- Just ahead on "Black Issues Forum," local elections have come and gone, but we're not done voting just yet.

Lots of developments to consider for 2024 and later in the show talks resurface about historical monuments and naming that represent our history of slavery and oppression.

Question is, are we preserving our history?

Are we preserving our future?

Stay with us.

- [Announcer] "Black Issues Forum" is a production of PBS North Carolina with support from the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation.

Quality Public Television is made possible through the financial contributions of viewers like you who invite you to join them in supporting PBS NC.

[upbeat music] ♪ - Welcome to "Black Issues Forum," I'm Kenia Thompson.

Local elections results are in and talks of 2024 elections are in high gear.

There's a lot to discuss as usual with our political round table.

So let's get right to it and bring in our guests of political experts and friends of the show.

Let's welcome Immanuel Jarvis, Chairman of the Durham GOP, Mary C. Curtis, Roll Call Columnist and Host of "It's Equal Time" podcast.

And Brett Chambers, Professor at North Carolina Central University.

Welcome to the show.

- Thank you.

- Thank you.

- Thank you.

- Yeah, of course, Mary, there's a lot to talk about.

We'll start with you first.

North Carolina election has passed voter ID, and we've experienced that through this last local elections.

Let's talk about any issues and potential impacts that it had.

- Well, that was a change.

Remember that we did not have voter ID and then it was brought back.

The North Carolina Supreme Court changed from a four-three Democratic majority to a five-two Republican one.

And elections officials in North Carolina said there were no major issues with the new photo ID requirements, which is good.

There are forms of ID that you could use.

The thing is, and the problem that some folks have with it is many see this as a solution in search of a problem because voter fraud is virtually non-existent, in-person voter fraud in the country and in the state.

And we see that a lot of this issue of voter ID and photo ID has become a partisan issue.

And it really surfaced quite a bit after the 2020 election, remember former President Trump said that there was a voter fraud, particularly in cities like Detroit and Atlanta, Philadelphia, predominantly Black areas.

And I will say that in North Carolina, a problem actually has been turnout where we've had low turnout.

And people are saying, do we want to put more obstacles in place, particularly that affect people who may not have a passport or driver's license, the poor, the elderly, those that have other issues.

And so, yes, nothing really happened, but do we really know how many people didn't come out because they felt they did not have the ID?

And you could vote provisionally, but then you would have to go back to the County Board of Elections and prove that you were that person and have a voter ID.

So I think you will see these laws back in court.

Remember that a former voting law in North Carolina was struck down by a federal court that said it went after Black voters with almost surgical precision.

So unfortunately, we see that whenever we have these voting laws in North Carolina, we also have these court fights.

- Good points.

And one of my concerns also is that we may not have seen the numbers that we should have seen at this time around.

Immanuel, were there any surprises in the number of folks who showed up to vote?

Any surprises in the results that we saw?

- Well, when you have an off-year election, municipal elections are really about highlighting the effectiveness of local governance.

And so issues like the economy or investigations on national figures or billions of dollars going to fund international conflicts are really not on the table.

So instead, people are looking at things closest to them in their neighborhoods.

Public safety, the effectiveness of schools, fixing roads, zoning and annexing.

Those are the things that really are highlighted in municipal elections.

And sadly, Americans tend to gravitate towards the national and don't really pay attention to their local races.

And so that's an issue.

But what we've also seen is that there is more of a polarization that we're seeing in counties.

Blue counties are becoming bluer, red counties a lot of times are becoming redder.

I think people are moving to where they feel comfortable with where the ideology lines up with their own value system.

And because of that, they're electing people that reflect their values.

- And so are some of those things that you mentioned, those part of our consideration for 2024 elections?

I know people mistake where we vote for what.

And so what are some things that we should be thinking about with the 2024 elections?

- Yeah, Kenia, you're absolutely right.

I think a lot of times our citizenry does sometimes get confused on exactly who they're voting for and what they're expecting from that particular branch, whether that's executive, judicial, or legislative.

But I think that, you know, in 2024, the United States and the American people just really need to be intellectually honest about the vulnerability of our nation, economic health of our nation, how illegal immigration is hurting, especially Black Americans.

