NARRATOR: On "The Journey".

This year's election has everyone on edge waiting to see who will be the next president of the United States.

Howard University political science professors here, have been keeping our community informed with everything you need to know about this election.

Our guest today will highlight some of the key issues in our country.

Hello, my name is Dr. Wayne Frederick.

And my guest today on "The Journey," is Dr. Niambi Carter, Associate Professor with the Department of Political Science here at Howard University.

So welcome, thanks for joining us today.

Thank you for having me.

So first I have to start with where it all started.

Right here in Prince George's County.

So tell me about growing up in Prince George's County and your family life.

So I grew up not very far from here, in Glenarden, Maryland, went to PG County public schools and it was a very different place than it is now.

I mean, it was still kind of rural.

We could see tobacco on the way to school because I was bused from where we lived to Woodmore, which was not as developed as it is now.

And so it was kind of a quiet place if you actually think about what it is now in this moment.

And DC was always sort of just right there for me, because my grandfather actually was a business owner in the district.

He owned a business in Northeast for many years.

And so, I was always sort of between DC and Maryland, because like a lot of folks here, folks left the district, moved over to Maryland and vice versa.

So it was a nice upbringing.

I mean, my family was here, my grandparents.

I had a great grandmother that I got to know quite well as a kid growing up.

So it was a very different place than it is right now.

What was your influence in terms of your ultimate major and where you went to college?

So I knew I didn't wanna go South, so I knew I wanted to go somewhere that was a city.

And I don't know that I took college all that seriously in the sense that I knew I was going to go.

It was just a matter of where.

So I had no worries about I was gonna end up someplace and it was different than 'cause this is the 90's.

So people weren't doing all the test prepping, taking PSATs as early as they do now.

So it was a little bit more laid back and I got into several schools, but I loved Philadelphia and I fell in love with it instantly.

My parents actually went before I did, and said, "You'll love it here."

And I did.

And Philadelphia is still my favorite city.

So I went to Temple University and I started out as an art history major.

And then I tiptoed through the grass a few times and then I settled on African American studies as my major and political science was my minor actually.

But when I was graduating, I realized that I was taking a lot more classes in poli-science and sort of gravitating to that more and that's what I decided to pursue in graduate school.

So you decided to do political science at the masters and PhD level, and that took you in the South.

Why the move to the South then?

So at the time I thought I was gonna either stay in Philadelphia or go to New York.

Maybe Chicago.

Those are like my top three places I had to be in a major city.

But Durham, Duke University in particular, this guy, Dr. John Brim, who's now at the University of Chicago actually, which was my first choice.

He was the director of graduate studies and he called me and I think he was the only person to actually call me.

And he said, and I will never forget, "Your letters of recommendation say you can do everything but walk on water.

So what do we have to do to get you to come to Duke?"

And then I go visit, and it's the middle of March, April, and it's beautiful.

It's green, it's warm, things are blooming and I have family there.

So my grandparents at the time were getting older.

They were about an hour and a half away from Durham.

And I thought, this would be a good time to sort of shift gears a bit.

And it's also a lot cheaper to live in North Carolina.

And the weather is better than it is in Chicago.

It was actually snowing in Chicago when I was going to go do my perspective visit.

And I had such a great time.

And in people who said, I don't know that I do what you do, but I will help you do whatever it is that you want to do.

And that was really an important moment for me.

WAYNE: And what was the focus of your dissertation at Duke?

So, one of the great things that happened after Dr. Brim left, was Dr. Paula McClain came to Duke university from UVA.

Dr. McClain got all of her degrees from Howard University, actually, and her PhD from the Political Science Department.

And she became my mentor and my advisor.

And so my work really came from conversations I had with her and I ultimately decided I wanted to do something about inter-minority relations in the South.

And so my dissertation, ultimately, became about race relations between blacks, the newly arriving Latino population and whites in Durham.

And that's very pertinent today, as we have a country that's obviously getting more and more cosmopolitan as we like to say, but as that is happening, currently, as you look throughout the various cities, et cetera, what applications from your dissertation you see, especially in today's politics as we lead up to a presidential election?

That's a great question.

I think one of the things that I really wanted to underscore in my dissertation, because there were lots of conversations about this sort of upheaval this was causing in black communities and how black people were reacting perhaps negatively to these newly arrived folks.

