Today, we’re talking all about the 14th Amendment. Our guest, Sherrilyn Ifill, a dedicated lawyer and the former president of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, is launching the 14th Amendment Center for Law & Democracy at Howard University, which promotes the vision of equality that the 14th Amendment promised – civil rights for all US citizens. She talks about how we as citizens can make the vision of equality a reality and why it is so important to know our American history.
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On today’s episode
Our host
Errin Haines is The 19th’s editor-at-large and writer of The Amendment newsletter. An award-winning journalist with nearly two decades of experience, Errin was previously a national writer on race for the Associated Press. She’s also worked at the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post.
Follow Errin on Instagram @emarvelous and X @errinhaines.
Today’s guest
Sherrilyn Ifill is a civil rights lawyer recently named the inaugural Vernon E. Jordan, Jr., Esq. Endowed Chair in Civil Rights at Howard University’s School of Law. She previously served as the seventh president & director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund, Inc.
Follow Sherrilyn Ifill on Instagram @sherrilynifill and X @SIfill.
Episode transcript
The Amendment podcast transcripts are automatically generated by a third-party website and may contain typos or other errors. Please consider the official record for The Amendment podcast to be the audio publicly available wherever you listen to podcasts.
Sherrilyn Ifill:
Our approach to equality is about feelings, and I’m utterly uninterested in any of that because I may be on a personal level, one-on-one, interested in it, but as a matter of policy, a matter of law, a matter of practice, a matter of opportunity, I’m utterly uninterested, and democracy. I’m not interested in the feelings.
Errin Haines:
Hey, y’all, welcome to The Amendment, a weekly conversation about gender, politics, and power from the 19th News and Wonder Media Network. I’m your host, Errin Haines.
Errin:
So, one of the core missions of this show has always been to have conversations that help uncover the places where the promise of our democracy remains unfinished, and to get clear on tangible solutions on how we can amend it. That is exactly the work that our guest today, Sherrilyn Ifill has been doing for decades. Sherrilyn is a lawyer. She’s the former president of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, and now she’s launching the 14th Amendment Center for Law and Democracy at Howard University, which is promoting the vision of equality that the 14th Amendment promised civil rights for all U.S. citizens. Sherrilyn is truly one of the most preeminent scholars on American democracy and the perfect person to explain where we stand in 2024. Welcome to The Amendment, Sherrilyn.
Sherrilyn:
I’m thrilled to be with you. I know we’ve been talking about this for a long time.
Errin:
Absolutely. I’m so glad that we are here and, and just after actually the anniversary of the 14th Amendment. So, I mean, let’s start there. How are you thinking about that amendment, our democracy and really this moment that our democracy is in?
Sherrilyn:
Well, we just passed on July 9th the 156th anniversary of the ratification of the 14th Amendment. And, you know, the 14th Amendment is really a powerful and important guide for us, particularly at this moment of democratic crisis and confused national identity. Um, you know, what I have tried to convey to people as I talk about the 14th Amendment is how powerfully it reset American democracy and in fact put us on the pathway to democracy. When we think about the founders of this country and talk about the founding of this country, we tend to focus on what I call the “first Constitution” — the 1789 Constitution. And we talk about those founders. We talk about Jefferson and Hamilton and Ben Franklin and John Jay, and we don’t talk about the second Constitution, which is the Constitution created after the Civil War in which this country had to be stitched back together.
Sherrilyn:
And the prime task that was before the founders and framers of the second Constitution was to address the compromises that had been made in the first Constitution that inexorably led to the Civil War that rent this country apart. And that was all of the compromises that were made to accommodate slavery. Whether it was the Three-Fifths Compromise in the first Constitution, the provision that allowed for the continuation of the slave trade until 1808, all of the ways in which there were accommodations for southern states and states of small population. This is what had to be dealt with. And the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments, which we call the Civil War Amendments, were the core of that. The 14th Amendment was really the centerpiece. The 13th Amendment, of course, outlawed slavery. The 15th Amendment, which was ratified in 1870, says that you cannot deny the right to vote based on color or race.
Sherrilyn:
But the 14th Amendment was the center of it. And I think people don’t understand how richly the 14th Amendment shaped the America that you and I are most familiar with. And so it’s always interesting to me when people are cosplaying with tricorn hats and long muskets and, you know, thinking that they are hearkening to something foundational about America when the America that we think of was largely created by those who formed the America created after the Civil War. And the 14th Amendment, which does some extraordinary things, it’s the first time the conception of equality shows up in the Constitution. We think about ourselves or we think of this country’s identity, even when we’re not doing it in practice, as aspiring to being a country of equality and justice. That comes from the 14th Amendment, not the first Constitution.
