Ep.14: Theodore R. Johnson | Public Policy Scholar & Military Veteran | The Power in "I Am"
This week on the podcast, host Mungi Ngomane is joined by Theodore R. Johnson III. Theodore is a Senior Fellow and Director of the Fellows Program at the Brennan Center for Justice at the NYU School of Law, where he undertakes research on race, politics, and American identity. Prior to joining the Brennan Center, he was a National Fellow at New America and a Commander in the United States Navy, serving for twenty years in a variety of positions, including as a White House Fellow in the first Obama administration and as speechwriter to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. His work on race relations has appeared in prominent national publications across the political spectrum, such as the New York Times Magazine, the Atlantic, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, and the National Review.
In this conversation, Mungi and Theodore touch on his time in the military, the challenges the military faces and the paradox of the Black American experience. Theodore also speaks about his book, When the Stars Begin to Fall: Overcoming Racism and Renewing the Promise of America, which outlines a path toward multiracial national solidarity to finally overcome the existential threat of racism in the United States. He shares honestly where he is in his life's purpose and explains the concept of the power in "I am" instead of "my name is."
Full Episode Transcript
Mungi: Hi, I'm Mungi welcome to the Everyday Ubuntu podcast.
Theodore: Everything that happens in the real world also happens in the military and especially in the United States, the military is held up as this bastion of meritocracy where race doesn't matter. And it's just not accurate.
Mungi: This week. I'm joined by the military veteran and public policy scholar, Theodore R Johnson, currently the director of the fellow’s program at the Brennan center for justice.
His work explores the role that race plays in electoral politics, issue, framing, and disparities and policy outcomes. We spoke a great deal about his book when the stars to begin to fall overcoming racism and renewing the promise of America. And its central premise is that racism is an existential threat to America.
I was interested to hear his thoughts on the involvement of military veterans during the January six interaction. And in response, he shared the very real paradox of the black American experience. For those of you who like practicality, he detailed some concrete things we can do to foster national solidarity.
Here's our conversation.
R Johnson welcome to the Everyday Ubuntu podcast. Thank you for speaking with me today.
Theodore: Yeah, thank you for having me. It's great to be here,
Mungi: excited to speak with you. And I will just jump right in and ask my first question. It's about how our resumes are not a full explanation of who we are as a person.
And so I'm wondering what's missing from your resume that you think is important for people to know about.
Theodore: Yeah, it's a great question. And actually, it's a question that I had to answer myself because I spent the first two decades of my career in the military. And after 20 years in the military, you get to retire and go do something else.
And the something else I wanted to do was go think about the way that race interacts with our politics and how that shapes the way people vote, the way it shapes public policy outcomes. But when I was applying for a position. All people could see was my resume. And which suggested that I knew nothing about race and politics, except for the doctorate that I just finished earning and everything on my resume was all national security, this military that and so the thing usually resumes paint, a picture of a person that puts them in a box of sorts.
And I think that the thing about me not on the resume is that my mind is more curious than the things I've done. Things I've worked on in the past. And so my viewpoints aren't easily categorized my approach to different questions or different issues aren't easily put in a box. And so it's because of that, that I can talk about something like race and politics and the outcomes where my opinions aren't immediately evident because I'm, I bring an objective as best I can and objective viewpoint.
To the question and then just see where the research and the information take me. So it's that what you, the person on my resume is usually not the person you end up meeting when we sit down in person, because of how unorthodox my approach to questions are that would be seem out of step with what one would think of a military.
guy.
Mungi: More curious. I like that. That's always good. I think we need more of that. Okay. So you spoke about, what you did after you retired from the military. And I know that you're a public policy scholar, but I'm wondering what made you join the military?
Theodore: Yeah. So I was a math at Hampton university HBCU in Virginia, and I didn't want to teach math and I didn't want to go to grad school. I only majored in math because I was good at it in high school. So that left me in a little bit of a lurch. And so frankly, I joined the military because. When they learned that there was this black kid who was a math major, they had a whole bunch of money to diversify their officer Corps, that they were willing to throw at me.
So I joined the primarily for job security or to have a job after college, also to travel some, to get my, both my professional feet under me, but also my. To just mature a little bit. And then the third reason is I grew up, my parents were first-generation college kids worked in corporate America, their whole lives, which mean I had a pretty middle-class existence and I felt like life had come too easy for me.
So the military was a way to force me to earn something on my own sort of a Rite of passage into manhood. And so those were like the three reasons that I joined the military, none of which were like, this lifelong dream of being in uniform or anything like that.