And I was really trying to understand what that was about because it just didn't feel right to me as a hunch, right?

Like I had no empirical evidence, but it just didn't feel right.

But one of the things that really came to the fore in the dissertation, and then later in the book that was revised significantly from that work, was that people are really trying to struggle to figure out how they fit into this experiment that we call the United States.

And what does it mean to be a member of the body politic and to be full members of that community.

And from when we talk about African Americans, you're talking about a community that has been denied, both legally and extra legally, that full participation.

So immigration just really highlights their on going and they're continuing grievances.

So it's not really about those people so much.

It's really trying to address these sort of foundational crisis that we have in this country.

And so I think when we think about that in this particular moment, we see that a lot of what we're seeing, our growing pains and sort of those struggles about who gets to count and who doesn't.

And what does it really mean to be a citizen in this country?

Yeah, now you weighted into academia at Purdue after leaving Duke, why Purdue and what was that experience like?

So it was interesting.

I had another job offer on the West Coast and I was thinking, at that time, my family is getting older, my parents are getting older, so I wanted to be a little closer to home.

But Purdue, as a university, was a really fantastic experience.

I had an amazing department of folks and I was jointly appointed with Africana studies and political science, which was great because I had a lot of colleagues around that space, that really helped me kind of figure out who I wanted to be.

And I would say if I could have taken those people and moved them everywhere I went, I would absolutely have done it.

Because it was really a formative experience because I think a lot of people have really negative experiences in their first jobs and I didn't have that.

Everybody was so welcoming and open and helpful, and those people are, I'm happy to say, still many of my friends today and mentors.

So I'm really grateful, but living in Indiana is a very different place (laughs).

Than living in many other places, but it was also Obama's election year, which was also an interesting time to be kind of in that part of the world.

Right and then your alma mater would attract you back home as they say.

And so, especially looking at political science, Africana studies at Temple, that must have been quite a home going.

It was, really surreal to be colleagues with the people who were your mentors and your professors just 15 years prior.

it was an amazing experience to be in that place.

I felt like I did a lot of good and that the students that I interacted with and the faculty that I was interacting with, I mean, it just, it's no experience like going back to your alma mater, I mean, you know this, right.

Like to be back in that place and to see many of those people still around and still thriving and still mentoring students the way they did for me it was awesome.

Yeah it has been unusual for me, but I tell people all the time it's surreal and I don't think you get to appreciate it, until you're not there any longer.

So I tell people post presidency, I'll probably look back at this and be like, "Wow, what a part of a duty to have."

And then we were fortunate enough to attract you here.

Why Howard University at the time that you came back and what about it presently, you enjoy?

Well, I think the thing for me, was being closer to home.

I mean, my family is all within 20 minutes of me, which I never had.

I had left to go to college and sort of never came back home and it felt like it was time, but also the position was right.

I think for many of us who do work, especially on marginalized communities, you're in sort of one academic department, especially at predominantly white institutions, but you really have interests and allegiances in other places, and it's hard to get that fit right.

And it was nice to sort of be in a singular department and not jointly appointed, but in a department, which has a focus on black politics, which is exactly what I do.

That's not common.

That's not something you see in any other place in the country, in any other department.

And that was one of the things that made the position so attractive.

And then you just look at Howard's legacy.

I mean, look at who you've produced, not just as graduate students, but also the faculty that have come through here, from Ron Walters, Dr. Morris, who just retired this year.

I mean there are these folks who were icons in their fields.

As you are studying you have a chance to be in that same space.

And it was just like, this is the right moment because you don't know when it's going to come again because not surprisingly, jobs at Howard don't come open very often.

It was just sort of the right moment.

Right, now you've written a book recently printed by Oxford University Press "American While Black: African Americans, Immigration, and the Limits of Citizenship" Couldn't be more pertinent today.

What was the inspiration behind the book?

And tell us a bit about what issues you're trying to address in the book.

Yeah, so this was really an extension of my dissertation and I think it had been like 10 years since I wrote the dissertation, but I think it couldn't have come out at a better time.

I think had it come out of any earlier it would have been wrong.

So I kind of am thanking myself, patting myself on the back for just holding on to it for a little too long.

But what I'm trying to really talk about here is what does the democratic process and project look like for African Americans and what is it that immigration does?

