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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. With us now, Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post columnist Jonathan Capehart, who some of you know is also a PBS NewsHour commentator and MSNBC host. What many of you may not know is the story of why Jonathan quit the Washington Post editorial board, how he grew up in two very different cultures in New Jersey and North Carolina, how he's experienced being too Black for some people, but not Black enough for others, as he'll describe it.

That he helped Michael Bloomberg get elected mayor of New York. Did you know that? Even how he began his professional media career right here at WNYC after being a college intern at the Today Show. It's all in his new book called Yet Here I Am, and here he is. Hi, Jonathan. Always good to talk. Welcome back to WNYC.

Jonathan Capehart: Thank you, Brian. This is very surreal for me.

Brian Lehrer: Because we've known each other a long time.

Jonathan Capehart: Right.

Brian Lehrer: The subtitle of your book is Lessons from a Black Man's Search for Home. What was this dual home you had as a kid in New Jersey and North Carolina? Where in Jersey, first of all?

Jonathan Capehart: I was born in Newark, and we lived there until I was 10. Then we moved to North Plainfield, and then we moved to Hazlet, New Jersey, and Monmouth County when I was 12. We were there until I was 16 and my mom remarried, and we moved back to Newark to the Weequahic section, where I went to St. Benedict's Prep until I went to Carleton in Minnesota. Then in the summers until I was about 12, I would spend every those summers in North Carolina in a small town called Severn, North Carolina, in Northampton County, North Carolina, at my mother's parents' home. My maternal grandparents.

It was a very formative time for me because while I went to Catholic school in Newark, I would then go down and spend the summers with my grandparents, where my grandmother was a Jehovah's Witness. I would spend my summers going witnessing with my grandmother on those dusty country roads.

Brian Lehrer: You also describe the two scenes as different racially in various ways, right?

Jonathan Capehart: Yes. The two scenes mean New Jersey up North versus North Carolina down South. Severn is this town that is so small that you have to zoom way, way in on Google Maps just to see the outline of the streets. It wasn't until I was older that I understood or could see the remnants of Jim Crow, probably the most prominent being there's a big boulevard down-- It's now called Main Street, down the center of town, big boulevard paved with big yellow line, double line down the middle.

When I was a kid, for the longest time, the street won over where my grandparents lived. That street was a dirt road, and it wasn't paved, if you will, until years later, but it was paved with just pebbled rocks and tar. That in the summer, in the heat of the summer, would bubble over, and kids running around with no shoes and socks had tar on the bottoms of my feet, and before dinner, I had to go and get some gasoline on a rag and rub it off before coming into the house. Meanwhile, in the North--

Brian Lehrer: Wait. Isn't that the name of the sports team for the University of North Carolina? The Tar Heels.

Jonathan Capehart: The Tar Heels. You know, Brian, I had not put that together.

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Jonathan Capehart: Meanwhile--

Brian Lehrer: Maybe because we're having Gary Cohen on later in the show. I've got a little sports on the brain today. Anyway, go ahead.

Jonathan Capehart: Anyway, in the North, Brian, we lived in Newark in a high-rise apartment building. Back then, it was called Academy Spires. Today, I think it's called Garden Spires. At 175 North 1st Street. I went to Saint Rose of Lima private school, not far from home. These two different experiences stayed in my head, particularly those experiences in the South, until I finally put a lot of the stories and my thoughts and what I saw, especially down South, down-- I was going to say down on paper, really was pixels sitting in front of my computer in 2017, writing down the stories of what it was like going witnessing with my grandmother.

Brian Lehrer: Jonathan Capehart with us with his new memoir called Yet Here I Am. Looks like you wanted to go into TV news from pretty young. You write that your stepfather thought that was just a fantasy, not a realistic goal. What got you interested in doing TV news?

Jonathan Capehart: My uncle McKinley, McKinley Branch, was an electrician at NBC, and he was there for 41 years. He passed away when we were all shut in during the pandemic. One day I was staying with them-- with him and my aunt, Annie, in the Bronx, and he was headed to work, and he said, "Turn on Channel 4 and stay watching because the Today Show is doing something on the plaza, and I'm going to try to find the camera and wave." Brian, when I was that age, I was a big tattletale. I told everybody's business, much to my detriment, from some of the punishments I got from telling other people--

Brian Lehrer: Some people call that journalism.

Jonathan Capehart: Right. Here I am, this big tattletale, and I'm watching the Today Show, waiting to see my uncle. What I see are people telling other people's business around the world. I was hooked. It was Tom Brokaw and Jane Pauley were the anchors. I just kept watching long after my uncle. I don't remember ever seeing him, but it didn't matter because now I'm watching these people and I'm learning about the world. It just took off as I was in school and geography classes, and history classes.