Mungi: Oh my goodness. I, there are some things that I feel have come too easy for me, but I don't know if I was, I'd make that kind of plunge.
I went to boarding school. So we'll say I got my discipline at boarding school. Let's
Theodore: just say, let's
Mungi: just say that. So then I wonder. What has your experience as a black man in the military been, what are the sort of challenges that you saw in your time that you think have not still been overcome yet? That needs to be over.
Theodore: Yeah, the military is a cross-section of society. Everything that happens in the real world also happens in the military and especially in the United States, the military is held up as this bastion of meritocracy where race doesn't matter. And it's just not accurate. It is true that I have had tremendous professional opportunities at an early age that I probably wouldn't have gotten in any other institution.
It's also true that. I've some of my promotions have been called like affirmative action handouts by some of my colleagues or folks who thought I got certain jobs offered to me because I was the one who diversified an Admiral or General's office. So that's that kind of discrimination also happens in the military just as it does in the real world.
So what it told me is that that one, I had the skills to succeed in. A professional environment, even when the deck is sometimes stacked against you. And two, it showed me a reaffirmation for me that no matter. How hard you work, no matter how well you align yourself with an organization's principles or its culture, that people will still think that whatever you've achieved was helped along simply because you're black.
And it's interesting that The same folks that say, America has all the opportunities in the world for anyone doesn't matter their race or their colour if they just are willing to work hard for it. And the military becomes the embodiment of that. And then when a black man shows up in the military or a black woman shows up in the military and does exactly that works hard and achieves, then it's oh, you only got that because of a diversity quota or affirmative action handouts.
So it's in this no-win situation and you learn to navigate those waters rather adeptly. And in the military just as you would incorporate,
Mungi: yeah. I like how you, it is a cross-section of society. And I guess sometimes we don't necessarily think about that. And I think, yeah, I think sometimes people forget about that, but you saying that I was like, oh, you are right.
Of course, anything that would happen in society would happen there. Speaking of a cross-section of society, obviously identity is something that is very complicated and in the U S identity is clearly extremely complicated. And when I think about January six, there was a part of it that was not only about race, but it's impossible to deny that there were clearly racial elements, when we see swastikas and Confederate flags being waved and hoisted up.
And so I wonder if you can speak about the dichotomy of believing in this institution, like the military. While also then being disappointed and hurt by it because we know that there were military veterans that were there and were part of the insurrection. Does that make sense?
Theodore: Yeah, absolutely.
It's a tough question. And, it manifests in so many ways. The summer I retired from the military was the same summer. Colin Kaepernick started kneeling during the National Anthem. And so I'm walking into the Pentagon in uniform and folks are saying, I can't believe this guy's kneeling during the Anthem.
What do you think about it? And I'm like, I completely understand I've been stopped by police more than 40 times in my life. Like this stuff it happens. And so I can be a person that both understands and both has an appreciation for the flag and the principles that stand for and recognize the nation has fallen short of the principles of which the flag stands for.
And so my saluting it alongside Kaepernick kneeling for kneeling in front of it. For me, there's no tension. It's that it makes perfect sense to me that there are these two different ideas about the nation that are. Define our existence in it. When I think about being black in America I think like those folks that were enslaved in the country still woke up every morning and fought for their emancipation in one way or another, sometimes in a passive way, but sometimes it was rebellion.
Sometimes they joined the revolution. He joined the military to fight for the nation's independence or security and hopes that their sacrifice for the country. Rewarded by their emancipation or their Liberty. And they only found out that after that sacrifice that they weren't granted, slavery was still persistent for 90 years after the nation was founded.
And so for me, the Black American experience is an experience of paradoxes. It's this quandary of wanting access to the rights and privileges of citizenship being denied, those things, but still managing to insist on being part of the country instead of abandoning the whole project together. So as a black man, whose skin suggests that I'm not completely compatible with America in a military uniform, which is the epitome of American patriotism.
That is the ultimate paradox. Maybe only outpaced by a black family in the white house, but for most Americans, it's hard to wrestle with that imagery. And I look at it as this is your problem. I don't have any problem being black in uniform or being black in America. Its society has a problem of seeing me as the full sort of embodiment of American principles, simply because of the racial group I belong to.
And that sort of characterizes the nations. It has had with race since its beginning. Yeah.