So I think we think of public opinion as people have these opinions and that's all there is.

But I'm trying to argue that when you look at people's opinions, African American people's opinions about immigration, it's really not about immigration.

It's about them and sort of the unreconciled strivings they have to be Americans while also maintaining their allegiances to their communities.

And so when you are looking at the issue of immigration, I argue, you have to think about it in a much broader context.

That really when you're seeing people's opinions, you're really seeing a referendum about white supremacy to not put too fine, a point on it.

You're really getting people's attempts to articulate what it means to feel like a secondary citizen when all the formal blocks to their citizenship are gone.

So how do you make that claim anymore?

And I argue that immigration is a way to make the claim that blacks have a grievance, and that's how they do it through immigration.

Because if you look at the evidence I compile, I use interview and quantitative data, you find that blacks have lots of opinions about immigration, but they're not all negative in the way that you would assume they would.

Right, and as we embark on a presidential election, that has all of these issues kind of scattered about on a plot with respect to this, what do you think are some of the most germane things that people can get from the book that are applicable to the limits on citizenship that are being kind of put upon us, as the vote attempts to suppress the voters there, attempts to question the legitimacy of an election, what are some of the things you think from the book that people can garner that would help give insight into the issues that we are faced with today?

Well, I would say one of the main things is don't go for the easy argument, right?

Don't go for the easy fight that often the people that you look to, is perhaps causing you harm, right?

The people who...

The newcomers who are taking your jobs and doing all these alleged things, they're actually not the source of the problem that the problem you have is much bigger.

So punch up if you're going to do anything, and then focus on those structural issues, because many times these people are facing those same structural conditions, right?

So they're in your neighborhoods because of the issues around how people find housing, around lack of affordable housing, right?

In the meaning of these locations.

So think about these larger structural problems because that's going to be the issue.

So your vote is being suppressed not because these newcomers are here, but because people know your voting power.

So focus on that part because many times you will find that there is a commonality here, it's not the same, but there's a commonality.

And the people who are the most vulnerable are not your enemies.

And those are not the people you should be going after if you have to expend any political entity.

Sure.

So let's spend some time on the election.

90 something percent of African Americans in most polls are gonna vote for the democratic nominees, why?

Well, I mean I'm gonna use one of my colleagues arguments.

Paul Farmer, he is at Princeton.

He makes the argument that blacks are captured by the two party system.

That Republicans haven't really offered black people a viable alternative in 40 plus years, and the Democrats have sort of been the winners by default, in part because of the legacy of Lyndon Johnson and those folks, but also because Republicans have really doubled down on this sort of Southern strategy of appealing to racial dog whistles and sort of these racial tropes.

So you might hear things like urban and suburban, like we did in the debate the other night, which are signals to say black and white without using those terms.

Or that conversation about law and order being framed with reference to Black Lives Matter, but almost no mention of this sort of white supremacist terrorist groups that are organizing, as we speak, to intimidate voters at the polls.

So I would say these moments are demonstrating to us how the parties are making clear contrast between themselves and others.

And they're not doing it cleanly and they're not doing it perfectly all the time, because I think there were lots to find fault with, with some of the things that Joe Biden said the other night.

But when we look at this longer period of time, where blacks could vote, so since 1965, the Democrats have really been the only choice because of this sort of two party system we have.

And I think there are lots of quibbles that folks can have with the democratic party, for sure.

But I don't think the Republicans have looked like a viable alternative for black voters for a really long time.

No, the black vote is monolithic and I'm pulling to say that very often.

I tell people all the time, if I get 10 African Americans on my campus together, and we discuss five issues, we might be there for 50 days because of the wide variety of opinions.

With that in mind, embedded within that 90 something percent who may vote for Democrats, do you think there's a real concern and a real policy difference of opinion around things that actually could lift up the African American community?

Yeah, for sure.

And I think what many people are selecting is the best of what we have, and not necessarily their ideal.

And I think for those who say, "I care deeply about police reform."

For example.

Probably the answer that Joe Biden gave them, was not satisfying at all.

Particularly around the sort of defund the police language and those few bad apples.

That doesn't feel good when you're talking about real concrete reform.

But if you're probably making the choice between a Donald Trump and a Joe Biden, you might think who is most likely to at least listen to the things that I want to happen, right?

