and, reflections, and humor with us at times. Zachary, this has been fun, hasn’t it?
Zachary: Yeah. It really has. The thing really comes through too is this theme of how important race is and how important identity is. That’s something that I think we’ve really been able to elucidate over the past few months.
Dr. Jeremi Suri: I think that’s right. We often hear your criticisms of identity politics and concerns about insensitivity to race and identity. So we can hear both sides of the argument there. I think in our programs, in our clips that we’ll play on this mosaic of thoughts, we’ll hear actually how sophisticated and creative many of our friends and colleagues are in bringing race into our democracy and bringing different identities into the way we think about democracy.
Zachary: Yeah. Well, let’s take a listen.
Dr. Jeremi Suri: Let’s take a listen.
Sam: Some of these earlier conceptions that I was raised with an earlier generation have faded away. There’s this very different individualistic and family and friends centric worldview that now comprises the American Dream.
Dr. Jeremi Suri: Did this surprise you Sam? I’m Sorry.
Sam: Absolutely. Because again, so many people talk about monetary background and it has nothing to do with that. Let me rephrase. It has little to do with that. Money still matters but not nearly as much. What’s interesting is when you break it down, so I actually said, “okay, well let me run this and look at people who are wealthy versus a lot less wealthy and see if there’s much of a difference here.” The answer was no. They just didn’t diverge even though I expected that to possibly show up.
Dr. Jeremi Suri: What do you take is the implication of that?
Sam: Well, the implication is that when you ask people, are we living the American dream? Are you on your way to achieve it or is it just not possible? About 80-82 percent of Americans right now say they are either living the dream or are on the way to achieving it. Quite optimistic. Again, it’s remarkably consistent. One story that we always hear about is that the coasts are booming and there are few spots in flyover country, and I hate using that word but that’s what so many people like to say. But in the heartland of America, these people are suffering and not realizing the American dream. When you break it apart, we’re not seeing these differences at all. So what I take from this is that it would be good to share this narrative and remind America that despite the frustrations that people are having now, despite the negativity, despite the political class, and the chatter of negativity and seeming culture war that we may have, it’s not as bad. We may want to remind ourselves that most of us are able to live our lives the way we want. It’s a value that almost all Americans seem to embrace. We could use a good kick in the pants to remind ourselves that things are not as bad.
MALE 2: I think the biggest contribution we can make to American democracy is bringing a culture of compassion and cooperation to our political system because today, if you look at the levels of polarization and the level of contempt, we have for people of different views, it’s toxic. It’s at some of the worst levels since the Civil War and that is a fundamental threat to democracy. But our generation has grown up in this peer-to-peer environment and we are a more inclusive generation. That’s true for every successive generation and so we don’t see issues of race, and gender, and sexual orientation in the same way and we tend to be much more inclusive and welcoming of these different identities. So if we can bring a level of compassion to our politics at a time when our country is becoming much more diverse, that will be potentially the biggest contribution as we seek this goal of being a multi-ethnic democracy. I think we’re headed in that direction but it’s really going to require millennials to create the kinds of communication, the kinds of understanding, the kinds of networks and the political culture we need for that type of understanding and compassion to exist.
MALE 3: If we’re ever going to get equality, we’re going to have less racial privilege. Men, and Jeremi knows this too because I know Jeremi is a feminist and so is Zachary as well, we’re going to lose male privilege because it’s not equal. We’re going to lose male privilege and we have to embrace that, so we don’t run away from it and say, “Oh my gosh, why do women want equal pay?” We say, “We love our daughters, our sisters, our mothers,” and we can say “We learn from them and are mentored by them.” That’s what we say but we’re still men, we’re still human beings but we don’t have to dominate anybody to be who we are. So part of this is a politics of racial privilege but part of it is really that, morally, we’ve lost sight of why racial integration matters.