Mungi: It's like this like simultaneous opposing existence that we are trying to live
Theodore: through. Debois calls it a double consciousness or Tunis. This idea of a, I think he said something like both a Negro and an American.
Two warring ideals, trying to live in one dark body whose strength alone prevents it from being torn apart. And I say other ideas, aren't actually at war, there's nothing incompatible with blackness and equality or Liberty or freedom. It's just the exercise of those principles in our country has not lived up to what those things stand for.
So the tension is that the people in our nation have been unwilling to live up to its principles, but the tension is not in blackness.
Mungi: Speaking about that and blackness in America and in America in general, could you share the origin story behind your book when the stars begin to fall and I know that you speak about the American promise in that.
So could you expand upon that?
Theodore: Yeah. So the book is basically an argument that if we don't address structural racism in the United States, That the idea of America that we are all created equal, that we have unalienable rights to life, Liberty pursuit of happiness, that our democratic government derives its power from the consent of the governed.
All of that stuff becomes meaningless because the United States will show them that it's more vested in racial inequity. Then it is on delivering the promise of America, of these ideals to every American. And so it paints, it pulls the question of racism out of people's hearts and says, we're not talking about how you feel about the guy across the street.
We're talking about the way our society is built, the way it's structured in a way that fosters racial inequality. And you can't have a structure that does that. And claim that you're the nation that believes all of us are created equal. So either we. Perpetuate racial inequality, or we take it down, but we can't do both.
And if we don't address it sufficiently then the American idea, it doesn't last. So the book basically paints lays out a pathway to how a multiracial coalition of folks can come together. To hold the nation-state accountable for not delivering on its promises of treating us all equally and making sure we all have access to the full rights and privileges of citizenship.
And what the book also does. It says that the model for this multiracial solidarity can actually be found in black America in the attributes black folks have had to employ use, develop and employ in order to. Push the nation to become a better version of itself. So over, our 245-year existence, we have become a nation-state where democracy is more available where slavery has been abolished, where separate but equal has been deemed unconstitutional, but we've not yet arrived at this perfect egalitarian multiracial democracy, but a lot of the pushing from where we were to where we are today is because black Americans have insisted.
On their inclusion, which has forced the nation to act in a more democratic manner. So the book lays out the way to get to this multi-racial democracy by looking at the history of black folks and the politics that they've employed to bring it about in hopes that if we can.
A picture of what it could look like then maybe we might be able to muster up the courage to do something about it so that we leave the nation just a little bit better than the one we inherit.
Mungi: Yeah. Can I get a group of people together to be these citizens that do that, but also I, it totally makes sense.
What you're saying about Black solidarity because I also saw I think it was maybe a tweet somewhere where some, I don't remember who it was, so I feel bad. I can't quote them, but they had said, show me an issue where black people are on one side and white people are on another side. And where in the end, the white people had been right.
And black people have said, oh, you know what? You were right about that. And I was like, yeah, guys, I gotta tell you that has not happened yet. So maybe you should listen to
Theodore: well, and it's because if you are the group that benefits from the status quo, Then what is your interest in disrupting what's happening?
The only thing you're looking to do is entrench yourselves in your current advantage position, and then maybe secure a little bit more advantage for the future. Whereas if you're in the out-group, the folks that have been left out of this democracy, everything you do is to expand the reach of democracy tomorrow.
How is that harmful to anyone? As opposed to, if you're a part of a group that's looking to lock in advantage? Of course, you're harming people that are not in that, that have been left out of the higher fee or at the lower levels of the hierarchy. So the push for black inclusion in America, Inherently makes America a better version of itself and a version that lives up to its creed instead of one that looks to take power away from folks and hoard it for themselves and exclude people from democracy, which is has been characterized too much of the nation's history.
Yeah.
Mungi: And then I know that you spoke about last summer's protest as a small glimpse into what national solidarity could look like. Could you explain that please? Cause you know, I'm sure you've seen now this, the sort of articles and things that come out that have said now there were this many people that believed in black lives matter and now like the members have gone down all of a sudden,
Theodore: right?
Yeah. So I do think last summer was a glimpse of national solidarity, but I don't think it was specifically in response to George Floyd's murder. If we look at the sweep of 2020 you have a, Arbery being killed by white vigilantes in Georgia. You have Brianna Taylor being shot by police and Louisville, and you have George Floyd being murdered in Minnesota.
And you have a global pandemic that is killing hundreds of thousands of Americans and millions around the world. And you have an economy that is now crumbling. And those who are most vulnerable are being hurt because coronavirus has now shut businesses down and people now have economic instability no jobs, unemployment, et cetera.
