In This Episode
Miami elections move forward as the state moves to end all vaccine mandates, Europe bans the use of gel nail polish, a Texas court-appointed lawyer faces white nationalist allegations, and a legendary Southern cookbook celebrates 50 years with a new cover.
News
Florida plans to end all state vaccine mandates, including for schools
Is This Court Appointed Lawyer in Texas a White Nationalist?
This Legendary Southern Cookbook Is Celebrating 50 Years With A New Cover
Follow @PodSavethePeople on Instagram.
TRANSCRIPT
DeRay Mckesson: Hey, this is DeRay and welcome to Pod Save the People in this episode it’s me Myles and Sharhonda and we are back to talk about the news that you might not have heard around equity, race and justice or the news that you did hear and with a different lens. Don’t forget to follow us on Instagram at @PodSavethePeople. Here we go.
[AD BREAK]
DeRay Mckesson: Well, we were on break for Labor Day and we are back, and it seems like a lifetime worth of news has happened in between, but here we are. I’m DeRay at @deray on Twitter.
Myles E. Johnson: I’m Myles E. Johnson at @pharaohrapture on Instagram.
Sharhonda Bossier: And I’m Sharhonda Bossier. You can find me on LinkedIn or on Instagram at @BossierSha. Or on Spill at @BossierS.
DeRay Mckesson: I need to log back in to Spill. I was like an OG spiller and then just fell off. Um. There’s a lot going on. Let’s start with rest in peace to Rolling Ray. When I saw that online, I was, at first I was like this is not real because you never know what’s real anymore online. And then it was like, oh, this is real. And Rolling Ray was such a key. Um. But Myles, lead us into our tribute to Rolling Ray.
Myles E. Johnson: So, A, I love language. I love Black people who break language and use language in ways that um are a big irreverent F-U to the people who construct it. And Rolling Ray is one of those people, even if you don’t know exactly who Rolling Ray is, you probably have heard somebody say Purr. Um. One of the more iconic moments for me is when he was next to another reality star named Bobby Lytes, and they’re in this battle. And Rolling Ray pretends to die and he comes back and he looks at Bobby Lytes and says, I just came back from the dead and you’re still not that girl. And it’s so funny. [laughter]
DeRay Mckesson: It was brilliant.
Myles E. Johnson: And it’s so funny and outside of what he contributed to language. I also love where people who we would not have seen at all get to be seen. And I think part of what makes his death really sad is because this is still somebody who was battling inside of poverty, battling inside a disability. So even though we saw him, even though he had fame, and even though, he probably had moments in his life that he wouldn’t be able to have if it were not for the internet, he was still somebody who succumbed to what looks like the data and the trends have been showing that millennials are gonna be dying earlier. There’s gonna be moments where people are, you know, are passing away earlier. And I think that I’m just kind of filled with appreciation that somebody who was so um disadvantaged in society still had a moment in the sun being themselves and being as non-respectable and as irreverent and as absurd as Rolling Ray got to be. So it feels um it feels wrong to try to be any more serious than that when talking about Rolling Ray, even in death.
Sharhonda Bossier: [laugh] Um, I rarely find people who are online like laugh out loud funny, but I always found Rolling Ray laugh out loud funny. And um, also someone I was very clear. I never wanted to attempt to match wits with, you know what I’m saying? I was like, I never want to be on the receiving end of any of that. You got it, girl. So, um, yeah, rest in peace to a real one.
DeRay Mckesson: And I think about Rolling Ray as a disability rights activist. In 2020, Rolling Ray was outside in the protests like anybody else, like fighting on the front line. Um. And that was important to see. And like you said, Myles, what does it mean to make sure that we represent all people’s experiences? And Rolling Ray was hilarious. And um you know Cardi had a good tribute to Rolling Ray yesterday. A lot of people had tributes to Rolling Ray, but died so young.
Sharhonda Bossier: Did Beyonce?
DeRay Mckesson: Right, Beyonce was his friend, remember when Beyonce wrote that thing to him?
Myles E. Johnson: I was literally, that was in my mind as like a second connection because he died around Beyonce’s birthday and he lied on divorce court and said that him and Beyonce were friends and she checks up on him. And then Beyonce.
Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah.
Myles E. Johnson: Fast forward, actually sends him an Ivy Park package and checks up on him. So kind of legitimizing this kind of like viral moment and the fact that he actually passed away around Beyonce’s birthday. I think he passed away on the third and her birthday is the fourth. Um you know one of those kismet kisses.
DeRay Mckesson: Rest in play, Rolling Ray. Now, did y’all also see uh Cardi B’s trial? And if you did not, I hope that you will go back and look at some of the the clips, but Cardi B was in a court. It was a civil case for damages because there was a security guard who said that Cardi B hit her. That is the short version of it. There are no cameras. There were no cameras, so Cardi B. Was on on the stand and she was um hilarious and I and then they used those images of her on trial to as a part of her album rollout which I also thought was so this moment and so Cardi B but did y’all see that?
Sharhonda Bossier: I did. I also saw all the looks as she was like going into court every day because people wanted to do that. I, um, Cardi B is also somebody I never want to match wits with, right? You know what I mean? Like I never wanna be on the receiving end of anything from her. Um, yeah, I mean, I, I saw some of the clips. I thought they were pretty funny. I the other thing is you know, people were like, is this fat phobic? Is it not? Especially cause she’s come under fire recently for having said some fat phobic things and for some of her fat fans feeling like she’s directed ire at them. Um. But when she, when people were joking about like her saying that the woman was like security guard big, as y’all know, I’ve been like in a gym where lots of women are like lifting weights and security guard big became actually like a rallying cry cause we were doing benchmarks and it was like, well, how heavy can you squat? You know? Um, so yeah, anyway, just, uh, yeah, lots of material, let’s say coming out of that Cardi B trial.
Myles E. Johnson: Yeah, I definitely saw the Cardi B clips. I think I was less interested in, I think because of the fat conversation was so exhausted, you know, and and and and I’m not at the point in my feminism that like so when things are happening in culture that are like fascist, it’s hard for me to go to the physical or the vanity, even if it’s still like substantive and real and there’s real ways you can pull from it, it’s hard to go there in those conversations. So I think that’s the reason why even the conversation around Cardi B and and and fatphobia and stuff like that kind of simmered out in a way that maybe two years ago it wouldn’t have. Um. What I am, what I was really interested in is, I don’t know if you all remember Cardi’s press video. And she actually used–
DeRay Mckesson: Oh, press, press press press, press, that song?
Myles E. Johnson: Yeah. So she actually pretended to–.
DeRay Mckesson: You’re welcome.