Dr. Jeremi Suri: No system is free of human frailties. How do we learn to address these issues? How can we be honest about the limitations of our systems? We have to be realistic and skeptical as well as ideological. Then third, I think one of the real lessons from Sienna and Florence is that a good government requires good institutions and good people in those institutions, and finding good people to be representative of us, electing good people, supporting good people. There’s no substitute for integrity. Intelligence isn’t boring but there’s no substitute for integrity. Most of us choose our life partners because we choose them for integrity. We should choose our representatives based on integrity as well. That’s a lesson from the renaissance.
FEMALE 2: Well, most workplaces are not democracies. I mean, it is ironic in this country where we like to think that we can help shape our own environment, that workplaces are often tyrannical places. You’re told where to be, at what time, how long to do this, in some cases, whether you can take a bathroom break or not, how much time you have for lunch. These are very difficult work sites, people spend a great deal of their working hours in these workplaces and yet they have very little say over their own lives. What is a good way to handle this job? What is a bad way? Most employers say do it or we’ll find someone else to do it. So I just think the workplace is an ironic place, if we talk about democracy.
MALE 4: One case is that I’ve never been elected to the executive committee of my department. At the beginning I thought it was because I’m not simpatico enough. I mean, that is fine but then you begin to see these patterns. It so happens that it’s widespread. It’s not only me but it’s widespread. So most Hispanics on-campus are outside networks of authority and hierarchies of authority. There’s only two deans in the entire University who are Hispanics and these are deans of very poor colleges, education and social work, with very little clout in general. Then there is one example. I just want to put you one example, which is striking because is the case of LASC. LASC is the Latin American Studies Center. One of the greatest on earth, literally.
Dr. Jeremi Suri: Yeah.
MALE 4: This is a surprise to me, I didn’t know. I thought it was the product of the Cold War. It is not.
Dr. Jeremi Suri: Right.
MALE 4: Precedes, founded in 1943 or something.
Dr. Jeremi Suri: I think so, yeah.
MALE 4: It has a history of about 80 years or more, 79 years or so. It has had 13 directors, none of them Latinos or Hispanic.
FEMALE 3: The rhetoric was full pays pay for your low-income students.
Dr. Jeremi Suri: Okay.
FEMALE 3: That’s embedded, right, in us. We need the full pays. But now it’s still is this “white savior complex” almost.
Dr. Jeremi Suri: Okay.
FEMALE 3: I have a huge problem with that because I feel like it takes dignity away from the community by saying that one community is paying for the other.
Dr. Jeremi Suri: Right.
FEMALE 3: In addition, there is also this, we say, oh, when we are recruiting multi-cultural students, low-income students or first-generation students, it’s diversity. We coined them, “It’s adding diversity.” If we do this, it’s adding value. So there’s a return on the investment.
Dr. Jeremi Suri: Right.
FEMALE 3: For the community that already exists here. It’s never a rhetoric of the other way around. We only tell the story one way.
Dr. Jeremi Suri: Yes.
FEMALE 3: In my opinion, it should be, we’re doing this because, this community deserves it.
Dr. Jeremi Suri: Right.
FEMALE 3: We have a civic duty to do so.
Dr. Jeremi Suri: Right.
FEMALE 3: That should be the value add. Not that, “Hey, and it happens in corporate America as well.”
Dr. Jeremi Suri: Sure. Sure.
FEMALE 3: When you think about it. They talk about, “Oh, let’s do diversity recruitment, teach diversity officers.” It proves that we’ll get higher revenues.
Dr. Jeremi Suri: Right.
FEMALE 3: Higher profits.
Dr. Jeremi Suri: Right.
FEMALE 3: Instead of, “No, people just deserve these positions because they’re equally as good.”
Dr. Jeremi Suri: Right.
FEMALE 3: If not better.
