00:02:08.780She's the first black woman ever nominated for the Supreme Court.0.89
00:02:11.980And because she's a black woman, her confirmation hearing is sure to be filled with disinformation
00:02:16.740based in racist, sexist attacks on her character.0.85
00:02:19.400not her actual record, actions, deeds, or values.
00:02:23.660And in fact, these attacks started before she was ever named as the nominee,
00:02:27.580when she was just a hypothetical Black woman that Biden intended to nominate to the Supreme Court.
00:02:32.880On the morning that Judge Jackson was named as the nominee,
00:02:36.060I sat down with my friends Sam and Annie from the podcast Stuff Mom Never Told You
00:02:40.480to talk through her historic nomination and how we can fight back against the kinds of racist, sexist attacks
00:02:46.000we're sure to hear during our confirmation hearing.
00:02:48.240It is so important that we have a digital media climate that allows for everyone to be judged by their merits, values, and records, not unfair caricatures and stereotypes of who they are.
00:05:56.760She gets very annoyed, rightly so, because this is her thing, and she wants it and has claimed it and has done well with it.
00:06:05.000How have I worked with Tari for two years and have not—I mean, I guess COVID as hell, but I didn't know this.0.87
00:06:10.980I need to take her out there for karaoke to see this in action.
00:06:15.080Oh, you know what's better? Bridget, we need you to come to Atlanta and we'll host a big karaoke night.1.00
00:06:20.120There are several great locations that we love, including my favorite spot towards Beaufort Highway, ran by a Korean family who is as Korean as you think, and we adore them, and they bring us fruit plates.
00:06:31.860It's a delight while we sing karaoke to our heart's content.
00:07:16.820So today is Friday, February 25th, 2022, and I want to talk about the just recently announced new nominee for the Supreme Court, Judge Ketanji Brown-Jackson.
00:07:29.860So I have to admit, I was putting together all my notes for this episode last night, and so the notes were all like, oh, the potential nominee, like, when we have the nominee, it was all very, like, hypothetical.
00:07:40.020And then this morning, the news just dropped that she is indeed the White House's pick to be the first ever Black woman Supreme Court justice on our Supreme Court.
00:07:50.220So very historic, very important, very exciting.
00:07:52.880But we know that it also comes along with racist attacks, sexist attacks, mis- and disinformation that women of color who are in public office, unfortunately, tend to face.
00:08:04.920And so today, I really wanted to talk about how we got to this place of having this historic Black woman being nominated for the Supreme Court and what kind of attacks she's likely to be facing, what kind of attacks she's already been facing, and how we can sort of all work together to create the conditions to have a better conversation about her nomination.
00:08:23.200Yes, and as you said, this is very ongoing.
00:08:27.700We're trying to get this episode out as quickly as possible because things are changing very quickly.
00:08:32.160But we've already seen some of these attacks.
00:08:34.320I know we're going to get into that in a minute, but before we do that, can you give us some history and background on what's going on here?
00:08:42.100Absolutely. So here's a little bit of background about the calls to nominate a black woman for the Supreme Court.0.88
00:08:46.800I have to shout out the She Will Rise campaign organized by a great organization called Sista SCOTUS.
00:08:52.640And their whole coalition is full of dynamic black women, women like April Rain, who created the hashtag OscarsSoWhite,
00:09:00.040a 1619 Project creator, Nicole Hannah-Jones, Alencia Johnson, who I love.
00:09:04.940I used to work with her at Planned Parenthood, Broadway multi-Tony Award winner, Audra McDonald.0.99
00:09:10.780So just a huge coalition of dynamic, badass Black women who have been advocating to put a Black woman on the Supreme Court.
00:09:18.260And so in the over 200-year history of the Supreme Court, not one Black woman has ever been confirmed or even nominated to serve on the Supreme Court.
00:09:27.000There have been 115 men and women who have served on the Supreme Court, and only three of them have been people of color.
00:09:32.780There have only been two black American members of the Supreme Court, Justice Thurgood Marshall and Justice Clarence Thomas.
00:09:38.560And so that's obviously not a very inclusive track record in terms of representation.
00:09:44.560And, you know, this idea of, I thought this was kind of a new precedent, you know, a presidential candidate saying, like, oh, if I'm elected, I will put this kind of person on the Supreme Court.