Myles E. Johnson: Be coming from a court um house. Um. And she makes inside this video, this kind of, through visuals, this statement around, you know, using power and sex appeal in order to navigate the court systems and navigate publicity. And it’s interesting to see her actually apply that because at the end of the day, we saw Cardi B throw the shoe at Nicki Minaj. She’s we know that she has a violent past, and I’m not somebody who’s anti-violence, so I’m really not necessarily critiquing her use of violence that she felt it was needed, but I am it is interesting to me that she’s able to be meta about how she’s gonna use her glamor, her celebrity, in order to navigate power, and her actually do that, be so funny, be so charming, have the outfits. To make sure that she still maintains her power. And um it’s just interesting because, you know, in America, we’ll always kind of side with power if it’s seductive enough. And I think Cardi B joins the likes of Johnny Depp, Gwyneth Paltrow, um if I’m being very extreme, even OJ, just like this use of your celebrity in order Michael Jackson. This use of your celebrity in order to escape um probably something that you did. And it is interesting to see people kind of um side with power yet again because it’s sexy and glamorous.
DeRay Mckesson: Did you see that, you know, she wore different wigs every day.
Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah.
DeRay Mckesson: And the lawyer from opposing counsel is like, you know, how do you change your hair that quickly? And she’s like, uh, it’s a wig. And there were these moments like she knew the camera was on too. And there’s like that, that, that celebrity part of it that works and to, to put your album roll out when you know you’re going to be in court and like, you know you’ll just be on TV every day or like it’ll be–
Sharhonda Bossier: And the headlines yeah.
DeRay Mckesson: Yeah it’ll be in the headlines. It was like, that was a smart move. The other person that was getting people on a tizzy was um Myles’s favorite homegirl on YouTube. The other Taylor.
Sharhonda Bossier: AKA woke Katy Perry.
DeRay Mckesson: Not Taylor Swift, but Taylor Lorenz. Myles, I’ll turn it over to you because she is your home girl and she had people worked up.
Myles E. Johnson: It’s funny because she’s not my favorite, but she’s the YouTuber who most intersects with what I do on this podcast so she’s so she’s been a Cliff Jane notes for me and I’m like, thank you, Taylor, for telling me why I don’t feel like deep diving every single week. But um there was this Wired article that came out and it exposes this dark money nonprofit that has basically been channeling money to different democratic influencers and a lot of the political TikTok influencers that we’ve been seeing, Instagram influencers we’ve seen seeing. And the YouTube influencers that we’ve been seeing have shown to be taking money from these dark money organizations and she kind of busts it open and names people and some of those people are people that a lot of people love. Um. The one person who I was a light consumer of who was in it was Conscious Lee. Um. I was deeply disappointed. Everybody else I only knew about, but I was not surprised because I’ve said on this very podcast how strange some of the communications have been coming from the left online. You can see who is in cahoots with a corporation and who’s not by how they speak, what they won’t speak about, and how um rabid they are for a political candidate instead of maybe an actual perspective. You know I’m rabid, but I’m rabid about Black feminism, Afro pessimism, blah, blah blah blah. Being rabid around a person maybe implies that I might be getting paid um by them. And um yeah, it just, there has been so many YouTube videos about that article. I know that everybody’s not like plugged into what’s been going on on YouTube, but so many people I’ve been making um, having talks about YouTube. There’s been so many TikToks about it. And then also the responses to the article by the influencers, um some of them are saying the same language and like, the idea is that there was a press release sent to these influencers, told how to respond, and like these influencers are copying and pasting those press releases and maybe [?] them, but the core language is the same, which is letting you know, um this is maybe not the most convincing way to prove that you’re not being puppeted by the Democratic Party. And um and yeah, that’s the news story.
Sharhonda Bossier: Can you say more about the disappointment you felt in finding out that someone you even lightly listened to was being compensated for producing content aligned with one perspective or one set of priorities? I’m very curious about that, given how much I feel like you have said, at least on this podcast, right? Um. That you try to connect to ideas and not to people.
Myles E. Johnson: Yeah, it’s the it’s the transparency. I think that’s the I think that’s the disappointment that I feel because specifically if you’re Black, right, there’s just been a long legacy of Black people who sold us out, you know? Even when we think about the Black church and the Black Church being annihilated, part of the annihilation of the Black Church had to do with the Black Church betraying Black people politically for political gains. So if you’re Conscious Lee, and you’re showing me you with a Black trans woman, if you are telling me these things that are supposed to be pro-Black, I’m I’m taking that you’re telling this from your soul, and if you really have an opinion about Israel that is different from mine, at least I know that this has been generated from the core of you and from your mind and not because of dollars. And that’s where the disappointment um comes in because I do think specifically for Black people, there has to be some type of establishment of like community and trust even digitally in order for a digital community to work. And at least saying, you know what, I got paid 500 to not say something will let me know that I can at least trust you and that’s where it comes from.
DeRay Mckesson: You know, one of the big responses to um in defense of those creators was people got to get paid, that many of them said that they that the Chorus, which was the group paying them was not their only funder. And if we are going to stand up to the billionaire funded ecosystem that the right wing has with the radio stations, the podcasts da da da. Then the left should have a response to that and that this seems to have been a response. So we should be, we shouldn’t be as critical of them as people have been um because of that. Like what is the alternative? Is no is there supposed to be no ecosystem of creators um on the left? What do you say to that? That is, I saw that as well.
Myles E. Johnson: What I have to say to it first and foremost is that that makes me sad. If you’re inside the field of talking about what’s right for Black people to make money, then you’re in the wrong field. If you have to make certain types of financial sacrifices. If this is a mold for you to find financial um stability, if this is the mode for you to find financial freedom. And it’s on Black people and on um and it’s on expressing certain types of rhetoric to different Black people. And you are feeling, and you’re compromised by money, then you’re in the wrong lane you’re in like that’s you should not be in this to get rich. And you should also be extremely transparent about where you are getting money. So it’s again, not just about getting the money. It’s also about the non-transparency about getting the money, and then the last thing that I’ll say that it’s about too is that it’s not the left, which is another thing I try to say on this podcast. If you can’t talk about AIPAC, if you can’t critique Israel, if you are being told what not to say, if you’re being told, uh, uh what candidate to say that is a conservative fascist thing that that is happening on the left, but it’s not the left. So you’re still not creating an actual ecosystem for the people on the left because there’s still people further left than you who are not let in. So you are just now solidifying yourself inside of the right, but a more liberal right but still the right itself, so yeah. How do y’all feel? Uh wh–[indistinct sound with laugh]
DeRay Mckesson: I don’t know pay attention to Taylor. It though it was interesting. I actually, so, you know, Taylor is a legitimate journalist. So I was surprised at the people attacking Taylor as like a journalist. I thought that was like a weird line of attack that did not hold. You don’t have to like her journalism, but she is a journalist and she is a legitimate one. You know, I think the most damning thing was their responses. The responses from the people was so defensive, but not about the things she was saying. And you’re like you know, it was the, you got to pay me da da. And you’re like, oh, that’s real. She’s not saying you should not be paid. She’s saying it was secret and it came with the strings that your listeners did not know. And, you know, yeah, it was just so like the response videos were just like, hmm, this is a little, like, I don’t know, that was weird. So I thought that was a weird. I will give Taylor credit though, because if Taylor will throw a rock and show her hands and stand there and say, I got another rock. This is the rock. Rock, rock, rock rock. Like, Taylor is no punk.