Who is most likely to push that ball a little further down the road?

And that's probably the selection you're making, not who's the most ideal because I think most people would say in this system, it's not ideal.

You're making choices that don't necessarily match your preferences.

But I think many black voters, regardless of sort of their unique policy preferences are pragmatic voters because often they don't get to select the option that they would most like.

And so sometimes sheltering in place, right?

And say, "Who's the person that won't hurt me right now, and take away the progress that I've made."

And then we can maybe think about the option that'll get us further down the road where we wanna go.

So with that in mind, what would you suggest would be the top three policy issues that you think voters should be going to the polls with on their minds and really looking at candidates around it?

And post-election, whoever the winner is, holding their feet to the fire, to deliver on?

Oh, I think these are big, but I think environment is of course very important when we're talking about the flooding we've seen in the Midwest, we've seen the wildfires in Northern California.

We're seeing the hurricanes in the Gulf.

I mean, it just decimated Lake Charles Louisiana, and that's barely gotten a blip on our radars.

I think we have to think about that, because these are also black issues.

When we're talking about the environment, we're not just talking about, recycling, we're talking about air quality, we're talking about locations next to trash transfer facilities.

We're talking about the fact that our neighborhoods are just hotter in general than others.

So environment, I think, is really important.

I think we also must talk about healthcare.

I mean, we're in a COVID crisis and we're seeing black mortality three times that of their white peers.

I mean, and that's from all these comorbidities, diabetes, hypertension, all of these things are really important.

Not to mention, we don't even actually know what COVID-19 is going to do for those who survive over the longer term.

And if these things reappear, are our communities going to be more susceptible because of the lack of access to healthcare.

So we absolutely have to be thinking about healthcare.

I also think we need to think about the judiciary.

I think that's something that Democrats haven't put a lot of mind to, in the same way that Republicans have, but we know the judiciary is going to be very important, not just who goes on the Supreme court, but also the lower courts, because those people are going to be in essentially lifetime appointments and they can make decisions about our lives for decades to come.

Even if the public will is very different than that of the judiciary.

So I think those are some of the things that we should have at the front of our minds.

And on that last point, I think elections have consequences.

And that's an example of an election that had consequences.

I believe that the Trump administration has appointed some 300 federal judges throughout the system.

And during the debate, president did tout the fact that he was left 180 vacancies.

He did not elaborate further on the fact that he stopped appointing and giving votes to some of President Obama's appointees.

But nevertheless, the point is, he has really changed the judiciary in a big way.

How much of an impact do you think that could have on American life and for how long?

What would it take to overturn some of that?

I mean, I think it's incalculable, to be honest.

Because we go to the judiciary for so many things, voting rights cases, abortion, I mean, all of these these voter lines that are about to be withdrawn.

These electoral districts that are about to be redrawn, as a result of the next census, the 2020 census, those kinds of cases, ultimately many times end up in these higher courts.

And so now he has a friendly judiciary that is going to pay dividends, not just for him, because they will long outlive his time in office, but for multiple generations.

And I think this is, to the last question you asked, about post-election and how this matters because we also have midterms coming up.

So people like Mitch McConnell, and others who were in the Senate, who frankly just stopped doing their job, refused to hold hearings at the end of Obama's term to confirm these judicial nominees.

It's also time to hold them accountable because the president can only do so much.

He also needs the willing assistance of those party members in the House and in the Senate, most importantly.

So it'll also be time for us to vote again in those midterms.

And we should also be thinking about what those folks did to assist this administration, particularly if we didn't like what they were doing.

Right.

So let's change gears to the young people.

They clearly held their noses at the prior democratic nominee and decided that if they didn't have Bernie Sanders, they were not gonna participate.

And that obviously had some consequences.

Enough attention wasn't paid to mobilizing the African American voters as well.

And that had consequences as well.

And the ground game for the Republicans has been touted.

What is your advice for young people in terms of getting involved?

And I'm not suggesting any partisan point of view, but just in terms of getting involved in participation.

Well, what's your advice for them?

Well, I would say, think of this as a long game and not a short game, right?

So the kind of changes that many of the young people, many of our students talk about that they want to see won't happen in one election.

It's going to take multiple elections.

I always tell people- I'll give them that advice for Howard administration as well.