Sherrilyn:
And in fact, what the 14th Amendment does is it reaches back over the first Constitution all the way back to the Declaration of Independence, which is where that foundational language comes from: “We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal.” So when people think about this country and equality, they’re thinking about the Declaration of Independence, and then they have to be thinking about the 14th Amendment. The first Constitution, there’s nothing in there that would support the idea that all men are created equal — not with a Three-Fifths Compromise, right? Not with allowing the slave trade to continue. So, um, so the 14th Amendment really reaches back to this foundational story about who we are meant to be, enshrines this idea of equal justice before the law and creates birthright citizenship which was meant to overturn the Supreme Court’s decision in the Dred Scott Case, in which the Supreme Court essentially said that Black people — whether free or enslaved — could not be citizens of this country.
Sherrilyn:
And birthright citizenship changes this whole country, not just for Black people, but for successive generations of White people who very proudly today proclaim their ancestors coming from Europe. That great migration of White Europeans coming into this country was greatly aided by the 14th Amendment. And the idea that you could become a naturalized citizen in five or six years — that if you were born, if you had your child the day after you arrived, that child was an American — it changed the demography of this country and created this identity to the extent people think of this country, perhaps incorrectly as a nation of immigrants. You couldn’t think of it that way without birthright citizenship. And so the 14th Amendment is doing some really, really powerful things, and that’s just a taste of the 14th Amendment. But it is a reset for American democracy.
Sherrilyn:
And the purpose of the center is to help people see it that way. But also, I guess, the last thing I’d say, Errin, is it is also to help us see that we have the power and the ability to re-found our nation. It doesn’t always have to be accompanied by a Constitutional Amendment. It doesn’t have to be accompanied, at least in my view, by a civil war, but it does require us having the courage and the conviction that we have the right — and indeed, particularly in times of democratic crisis, the obligation — to reset and to reimagine our democracy to make it consistent with the ideals that I think we want this country to be.
Errin:
Absolutely. And I just really love what you’re saying, particularly in the context of this conversation and this podcast. Like it is the work of all of us to continue to keep amending this democracy, to make it more real, more inclusive.
Sherrilyn:
Yes.
Errin:
More representative of all of us who are here. And in the spirit of the 14th Amendment, which was kind of the beginning of the journey to, really, full citizenship, full inclusion for so many people who were not frankly included in our founding documents. And to continue to think about what it means to be a framer of our democracy, right? That the Constitution is a living, breathing document that evolves — that must evolve, right? — as our democracy evolves. And so, happy birthday to the 14th Amendment. And happy birthday to the America, really, that gets us closer to that more perfect union that the founders talked about but that amendments like the 14th Amendment really help to kind of make more real start to usher in. Although, as to your point, there is still more amending for all of us to do.
Sherrilyn:
Indeed.
Errin:
You’ve said before you think the country is in a state of democratic crisis. So I mean, what are the things that you’re seeing in our current moment in American political life that lead you to say that we are in a state of democratic crisis?
Sherrilyn:
Well, I think that we have abandoned the consensus around the things that make a democracy healthy. We are not a healthy democracy, and we haven’t been for a very long time. And I think it’s incumbent upon us to begin to examine that, you know, you can be an unhealthy person for a very long time and not be at the point of crisis, you know? There comes a point, however, where often all of the various unhealthy habits kind of create a perfect storm, and your body will tell you, well, that you are in trouble. And that is the place that we are in this country. Voter suppression has been going on for a very long time. I’ve been a voting rights attorney since 1989. Segregation — particularly segregation in response to the Supreme Court’s decision in Brown — has been going on really since the high point of integrated school education, which was 1970 to 1980.
Sherrilyn:
And we have been tacking back at a very quick pace. And now we are deeply segregated, but not only in school, in housing, you know, in our communities, in our churches and all over the place. We are living, still, racially segregated lives in this country, even if it’s not mandated by state law. We are seeing and continue to see unchecked violence of the state against unarmed Black people. When we see this in another country — when we see police officers beating protestors, when we see police officers targeting racial or ethnic minorities, and we see this in other countries, we know what it is. When we see it here, we treat it as though somehow it is not connected with these questions of democracy. So all of these things have been present for a very long time. We have now reached a perfect storm in which they have come together in a way that imperils the continuation of democracy in this country.