And you have people stuck in their homes and told that they can't, there are curfews that are happening. They can't gather with family and friends. And so all of those things together created a. A large swath of the country was extremely dissatisfied with the role government was playing and not sufficiently addressing any of those things, much less all of those things.
So it wasn't that they just failed. Brianna Taylor and George Floyd, it wasn't that they just failed on stemming the tide of coronavirus. So they failed and providing economic support or they failed and providing some social outlet or safety for the majority of American states. They failed on all of those things.
The protests we saw for weeks on end last summer, across every state in the country. Multi-generational across party lines, across races, ethnicities across religions was a multiracial coalition of folks coming together saying the government has, is not doing what it's supposed to do, and we're not happy about it.
George Floyd's death was the. But it wasn't the only thing that went to those protests. And the way we know this is that in the presidential election of 2020, we had the highest voter participation rate we've seen in 120 years. That is the sign of a people that are not happy with what government is.
But what we also saw was that the election was really decided by about 40,000 votes over about three states in the electoral college. And then we see January, so scary, which is why we got January 6th, just because we were all civically engaged in the election. That doesn't mean we were fighting for the same thing.
And so when the losing side, which just so happened to be predominantly white and on the far right. And Trump supporters couldn't accept the fact that they'd been beaten. They storm the Capitol and declared the election of fraud. So this is, so we got a glimpse of what national solidarity could look like.
The problem is we didn't agree on who and what government should do and who should benefit from the government's actions. And the fighting we've seen post-election through January 6th and even up to today is a result. Two large sections of the country fighting for very different things. And whereas we could all agree that the government wasn't doing its job last summer.
Most of us can't agree on government should be doing this summer,
Mungi: man. I don't know if I should be optimistic
Theodore: or not, we have to be
Mungi: well. Okay. You've clearly say that's one of the core premises of the book is that racism is an existential threat to America. And you've spoken about, what we as citizens can do, but are there one or two concrete things that you would say that we need to do now to foster this sort of national solidarity?
Overcome this threat.
Theodore: Yeah. In the short term, this is a long-term fight. This is something the nation has been fighting for since before it was even founded. So we were not going to win tomorrow, but in the short term, two things we can do. One is to support the legislation that expands access.
To democracy for more people. This means protecting folks voting rights. This means getting gerrymandering out of our elections. This means getting dark money out of our elections, like reform the institutions and processes so that we can all participate in our democracy. And then when the people have spoken that the system then protects the will of the people and execute on it and we have to fix our systems and structures, procedures, et cetera, to make that happen.
And there are bills in the states across the country. A couple of bills in Congress right now geared to do this very thing. Some of them to expand access and at the state level, in particular, some to restrict access. So this is the. Contemporary real-time fight. We're having about voting in America today and we have to win that one.
The second thing we can do is we don't know each other across racial lines. I think something like three and four white Americans and two and three black folks, don't have a single person of another race or ethnicity in their immediate social circle. And when you. Up the number to the number of us that have zero or one person of a different race or ethnicity.
It's like 80 to 90%. So we don't live around each other. Our kids don't go to school together in the places where we do convene together. Actually together, we're sitting in separate places, we're not talking to one another. And so what that happens is when those who were looking to divide us, but all they have to do is exploit racial tensions.
And there's, we're not resilient to that exploitation because we don't actually know people from the group that they're demonizing. So when they say things about immigrants, if you don't know any immigrants, you end up believing the guy from your party. If you don't know any black folks, you don't know any poor white folks, you end up believing.
All of the caricatures and stereotypes and that just further entrench division. So the best thing we can do on a day-to-day basis is to proactively seek out opportunities to engage people who are different from us to form connections with democratic strangers. It will be uncomfortable. It will be difficult, but if we don't interact, then the demonization is even more likely to happen.
And doom spiral to a place where, you know, any hopes of national solidarity aren't even. Yeah.
Mungi: And I also think that we rely on the like sort of one friend like my black friend says, and I've been that black friend and I'm like, you cannot put it all on one person because we are not a monolith.
So as your one black friend saying this does not mean that my other black friends agree with it. So let's expand. Let's expand the group.
Theodore: Yeah. And there's like we know what it's like to walk into a room at work at a club a bar or whatever and be the only person in that room that looks like us, and we have had to navigate a world.