00:09:54.300However, there is actually a long history and precedent for presidents pledging to pick a SCOTUS nominee who represents a certain demographic of our population.
00:10:03.400So this is from a really great New York Times op-ed by Walter Dellinger, who was the acting Solicitor General of the United States under Bill Clinton.
00:10:12.280There is a long and important tradition of presidents taking into consideration the demographic characteristics of prospective justices,
00:10:18.780including geographic background, religion, race, and sex,
00:10:21.700to ensure the Supreme Court is and remains a representative institution in touch with the varied facets of American life.
00:10:27.860More fundamentally, our history shows the process of reaching out to expand the personal backgrounds of the justices
00:10:33.720has often produced stellar jurists who make historic contributions to our court and judicial system.
00:10:39.360So he goes on to describe how President Reagan promised to nominate a woman to the Supreme Court.
00:10:43.820And even though a bunch of his Republican colleagues were very vocally against it and kind of forced him to add some men to his shortlist, President Reagan was really adamant about picking a woman and eventually nominated Sandra Day O'Connor, making her the first ever female associate Supreme Court justice.
00:11:00.320And so that's some, like, history that I didn't even know about, you know, how other presidents have set this precedent to make the Supreme Court more inclusive.
00:11:08.180Yeah. And I think, I mean, it's kind of a waste of breath to call a lot of news organizations and Republicans perhaps if they're critical, but they would have you believe that this is a new thing. Like, oh, this has never happened before and it's ridiculous.
00:11:25.940Right. And this is not just an issue of representation, correct?
00:18:20.980but they're not, it's going to be, you know,0.75
00:18:23.520fodder for unfair, sexist, racist attacks purely based on their identity, who they are.
00:18:30.520And so I don't want to just have Black women or women or women of color. I don't want to0.99
00:18:36.540just have us be amplified as leaders if we're going to be set up to fail, if we're going to
00:18:41.660be set up to compete in a completely unequal playing field. I want to amplify the leadership
00:18:48.360of women, but I also want to create the conditions that we actually can thrive.
00:18:53.900And so I think that that's really what I want to get into today about some of the ways that
00:18:58.000our media landscape are kind of set up to ensure that this person will not get a fair shake.
00:19:04.800I have to say, like, I wasn't really thrilled watching Jen Psaki from the White House kind0.99
00:19:09.040of give this tepid acknowledgement of the kind of racism and sexism that would go along1.00
00:19:14.180with picking a Black woman for the Supreme Court nominee.
00:19:16.460She said that Biden's intention to pick a black woman for the Supreme Court presented, quote, specific challenges.
00:19:22.400But in my opinion, that really doesn't go far enough in naming and lifting up the kind of racist, sexist attacks and media climate that are setting this person up to face.
00:19:31.940And that can really be tricky because, as I'm sure a lot of people listening can probably attest to, it can be sometimes difficult to call out the kind of unfair attacks that we face as marginalized people.0.65
00:19:43.940So if you're a woman who is facing sexism, sometimes if you if you are the one to vocalize that, that only kind of goes against you because then you're the complainer, you're the nag.
00:19:54.280And so if you're in a climate where you can't really call out what you're facing and the people around you aren't going to explicitly call out what you're facing, then it's just allowed to fester like uncalled out.0.63
00:20:06.960Yeah, I found it interesting because as you had brought this to our attention, I hadn't realized he had made an announcement.
00:20:13.040We just knew the promises that President Biden had given, finally naming a name and trying to look her up and seeing who she was.
00:20:20.240Of course, one of the top things that I saw was a congressman going in on attacks and being repeatedly attacking them, just obviously already ready to go.
00:20:29.240Oddly enough, the same congressman was the one that had been one of three Republicans who had voted her in her federal seat.
00:20:34.700And we were like, wait, so how is she qualified then and not now? But we know the answer, obviously, of why they are very upset about this pick in general. In all of the game of politics, we understand that. But as it comes along, that is part of that conversation where I'm like, I know, I don't even want to mention who it is because I don't want to amplify that even more. Instead, let's talk about her qualifications and why she is qualified to lead us in this type of position.