Sherrilyn:
And because we have not addressed and dealt with the things that ail us, including the ongoing ideology of white supremacy, we’ve left kind of the back door open. And when you leave the back door open and you leave your system undefended, then anyone can walk into it and rob you of everything that you have. And that’s how I would describe, for example, the rise of Donald Trump. No one person can walk in and break your democracy if your democracy is healthy, but if your democracy is unhealthy and someone unscrupulous with a large audience and a large amount of cash can come in and exploit your weaknesses, then, yes, they can do tremendous damage to your democracy. And that’s what has happened with us. Donald Trump was able to come in. He was able to exploit our divisions. He was able to exploit the ongoing reality of white supremacist ideology. He was able to exploit the sense of dislocation that people feel from tremendous wealth inequality, even though he was offering a false story about wealth inequality. I mean, but these are all things that we allowed to continue, and he’s just the accelerant who has come in and exploited it. And so I am really focused on, like, the actual elements of our democracy that are weak, and that left us vulnerable to the attack that I think Trump has represented.
Errin:
Yeah. And just to stick with your metaphor about, you know, a healthy democracy, and people can also be in denial, right? About how healthy or unhealthy they are.
Sherrilyn:
Yes. Oh, yes.
Errin:
AndI wonder if, you know, we as American citizens have been in denial about the health of our democracy, and if that is part of how we now find ourselves in the moment of democratic crisis that you are describing.
Sherrilyn:
So let’s keep, let’s stick with our, the same metaphor. Um, there are things that can make you ill because you, you know, didn’t take care of yourself, or things in the environment — you know, pollution — that might make you ill. But there are also proclivities that we have because of our DNA. So if you have, for example, diabetes in your family, you know, it’s in your DNA, it doesn’t mean that you are going to get diabetes, but it does mean that you have the proclivity to get diabetes unless you do some things differently than had been done in the past. Well, part of why I love the 14th Amendment is that the framers of the 14th Amendment understood that white supremacy was in the DNA of our country, and they were not covering it over like the founders of the First Constitution who just never used the word slavery, but talked about the importation of persons.
Sherrilyn:
The 14th Amendment framers are using the actual words. They’re using the words “White.” They’re using the words “Black.” It’s the first time the word “male” appears in the Constitution. They are, to put it kind of colloquially, keeping it real. And so the 14th Amendment is not just about all the guarantees that we know of in the first part of the 14th Amendment — birthright citizenship, equal protection, due process. It’s not just about that. It’s about the sections that we don’t learn about in law school. It’s about Section Two, and it’s about Section Three, which many of us now know about because of the lawsuit to try to keep Trump off the ballot, in which essentially those framers are understanding that if you are going to get the republic that you want with the guarantees that are in that first section of the 14th Amendment, you’re gonna have to do some things to protect this republic against the ongoing reality of these two things that the framers talked about and understood lived in this country.
Sherrilyn:
One was white supremacist ideology. The other was the spirit of insurrection. And so what you see in the 14th Amendment, if you’re pulling back from it and you’re looking at it in terms of its architecture and what it’s trying to do, yes, it has the soaring guarantees and the idea of rights and equality and birthright citizenship that are so important. But it’s also telling you in the other sections what it knows about this country. It’s telling you in Section Two that they expect that the South will continue to try to deny the vote to Black men. And so in Section Two, the 14th Amendment says, “if they do deny the vote to Black men, then Southern states will have their representation reduced by the number of people who they deny — black men over age 21 — the right to vote.” Section Three says, “People who have engaged in insurrection who were once officers and swore an oath to the United States and who have violated it by participating in insurrection cannot serve in federal or state office.”
Sherrilyn:
Now, the Supreme Court just essentially read that provision out of the Constitution, but that was very deliberately placed in the Constitution. And in fact, there was more debate about the importance of Section Three by the framers than all the guarantees of Section One, because they understood that the spirit of insurrection lived in our country. Frederick Douglass said — who I consider a framer and a founder — said that this spirit that he believed lived in the South, he said will be passed from sire to sun. It will not die out, he said. In a year, it will not die out in an age. So they understood something about this country, and they understood the need to put those protections in. So now take it back to the diabetes in the family and the heart disease. This is what I’m saying — that to found and frame your country requires not only that you create these idealistic words, but that you create, that you understand what is true and that you protect.