Where that is commonplace. I think the script needs to be flipped a little bit and I think white Americans should be able to, they shouldn't force themselves into places where maybe they're the only one, or maybe they're in one of 10% of the room, looks like them. And 90%.
And instead of feeling like you're uncomfortable learn, get to know the people you're in the room with whether it's in an organization, whether it's at a bar or whatever, but you have to interact with other people in this country. If you want a multi-racial democratic society to be the end result because we're never going to fight for the rights of others.
Aside from ours, if we never have any exposure to those other groups, they're not my problem. They're not my issue. I'm just worried about me and my people, a multiracial democracy can't function that way. It's it, this is probably a tactic that is most comfortable for black people, frankly, because it's the way we've had to live.
Ever since we've been here, it will be most uncomfortable probably for white Americans and maybe even some other groups that live in like small enclaves and large cities, in Chinatown or little Cuba and that sort of thing to get out of those places and go and hang around. And watch the stereotypes fall away.
And then even when the times where the stereotype is confirmed or evidence of it, don't believe that now characterizes the entire. And if you meet a hundred black folks, you're going to find that the caricature, you saw them on cops on, that one black person on your favourite sitcom doesn't fit, and you need to, complicate your understanding of black folks in order to have a real understanding of how the nation is falling short, especially when it comes to access
to our democracy. Yeah. I heard
Mungi: someone once what you said about flipping the switch and I don't know. I don't know if it was my mom or maybe it was someone else, but they said what needs to happen is. White people or like a group of white women, I think, as we were discussing, like why feminism needs to go to Essence Fest, but not with a group of your friends, you need to go as an individual.
You need to stay where like, all of the people at Essence Fest are staying and like actually be involved. Cause that's what it's like for us every day. And then you'll see what, what life is and how we feel. You can't be with a group of four or five of you. You need to be like individually.
Theodore: And how that one black friend that you've had over your house, doesn't summarize the black experience in America? And so I think that's a great idea, force people to get outside of their comfort zone and have a better appreciation for the other folks in this country. And instead of thinking that they are the center of the universe and everyone else needs to assimilate to their way of living.
Yeah.
Mungi: And so now I want to ask you what is the concept of power.
Theodore: So this is actually something I've learned in the military. One of my drill instructors drills this into our head all the time. That when we introduced ourselves to never say my name is, but always to be more too, to take ownership of your name, because that is a way of taking ownership of your character, your identity, instead of by saying my name suggests that you.
It's a passive declaration of who you are. This is what people call me. This is how people see me. Whereas I am is assertive. It says, this is who I am, and this is how I present to the world. I took that on board because I wasn't a player. Like cloud chasing, frankly, for lack of a better word.
I was always looking for the academic award or the good job, like the accolade that would add to my resume that would tell people I'm important before they ever met me. Instead of finding just the inherent value of just being me and I am saying that I am, I have a story. I have a purpose.
I have passion. Meaning to this world beyond whatever rank is on my collar or whatever accolade is on my resume. And so the power and I am is just that it's like black lives matter, that assertion individualized, I don't matter because I'm black, I matter, and I'm black and I just, it's that recognition of the inherent value that people.
That doesn't need to be supplemented by these blue check marks from society to say that you are somebody important.
Mungi: I like that. I'm going to, I'm going to try and remember to introduce myself that way as well.
Theodore: Now it's tough. It actually is tough to win, hey, my name is that's how you introduce yourself at every conference or every, and so it is a mental flip of the switch to get out of that habit.
Mungi: And then what do you see as your purpose worker or your life's purpose? You've done a lot. We've obviously discussed and your resume is extensive, but what do you see as your life's
Theodore: purpose? Yeah, it's hard, I'm still, I think I'm still trying to figure it out.
It's trying to say, I want to leave the world better than I found it. But it's true. It, I know that when we will never get rid of racism, but I want my kids experience with it to be much better than mine, just like my experience with it was much better than my parents grew up in Jim Crow, in the deep south and their experience was much better than their parents experienced.
And so I think it's that, I think it's trying to force this world to be like, just to become a, to prioritize racial equality a little bit more. Tomorrow than it did yesterday. And in hopes that over time we will continue this trajectory towards a slightly more equal and more just society. And that's it.
And, I just and instead of being sensationalist and contributing to the division or trying to make money off of talking about racism by turning folks against one another, I'm okay with presenting it in like a nuance. Beautiful complex way and then suggest that it's hard to make the progress we want to see, but encouraging people that it's worth the difficulty if enslaved black folks who wake up every morning and not take themselves out, but instead go to the field in hopes that maybe tomorrow our work and our struggle and our demands will be enjoyed by future generations.