00:21:03.920So even before Judge Jackson was named as the nominee, people were wasting no time lobbying these completely ridiculous, unfair, sexist attacks on her.1.00
00:21:15.080Just we don't even know who she is.0.86
00:21:16.380She was just a hypothetical person.0.82
00:21:18.100Senator John Kennedy, he told Politico, I want a nominee who knows a law book from a J.Crew catalog.
00:21:23.820I want a nominee who is not going to try to rewrite the Constitution every other Thursday to advance a woke agenda.
00:21:30.100And he was saying this, we didn't even know who this person was yet.
00:21:33.720And they were already lobbying these racist, sexist attacks.
00:21:37.980Like, why do you assume that she's not going to know what a legal brief from a J.Crew catalog?0.70
00:21:42.220Like, that's like reading between the lines that is obviously meant to be a sexist swipe because Biden had already expressed his intentions to nominate a black woman.
00:21:50.560Why do you assume this person is going to be, you know, pushing a woke agenda?
00:21:56.100I think when you really pull apart some of these dog whistles that are used, it just reveals itself as unfair attacks rooted in identity or just complete hypocrisy.
00:22:07.820Like, just like what you were saying, were you referencing Lindsey Graham, who was, you know, I think it was literal.
00:22:14.240So I've been up working on this since like all day, right?
00:22:20.100the responses. Lindsey Graham tweeted literal minutes after she was announced saying, quote,
00:22:25.560the radical left had won over Biden. Yet Graham also voted to confirm Judge Jackson to the D.C.
00:22:31.780Federal Appeals Court, which is the second most important court in the country, just eight months
00:22:36.140ago this past summer. So which is it? Is this a win for the woke left? And like what was different
00:22:41.500eight months earlier when you voted to confirm her? So it's just very interesting. At this point,
00:22:45.880I wouldn't even like the hypocrisy is so clear that it's almost sort of like not worth pointing
00:22:52.040out. It's like, of course, you are only interested in a bad faith assessment. You know, you don't
00:22:57.800even expect people to look back at your own voting record to see where you actually stand on this
00:23:02.580issue. You're just counting on people not actually spending a little bit of time and thinking about
00:23:07.260what you're saying. Right. Yeah. We're both shaking our head with frowns. It's true, though.
00:23:13.240It's so frustrating because it's like every time I point out something that's hypocritical, it doesn't matter anymore.
00:23:20.000They're like, yeah, of course it is.0.73
00:23:21.020I mean, essentially, it's kind of what we were talking about when Amy Barrett-Cohen was confirmed, as well as Kavanaugh, about the ridiculous hypocrisy that happened between Obama administration and the Trump administration.
00:23:47.320And they kind of just leave it at that and assume that nobody will notice.
00:23:50.980And typically people who are already dug their heels in don't notice, won't notice because they want what they want in whatever agenda it is that they have planted themselves firmly in.
00:24:01.400But yeah, let's talk about the fact, this is a whole different conversation, but that we have different types of terms and words like woke that have been used as a positive has now flipped so hard to a negative that everyone is automatically like, oh, he said it, he's right, it's bad.
00:24:25.520There are so many words that have just become meaningless, right?
00:24:29.360So if you're talking about a hypothetical Supreme Court nominee and you're like, oh, we don't want somebody who's woke, you don't know any – this person is a hypothetical person, so you're not – you don't know anything about their record.
00:24:40.360You don't know anything about, like, where they stand on the issues.
00:24:42.600So saying woke, it almost just – the only thing we know about this person is that she's going to be a black woman.0.75
00:24:48.400So saying you don't want someone who is woke, reading between the lines, you're using that as a stand-in for the word black, right?
00:24:55.140And so I think that we see that time and time again where these words become stand-ins for identity and they also kind of become meaningless, right?0.92
00:25:09.480I remember reading, this is sort of silly, but there was this story a while ago where this guy who had been running a racehorse in the Kentucky Derby, his racehorse had been, I don't know, I'm sure there's more details to it.
00:25:22.600but essentially his racehorse had been drug tested
00:25:26.440and he had been like found to have drugs in his system.
00:25:46.420Even like, I just have a lot of questions
00:25:49.260about the way that these words are being used.