Sherrilyn:
Section Five of the 14th Amendment says that Congress has the power to enforce all the provisions of the 14th Amendment. That is the explicit recognition by the framers of the 14th Amendment — that we cannot trust the states to protect certain kinds of rights. That’s why the 14th Amendment includes the words, “No state shall.” The first Constitution concerned itself with the potential for unlimited power of the federal government. The second Constitution ushered in by the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendment is a recognition that there are things for which we cannot trust the states. And when it comes to the rights of Black people — when it comes to equal protection — we give that power to Congress to make sure that they have all the tools to effectuate the guarantees that are in section one of the 14th Amendment. So what you’ve got there are soaring guarantees — equality, birthright, citizenship, and so forth;
Sherrilyn:
You’ve got a recognition of what lives in the DNA of the country — white supremacist ideology and insurrection and the provision of tools to protect against it. And you’ve got the acknowledgement that we cannot count on states to protect and ensure these rights. And we must give the power to Congress, to the federal government, to ensure that these rights are protected. That is a powerful transformation, a reordering of power, a reordering of the conception of citizenship. You know, birthright citizenship, the first line of the 14th Amendment says, “Any person born or naturalized in the United States is a citizen of the United States and of the state in which they reside,” putting national citizenship before state citizenship. There’s a whole reordering that’s happening. When you really begin to get into the text of the 14th Amendment, you begin to understand that this was a reset for our democracy.
Sherrilyn:
And as you know very well, Errin, the 14th Amendment and its promise was hijacked in the post-reconstruction period by the Supreme Court; by the somnambulance of Congress that was asleep for the first half of the 20th century; by violence — by white vigilante violence and klan violence; most principally, though, by the Supreme Court and a series of decisions that essentially removed the power of the 14th Amendment. And that’s why so few of us understand its power and the way in which it was supposed to reshape this country. And my project is designed to resuscitate our knowledge to remind us of what this country is supposed to be and to give us the tools and the power to believe that we can continue, as you say, to amend our democracy.
Errin:
Yeah. And the idea that amending our democracy and perfecting our union is dealing with the unfinished business of the 14th Amendment, right? Of harnessing the true power of the 14th Amendment. Which, I mean, just even listening to you describe it, it feels like maybe among — if not the — most honest amendment that we have, and something that is also prescriptive if we, as a democracy, are willing to follow the prescriptives that are laid out in the 14th Amendment. So, continuing with that line of thought, helping people understand if we are not really harnessing the power of the 14th Amendment — right? if we are not moving towards the things in the 14th Amendment that move us towards that more healthy democracy that you said that you’re talking about us needing to get back to — what does living in an undemocratic state actually look like? Like, for somebody who’s listening to this show right now, what are the ways in which their life would materially change? And what parts of their life do you think might stay the same?
Sherrilyn:
Well, it’s so funny, you know, there’s always this conversation about, you know, becoming an authoritarian state and what it would be like. And people say, “We should look to other countries and try to understand what it could look like here” as though we don’t have deep experience with this. You know, as though life in the segregated South was not life in an authoritarian state. We had that here. We know what that looked like. We know what enforced segregation looked like. We know what violence with impunity from the state looked like. We know what economic deprivation looked like. We know what voter suppression and cutting off access to political power looked like. That was the whole point of the Civil Rights Movement — was actually to release us from living in an authoritarian state. So when we see, today, books being banned; suppression of the truth of our history, including Black history; when we see people being demonized for their sexuality and the Supreme Court enshrining the possibility of discriminating against such people; when we see measures designed to promote integration outlawed by the Supreme Court to virtually return us to segregation; when we see the widespread voter suppression that is happening throughout this country and it being permitted and allowed by the Supreme Court in many instances; when we see the power grab in a number of states where, you know, we have these super Republican-controlled legislatures that essentially suppress the will of the people — that even when the people want to put an issue like abortion on the ballot, they change the rules to make sure you can’t put it on the ballot.
Sherrilyn:
We are living in the beginning of — and we’re pretty deep in to — what that authoritarianism looks like. And I think in this country, because we hyperfocus on, you know, New York and California and Chicago, we don’t focus on the fact that in much of the country today we are seeing that march happen. And the fight that we’re having right now is to hold onto the power — first of the federal government to be able to upend this as the 14th Amendment expected, but also to release the power of people living in states where this march to authoritarianism is happening to be able themselves to equip themselves, to compel their state governments to engage in democracy. This is very real and very, very serious.