Then the least I can do is add my little 2 cents to the hill of sacrifice and blood that have been that have already been expended to create the country that we have now. So I guess that's, I guess that's it, to address the issue of racial inequality, both in society, but even in our public policy, in the things that we prioritize in the county,
Mungi: I get what you're saying because I feel the same way when I think of my mother having lived through apartheid, South Africa, and then still being the sort of like generous, empathetic, forgiving human that she is like, who am I to then, think that what I've been given is the worst and I can't continue on.
So I totally understand that.
Theodore: Yeah. And can you imagine the strength it takes to live in that kind of society? And still, maintain faith and hope and optimism for tomorrow and encourage your children to contribute to society. Instead of burning down for all the wrong, it's just black folks across the world, have an amazing capacity to endure and to improve on almost everything that we encounter.
And that's, like you said, who are we to say? The struggle is no longer worth it.
Mungi: It's that resilience that I'm sad that we have to have, but that we do have, and it connects to my next question. And it's what has sustained you in difficult moments, whether that's, in the military or dealing with racism these days?
Like what sort of keeps you going.
Theodore: Yeah. It's the faith of the folks that came before me. I like in those moments where I'm like, this is all crap and want to check out of whatever it is I'm doing and go do something else. I just think about my parents or my grandparents and how disappointed would they be if I quit or if I gave up instead.
Endured and improved on whatever it is I'm up against or come out of the other side of it with more knowledge, more information to pass on to other generations, to help other folks through those struggles so that they won't have as hard of a time. And that's what keeps me going, is making those who came before me proud and.
Sort of reminding them that their sacrifice wasn't in vain that all of the dreams they had to give up on those things weren't lost forever. They were just passed on through generations. And so I want to carry that mantle son and
Mungi: who are the people who have inspired you?
Theodore: So there's like the close folks, I think my grandmother,
my mother's mother really inspired me. One, because she believed in me in this way that I still don't understand. I don't know what it was she saw in me, but it's you, when other people see something in you you begin to. Believe in the power of that thing, even if you can't see it yourself.
Absolutely. She really went out. She just poured that into me in a way that made me think there was something special I was here to do, even if I don't know what that was or is. And so definitely her and of course my parents, and that's more to again, ensure that I'm delivering I'm a return on their investment for the things that they sacrifice in order to give us me and my siblings a good life, but then I've got the folks that inspire me, like in writing or in thinking and I think is probably at the top of the list and the way that he was able to.
Think about our nation through sociological terms and through beautiful writing that was both compelling in its logic, but also in its emotional appeals. And I will never get to that level of scholarship and pros, but I think both ends. He's an inspiration.
Mungi: I like that. I'm going to ask you my two favourite questions and the first one is what is your greatest fear for humanity?
Theodore: That selfishness will cause the whole thing to collapse that selfishness, whether it's around racial inequality, economic inequality, or a more national kind of selfishness that exacerbates things like climate change and that this great opportunity we have to create a society of world society.
Of enough, where there's enough food where there's enough opportunity for everyone, we will hoard it. And to the point where there's not enough for any of us. And then I fear that might have disastrous consequences in terms of war, but also in of like natural disasters and the way the environment rejects our use of it.
Mungi: Yes, absolutely. Yeah. And then what is your greatest hope for humanity?
Theodore: It is, I hope that we can figure out how to live in a multi-racial world society immediately. Finding ways to oppress other groups that don't look like us and the human history is filled with oppression across racial and ethnic groups.
Usually attached to land or resources or something like that. But the greatest hope is if we can figure out how to create a multi-racial egalitarian society. Then I think we would have fulfilled the greatest hopes and ambitions of mankind. If we can get out of the sort of more base selfish and doggy dog kind of living and instead expand the one that prioritizes opportunity and compassion and that sort of thing.
Especially across racial lines, I think I think that's the best we can hope.
Mungi: I agree with that. Ted Johnson, thank you so much for speaking with me today. It's been a pleasure.
Theodore: Yeah, thank you. This was great.
Mungi: I hope enjoyed this conversation today and don't forget to hit subscribe and give the show a rating and review wherever you enjoy your podcasts. Follow me at Mungi dot Ngomane on Instagram. I'd love to hear from you and get your feedback on the show. I'll be back in a week with a new episode. Thank you for listening to Everyday Ubuntu.