Myles E. Johnson: Let me see your 23 and me, Taylor. I’m feeling a good 2% over there.
DeRay Mckesson: Yeah, I don’t even, I mean, I, I don’t know Taylor personally, but I don’t see her sweat about it. I see her get annoyed when people like attack her or something like that. But, you know, I’m like, Taylor will throw a rock and show her hands. And that is, you know, I respect that about her. [music break] Hey, you’re listening to Pod Save the People. Stay tuned. There’s more to come. [music break]
[AD BREAK]
DeRay Mckesson: Sharhonda, I wanted to talk to you. I don’t know if you saw that gel nail polish seems to be getting banned in parts of Europe uh for the toxins that might mess up women’s fertility. Not yet banned in the UK and not yet banned here in the United States, but it seems like in both they are on the list. And I wanted to know if this is making you change your habits around nail polish.
Sharhonda Bossier: For those of you who do not know me, I have a standing bi-weekly nail appointment. Uh. I get my nails done. They are gel. Uh. I’m not changing anything, I don’t think. I do think I’m gonna look for you know brands that don’t have you know the TPO, so there is supposed to be like this non-toxic alternative and we’ll see if they stick. Um. But, you know, my nails have been part of who I am since I was 14. Um. And I feel like there’s a whole bunch of other stuff that I do that is potentially ill-advised, um but my nails feel like part of me. Like having a manicure feels like who I am. When people who don’t see me in person all the time run into me, they’re like, let me see your nails. You know? Um. So I did see the article. Um, I’ve ignored everyone who has sent it to me though. I’m so grateful that so many of you love me, uh, and I, I don’t see myself changing my behavior. I just don’t.
Myles E. Johnson: Doesn’t it feel like sometimes people send you stuff and it’s like, are y’all really sending me stuff to be inform me? Are you trying to play like, what’s gonna be the knock that cracks the egg? Cause I’m like, y’ all know what’s going on in the world. That’s the last thing I need to see.
DeRay Mckesson: And you were the first person I thought of, Sharhonda, I was like, ooh, Sharhonda they takin’ the gel, baby. They takin the gel out of here.
Sharhonda Bossier: Oh, I, yeah, um, but I think to Myles’s point, you know, especially with like gel manicures for a while, there were concerns around the UV lights and all sorts of things, right? And I was like, look, I won’t eat red dye, whatever, but I’m going to get my nails done and they will last the two weeks. So gel manicures all the way.
Myles E. Johnson: Your gel manicure is um my diet coke.
Sharhonda Bossier: Ooh.
Myles E. Johnson: It’s like it’s like, because I have been living such a like sober life, and not that, I mean, just like, no alcohol, no anything.
Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah.
Myles E. Johnson: Um. So diet coke is the thing. And I’m like.
Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah.
Myles E. Johnson: And people say, this is in it, this is in it, and I’m, like, I don’t care. We have to, come on.
DeRay Mckesson: Do you actually like Diet Coke more than regular Coke?
Myles E. Johnson: Yes.
DeRay Mckesson: I like never got into Diet Coke.
Myles E. Johnson: It’s a different taste. And then my mother, um growing up, we would always um she would always use Splenda. So I think that like even my taste, there’s something familiar.
Sharhonda Bossier: Oh okay.
Myles E. Johnson: About the sugar substitute that reminds me of that, yeah.
DeRay Mckesson: That’s interesting.
Sharhonda Bossier: I’m a Coke classic girl.
Myles E. Johnson: But I’m also you know losing fitness, diet, getting older, so I’m like, okay, zero calories.
DeRay Mckesson: It’s funny I posted a gym picture today and somebody um was really shady and was like, they were like, what a weird rebrand. And I’m like, I don’t know if this is a rebrand, but shout out to should out to the gym pictures. I was like–
Myles E. Johnson: Were you, did you have clothes on?
DeRay Mckesson: Yeah, I mean, it was like the same gym photo that I post every single.
Myles E. Johnson: Oh okay.
DeRay Mckesson: It was like a rebrand from the best.
Myles E. Johnson: Okay, I was okay. I was just trying to contextualize.
Sharhonda Bossier: Okay. Okay.
Myles E. Johnson: The photo where I’m like, what would consider it a rebrand or like?
DeRay Mckesson: I was like, I don’t know how rebrand it is as much as I just go to the gym now to stave off walking into traffic.
Sharhonda Bossier: But also shout out to being a full person online and not like one dimensional, you know, like you have things you do outside of activism. Imagine that.
Myles E. Johnson: I think also the internet and social media in general is such a marketplace. So you showing something like that, even like I showed you all um, we’ll get into it when it’s my news, but I showed you all my cooking, I’m very slow to show my cooking because then it turns into like a thing and I’m like, no, I’m just, this is something I enjoy so.
Sharhonda Bossier: For those of you listening, I have already requested a plate. So I.
Myles E. Johnson: Oh yeah. You ain’t gotta worry.
Sharhonda Bossier: Those of us who are always hungry, I got us covered.
Myles E. Johnson: Now, if you eat the pork, because I still make it with the pork shoulder and stuff like that so.
Sharhonda Bossier: Oh, 100%, that’s the only way to do it.
DeRay Mckesson: It’s so Black. It’s so Black.
Myles E. Johnson: Okay.
DeRay Mckesson: I love it. He said, no turkey over here.
Myles E. Johnson: No.
DeRay Mckesson: Um.
Sharhonda Bossier: Not at all.
DeRay Mckesson: This is not my news, but I did want to talk about Miami. I don’t know if you saw, but in my and we talked about this, I think, a while ago. Miami had tried to change the elections to coincide with the national elections, which would have allowed everybody in Miami local politics to stay in power for another year.
Sharhonda Bossier: Yup.
DeRay Mckesson: And that was shady. And somebody running against one of them took it to court and recently lost. So they will have an election in November. And I hope they get all of them people out of office. I hope they clean house in Miami because they were being really shady trying to move the election by a year against like no referendum about it. No–
Myles E. Johnson: Right.
Sharhonda Bossier: Yup.
DeRay Mckesson: They weren’t gonna let people vote. It was straight up the council did it. And I’m happy that they lost. And especially because that court of appeals over there is not always great, but they were like clear about this.
Sharhonda Bossier: And Florida has proven to be a testing ground for so much that, you know, Republicans try and scale across the country. So was also glad to see this outcome.
Myles E. Johnson: Yeah, I feel like you can’t even have excitement, like for real, but I am excited to see in November what the real um climate is, you know? And I think that waiting too long, and if that were to go through, so many things would have cooled off. But also, I think sometimes when we look at liberal blue-MAGA media, well like you can’t really tell if something’s really taking foot somewhere. So I feel like this election will show, oh, is there actually a shift happening? Are people as upset as we’re seeing on media? I think the elections will be a good time to see what’s actually working when it comes to our media and what is just smoke and mirrors.