Errin:
Yeah. And just listening to you talk about reconstruction and Jim Crow, it is kind of a reminder that, you know, I know we talk about this kind of moment of democratic crisis is unprecedented, but yet it’s…
Sherrilyn:
Not.
Errin:
We have been here before, right?
Errin:
You described the 14th Amendment as radical, really, and argued that for most —
Sherrilyn:
It is. We called them the radical Republicans for a reason! They were radical.
Errin:
Yeah, yeah. I mean, and you argued that for most of American history you talked about the Supreme Court watering down the 14th Amendment.
Sherrilyn:
Yes.
Errin:
Talk about why the 14th Amendment was radical and what it would really look like to live in an America where the full radical power of the 14th Amendment was realized.
Sherrilyn:
Well, the idea of the 14th Amendment was to remove caste — right? — from our country and to ensure full first class citizenship for Black people. And Black people are not first class citizens in this country, you know? So that has obviously not been realized. And I think that, you know, the efforts of Congress in the years after the 14th Amendment was ratified — for example, in passing the what we call the “Enforcement Acts” or “The Ku Klux Klan Acts,” when Congress learned about the violence that was being visited on Black people — Congress held a set of hearings in Washington, D.C. and around the country to learn about how what Klan violence was doing. And it’s one of the most powerful reports you will ever read. It’s just ordinary Black people testifying what was happening to them, the kind of outrageous violence they were living under — the rapes and the being dragged out of their homes and beaten and whipped and killed, and basically living in a state of absolute terror, which compelled Congress to pass these Ku Klux Klan Acts that would give power to the federal government to prosecute these cases.
Sherrilyn:
And please remember, the Department of Justice was created for the purpose of giving the federal government the tools to be able to prosecute Klan violence. It was not created for antitrust, you know? It was not created for all these other things that we see the Department of Justice doing. It was created for the purpose of civil rights. So we just need to remember and understand that.
Errin:
This history is feeling important. And, you know, you made the point earlier that not enough of us do understand even the full history of the 14th Amendment.
Sherrilyn:
Yes.
Errin:
Like, how do you think the 14th Amendment is vital to people’s understanding of what America is and what narratives of America are really tied up in the 14th Amendment?
Sherrilyn:
Well, the first narrative, of course, is about this idea of a place of equality, which…where does that show up in the first Constitution? Nowhere. It shows up for the first time in the 14th Amendment. So that whole conception that people have — that in America, there’s equal opportunity and you can make it, and, you know, you can’t discriminate against people; the idea that you can’t discriminate against somebody in getting a job. The idea that you can’t discriminate against somebody in forming a contract or buying a house, or… — all of those things emanate from the 14th Amendment. So if you think that that’s part of this — the at least aspirational national identity, that America is a place of, you know, equality and equal opportunity — that comes from the 14th Amendment. It’s meant to be a shared foundational value.
Sherrilyn:
You know, it’s like when you hear various politicians say, “We’re gonna end birthright citizenship,” which for some reason a number of politicians in the Republican party say from time to time as though it’s a policy choice. It is in the Constitution. Birthright citizenship is a constitutional right. And the idea that we allow a conversation to happen. And I very rarely hear journalists challenge those politicians who say that to say, “So you’re saying you’re going to amend the Constitution?” Like, that’s what it would take. Right? But instead, what I see is that journalists let them say this as though it’s a policy choice that’s up for discussion. It’s not up for discussion. It’s in the Constitution. Either you’re amending the Constitution, or you need to stop saying it, because that’s the only way that it’s not a Constitutional right. So that’s a perfect example of something that is treated as though it’s a policy choice, when it in fact is a guarantee in the 14th Amendment, you know? Our conversations about, you know, civil rights statutes and about the Voting Rights Act — the 15th Amendment also, you know, has this enforcement clause that gives Congress the power to enforce it —
Sherrilyn:
And we talk about, you know, we’re hearing the resuscitation of “states’ rights.” When it comes to civil rights, the 14th and 15th Amendment is very clear that there are no states’ rights — that the federal government…that supersede the rights that the 14th and 15th amendments guaranteed to Black people. And it gives Congress the power to ensure that states cannot overcome those rights. So even when I’m up on Capitol Hill, and I’m talking with members of Congress — even Democratic members of Congress — there’s this concern, there’s this, “Well, what do we say to the States? Well, how do we make sure that we’re not intruding too much?” You actually don’t have to because the constitution, the framers of the 14th Amendment, said, “You have the power.” And I’m constantly telling Congresspeople, when we talk about passing the John Lewis Voting Rights Act and all this stuff, I tell them, “It’s not just that you can, it’s that you have the obligation. The expectation was that this is what you would do. That when Southern states started engaging in voter suppression that you would use the power that the framers gave you in the 14th and 15th Amendments to ensure that those rights were protected.” And no state shall, okay?