00:25:51.420But I think, and that's kind of the second point that I want to make about this, is that one of the reasons why I am so adamant about things like disinformation, misinformation, and just having a healthier, more honest conversation and a media landscape that facilitates those kinds of conversations is that we are no longer able to have substantive, thoughtful conversations about the issue when our ecosystem is flooded with bad faith,
00:26:19.980clearly hypocritical rhetoric and discourse. And so, you know, even if you're someone,
00:26:25.880let's say that you're listening and you are very conservative, you know, you probably have hated
00:26:30.760this conversation that we've been having, but, you know, like, even if you're someone who is
00:26:34.640very conservative, you deserve to be able to, you know, talk about your issues, talk, have a
00:26:40.700substantive conversation and a substantive debate about where you stand on the issues.
00:26:45.200And so I believe that when the discourse and the space is just flooded with, you know, charged rhetoric where we're talking about race or identity, but using different words, everybody loses because you're not able to have a substantive conversation about where you might agree or disagree with the Supreme Court nominee, right?
00:27:06.320And so I think that that's my biggest issue is that we have a media ecosystem that really amplifies the most extreme, the most over-the-top statements or the most nonsense statements.
00:27:17.860And so everybody loses, Democrat, Republican, conservative, lefty, whoever, everybody loses when we have an ecosystem that amplifies the least substantive takes because that takes away from the ability to have an actual substantive thoughtful debate or conversation about the actual issue.
00:27:36.320And so I don't want to create the conditions for Judge Jackson to only be judged by racist, sexist tropes or caricatures or unfair attacks, because I want to talk about her actual credentials.
00:27:49.380I want to talk about her actual record.
00:27:51.080I want to talk about her actual character.
00:27:52.720But disinformation and misinformation does not allow for the actual issues to take the center stage that they should.
00:28:11.040But, you know, and I'm thinking about this because when we talk about these terms and automatically just becoming used by media as an ecosystem to bring in the shock value, it makes me also realize that in terms of what they're talking about in woke, it is a black term that was created by the black community to kind of gift non-black people with, hey, you woke up.0.81
00:28:34.800congratulations you're finally seeing what we have been going through all of our generations
00:28:40.180welcome you have woke like that's kind of that term and i hate that it has been weaponized to
00:28:46.360this point of being used against people and when they're using it when kennedy used this he was
00:28:53.180weaponizing this terms to a woman to an official to a judge to a professional who didn't need to
00:28:59.600be woke. She was already there. This was her life. And not only that, if we do look at her
00:29:05.520backgrounds and credentials, she has been doing this work. There's no conversation of her being
00:29:10.360woke. She just is. So with that, because I'm angry about this, can we talk about some of those
00:29:15.680qualifications? Oh, absolutely. So one of the best ways to counter all the kinds of BS, racist,
00:29:21.820sexist attacks that you're definitely going to hear about, Judge Jackson, is to flood the space
00:29:26.780to counter that with accurate information.
00:29:29.320So I'm super excited to talk about her actual qualifications.
00:29:32.840So a little bit of background information about Judge Jackson.
00:35:50.620It is an interesting strategy that Biden and his administration has pulled,
00:35:54.280Not only because this is obviously telling, it's like, okay, this is one of the most qualified people that we could find that we think is deserving and has earned a place in this position.
00:36:05.020If you, who oppose everything we do, are starting to start arguing, it's going to be a telltale sign of who you are and what you're doing.
00:36:24.960It's so true because, like, you know, I was thinking about that this morning.
00:36:29.680I do think it's clear to me that the administration picked someone who had already been, like, gone through this process a few times just so that it would be, you know, to sort of shut down any kind of, you know, consternation there might be in terms of, like, you know, like vetting her and all of that.
00:36:47.000And I think it really demonstrates something.
00:36:49.220I'm not totally sure. This is not a completely fleshed out thought, and I'm not totally sure how it fits into this conversation.
00:36:55.300But I do think there is this standard for women, women of color and black women where we have to be extra special qualified.
00:37:04.140Kind of that standard of women have to do 130, 40, 50 percent more than men in general.
00:37:11.220And then when you're a part of the marginalized community, add on another 20 percent.0.80
00:37:15.220And then if you're a black woman, add on another 30 percent of exceeding the standard, exceeding the qualifications, because for some reason you have to be on that level in order to be seen as serious.0.86
00:37:31.080So let's put that in this federal level where they are putting her under a microscope in every way and not only putting her under a microscope to twist and turn truce, they're going to tell flat out lies.