DeRay Mckesson: Well, I’ll start. Um. I don’t know if you saw, but since we’re talking about Florida, we’ll stay in Florida. Florida is proposing to remove all vaccine mandates, including all school vaccine mandates. And it is happening. It always seems to be happening. You might not know, but all 50 states adopted mandates in 1980. And as you can imagine, all of us had to get our shots before we went to school, and that was an important thing. Um. And as of September 3rd, the state leaders, including the governor and the certain general, have said that they are going to try and do it. Now, obviously parents are gonna sue, you know so this will be caught up for a while. You might be wondering, what are the required vaccines for school children in Florida? They have to get immunized against polio, diphtheria, rubella, which you, probably rubella, um rubeola, which you know as measles, pertussis, which, you know as whooping cough, mumps, and tetanus. And um private schools can set their own vaccine requirements, but public schools cannot. And I just never thought we’d live in a world where like we would just let that be up to families to decide. And it’s like more kids will die when, of like whooping-cough, which I didn’t even know whooping cough was still around. Like, people still get whooping-cough. I didn’t even know that was like–
Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah.
DeRay Mckesson: –a thing, you know? I’m like, kids with their very weak immune systems, anybody who’s worked in a school, you know that you get sick the moment them kids come back anyway, just because like, you know, school sickness. Um. So I just wanted to bring it here because what’s happening in this political climate is just contrary to all of the things that we have learned with regard to science and healthcare and da-da-da. And as much as R.F.K. Junior is anti-vaccination, all of his children are vaccinized [SIC]. As much as Trump and them are like anti-da-da-da, they got the COVID vaccine. You’re like, these people are playing y’all, and you know who’s gonna get vaccinized [SIC]? The rich child of everybody in the state of Florida is getting a measles, mumps, and rubella. They are. It’s just gonna happen. They’re not gonna die like this. It’s gonna be poor people who are gonna be like, oh, you know, I like didn’t da-da da-da. And so I hope that they take them to court. I hope they do not allow them to do this, but I wanted to bring it here because it makes me nervous that other states might even try to do this. Like I’m like, what is going on so yes?
Sharhonda Bossier: Well, I live in the great state of California and our governor uh has joined forces with the governors of Washington state and Oregon to form an alliance uh to issue their own guidance around required vaccines and required vaccine schedules because they say we can no longer trust the feds to do it. Also, it’s an attempt at ensuring that, you know, once the CDC changes guidance. What you can get access to in a clinic also changes, right? And I think we’ve talked about some version of this, particularly around like HIV and antiretroviral drugs. Um. But anyway, it’s been interesting to see uh California, Oregon and Washington State try and like be a counterweight to some of this as, you know, and to form a bloc. Uh. You know, I also am terrified. You know, if you listen to the surgeon general’s um remarks when he talked about this, uh you know, he likened vaccine requirements to slavery, which is a wild thing to hear come out of a Black man’s mouth. Um. And random side note, the Haitians in my group were like, y’all, do we think he’s Haitian? They looked him up, he’s Nigerian, so they feel like they’re safe, right now. It’s like a new front in the diaspora wars. But anyway, um I just I think it’s really interesting to choose to DeRay’s point about who’s gonna be most impacted by this, a Black man to be the messenger of this for the state of Florida. Um. And I do think that we are going to see the return of diseases and viruses that we had all but eradicated in the United States. And I do think that many of us are operating from a place of privilege. In talking about what we want to, or don’t want to be vaccinated against. Like there are so many other people in countries where these things continue to run rampant, who know better and know the protection that vaccines can provide. Um. And so I just think it’s like further evidence of like the growing anti-scientific um movement in the United States gaining real traction. And it’s sad, because it’s not an individual choice, right? Like your decision to get vaccinated or not has an impact on the people around you. Um. And it’s just, I think, also rooted in America’s rugged individualism so.
Myles E. Johnson: Your comment around if he was Haitian or Nigerian reminded me of, we didn’t talk about this, but Amanda Seales’ Jubilee episode happened while we were gone too, which was like, sent the–
Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah.
Myles E. Johnson: Sent the internet on fire. And there was this part, maybe um uh AJ, the producer, could like maybe splice in the part where she kind of talks about immigrants and stuff like that. Um. But anywho, that’s what that made me think of and made me think of how we need more minds talking about why sometimes the Black immigrant community tends to drink raccoon soup so much. Um. Without it being xenophobic and without it being um.
Sharhonda Bossier: Yes.
Myles E. Johnson: A real thoughtful conversation about the realities that we’re seeing. The other thing about this is like, the like if enough families agree with something, it’s not just families, it’s culture. So when you go to certain places in Florida, when you go to certain places in Georgia, and Mississippi and stuff like that, yeah, it’s not just one or two families that is like the culture of Kentucky, Ohio. It’s not just a couple of families, it’s the culture of a place and you see things like this be able to get life. And what to me is the evil genius of the right is that now you have more poor people who are gonna die. So there’s two options. You either have a booming big pharma and you now have all these people who are making um those shareholders in big pharma um happy. And you have people dying and giving up homes and more property that you can now flip and exploit. And you have a people willingly doing the genocide. And what’s going on in Gaza and Israel, Israel has to drop the bombs on Gaza because those Palestinians want to live. Here, we say, you don’t need to drop a bomb on us. We’ll kill ourselves through through through these kind of cultural and political choices. And that to me is what’s sad is that there is this kind of, um we talked about it at the last time on the podcast, it’s kind of like suicidal, nihilistic choice that the American makes that to be feels just as philosophical and spiritual to me as it does like political.
Sharhonda Bossier: I think the point about Big Pharma is really interesting, right? Because people have said, Big Pharma’s profit motive is why many of them are choosing not to get vaccinated, right, but you’re like, oh baby, Big pharma is going to get its money one way or another, right. So they have pointed to, you know, like the American, like, you, know, RFK has been testifying in front of Congress right now. The point is to talk about, um you know, a whole bunch of things that have happened uh under his tenure. And, you know, one of the things that keeps coming up is, you know they’re pushing the senators, the democratic senators anyway are pushing him on this like narrative that he’s been pushing about American research and medical institutions being corrupt. And you know everybody is like, well, big pharma funds a lot of the research and that’s why all of this scientific research says that we need to have these vaccines because then big pharma gets to turn a profit. But I think Myles to your point. Big Pharma’s gonna turn a profit whether you’re well or not, right? Big Pharmas gonna turn a profit whether you get the vaccine or not. The question is, what costs are you gonna pay to ensure Big Pharma’s profit?
DeRay Mckesson: Yeah, when all those people get measles, Big Pharma’s gonna be fine.
Sharhonda Bossier: Yes.