Sherrilyn:
That this idea that you have to have this solicitude for states’ rights when we’re talking about protecting the civil rights of Black people, it’s just simply not consistent with the 14th Amendment. And so, it may be politically something that you feel is important, but then let’s talk about it in that realm. And first, understand your power. Let’s begin from the place of your power, and then you can talk about whether you’re willing to cede aspects of that power. But don’t make it like you don’t have the power to do this thing. So, that’s why I think it’s so important to educate people about what the 14th Amendment was trying to accomplish, because we have been having a conversation for more than a hundred years about race in this country as though our approach to equality is about feelings. It’s about whether White people are nice White people, whether they have a racist bone in their body, whether they even see color, whether they care whether you’re Black, purple, yellow or green.
Sherrilyn:
These are, you know, the tropes that we hear all the time. And I’m utterly uninterested in any of that because — I may be, on a personal level, one-on-one interested in it, but — as a matter of policy, a matter of law, a matter of practice, a matter of opportunity, I’m utterly uninterested. And democracy — I’m not interested in the feelings. I’m just not. This is why we say, in the context of the First Amendment, that even speech you don’t like can be protected because it’s not about feelings. It is about protection. You can’t say certain things that would put people in danger and create dangerous environments and so forth. But I may disagree with your view. I can’t stop you from saying your view. The government can’t stop you from saying your view just because they disagree with it.
Sherrilyn:
That’s what we say about the First Amendment. But the same is true of the 14th Amendment. States may not like it, and you may not like it, right? But that doesn’t change its constitutionality.So I just think we have assigned the issue of equality to this place of emotion and not to its proper place in the constitutional order.
Errin:
Yeah. Andthat feels like something that has been true for a long time. And it is absolutely helpful to kind of reach for these historical parallels to help us understand our current moment. So, I mean, I’m also wondering though, what about this current moment do you feel like is unique and that we haven’t before?
Sherrilyn:
Well, I think that there are a couple things. I’m glad you asked that question because I don’t wanna give the impression that, “Oh, we’ve seen all of this before.” That’s not what I’m suggesting. I’m saying there are important parts of our history that we should be drawing on that are critical for addressing this moment. But I think there are some important changes. One change that I think we should be deeply concerned about is the way in which prominent members of our country have allied themselves with foreign powers that are not allied with this country. I find this embrace of Russia —which also has white supremacist roots in terms of its embrace — very, very troubling. You know, one of the things that was helpful for us, you know, was this idea of wanting to preserve a certain reputation and national identity for this country.
Sherrilyn:
And I think we’ve lost that. That we can’t agree that Congress did not, with great dispatch, pass legislation designed to ensure that you could protect our voting systems against Russian interference. That that wasn’t a kind of primary act immediately following the 2016 election should appall us. That is the protection of your democracy, the protection of your country, attempting to enter the computer systems of state election officials as happened in the run up to the 2016 election — using social media platforms and so forth to try to influence the election. This is like a shot over the bow, like acts of war. And the response to it instead was denial. And no matter how many bills floated up that were designed to protect our election system, that it just didn’t happen. So that greatly concerns me — the willingness to not ban together, to protect our country from attacks that come from the outside with countries that are not allied with democracy.
Sherrilyn:
That’s one. The second thing is, one thing I will say, that Donald Trump has ushered in is a lack of shame. His attraction for many people is that he has offered an invitation to be your worst self. He’s offered an invitation to abandon the norms that were created in the post-Civil Rights period. The norms about the kinds of words we use towards one another, how we behave towards one another, our efforts to our societal norm away from racism — certainly away from explicit racism — away from explicit misogyny, all of the norms that we had begun to adopt around women, around Black people, around gay people. Those have been unraveled and norms are very important, and shame is very important. You know, on that Sunday night when they interrupted the showing of judgment at Nuremberg on network television to show the pictures from the Edmund Pettus Bridge in 1965, it created a powerful sense of shame among many Americans.