00:39:11.680It's like we have this attitude where it's like, if you choose to serve the public, you're some kind of a, like, I don't know.
00:39:18.560So I don't I don't think we give people who serve the public that the like props they deserve and they deserve a lot.
00:39:25.500And you know what? I have been feeling some emotions for our people in Texas who are social workers that we know what's happening there.
00:39:34.120Most people do, I think, especially our listeners. And my heart has been breaking because I already know how divisive that type of conversation is.
00:39:40.700But going back to Judge Jackson and her public defense, like, yeah, I have worked with many public defenders and a good public defender is invaluable in the way that they have to advocate and push for truth and justice, true justice, meaning that we are hearing the side and that they are not guilty till proven otherwise.
00:40:01.760and how oftentimes, especially in, I'm assuming DC, Atlanta, it was very similar, how often that
00:40:08.160gets wrong. And that when we would find as a social worker who worked in the judicial system,
00:40:14.600when I found a good defender, I went and talked to them personally to try to get them onto cases
00:40:19.280for my kids, specifically to make sure that they got what was fair. And that is so huge. So I do,
00:40:25.860my heart is soaring to know that we have someone in that field coming to this point.
00:40:32.520Yeah, it's a pretty historic thing. And yeah, people who serve the public,
00:40:38.000like thoughtfully and meaningfully, they really care about people. And so I applaud you for,
00:40:44.860you know, going the extra mile to create the conditions for your kids to get real justice
00:40:50.000and to have a real advocate, because that's not everybody is like that. That's like a special
00:40:53.460thing yeah this is something that's been on my mind and I think a lot of our minds lately which
00:40:58.380is a separate podcast but I'll mention it here is like I feel in this country we have a real0.77
00:41:03.200problem with glorifying like male ass as being successful like oh you manage the system get your0.98
00:41:12.640money like it doesn't matter the kind of like what we're talking about here with the hypocritical0.99
00:41:16.260nature of all these arguments being made and it's more to me it feels more about the show and like
00:41:20.820oh, I'm a politician. I'm on TV now. Like it's glorified. Whereas we have people who are working
00:41:26.040for the public. And in a lot of ways, these are kind of more gendered as feminine and therefore
00:41:31.300lesser in nature, like not worth the attention, not worth the accolades, not worth the money,
00:41:37.360even though it's so critical to a functioning society. But yeah.
00:41:44.880Oh, my gosh. I mean, I could talk all day. The way that we have harmed everyone, a deep, deep societal harm is our legacy of not respecting jobs that we code as feminine, like traditionally feminine.
00:42:00.840So care work, you know, social work, education, all of these things that we have coded as feminine, the deprioritization and just like outright degradation and disrespect of those, I think that the ramifications we will never fully be able to contend with as a society how much that has harmed us.
00:42:19.460The way that, you know, people who do care work are underpaid, if they're paid at all.
00:42:25.200Just the way that we don't even factor it in and it just falls on unpaid women, right?
00:42:31.260Like, this is what I mean when I say women are the backbone of our country and our society.
00:42:36.000And oftentimes that work is just completely not just unpaid, but unseen, unacknowledged.1.00
00:42:41.460It's just like the cost of society functioning.0.99
00:42:44.700And so I think that this country, sometimes the only thing that is standing between our country and, like, complete collapse is the effort and labor of some f***ing exhausted women.1.00
00:42:57.240Right. And let's be honest, at this point in time, it's black women.1.00
00:43:00.540Like when we talked about the elections before Biden, the Biden administration, the amount of work that has to be done, when we talked about cases like Aubrey Ahmed and all of those, how women have been forefront in protesting and bringing up all of these conversations and the continued work that they have to do.
00:43:18.600But not only that, like not only are they working to do good, but they're often having to combat all of the disinformation and harmful things that are being said about them because they are doing the hard work.
00:43:30.540Exactly. I mean, that really leads us back to, you know, Judge Jackson. So Judge Jackson, I think I got the email that she was going to be the pick at like 8.30 this morning. And so we're talking at 2 p.m. And so already just in a couple of hours, here are some of the unfair or just completely misleading attacks I've seen on her.