One day, one of my friends had to write a book report for something. He had this novel idea of writing the embassies, asking them for information for his report, and they sent him maps. I thought, "Wow, that's cool." I started writing away to embassies. I was National Geographic member. My bedroom wall at home, this is when we were living in Hazlet, covered with maps. I'm watching the Today Show. I'm watching NBC Nightly News. I'm watching all of the news breaks that they used to do back then in the '80s. I would spin around in my room, look for the map to see where the action was happening. That's how I got it in my head that I wanted to become a news commentator.

Brian Lehrer: Here you are, a news commentator. By page seven in the book, you have your first reference to WNYC. This is not a big part of your career, so I don't want to linger on it too much, just because it's us. How did you wind up here shortly after you went to Carleton College in Minnesota?

Jonathan Capehart: When Mayor Dinkins became mayor, and for folks who might not remember, WNYC used to be owned by the City of New York. The mayor appointed the president of WNYC. The person he appointed upon becoming mayor was a man by the name of Tom Morgan. Tom Morgan was the president of WNYC, but he was also an alum of Carleton College, which is where I went to college. He was on the board of trustees. I, after graduating college, I stayed an extra year to work as assistant to the president of Carleton.

One day, my final board meeting, I'm walking across campus and I hear Tom yelling for me. We meet up. He asked me, "Did I overhear you say you're looking for jobs in television in New York? Don't you know what I'm doing now? Weren't you going to call me?" [laughs] Long story short, he offered me a job of being one of his assistants, and I took it.

Brian Lehrer: From here, you went to the Daily News, and I see you have an Instagram post today with a little excerpt from the book about getting interested in Harlem politics in the '90s. What you call the power struggle between a cadre of young African Americans with business acumen pushing for economic development and the older generation as represented by the Gang of Four. That Gang of Four included Mayor Dinkins, Congressman Charlie Rangel, and others. How do you recall what that power struggle was about? Why did you post that out of all the things from your book on Instagram today?

Jonathan Capehart: Brian, it's called the tease. [laughs] Really, the Instagram post was meant to focus on Darren Walker, who is now the president of the Ford Foundation, but back then was working with Reverend Calvin Butts at Abyssinian Development Corporation. What that was, while that was focused on Darren Walker, what that story is is the bigger story of how we, when I was on the Daily News editorial board, started our campaign to save the Apollo Theater. It all went back to a field trip that we took after seeing a story in the Daily News about a power struggle between Mayor Giuliani and Congressman Charlie Rangel, who-- Sorry about that.

Mayor and Congressman Charlie Rangel, who was the creator of the Upper Manhattan Empowerment Zone. The theater and the mayor were going at it because the theater wanted funding, but the mayor was standing in the way. We took a tour. During the tour, we noticed that the theater was just falling apart. Paint peeling from the ceilings, ripped-up carpets, a lot of broken seats. We learned that the fantastic show, Showtime at the Apollo, that was shown on Channel 4 after Saturday Night Live. It looked beautiful on television, but a lot of things had to be brought in because the theater just wasn't state-of-the-art.

Long story short, Michael Goodwin, who was our editorial page editor, told me and Michael Aronson, who is now the editorial page editor, to start taking a look at what was going on with the theater. That is when-- We long knew that a lot of things did not get done back then in Harlem without those four men. We then, through our reporting, started to see just how intertwined all these things were. That Instagram post was a bit of a tease into the larger story about how we began our campaign to save the Apollo Theater, how we succeeded in getting management changes, and helping to get the theater on the right track. Then later on, you learn that our little campaign to save that jewel on 125th Street earned us a Pulitzer Prize.

Brian Lehrer: If you're just joining, my guest is Jonathan Capehart for another few minutes. Washington Post columnist, and you may know him as a PBS commentator on Friday nights with David Brooks and an MSNBC host on the weekends. His new book is called Yet Here I Am. You have a paragraph in the book. "Blackness is always at the mercy of someone else's judgment. You can be too Black, not Black enough, or not Black at all. Some Black people are either eager to take away my Black card. Some white people would rather I not mention my race at all." Can you talk about how you've experienced some of that dynamic?

Jonathan Capehart: I introduced that in telling the story when I was in Hazlet. The earliest moments when I understood the racial choreography one has to go through when you are a Black person or a Black kid in predominantly white spaces. I tell the story about how we were all playing and having a good time, and someone was making a joke about something happening somewhere. I said something just naturally. I said, "I'm just going to carry my Black behind," but I didn't say behind. It's a three-letter word, begins with an A.

Brian Lehrer: I can't imagine what that is.

Jonathan Capehart: Huh?

Brian Lehrer: I can't imagine what that is. Anyway, go on.

Jonathan Capehart: Yes. "I'm going to carry my Black behind over there." Someone says, "What does race have to do with this?" As I write, it had nothing to do with it, but everything to do with it. When you're African American, that phraseology, "Black behind", but the more explicit version, can be peppered throughout conversation. It's done when you feel comfortable, when you are at home. I made the mistake, as I realized later, of feeling comfortable with my white friends. In that moment, I also learned that by doing that, by just doing that little thing, I broke the unspoken agreement. The unspoken agreement is, was, and sometimes remains, that we won't even talk about the fact or even acknowledge the fact that I am Black.