Myles E. Johnson: Very fine. And we talk about the left a lot here and like Democrats and left, like, etc, etc. But to me, the left has a better job at having maybe political ideas that exist in the digital and communicating those things. So I know that sometimes when it comes to electoral politics, that doesn’t happen. But like, it’s harder to trick somebody who is on the left, not impossible, as you can see, shout out to Taylor, but it’s it’s harder. You got to think more. With the right, you they’re lying to you. They’re using Big Pharma. They’re not naming it. It’s Big Pharma, great name. They’re using it. And they can call it Big Pharma while, all while, you are Big Pharma. R.F.K. Jr., you are now Big Pharma. And they could say, just like America, just like just like Donald Trump. Like he gets to say all these things about the swamp and all this other stuff. Meanwhile, you’re in the Epstein files.
DeRay Mckesson: We didn’t talk about this, and I didn’t put this in the chat, so maybe you didn’t see it. But did you see that the DOJ is considering banning trans people from owning guns?
Sharhonda Bossier: Yes, yes.
DeRay Mckesson: I’m like, what? They are gonna wage this culture war until they cannot possibly do it anymore. Myles, no, you disagree? What’s that what was that face?
Myles E. Johnson: No, no, no no, no no. I don’t–
DeRay Mckesson: Oh.
Myles E. Johnson: –disagree with anything that you said. I was just my frustration is my request would be, yeah, go ahead and ban trans people with guns today. If I elect you and you want my democratic money and you or excuse me, you want my, well, Kamala did get my money, but not my vote. But but if you want to but if you want to get if you want to get my support, then I need for you to go ahead and say we ban all white men to do it. Like, I want, and of course not that literal language because that would be too divisive, but if that’s the game they’re playing. Play heavy ball. They’re literally saying, oh, you’re trans, no guns. You needed something that says, oh you’re predisposed to what we would call white malehood. Because that’s one thing that trans shooter and the white men shooters have in common is that they all were born into white malehoods. So we should be able to diagnose that. We should be able to create policy that’s just as um confrontational as they do. And that’s what kind of pisses me off that they get to be so derogatory. And then when it’s time for us, we have thoughts and prayers and maybe some soft policy, and I’m like, no. We’re literally bringing knives to a gunfight. Literally.
Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah, I mean, I think at the very least, we should be able to say if you hold white supremacist values and beliefs, right, you shouldn’t be able to own a gun because those are supposed to be beyond the pale in our current society and culture.
Myles E. Johnson: You know I want it extreme. If you ever watched Larry the Cable Guy.
DeRay Mckesson: Not Larry the Cable Guy, you psycho.
Myles E. Johnson: If you ever said, I’m a redneck woman, I ain’t no high class broad. If you are, [laughter] mm-mm, all of it, all of it.
Sharhonda Bossier: You’re gonna get a lot of Black people caught up in that, especially if you add Reba in it, because you know Black people love them some Reba, honey.
DeRay Mckesson: Some Reba oh my gosh Reba. [laughter] Hey, you’re listening to Pod Save the People. Stay tuned, there’s more to come. [music break]
[AD BREAK]
Sharhonda Bossier: Speaking of being invested in supporting and believing in white supremacist ideals, my news this week uh is from a Texas media outlet called The Barbed Wire, um which was reporting on the former national chairman of the Proud Boys, who lives in North Texas and is currently serving as a court-appointed attorney for indigent, that’s the legal term as you know, clients in North Texas. So um you know Jason Lee Van Dyke began to work as a court appointed attorney in Denton County, which is just North of Dallas in 2024. Um. And he has taken on a number of clients, 17 of the clients are white, 10 are Black, four are Latino, and one is Asian. Uh, and you know. Denton has in addition to being the one-time national chairman of the proud boys, which I feel like should be disqualification enough, has said things publicly like I don’t waste my breath on niggers like you. I hang them. And when he has been challenged on some of those statements, he’s like I lost my temper. That wasn’t me going around finding African-American people and calling them the n-word. I was provoked. Um. And I guess if it worked for Liam Neeson, it can also work for him. Uh. But anyway, I think it’s really interesting and wanted to bring to the pod this story of this man who has a very public record of being a white supremacist, again, serving as the national chairman of the Proud Boys, who has a Proud Boy’s tattoo on his arm that is visible to his clients, right? Um. And then he can say things like my personal beliefs don’t impact my work. And in fact, as part of this interview, he put one of his Black employees on the phone to say, tell them, I don’t I don’t hold it against my clients that they are people of color, I’m here to do a job. And we’re all supposed to pretend that his quote unquote “personal beliefs” have no impact on his ability to be effective counsel for the people of color he’s charged with representing in North Texas. So wanted to make sure that stuff like this was on people’s radar and bring it to the pod.
DeRay Mckesson: The Atlantic wrote a story um a month ago that was called, Where Have the Proud Boys Gone? And his central thesis is that because all the things they cared about Trump just did with the government, they have been left with, they are trying to find new ways to be racist because you know they hated immigrants, but now ICE is the largest funded uh–
Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah.
DeRay Mckesson: –law enforcement group in the country. So proud boys don’t need to go harass people because now ICE is doing it. And apparently, the January 6th fallout has splintered some of the white supremacist groups and they disagree about strategy about January 6th. But it’s like these people ain’t gone nowhere. They are still here. They’re just trying to find new ways to think about how to put white supremacist thoughts and systems. And I couldn’t imagine getting a court appointed attorney who was a proud boy. I think about our work in Cleveland with the jail and we were in a meeting the other day because we’re trying to build this literacy program. And we were talking about like, how do you meaningfully participate in your own defense if you can’t read?
Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah.
DeRay Mckesson: You are hosed on the front end, you know? Like it’s–
Sharhonda Bossier: Yes.
DeRay Mckesson: It’s you got a bad thing. So when people in the movies see things like the lawyers as a guide of the legal system, you’re like, yeah, they more some of them are more than a guide. They are your translator. You can’t read the plea that, you know.
Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah.
DeRay Mckesson: Like the system is really worse than what people see. And you know, the older I get, I think about the way that we represent the system on TV and the court appointed attorneys are like these noble overworked people until one of them is a white supremacist. So you’re like, now you set him up to take a 30-year plea deal when if he had gone to trial.
Sharhonda Bossier: Yes.
DeRay Mckesson: He’d be home.
Sharhonda Bossier: Yes.
DeRay Mckesson: You know what I mean?
Sharhonda Bossier: Yes.
Myles E. Johnson: Yeah, it’s just a scary story, right? I think so many like–
Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah.