00:43:50.500One is that, you know, her decisions have been overturned, when in reality, of her roughly 600 decisions that she has authored, she has been overruled just 2% of the time, right?
00:44:00.500And so if someone is telling you that in her career as a judge her decisions have been routinely overruled or overturned, that's just not true.
00:44:08.100It's happened less than 2% of the time.0.95
00:44:10.840The idea that she's an affirmative action hire, that she only got the job because she's a black woman, when in reality she is clearly absurdly qualified to the point where even talking about it seems ridiculous.0.95
00:44:21.100This idea that she's too woke or too radical.
00:44:24.080One thing I would say is really be wary of people throwing things like that around without being able to point to a specific ruling or policy or argument that she makes.
00:44:34.540So just saying somebody, so-and-so is too radical and then not having it be attached to any kind of actual policy that you think demonstrates that, be wary of people who are saying that.
00:44:46.280Because in my opinion, nine times out of ten when someone is saying that, what they actually mean is this person is a black woman.0.59
00:44:52.220And then this idea of just sort of kind of connecting her to things for no real reason with no real explanation as to like why you are connecting her to these things.
00:45:02.660And so earlier today, Mitch McConnell tweeted, the Senate must conduct a rigorous, exhaustive review of Judge Jackson's nomination to the Supreme Court.
00:45:11.100This is especially crucial as American families face major crises that connect directly to our legal system, such as skyrocketing violent crime and open borders.
00:45:19.040So what does Judge Jackson have to do with open borders exactly?
00:45:22.500What does she have to do with violent crime exactly?
00:45:24.140You know, the fact that he's just throwing her in, you know, connecting her to these things, I think really, I think this is a moment where we will really be rewarded by really thinking critically about what people are saying and what they're saying in between the lines.
00:45:39.300And I think that really, to me, demonstrates a tricky truth about the nature of racialized and gender disinformation.
00:45:46.700I think most people can tell you that there is misleading or inaccurate information out there about like COVID or vaccines, but misinformation can be a lot trickier to spot and talk about when it relies on dog whistles.
00:45:59.200You know, the same way that someone might say like, oh, a woman is too emotional to lead.0.87
00:46:04.360And that's just code for being a woman.
00:46:06.320Oftentimes people are using dog whistles or coded language to attack women, women of color and other marginalized folks with this kind of like highly coded language that can be so tough to really call out and talk about for what it is.
00:46:20.960Yeah. And it's such a, again, it's one of those things, it's such a double standard and it's so hypocritical.0.80
00:47:44.120Something else that I has been on my mind and has been a source of frustration for a lot of us and that we've talked about on your segments when you come on Bridget is this kind of what you mentioned is like,
00:47:56.020Not only is Judge Jackson facing all of this job interview that's very intensive, but then there's all of these attacks online that are racist and sexist.
00:48:12.720We've talked about it. It's not unique to this area because we've talked about it in terms of video games and we've talked about it in terms of entertainment, but I feel like that's already a term of gatekeeping.
00:48:21.400that's already an extra thing you're asking people
00:50:43.400playing a huge role in legitimizing and mainstreaming racist, sexist attacks on women of color in public office.
00:50:50.460And so, you know, you might see things like an article about some complete racist nonsense or a complete racist attack being quoted in the headline of an article
00:51:00.240so that when people share it on social media, it provides the impression that this is a legitimate grievance that somebody might have instead of just a racist attack, right?
00:51:08.360And so we are really calling on media to not create the conditions for these kind of racist, sexist attacks to fester and spread.
00:51:17.000Right. I think that this is a time that really requires everybody, whether you are a journalist or an editor or just a regular person on social media, to really be careful and thoughtful about how you are talking about this very visible black woman who is going up for this very visible position in the Supreme Court.
00:51:36.220Okay. I feel like you just led us into this. So tell us, the listeners and us voters and constituents who are here to not only look and see and view and be the audience, but participate in help stopping this harmful disinformation.
00:51:53.320What do we need to do to make sure that we are not only engaging in that, but not being a part of that, but not spreading that?
00:52:02.000So first is just, you know, if you see like a harmful racist, sexist attack or a conspiracy theory, first and foremost, don't spread it.