Exactly, that it takes decades, right?

To get the kind of lasting change that they want.

But if they're issues that you care about, then one of the best things you can do for yourself, is to be knowledgeable about that.

So if you care about no cost college tuition or evacating student debt, then one of the things you can do is get educated about that.

Support the organizations that are going for those kinds of things.

So that doesn't necessarily have to be money.

'Cause a lot of young people don't have lots of money, but I mean, if you have five bucks, many of those organizations will accept it, but they also need organizational assistance.

So they look for volunteers because they need people to help them do administrative tasks because all of these little things help.

I would also say, don't get dissuaded when you don't get your way that one time.

So I know lots of people were really upset that Bernie Sanders wasn't selected as the nominee, but again, Bernie Sanders is one person.

That doesn't mean that there aren't other votes in other elections that aren't important, particularly at your local and your state level.

And I also tell young people, you can be a state holder or office holder yourself.

You don't have to be a particular age unless you wanna be in the Senate or in the House, but in your local community, you can serve on advisory boards.

You can be on city councils, you can be on commissions, which are non-elected positions that you can actually be the change agents you wanna see in your communities.

And there are lots of interesting things that are happening at the local and state level.

I mean, look at what's happening in Stockton, California with Mayor Tubbs.

Like those are things that I think young people need to see that the change they want isn't outside of them, and it doesn't lie with a single person, it actually could be them.

That's it, and clearly Bernie Sanders, and his movement has actually moved the party in terms of platform, to a place that's very, very different.

than it has been for years.

Looking into your crystal ball, and this is a tape that we probably will need to come back and rewind later, there is a possibility in 2024, that a democratic nominee could be a woman of color in Kamala Harris, who at that time could be VP Kamala Harris, and the Republicans could have a woman of color in Nikki Haley as the nominee.

How likely you think that is, and what would that mean for America?

I mean, I think anything is possible.

And I certainly think Senator Harris has political aspirations that have been very clear, right?

She was one of the first to announce in fact, that she was running for president.

And I don't think she's given up on that.

And she's young and we should expect her to go for that brass ring very shortly.

And it could actually be Governor Haley, right?

I mean, I think Governor Haley has been a bright light in terms of Republican leadership for a long time.

And I think the fact that she's a woman of color is an important signal to see, particularly for Republicans who are sometimes viewed as being a pretty homogeneous party, at least racially and not being open.

I mean, of course there's Tim Scott and a few others, but generally speaking it's not viewed as being open.

So I think if they're thinking about their electorate and they're thinking about their supporters and what this country looks like, I think that Nikki Haley could be an important signal center, but there could also of course be others.

So he may have to be back here in 2024 with your new book, with a new title- Absolutely.

Absolutely.

So as we close, why Howard University, for those perspective students who are out there, and why now?

I would say there's no more exciting time than to be at Howard University than right now.

And I think one of the things that distinguishes Howard is it's not been a great university for a little while or just because the rankings demonstrated it.

It is because it's been a great university since its founding.

And what we foster here, is not just sort of the academic rigor.

That's there, that's going to be at any university, but the community.

I think one of the things that has struck me, as a not Howard University person but probably owner of multiple Howard University paraphernalia at this point, is that it does feel like a community, but it's not just gonna be some proud community and there's no where you can't go where you're gonna see a Howard University person or someone who has some story about Howard University.

And I think for me as a person who has to think about where I want to be and what I want my intellectual and other legacies to be, I want that to be done in this space.

The work here matters, the students, I'm always in awe at how much they do, not just in class, but all of the voting election stuff that they do.

I mean, assisting poor communities.

I mean, doing these alternative spring breaks, I'm always excited by our students and the great ideas they have and how selfless they are.

So I would say if you want to be a part of a community that is bigger than you, you wanna be in a community where you can be almost any version of yourself, that you want to be, right?

Whether you're the hippie type, or the activist type, or the health nuts and all those, like all of those people are here and it is a beautiful, vibrant, lively, vivacious community.

And it's an audacious community, which is partly what I love so much about Howard University is a challenge in the best ways every day.

Excellent.

Thanks for being here.

My guest today was Dr. Niambi Carter, Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science here at Howard University.

I'm Dr. Wayne Frederick, please join me next time on "The Journey".

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