You know, they say that when white America experience an economic sniffle, Black Americans experience an economic flu.

And right now Black Americans are suffering.

And you know, a week from today it's gonna be Thanksgiving and many are gonna be struggling to put Thanksgiving Day dinner on their table.

And these are things that as we get closer to 2024, people are gonna need to take a look at their pocketbooks, take a look at their IRA accounts, take a look at exactly how their kids are doing in school, the cost of college, are they able to save, their credit card debt, inflation?

These are the things that I really do believe that are going be really foremost and pinnacle when people are going to the polls in November of 2024.

- And we'll circle back to finances, but Brett, I wanna come to you.

North Carolina voting rights advocates just earlier this month were in federal court trying to block a law related to felons voting rights ahead of the 2024 elections.

They wanna make it so that people who are illegally registered to vote while on probation or parole for a felony can only be charged if they knew what they were doing wrong.

That confused me a little bit.

What are your thoughts on this?

How do they know, or how can they even prove that someone wasn't actually illegally trying to vote, or they actually knew that they were doing something wrong?

- Well, first of all, thanks for being here.

And I wanna go back to something that Brother Immanuel pointed out was that people are voting based on, and they're moving to where that represents their ideals.

And some of this actually has to do with going back to your original question, this is a historical problem going back to slavery because the prison system is a representation of that, it's the modern day version of slavery.

There's all kinds of literature about the education to prison pipeline.

And these are things that are influencing who the powers that be want to determine are gonna be eligible to vote.

And a lot of it is about scare tactics and strategy.

It's a psychology, like if we tell you that you may not be able to vote because you may get put in jail, then you may not show up.

And if you don't vote, if you're not the population that's been identified to vote our way, then we've scared you away.

You know, your probability of voting is a lot less.

And a lot of these are, a lot of these policies that are trying to be put in place are strategies to keep people that don't vote for whichever side is trying to put that policy in place.

It's just like trying to rig the game in your favor.

- Yeah, good point.

So let's get back to that financial topic that Immanuel was trying to touch on.

Mary, we've discussed the potential government shutdown here on the show.

We've had the conversation of stop gaps being put in place.

And once again, we're here, I believe the date was November 17th, that they had to make a decision.

I've asked it before, but are we just delaying the inevitable?

I feel as, and this is my personal opinion, is that they're trying to get us through the holidays, maybe to spend some money to feel secure, and then we may be hit with some hard news later on.

What are your thoughts on that, Mary?

- Well, we see they just escaped it, right?

The Senate and House have agreed, and the president will sign this bill, but it is just a stopgap measure.

And I think Americans are looking at the dysfunction in Washington and they're seeing these representatives who are, can't seem to get out of their own way thinking, "Hey, I can fund my own household, what's happening here?"

But the hold up we see is that it was a Republican-controlled House, which is kind of split.

They have that new speaker, Mike Johnson, and he had a bit of a honeymoon, but we also see members of his own party who wanted some very deep spending cuts.

So he needed democratic support to get this bill.

And it only is until next year, early next year, it's this laddered approach where some of the government will be funded until January 19th, and then some of it will be funded until February 2nd.

And you're right, we will be right back here where there'll be fights over it.

And we see that this bill may not have had these steep cuts, but also there's a lot of issues that are still out there, funding for Ukraine, for Israel, for Taiwan, humanitarian assistance, funding for the border.

And we see even here in North Carolina that some of our own representatives, Greg Murphy and Dan Bishop voted against this bill.

And so, you know, Mike Johnson will have some problems and we'll see that there'll be fights over funding for the IRS, which they wanted to cut funding for that, which would've added billions to the deficit.

So yes, this is a stopgap measure because nobody wanted to be seen as shutting down the government right before the holidays, having military veterans and TSA workers operating without salaries.

So this was a happy Thanksgiving gift, but we see, yes, early next year, we'll be having these same fights.

And the speaker says he won't continue with these continuing resolutions.

So, okay.

We're gonna see what's gonna happen again.

There was a little more agreement in the Senate because right now it's the House that seems to be fighting back and forth.

- Not much of a gift in my opinion, but we'll see what happens.

We'll see what happens.

Immanuel, let's talk about South Carolina Senator Tim Scott.

