Melissa Harris-Perry: I'm Melissa Harris-Perry. Thanks for being with us on The Takeaway as we continue our discussion of the January 6th attack on the Capitol. The core motivation behind the violence we saw a year ago is a belief in the big lie, that self-serving falsehood perpetrated by former President Trump himself that the 2020 election had been stolen.
President Trump: If you count the legal votes, I easily win. If you count the illegal votes, they can try to steal the election from us.
Melissa Harris-Perry: To guide us through some of the implications of this big lie, we returned to Professor Hasan Kwame Jeffries, Associate Professor of History at The Ohio State University. In full disclosure, I've known professor Jeffries since we were both doctoral students at Duke University more than 20 years ago. At that time, I think we both saw ourselves as inheritors of a Black radical intellectual tradition, whose central feature has been critique of the American political project. I wondered if Professor Jeffries was surprised to discover that we are now among those who are defending the legitimacy of the American electoral system.
Professor Jeffries: The reality is that those of us, scholars who have spent our professional career studying that path, but even just Black folk intuitively, who have understood with a factual-based skepticism and recognized and experienced the shortcomings in American democracy, can also recognize when the darn thing was working. It's not that we don't know, the wool has been pulled over our eyes, we know what disenfranchisement looks like. We know what voter suppression looks like. We know, as both scholars and people of color and folk who have been victimized by long history of disenfranchisement, that it still was in operation. People participated despite the attempts to suppress the vote.
The folk who were complaining about voter fraud, it created new solutions in search of a problem that doesn't exist. That is part of the great irony, and I think why January 6th needs to be taught and taught honestly, because it's based on this lie that there was massive voter fraud, that there was massive disenfranchisement in some way, shape, or form and cheating and stealing. That just didn't happen. It just didn't happen.
Melissa Harris-Perry: Professor Jeffries also pointed to another important feature of Black political history that stands in stark contrast to the violence initiated by the big lie, hope.
Professor Jeffries: Despite the hell that Black folk have caught in this country for 400 years, we have never sought to overrun the Capitol, but we have acknowledged and said, "There is something here that can be built upon." There's been, I wouldn't say an optimism or even a faith, but there's been a hope. There's been a sense of humanity that despite how rigged this thing is, despite how awful this thing is, we can make something of it. It is both shocking and disturbing that those who have benefited the most from this system would turn on it the way they did.
I think there is something to be said by the hope that Black folk have and the belief that Black folk have in turning something good out of what really has been horrible and set up to be horrible and not to benefit people of color, Black folk, Native American folk, Latino folk. Still, that's the hope, that's what Americans don't get. If you all would just listen to Black people, just listen to Black women, we'd be in a much better place because that is the hope that carries people. That's the hope that has made this a more expansive democracy.
From the one hand, you got Black folk who are rallying around hope and saying, "Look, it's far from perfect, but it can be better if you invest." White supremacy doesn't allow you to do that. White supremacy is all or nothing, and that's what those folk were rallying around, is belief in white supremacy. It's either everything for us or nothing at all, or we're going to burn it down.
Melissa Harris-Perry: Hope. Black folks tenacious, collective insistence that America can and must embody her highest ideals and her most soaring aspirations. This is the hope we heard from Elizabeth Alexander's inaugural poem in January 2009 when President Obama first took the oath of office.
Elizabeth Alexander: Say it plain that many have died for this day. Seeing the names of the dead who brought us here, who laid the train tracks, raised the bridges, picked the cotton and the lettuce, built brick by brick the glittering edifices they would then keep clean and work inside of.
Melissa Harris-Perry: This is the hope echoed by inaugural poet Amanda Gorman in January of 2021 when the insurrection was quelled, and power peaceably, if painfully, passed to President Joe Biden.
Amanda Gorman: Yes, we are far from polished, far from pristine, but that doesn't mean we are striving to form a union that is perfect. We are striving to forge our union with purpose. To compose a country committed to all cultures, colors, characters, and conditions of man, and so we lift our gazes not to what stands between us, but what stands before us.
Melissa Harris-Perry: I asked Professor Jefferies if he's feeling hopeful. After all, for him, January 6th was not just a political crisis or a historic occurrence. It was a deeply personal day. Professor Jeffries is the younger brother of representative Hakeem Jeffries, who represents the 8th Congressional District of New York and serves as chairman of the House Democratic Caucus.
Professor Jeffries: It got really personal really quick, not only because my brother's a sitting member of Congress, as you pointed out, was there and I couldn't reach him. As the shock of what was happening became clear that this is a really dangerous situation, I was worried just in general for the fate of the nation, but also is my brother going to be okay? Thankfully, he was. I was able to reach him eventually, but just as I was able to reach him, then I start receiving these death threats connected to him saying that "We have people outside of your house, and we're wanting this, and make sure your brother stops this and the other."
My brother still owes me a Thanksgiving meal or something for taking that flak on, but I don't know what's happening. I got to gather my family together and leave the house because you're showing pictures of my house. What is happening here? Then next thing you know, I got the Capitol Police calling me, I got the FBI calling me saying, "Hey, we're going to investigate this." The Special Agent called and became my best friend. Like, "We're going to send somebody outside your house and all this." Melissa, a week in I was like, "I got cops driving by waving at me."
Then they promised to catch the guy, I'm like, "How are you going to catch this guy? You know who are these people?" But they catch the guy, and then he gets sentenced to three years because it wasn't just me and my family, he was targeting these other people. The judge was like, "You're getting three years." He got three years for this. In the end, there was a modicum of justice in essence. Thankfully, nobody was hurt, but is a traumatic experience because I got to explain to my daughter why do we have to leave, and this is connected to what's happened on January 6th, but it's the reality.
Look, when in American history have Black folk ever been safe? Especially when we're talking about these questions of political violence and politics and democracy. It was a lesson in what does it mean to participate in the political process, but it also shows the potential and possibility, that there can be accountability, there can be justice, but it also needs to be in the classroom, a conversation about accountability and justice. Who should be held accountable for this? Is it just the individual who's animated by this white supremacy and sending threatening messages to people, or should it also be the people who are galvanizing this, who are purposefully perpetuating these lives? Should they be held accountable, and what does justice look like in that regard as well?
Melissa Harris-Perry: Indeed, what does justice look like and who else must be held accountable? Thank you to Professor Hasan Jeffries, Associate Professor of History at The Ohio State University.
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