FEMALE 4: Working first a journalist, then as an activist, then on a political campaign where I learned a lot of things about what not to do in the senate office, in the executive branch. As a diplomat, I think what you learn is how to build coalitions inside government and with other countries, how to speak to individuals from the vantage point of their equities and their interests. So it’s much more about taking the same old vector that I probably have had or been on from the very beginning. But operationalizing it in complicated institutions, how to work with Congress.
Dr. Jeremi Suri: Sure.
FEMALE 4: Especially in an era of polarization. What is the right way to establish a partnership with the Chairman of the Joint Staff on Peacekeeping, for example. I might have always thought that peacekeeping should be improved. But to figure out how to make that argument effectively with the Pentagon, that was a different language for me.
FEMALE 5: Hong Kong people have never been able to vote for their top leader. Not when it was a British colony, not since the handover. This is really something that Hong Kong people want. They want a leader that they vote for, that can be held accountable. Because right now, a big issue too, with Carrie Lam is, she has said she’s not stepping down, she’s not resigning, and she’s going to continue with her role. But she is not popular.
Dr. Jeremi Suri: Right.
FEMALE 5: Among Hong Kong people. Because Hong Kong people feel that she has made mistakes and she is not bearing the responsibility. That’s another issue that the protesters want the government address.
Sam: Well. We should say from the outside that clearly not all North Koreans believe this. Because if they all believe this, there would be no defectors.
Dr. Jeremi Suri: Right.
Sam: People do defect every year. But it’s actually, it’s astonishingly a small number. I just checked the numbers last week and I want to say it was less than 30,000 over the last 10 years.
Dr. Jeremi Suri: Wow.
Sam: That is not a large number of defectors.
Dr. Jeremi Suri: No.
Sam: Many of these defectors actually end up going back to North Korea. This is very, very hard for us to understand. But the reason that they do is because in North Korea life is about something. Many of these people come to the south and they tried to integrate into a liberal-capitalist society, and the South Korean government does what they can to help them. But the truth is, they find life there very alienating. They find life in China very alienating because as twisted as the narrative is, that the regime tells them, it actually gives purpose to their struggle and it really gives meaning to their life. Their life is a daily struggle for survival for the Korean race. This is something that gives them meaning and gives them purpose. They have a hard time really reorienting their life in another way. It’s important to notice too that, this is what they’re taught. Certainly, even if they don’t believe it, it’s hard for them to know what to believe because there’s no counter narrative to this information in North Korea. No consistent counter narrative, coming in.
MALE 5: When we were sitting and waiting in the waiting room, the hall is a big hall, maybe 60-70 people waiting, and you’re watching people go in and out.
Dr. Jeremi Suri: Yes.
MALE 5: You see some people come out and got big smiles on their face, you know things went well. But once in a while somebody walks through the door and you can see they’re on the verge of breaking down. That made the process real for me, and that made me realize that we often talk about immigration in this country. We talk about policies, politics, ideology, we talk about all kinds of things. It’s easy to forget that there are real people who are going through this process.
Dr. Jeremi Suri: Yes.
MALE 5: I can’t judge whether some of those folks had their nationalization process denied for right or wrong reasons. I can’t comment on that. What I can say is that, you could see on their face that this was a life shattering event.
Dr. Jeremi Suri: Of course.
MALE_5: That really brought it home.
Dr. Jeremi Suri: For many of them. This is not just a dream. This is a source of salvation, right?
MALE 5: Yes. Might be a question of survival.
MALE 5: Absolutely.
MALE 6: Yeah, so in our experience, running these focus groups with Ukrainian students, I think cynicism is one of the big overarching themes that we’ve seen. I don’t think it’s tied to any kind of regional variation. We’ve spoken to students in the east, in cities like Kharkiv, or in the West like cities like Lviv and Ivano-Frankivsk. I think overall, there’s this general cynicism that all the candidates that are running are corrupt and that their vote doesn’t matter. Unfortunately that seems to be the case with the young generation, which we in the West hope to be the generation that really brings Ukraine.