He decided on November 12th that he was gonna drop out of the race for GOP presidential nominee, but we still have about eight folks left in GOP presidency candidacy.

So let's talk about the 2024 candidate pool as well as former President Trump's standing.

- Yeah, well, you know, what I've learned being in politics, especially on the presidential side and for that matter in every level is that there are three reasons why people run for office.

A lot of people think that there's only one, they want to be elected, but there's actually more reasons than that.

And number one, obviously they want to be the president or elected into the candidacy of their position.

But the other one is just to really be able to raise their political brand in hopes to become like in a cabinet position.

The two examples of that, the previous administration, Dr. Ben Carson, head of HHS, and then also Pete Buttigieg, who is the mayor, and now he's over the Department of Transportation.

So those are two examples of how people will run, knowing that they're not going to win, but they're trying to curry favor so that if there are side winds, that they're in an opportune place to catch a cabinet position or apointee or something like that.

And then the last that I've just recently been able to discover just over my time in politics is that there's some people run because that's their job to run.

Campaigns receive millions of dollars just on one to 2% approval rating throughout the nation, millions of dollars.

And not only does that pay for staff and campaign managers, but it actually goes to the candidate to take care of some of their expenses as well.

So there's multiple reasons why people run.

Now, in the case of the 2024 Republican primary, Trump is a forerunner with like a plus 45.

I mean, he's way, way, way outside of the realm in terms of the other candidates.

But those secondary and tertiary candidates are really looking for one of those two things, to either, if Trump is successful, to be able to be considered as either VP or a cabinet position, or they are trying to kind of stick around to see exactly what is gonna happen to him as a possible second place person if Trump is no longer in the picture.

- You know, one thing that I've noticed more and more increasingly over the years is this violent rhetoric or just really kind of dangerous language that's starting to creep into these political races.

I'm sorry, Brett, when we talk about hearing this type of language, we've heard it in Trump's Veterans Day speech calling opponents vermin and his promises to go after those he feels have been disloyal members of Congress.

And then now we're hearing more about language and behavior being more of a distraction.

Are there things that we should be paying more attention to?

Are these distractive methods that they're using to keep us distracted from what we really should be seeing?

- It's more Trump appeasing his base and making sure the people that are on board with him are still on board with him.

He's giving the appearance of being Mr. Strong Guy.

This is not something new, I heard somebody on MSNBC talk about quoting Maya Angelou of all people, saying, "When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time."

And Trump hasn't changed since he started.

This is classic Trump.

He knows how to play the media.

He knows how to convince people how to do things.

He knows how to engage his audience, if you will.

He's still doing what Trump has always done.

This is not new.

And his base is gonna be his base.

They're hardcore, they're locked in.

And like you said, you know, he could shoot somebody on Fifth Avenue and get away with it.

That's the kind of mentality that he has.

Now, as far as the rest of 'em, I go back to Immanuel, it's not just for the Republicans, but on both sides it's just about they're running because they want something else other than just being in office.

And people waiting to see what happens to Trump, if anything, and Trump's people are waiting to see, because they're waiting for their marching orders of what's gonna happen with them once the decision of whatever comes down.

This is a way to see, but it's a strategy that he's used since he came down the escalator.

This is not new.

- It's not new.

And I wanna bring in someone else that it's not new when we talk about offensive language, is Lieutenant Governor Mark Robinson, who recently traveled to Israel, but he's been known for antisemitic language and talks and conversation.

Mary, I wanna direct this to you.

What are your thoughts on his visit to Israel?

You know, he's facing criticism from the Black community.

What are your thoughts there?

- Well, it's interesting because we see Mark Robinson, who's Lieutenant Governor doing what all politicians do when they're running for a greater office.

We think he may be the Republican nominee for governor, and they pivot from talking to a smaller audience to a bigger one.

So he's downplaying some of this more divisive rhetoric when it comes to abortion, LGBTQ rights and other things.

And even these hints in the past where people have accused him of downplaying the Holocaust and antisemitic language.

So we see him going to Israel and saying he's standing shoulder to shoulder with Israel.

And some of his even Republican opponents are saying, "Wait a minute, you have to answer for what you have said in the past."

Is this a hypocritical thing?