00:52:10.440Nine times out of ten, if you see this kind of thing, if you retweet it or like comment on it, you're actually just helping it grow and spread because of the algorithmic nature of most of our social media platforms.
00:52:20.780And so the platform is going to think like, oh, this person is engaging with this.
00:52:27.700Focus instead on sharing accurate, timely information about the issues and the candidates, right?
00:52:34.100So talk to people about Judge Jackson's actual record.0.56
00:52:38.400Talk to people about her actual positions and where she actually stands.0.96
00:52:41.860That will kind of provide a little bit of taking the oxygen out of the kinds of racist, sexist, gendered attacks we are sure to see.
00:52:49.120You can go to weareultraviolet.org and check out our media kit, really asking for the media to create the conditions for this person to be, you know, fairly judged and fairly talked about and fairly assessed by the American public.
00:53:02.980And also the last one I would say is like, just really ask questions and be, I think this is a time where we will really be rewarded if we are interested in being critical thinkers, right?
00:53:13.880So when someone says like, oh, she's too radical, but can't give you a single thing that backs up what they're saying.
00:53:20.000Or when someone says like, oh, she's just going to be really woke, you know, really being able to ask, you know, what do you mean by that?
00:53:25.500When you say woke, what does that mean?
00:53:28.580I have found that to be really useful when I'm having conversations, particularly with people that may not be aligned with me politically.
00:53:35.500You know, really getting down to what is the substantive thing that you are trying to say?0.83
00:53:40.800And if the answer is, well, I just don't like her because she's a black woman and I don't like black women, then say that so we can, you know, address that for what it is.0.99
00:53:50.720Be loud about it because, you know, you're already pretty much saying it.0.99
00:53:53.720Right. Like say it with your chest if you're going to say it.
00:53:56.300Right. I just do it. You're already doing it. It feels hypocritical for me to ask this. So I
00:54:01.420apologize for the jump. But as non-black women and for our male identifying listeners, what can
00:54:09.720we do to make sure because we know we already know black women are stressed the out. But the0.97
00:54:17.260fact of the matter is with this is going to come on to so many more attacks is visceral. We know
00:54:23.040what's going to happen we know it and it's going to be harmful and it's going to be gross and not
00:54:27.260only should we do all the things that you told us to do but what can we do to ease the load a but
00:54:33.700help fight for y'all in general i love this question i would say first of all it's probably
00:54:42.460a tall order but i would love to see a shift where we understand that this fight is all of our fight
00:54:50.060Like, we are the, you know, the more marginalized you are, the more you are a target.
00:54:54.280But this kind of thing really harms us all.
00:54:56.800And so I think seeing this work as all of our work to create a healthy democracy is really key.
00:55:03.320And so these kinds of attacks, they don't just hurt the women that are subjected to them.
00:55:07.840They really have a meaningful impact on the health and well-being of our democracy.
00:55:13.420because we can't have a fully functioning representative democracy if everybody is not
00:55:19.440able to use their voice, if everybody is not able to participate. And so step one of that
00:55:24.280really comes with having a healthy media ecosystem and a healthy climate for everybody to be able
00:55:29.900to participate. And so I would say really working to see these attacks on marginalized people as
00:55:36.300all of our fight, because all of us are invested in having a healthy democracy, whether you are
00:55:40.040a man, a woman, black, white, like it is all of our fight. And so really being able to,
00:55:46.820to see this as something that you're meaningfully invested in, not just because it's the right
00:55:52.120thing to do, which it is, but because we all deserve to have a functioning democracy.
00:55:57.620Yes. I love it. Well said as always, Bridget. Any other resources you want to shout out? Any
00:56:03.060final thoughts? Yeah, I would, I have to just, again, shout out the work of Cistis Scotus. They
00:56:09.400have been really doing a lot of the work of building this infrastructure to hold Biden
00:56:14.720accountable for this campaign promise that he made. So their website is awesome. The women who
00:56:18.680run it are awesome. So definitely check them out. You can check out Ultraviolet's work. You know,1.00
00:56:22.900we are doing a lot of the work of trying to inoculate folks against disinformation and,
00:56:28.340like, help people spot it when they see it and identify it. So you can check us out at
00:56:32.380weareultraviolet.org. And, of course, you can always check out my podcast,