Sherrilyn:
This is why you could have that bloody Sunday happened in March of 1965, and by August of 1965 you had a Voting Rights Act. Because those images shocked many in the nation to the core, including White people to the core, because it was…who are we, right? But now I want you to think about how many videos of Black people killed by police officers we’ve seen, or how many lines outside voting stations we’ve seen. We’ve lost a sense of being able to be shamed into action. There was the George Floyd video, which did, it, you know, it caused tens of millions of people to come out and protest during a pandemic. And we’ve seen the backlash against that — the backlash against the empathy that people felt. And that’s where the banned books and the not teaching our history have come from.
Errin:
Yeah. Shamed or shocked into action, right? At the federal government level. That does seem to be a thing that’s missing. And I would add to that, uh, you know, January 6th, which certainly was televised.
Sherrilyn:
For sure. For sure. That’s the other thing. I mean, that’s yet another kind of, like, norm. Like really? How is that a partisan issue that you don’t attack the capitol and try to launch essentially a coup? And I think we have to recognize that we’re working with fewer tools of that sort than we had in the past.
Errin:
Yeah. And I think what you’re also speaking to is the way that narrative shapes democracy and how the narratives that we are seeing now are shaping democracy. I mean, how have and how do the stories that people have told about what America is changed what America actually is?
Sherrilyn:
Well, you create an image of yourself in your own eyes. I mean, I think there came a point where the Civil Rights Movement became a powerful story to tell because it was a story that actually made America ultimately look good. You know, it didn’t make America look good that there was Bull Connor, but it made America look good that the president ordered in The 102nd Airborne to Central High School in Little Rock. And that’s how, kind of, we got the sepia-Disneyfication of the Civil Rights Movement, where it became, you know, the slogan for, you know, the use of the “I Have a Dream” speech and all that stuff, right? You know? It became a useful story to tell because it projected to the world a story about America that was uplifting and promising and hopeful and became part of our national identity.
Sherrilyn:
So for sure, you know, it’s the narratives. And this was well understood in the post-reconstruction period, and that’s where we got the “lost cause” narrative from — of, you know, southerners basically winning the narrative war, despite losing the physical civil war. You know, the idea of the noble southerner who was fighting for a way of life, and the idea of the southern belles and reconstruction having been a failure because, you know, Black people were not ready for power — all of which was untrue. But it was a powerful narrative, and they reinforced it. They took over the creation of textbooks that would tell the story of the South in the way they wanted it told. And all of these Confederate monuments that people are clutching their pearls about, you know, coming down. You know, those monuments were largely created at the beginning of the 20th century, between 1900—
Sherrilyn:
—and in the 1930s is when most of those Confederate monuments went up. And it was to reinforce a narrative. And I’ll take it a step further, you know, this Confederate flag that people say, “Oh, it’s about our pride. It’s about our Southern pride.” It came back into vogue in its use by those who were opposed to the Civil Rights movement, and particularly opposed to Brown versus Board of Education. It revived after 1954. And so it’s not about some rebel spirit and pride in our heritage. It is an anti-Civil Rights symbol. So it’s important for us to understand the source of these things. When I talk about this stuff — and maybe people listening to the show will feel the same way — there’s this, kind of very often among White people, a kind of exhaustion that sets in, “Oh my God, everything is not about race.”
Sherrilyn:
A lot is in this country. That’s what I mean when I say if it’s in your DNA, you have to be able to face it. You may have other — let’s go back to the body again — health problems, you know, that may arise. But, they will emanate from that major problem — right? — that’s in your DNA that wasn’t addressed. And so that’s what we have to understand about race. Hate to bore you all by talking about something that we’ve never really talked about in any productive way, but it’s an underlying condition of this country, and it leads us to all kinds of other problems because it is a fundamental vulnerability that we’ve been unwilling to, in a sustained way, confront and deal with.
Errin:
Yeah. And I mean, listen, the parts of our history that we like, we cannot talk about enough, and the parts of our history that are uglier, we cannot move on from more quickly. I mean, I wanna also ask, thinking about citizenship beyond voting — right? — I mean, obviously we’re in an election year, but citizenship and civic engagement as a year-round, ongoing process. So an important part of the 14th Amendment was granting citizenship to Black people, which gave us the power to vote. But beyond just voting in November, what does it mean to you to be a citizen at this country?
Sherrilyn:
It means I have the expectation of certain guarantees and protections in this country, but it also means that I have certain responsibilities to this country, which is, I think, the part we need to be more focused on at this moment, which is, I have the responsibility to speak the truth; I have the responsibility to fight not only for the integrity of my own citizenship, but the integrity of my neighbor’s citizenship as well; That I have the obligation to work not only for my own liberation, but for the strength and the sustaining of the democratic values that undergird this country, and that that is the very essence of, of patriotism, in fact. So to be a citizen, it means to fully engage around that set of questions and issues, and to believe that you have not only the right, but the responsibility to make your views known, but to engage in the aspects of society that uphold democracy.