Brian Lehrer: Does this relate also to the chapter in your book about why you quit the Washington Post editorial board after 15 years? Spoiler alert for our listeners, it wasn't just recently, like some other Washington Post people, because they felt like Jeff Bezos was forcing them to toady up to Trump. It was in 2022. Want to tell our listeners what happened?

Jonathan Capehart: We don't have enough time for me to tell people what happened.

Brian Lehrer: Yes. We have about three minutes left in the segment.

Jonathan Capehart: Right, you have to buy the book. It boiled down to a position that the editorial page editor wanted to take on Georgia voting. I and a bunch of other people strenuously argued against it. The matter was dropped, or so I thought. After the Georgia runoff race, that particular line appeared in an otherwise fine editorial. The line was in direct contradiction to what I had argued during the meeting. The line was something along the lines of President Biden was being hyperbolic when he called the Georgia voting law Jim Crow 2.0.

As the only African American on the editorial board at the time whose job was publicly stated as being focused on national politics and social issues, it just became just the last straw that you can't ignore me and what I bring to the table, my lived experience, my personal experience, plus my reporting, and not expect me to respond. I decided that it just could not stand, that I would no longer be on the board. When you are on an editorial board, you are there for a reason. Not just your reporting chops and your writing chops, but what you bring to the table in terms of who you are, your lived experience as a way of informing the editorial so that they are knowing that they are rooted in something. I just decided that I was not going to be treated that way.

Brian Lehrer: How would you describe your own politics? You're a columnist. You get to describe your politics. In my experience with you over the years, Jonathan, you're not the most radical person in the world. People may not know you worked for the Bloomberg campaign for mayor against the Democrat back when he was running the first time. On television, you do that Friday, right left segment on the PBS NewsHour opposite David Brooks, and you're a weekend host on MSNBC. Those are two pretty different vibes. How do you straddle that spectrum and see the role of each in terms of what you want to present to the world as a columnist and commentator?

Jonathan Capehart: I think the thing that makes it possible for me to do all of those things, Brian, is that I know who I am, and I know what I believe in. I also know that I have open ears and an open heart. If new evidence comes up or new reporting, that changes my mind, I'm not afraid to change my mind, because that is the essence of learning. That is the essence of being, I think, a good journalist. Not so wedded to an idea or a philosophy that you can't change your mind or your position when clear and convincing evidence argues that you do so.

It is wonderful that the media landscape has changed to the point where I can be at a newspaper, I can be on television. I could also, as you remember, Brian, I've filled in for you more than a couple of times over the years so that I can be on radio. Just by being me and bringing my curiosity to the table, to the pen, to the computer, that is what I think makes the job that I have not just a privilege, but an incredibly, a whole lot of fun.

Brian Lehrer: Let me get to just one thing from the news before you go. It's from your latest Washington Post column. It's about the doldrums of the Democratic Party and someone you think might help the Dems revive. The column is called This Iowan's raw anger could make him the new anti-Trump. "Nathan Sage is running against Republican Senator Joni Ernst with a tone we usually hear from MAGA," you say, so I pulled a little clip. Here's 20 seconds of Nathan Sage in a video he released.

Nathan Sage: I'm fighting for a Democratic party that people like me will actually want to be a part of. People like my dad, myself, my kids, all the people like us, the DC Elites, the ruling class, they don't want me. I think maybe you will.

Brian Lehrer: Why did you key on Nathan Sage enough to write a column about him in the context of the Democratic Party, trying to figure out who it is?

Jonathan Capehart: When you listen to the entire clip, his ad, it is filled with just plain spoken language. He ends with this incredible line how, come November, "I'm going to kick corporate Republican Joni Ernst's behind." That's not the word he uses, "Next November." It was just such a jolt that I thought, "You know what? Let me have him come on my previous show." Even on the previous show, he was just a breath of fresh air, a guy who is willing to tell it like it is. He's doing it not from the MAGA. Not from the MAGA right, but from the left. I thought, "I want to talk to him some more."

The more he talks-- Brian, the reaction to the column has been incredible because people are longing for more folks to speak plainly in the way that Nathan Sage is speaking in that Iowa race. I should point out that he is the first one to declare he's running for the Democratic nomination to run against Joni Ernst. There are at least three others who are thinking of jumping in the race. They're all Iowa state legislators. The big thing that I'm going to keep my eye on is how much do they emulate what Nathan Sage is doing on the campaign trail. Putting aside the political consultant speak, going right, are they going to be as real and raw as Nathan Sage?

Brian Lehrer: Jonathan Capehart, Washington Post columnist, PBS NewsHour commentator, and MSNBC host, and now the author of Yet Here I Am. Lessons from a Black Man’s Search for Home. Thanks, as always, Jonathan, and congratulations on the book.

Jonathan Capehart: Oh, Brian, thank you so much.

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