Myles E. Johnson: –so manyl times we’ve talked about on the podcast, there is like a global conservative takeover. And I like this, like in air quotes, liked this article, because it shows like the intimate ways that it’s showing up, like or the domestic ways that it’s showing up in our reality. Um. But you know me, I always have to like zone out because A, the you know white supremacist groups being integrated into American politics is a lot of things, but new ain’t one of them. Um. I even remember, remember, but I don’t know if y’all know, I used to go to Hiram High School. Hiram was the name of the Grand Wizard in Georgia. And um you know the Grand Wizard’s colors is purple and gold, which was also our school colors. Um, and I remember us like a lot of a wave of Black people finding that out in our junior our sophomore or junior year and that kind of just tickling something in my head where it’s like, oh, white supremacist groups and people don’t just disappear and go live in a go live in a cabin somewhere and go burn crosses. Like they integrate themselves into society and we see the effects of that. So yeah, that’s what makes this a little chilling for me and I’m just gonna say it. I also just feel like I wish people were as alarmed about the white supremacist takeovers when there’s liberal power. I wish that these kind of articles, these type of discussions, these type of um, this type of panic and alarm was happening even if there’s neoliberal power because white supremacists uh uh integrating themselves into our political realities is not new. And it’s been a danger, and it makes me sad that it seems like when Trump is in office, then we could talk about all of it. Do y’all remember last Trump, where like it was like, it was good people on both sides, and people were talking to white supremacists and stuff, and then that just died with Biden. And now we’re here again.
Sharhonda Bossier: I um just listened to this podcast episode about the evolution of ICE, and so Myles to your point about you know what is or is not different, you know depending on who is at the helm, you know thinking about how a lot of local law enforcement agencies no longer have the opportunity to opt out of sharing fingerprint data, right, with with ICE. Uh, because of a program that was actually expanded under President Obama, you know, um, and so they’re talking to an immigration rights expert who’s like, look, there is a through line with very little change between Clinton, Bush, Trump one and Obama. And in fact, the man who was the architect of the family separation policies at the order worked for Obama. You know what I mean? Like that’s how he first got into the job. And so it’s just, it’s an interesting thing because I, you know, the folks I know who have worked on immigration and immigration reform have been saying this for a long time. And I think for, you know, my own learning in public and owning my own [bleep] I have been really resistant to narratives that are like on any issue, both parties are anywhere near each other. And I think the older I get, the more experience I have, and particularly the last you know two presidential administrations. I’m just like, damn, y’all might’ve been right.
DeRay Mckesson: Before we go to your news Myles, which will be culture news, I wanted to talk about something that is breaking while we’re recording. I forgot to pull up that clip on Joe Rogan, where they just blatantly lie about trans school shooters.
[clip of Joe Rogan] I wonder if any of the woke AI chatbots have talked to any of these trans school shooters.
[clip of unknown guest] They might have.
[clip of Joe Rogan] You know what I’m saying? Like.
[clip of unknown guest] Well the last one, yeah, I don’t know.
[clip of Joe Rogan] Bro, it’s like seven of the last X amount of trans, seven in a row have been trans except one was non-binary, which is just diet trans.
[clip of unknown guest] It is [laugh]
[clip of Joe Rogan] Right? That’s diet trans! That’s trans without the sugar.
[clip of unknown guest] I just don’t get it. Like if I felt suicidal. Like stay at home and kill yourself. Like don’t go into schools.
[clip of Joe Rogan] Yeah. Or just go for a walk.
[clip of unknown guest] Yeah.
[clip of Joe Rogan] Okay good.
[clip of unknown guest] That would be good too.
[clip of Joe Rogan] Yeah. You know the problem is some people get to a certain point in their life and they have no friends and no community and no identity and no life and it’s not they’re not successful and they feel like shit and then they have gender dysphoria on top of that and then they’re probably on a bunch of SSRIs which–
[clip of unknown guest] Yep.
[clip of Joe Rogan] RFK Jr. is going to apparently do some sort of a large-scale research into the connection between mass shootings and psychiatric drugs because it is real and everyone knows it. And it’s just this dirty secret that no one talks about because all the media is paid off by the pharmaceutical drug companies.
[clip of unknown guest] Yep.
[clip of Joe Rogan] And nobody wants to make this correlation connection because you also risk the wrath of all these people that are on them, say, I’m on them and I’m not doing anything. It’s not the pills. I need these to function. Maybe you do. I don’t know. I don’t know how your brain works. But the reality is most of these people that have committed mass murder are on psychiatric medication.
DeRay Mckesson: If you actually care about the identity of school shooters, it is white men. That is who is shooting up schools. That is the 99% of the demographic. That and it has been true for as long as there have been school shootings. But I wanted to see what y’all thought about the clip with Joe Rogan. Um. I was shocked actually. I was like, wow, this is really gross.
Sharhonda Bossier: I mean, it doesn’t have to be rooted in any reality. I think we’re seeing that, right? Like what gets said often on podcasts and what people pick up and what becomes the soundbite and what gets circulated becomes the truth. And it’s similar to like a newspaper retraction, right. Like any attempt at inserting fact, any attempt at like retracting it later gets missed. It gets overlooked. And um I think this is really dangerous rhetoric. I think the bathroom stuff and the sports stuff didn’t stick in making trans people cultural boogeymen. And this is the next place where they are going. Um. It’s disgusting, and it’s terrifying. But I actually think that this will become, like I can picture the graphic that gets shared on Instagram as a result of this soundbite. You know?
Myles E. Johnson: Yeah. So one of the biggest flaws to me about the left’s communication skills in 2025 is that they think it needs to be based on fact. Like, I’m sorry. Like, I think that we’re in a space where the right is out storytelling, if that’s how you wanna phrase it, but also out myth-making. And we see that whoever has the most fascinating myth wins and we see that being weaponized. So I think one of the reasons why that didn’t necessarily surprise me or make me feel any type of way is because that is the ball game that we’re playing. That is the ball game that we’re playing. How do you take something that’s happening into the news and bend it and morph it and mutate it to serve your political interests and they know how to do that casually and they know how do it by just speaking about what they want to be true. So they just want that to be the true story. They want the idea that transness is some type of um psychosis, and this fits perfectly in that narrative. My big thing is why are we so uh why is the left so absent of narratives and myths? Specifically, when one of your opponents is white people and white men. It shouldn’t be hard to make them seem like the boogey man because they’ve been the boogy man. And that to me is what’s annoying. It’s feel like we’re always being outpaced because we we’re playing by the rules.
DeRay Mckesson: The other thing I want to talk about before we go to Myles to close us out was Zohran. So I don’t know if you all saw, but Eric Adams is being recruited by the Trump administration to get a senior job as the ambassador to Saudi Arabia, I believe, uh so that he does not run to be mayor and that they can clear the field so that it’s just a one-to-one with Cuomo and Zohran. Their desperation to try and get Zohran out of here should turn all of us into campaign field workers for Zohran Mamdani. I might actually go out this weekend if they are doing door knocking, just because this is absurd, how the lengths that they are going through to try to stop him from being the mayor.
Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah, who was the? There was another man who was running, sorry, it was a pretty crowded field. He was like, you know, never going to make the cut. But he’s the one that Bobby Schmurda supposedly endorsed, which is how he ended up on my radar. Myles, I know that’s a wild face, but it actually happened. Um. And he dropped out and said something similar, basically, was like look, I wasn’t going to win. What was going to happen was we were going to split the vote and we were going to find that Zohran was going to win and that’s the worst possible thing for New York City. And so I’m calling on all of the other candidates who claim to care about the city and its future to also drop out and let it be a like one to one. But ugh I mean, yes, we should talk about Zohran, but we should also talk about the fact that people think that [bleep] Andrew Cuomo is the answer. Like to Myles’s point about like establishment Democrats having any imagination, like I don’t know how many times voters have to tell you they are not interested in Cuomo. And y’all just y’all just keep trying it, right? But I think they’re just so convinced that people will be so fearful of this brown man with this weird ancestry that no one can make sense of, right? Um, that they’re just, they will run into Cuomo’s arms. And to DeRay’s point, I hope New Yorkers prove them wrong. And I hope they prove them wrong decisively.
Myles E. Johnson: I love this moment, and like months ago, I remember saying like when I was kind of saying on this podcast that I think AOC should break, like even if it’s an evented break, right? I already told you, I’m okay with mythmaking and lying, right, when it comes to politics. So even if you have to invent a publicity moment to make it appear as if you broke, there are people in the Democratic Party, I was thinking about AOC, I was thinking about Bernie Sanders. Um. Of course, thinking about Zohran, who should break with the Democratic Party, if just symbolically, because the brand is so toxic. And I think that this moment, to me, is great because it shows the actual division. So we’ve been underneath this guise of Republican versus Democrat for my whole life, and now we’re not underneath that that anymore. In the side of a Democratic party, there’s still more splits to be had, and now, we’re seeing who really is for you as a person and as an American citizen and who’s not. And I think that’s been really illuminating because, to your point, Sharhonda, it was been hard for so many people to wake up to the fact that we’re not getting what we deserve from our representation as as as folks on the left, progressive leftist, liberals, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera and we’re not getting it. And I think moments like this show that, oh, it is corporatism versus um roots, and here it is. And not in a way that to me, in my opinion, was just the veneer of Obama. It’s coming in a way that actually might make people’s life materially better in a way that’s like significant to them that they will remember. So I’m actually kind of excited about it because it’s not working. He’s eating them up. Did you see that um meme about the um about somebody like sent him a picture of frying pork and he was like he was like, Habibi, Muslims are not vampires and this is not garlic. Like, like what did you think like he’s cannibalizing, and I mean that in a good way, like he’s cannibilizing all of this fascist hatred into this like social media irreverence and it’s really masterful, but it’s also based in the fact that he doesn’t seem like a fricking scumbag, that he doesn’t seem like somebody who you wouldn’t trust. Hakeem, et cetera, et cetera, these people who you’re like, you’re not sitting right in my spirit, you know? So I’m kind of happy about this division.
Sharhonda Bossier: I’m ready for Eric Adams to go do something, not be ambassador or anything, but just to go sit down somewhere so I can just laugh at his tweets.
Myles E. Johnson: Oh I think Eric is not going nowhere, and I think he’s going to be so useful to the right if he gets totally–
Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah.
Myles E. Johnson: –shunned by the left, so he’s gonna be so useful.
Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah.
Myles E. Johnson: So I just don’t see him going anywhere, and he does have some support, so it’s not like he doesn’t have any support, and I was even thinking about it in the dark crevices of my mind around how Trump got to be president, and how what we’re seeing in the atmosphere of the digital right is a whole bunch of possible Trumps. You know, I’m always talking about in 20 years, in 30 years, I’m like, a buffoon from the ’80s is a president in the 2000’s. Do you know how many buffoons from 2025 are gonna be president in 2045? Um.
Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah.
Myles E. Johnson: Yeah so I unfortunately, I don’t think it’s that easy to get the right out of here, but I think it is that easy to get people who serve the right, out of left politics.
DeRay Mckesson: Hey, you’re listening to Pod Save the People. Stay tuned, there’s more to come.
[AD BREAK]
Myles E. Johnson: So, I don’t cook soul food every single day because I read the news and my blood pressure is great. My sugar levels are great. But today,um this week is Yemaya on Saturday, Orisha name Yemaya, id um its her day on Saturday. It’s the blood moon, it’s harvest. So I make a pot of collard greens during significant moments. And when I was figuring out I don’t know, I was just kind of curious about Black culinary expressions, and I came across this article that I wanted to share with you all because it’s actually an anniversary of sorts. So I’m going to read a little bit from this article from Southern Living. I feel so suburban reading an article from Southern Living. So, Nina Williams-Mimbengue was just 12 years old when she began typing the manuscript for what would become the taste of country cooking for her aunt, Edna Lewis. She carefully transcribed Lewis’s handwritten notes on yellow legal pads, and some passages, almost 50 years later, are still committed to her memory. She didn’t know that Aunt Edna’s book would become the beloved classic it has in the years since, credited with inspiring the modern farm-to-table movement, the 1976 Southern Cookbook also documented the foodways of Freetown, Virginia, an African-American community founded in 1866 by formerly enslaved people, including Lewis’s grandfather. So one of the reasons why I wanted to bring this to the podcast is, A, it’s good news. [laugh] And I wanted to bring and insert a little bit of joy into people’s listening experience and to my fellow cohosts but also because I think recipes and cooking are so foundational to um memory and ancestral reverence, specifically when it comes to Black people. And there’s been a particular type of shame that has happened around Black people because Black people are often in food deserts and we often have these kind of um dietary produced ailments that happen to us and often it gets blamed on our soul food, it gets blamed on our Southern food and not only are there ways to engage with Black cooking and culinary that is healthy, a lot of our recipes are already healthy. And also it’s been foundational for white folks. So when you see so many white influencers who have their farms and they’re making certain dishes, these too are Black American traditions. So A, I wanted to shout out Etna Lewis and this beautiful book’s um 50th anniversary because I think more people should engage with things that we just see as farm to table or holistic eating that there are also ways that Black people kind of um figured out how to navigate this culinary world and it also to me did a work in not demonizing the things that are part of my ancestry because the media fed me that narrative. Now of course I do not cook with the pork shoulder every day or week, but there are other ways to engage with black food that is just as powerful, and it’s not our food that is killing us, it is the lack of everything else that’s killing us. Which took me a while, I’ll say, as an individual, who struggles with my body and food and stuff to really um understand. I’m like, oh wow, even as I’m on my fitness journey, now I’m eating more Black soul food than I’ve ever have, which is, to me, opposite, but here I am. So I just wanted to spread that, wondering if you have ever heard of Edna Lewis, wondering what your relationship with food is. I know that DeRay makes a fantastic PB&J and fried salmon. Um. [laugh]
DeRay Mckesson: Shout out to the air fryer.
Sharhonda Bossier: And dry salmon.
Myles E. Johnson: I said fried, I said fried.
Sharhonda Bossier: Oh, fried salmon.
DeRay Mckesson: Right.
Myles E. Johnson: Fried salmon. Um. But yeah, I’m interested in all you all’s um interactions with Black culinary.
Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah, I had not heard of Edna Lewis. So thank you for putting this on our radar. Toni Tipton-Martin, who wrote the foreword for the re-released edition is someone I do know. And in fact, I own Jubilee and I own her cocktail book. Um. And I actually read them as history books because they’re just so fascinating in talking about Black food pioneers and Black cultural traditions and what she calls food pathways, but also are about like migratory patterns of people, right, like where we went, the things we brought with us, that sort of stuff. Um. You know, I was raised by my grandparents, both of whom migrated to California in the forties and fifties from South Louisiana. And actually for most of my childhood grew most of our vegetables. We had a walnut tree. We had an avocado tree. My grandmother grew what, uh, in New Orleans, they call melleton and, uh other Spanish speaking places. They call it chayote. Like we, that we had strawberries, we had tomatoes, we had string beans. And so I remember the first time I had a canned string bean, I was like, what is this that y’all have been eating? No wonder y’all don’t like vegetables. This is terrible. Uh. The first time I had Jack in the Box, actually, which is a pretty big food chain here in Southern California, I was an 11th grader, right? And so like.
Myles E. Johnson: Wow.
Sharhonda Bossier: To your point, like a lot of what my grandparents cooked, it was like, go out there, get this. And then like, I mean, my grandmother fried chicken, fried [?], she did all the things, right. Um. But a lot it was also just like sourced differently, right, which I think is also a big thing. Um. I have been really pleased to see in some of the like wellness and dietary spaces, people talking about how much wellness and diet conversation excludes quote unquote “ethnic foods,” right? Even as we see people who live in many other places eat those same quote unquote, “ethnic foods” and not have the same, to your point, health complications that we do. Um. And so I think there is a movement to say, how do you reclaim your cultural foods while also being well. Um. And then like the things that we have come to think of as like American or Southern, many of them were recipes developed by enslaved people who were enjoyed, you know, by the people who were enslaving them and became in some instances like fine dining, right? Um. And so I think there’s a little bit of, um to your point, wanting to take pride in some of that culinary legacy, right, to say. Um, a lot of what y’all think of as just American food is Black food, right? Is, is, is Black American food, Black Southern food in particular. Cause I also think there’s an, always an attempt at erasing the South and, and the South’s contributions to culture. So, um, really excited for this and excited to try some of your collard greens next time we’re in the same place Myles.
Myles E. Johnson: Okay, okay.
DeRay Mckesson: So I don’t know much about making food, um but what this made me think of is, is back to Myles’s earlier point about the power of mythology, that we are often up against a deep-seated racist mythology that has shaped people’s understanding of what is up and down, what is true, what is left and right. And it becomes so deep- seeded that people don’t even interrogate it anymore. So like the, you know, who created this, or is this healthy or not, or what health means, or da da. Like, all of those things are rarely, some of them are not rooted in fact, but they are rooted in the mythology that becomes so persistent that people experience it as fact. And I think about what does it mean to retell, you know, even like the movie Soul Food and, you know like, what that did to people around–
Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah.
DeRay Mckesson: –healthy food and diabetes and da-da-da. And I’m like, you’re the more I’ve learned. I’m, like, you know glaucoma is a, you know you gonna die, you gonna go blind if you ain’t got an eye doctor. That’s not really, that’s not you being lazy, you know.
Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah.
DeRay Mckesson: You can’t get to an eye-doctor. You ain’t got it. Or like the high blood pressure stuff, can you even get, I think about growing up and I’m like, my grandmother could not easily get to a doctor. So it actually didn’t matter what she ate or didn’t eat. She couldn’t get, getting a doctor’s appointment back then was so hard that like it wasn’t a matter of her willingness, which is what people have been talking about. So that’s what I take away from the end of this episode is I’m, like, oh, let me think about the myth making that we engage in that is productive, that is generative. That reshapes people sense of possibility. And one way I think about myth making is like, what is the story that we tell about a reality that’s just not here yet, but we know it’s possible? Like what, how do we tell that story really strong?
Sharhonda Bossier: Can I say one other thing about cooking though? Sorry. And that is, I think often when we talk about cooking, we talk about our grandmothers. I want to give a shout out to my grandfather who was also a fantastic cook.
Myles E. Johnson: Okay.
Sharhonda Bossier: Uh. And when my grandmother died two weeks before I started high school, um fed a household of three children on a full-time basis, fed our cousins, fed our friends.
Myles E. Johnson: Okay.
Sharhonda Bossier: Uh. And did not think that labor in the kitchen was beneath him. So shout out to my grandfather being an example of a man stepping up and doing what is traditionally considered women’s work and doing it well um and from a place of love. So shout out, grandpa.
DeRay Mckesson: My grandfather can make some great cream of wheat, baby. Grandpa, that cream of wheat was top tier. I’m sure he made other things, but all I remember is the cream of wheat.
Sharhonda Bossier: Is the cream of wheat.
DeRay Mckesson: Grandpa in the morning, he didn’t, he couldn’t even, you know, he couldn’t compete with my great grandmother and my grandmother. Like they just wouldn’t let him.
Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah.
DeRay Mckesson: Like no matter what he wanted to do.
Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah.
DeRay Mckesson: They just said the kitchen is mine.
Sharhonda Bossier: It just wasn’t going to happen.
DeRay Mckesson: But breakfast? They didn’t fight him on breakfast and baby.
Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah.
DeRay Mckesson: Cream of wheat that old-school cream of wheat.
Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah.
DeRay Mckesson: On the stove, you know what I mean?
Sharhonda Bossier: What an act of love. What I mean, he probably wanted to love you in that way, you know?
DeRay Mckesson: It was great. Grandpa was on it.
Myles E. Johnson: Yeah.
Myles E. Johnson: One thing about DeRay is he’s going to champion a carb. [laughter] Every single time but that makes me want to um, my boyfriend’s father, since we moved, he’s cooked for us. Like when you talk about pork chops, soul food, um and to your point, it’s been so cool to, A, he is a pastor, and and and we’re a gay couple, a queer couple, um a diet trans couple to some. Um, and, like so like he uh, just us, him making this soul food and us having conversations and us all being assigned male at birth and just having certain things of being seen as Black men that we could talk about over soul food has been really healing. And um to your point, I think that–
Sharhonda Bossier: I love that.
Myles E. Johnson: These kinds of culinary expressions are too often gendered and they shouldn’t be because they’re beautiful for everybody. [music break]
DeRay Mckesson: Well, that’s it. Thanks so much for tuning in to Pod Save the People this week. And don’t forget to follow us at @PodSaveThePeople and Crooked Media on Instagram, Twitter and TikTok. And if you enjoyed this episode of Pod Save the People, consider dropping us a review on your favorite podcast app. And we will see you next week. Pod Save the People is a production of Crooked Media. It’s produced by AJ Moultrié and mixed by Charlotte Landes, executive produced by me and special thanks to our weekly contributors, Myles E. Johnson and Sharhonda Bossier. Our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East. [music break]
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