Sherrilyn:
And that’s, as I said, it’s not just voting. It’s the other institutions that hold a democracy together that require our attention as well. If you open the newspaper every day, every week, and you read an account of some man being released from prison after having been held for decades — incarcerated for a crime that we’ve now decided he did not commit — and you think that has nothing to do with you as a citizen, you think that has nothing to do with your responsibilities, then I question and challenge your definition of what it means to be a citizen. But most people walking around think if they show up and vote that they’re really good citizens. And, you know, the “I listen to the news and I vote.” We have a country in which most people try to get out of jury duty, which is the responsibility of citizenship. But people will think because they voted that they’re great citizens. So I’m calling for us to reexamine ourselves and to reexamine how we walk in citizenship in this country, especially at this time when it’s very obvious that the citizenship that we’re being called to requires so much more.
Errin:
Yeah. Yeah. I know that you describe yourself as a perpetual optimist, so, I’m just wondering if you can leave us with some of that optimism now in terms of what gives you hope for the future of American democracy?
Sherrilyn:
Well, it’s one of the reasons I spend so much time in history, because, you know, that’s what allows me to see that there has to be a way through. There have been so many times when it was impossible to imagine getting to a place of greater freedom, of greater equality. This is part of the problem of looking back on the Civil Rights Movement as though it was this wonderful period of nobility all covered in sepia tones. It was a time of tremendous pain, tremendous disillusionment. We wanna focus on the March on Washington and the soaring speech and all the people standing out there, and it seems so beautiful. But 1963 was a tough year. It was a tough year. You know, Medgar Evers had just been shot on his driveway in June, so there was a lot of pain. And it’s a reminder to me that, you know, we all wanna be living in the time when it feels like all the accomplishment is happening, but that’s not how it was.
Sherrilyn:
And so we just have to work through our time, and we have to be mature and recognize that fighting is fighting. It’s hard. But those of us who have had lives that would not have been possible 50, 60, 100 years ago — women, LGBTQ people, Black people, Latina people, Asian American people, poor White people, you know, whose grandparents and great grandparents could not have imagined the lives that they’re living — get it together. You know, these things didn’t just fall from the sky. People had to fight and advocate for them and make sacrifices. So I think that’s what helps me is just trying to imagine the kinds of things that people were able to make their way through to make our lives possible.
Errin:
Yeah. And that’s such a good reminder that we get not only the democracy that we vote for, but the democracy that we work for, and that requires all of us to, you know, amend that democracy to make it more real for everybody who is a citizen of this country. So, Sherrilyn, thank you so much for joining The Amendment and for illuminating the 14th Amendment for all of our listeners.
Sherrilyn:
Thanks so much, Errin. I appreciate it.
Errin:
Before we sign off, I wanted to let you know The Amendment Podcast is taking a brief summer break in August. But I want to make sure we stay connected, especially ahead of such a high-stakes election season, particularly for women and LGBTQ+ people. S to keep up with the latest from The 19th — and me! — make sure you’re subscribed to our daily email. Sign up at nineteenth news dot org slash daily newsletter. It’s an incisive, critical resource that mixes timely news with optimism, and it’s an easy way to stay close to our journalism. There’s a weekly option, too, at nineteenth news dot org slash weekly newsletter. I look forward to being in your inbox real soon.
Well, that’s this week’s episode of The Amendment, which is also a newsletter, by the way, that I write. You can subscribe to it for free by going to 19th news.org. That’s where you can also find all of our great journalism around gender, politics, and policy. For the 19th and Wonder Media Network, I’m Errin Haines. Talk to you again next week. The Amendment is a co-production of the 19th News and Wonder Media Network. It is executive produced by Jenny Kaplan, Terri Rupar and Faith Smith. Wonder Media Network’s Head of Development is Emily Rudder. Julia B. Chan is the 19th’s editor-in-chief. The Amendment is edited by Jenny Kaplan, Grace Lynch and Emily Rudder, and it is produced by Grace Lynch, Brittany Martinez and Taylor Williamson with production assistance from Luci Jones. And post-production support from Julie Bogen, Victoria Clark, Lance Dixon and Wynton Wong.