But obviously he's trying to appeal to a broader audience now, and you'll see him downplaying a lot of his more divisive rhetoric.

You also see that there reports that he's planning an event with Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago.

So he is trying to tag on to the Trump base when it comes to North Carolina, which is interesting because Trump did win North Carolina twice, but by very narrow margins.

But right now, Mark Robinson is trying to place himself, of course, saying he has foreign policy credibility going to Israel, and that he has the national support of Trump.

We don't know what will happen with that, but we can see this happening.

And it's all a part of his strategy to broaden his base so that he will be a better gubernatorial candidate and he won't be able to be quite as divisive as he has been.

That rhetoric has worked for him.

You were talking about that rhetoric in the past.

But as a general candidate, he'll have to broaden that appeal.

- Yeah, a lot of tactics happening.

So we gotta stay careful and stay vigilant, for sure.

In this next block I wanted to talk about Davidson College and Davidson, North Carolina.

They've announced this week that they will not rename its central academic building that's named after Maxwell Chambers, a slave owner who helped keep the school afloat before the Civil War.

There was a time that news of Confederate monuments or those that represented a dark time in history came with mixed emotions, questioning if they should remain or be removed.

I've had the beautiful experience of being able to go to Africa and when I saw this story, I thought about my experiences going to slave castles, going to the slave dungeons, going to the point of no return and realizing from the folks there, they told us, "We keep this history so we remember where we came from.

We keep this history so that we don't forge what our ancestors have done for us."

So I wanted to bring this question to the panelists today to talk about how do we feel?

I know again, it's a continued conversation, but Mary, I wanna come back to you.

How does it feel?

It feels like a trend to wanna pull down these historical monuments that represent the story of slavery in this country.

But what are your thoughts on pulling them down?

Should we keep them or should we get rid of them?

- Well, I think it's not about erasing history, it's about who and what a society wants to honor.

And I think the monuments, it's mostly about putting 'em in context because so many of these, remember, were not placed right after the Civil War to honor the Confederate War debt, it was placed in the beginning of the 20th century.

They were more monuments to Jim Crow to remind African Americans what their place was in society.

Many of them were outside courtrooms to remind Black folks a two-tiered system of justice.

So we in North Carolina have a law that limits what you can do with these monuments and many say you can't take them down, but a lot of folks wanna put them in museums so they would be preserved, but have a context to show what it was about that the Civil War, yes, was fought over slavery.

And some of these people that we are honoring shouldn't be honored.

So I find it fascinating.

At the same time, we're having these discussions, we're having discussions about book bans and how slavery in the Civil War and the history of systemic racism is presented in the classroom to our children.

And many people don't want that truth to come out.

So I think there that everybody wants to know, should want to know history and what did happen, but to place it into a context.

And we've seen that even in North Carolina, the renaming of Fort Bragg after a Civil War figure to Fort Liberty and that's, I think, what the discussion should be about.

It's not about erasing the history, it's about who are the people that we want to honor.

And to put all of that history into context, remember when these were first put up, Black people had nothing to say about it.

It was a way to reframe the Civil War with the South as victors or fighting for the noble cause.

And we know that that is a myth, the myth of the lost cause.

- Yeah, you brought up book bans, Immanuel, I was gonna kind of throw that your way as well.

What are your thoughts on the college's decision to keep that name, and then do you feel the same as far as keeping or retaining information, keeping or getting away, giving away information in our books that they're trying to ban now?

- Well, you know, I've read the comments from the president of Davidson College and my thoughts are this, Davidson made his decision.

Whether you agree with it or not, they're a private organization, they can do what they want to do.

Now, Black Americans also have a decision to make.

We can choose not to send our kids there.

Simple as that.

You know, our money is our voice.

And so even if your kid gets the only division one scholarship offer from Davidson, you have a choice whether you wanna send your kid to that school or not.

But I think we also need to be cognizant that there are so many, there's so many implements and illustrations of slavery names.

And so if we go around trying to take away, or even put in the proper context of every kind of park building lake or building that has a slave owner's name on it, we're gonna find ourself in a very interesting position, for instance, I don't think a lot of people realize this, and I'm actually a part of this tribe, my ancestors are, but the Cherokee tribe was one of the largest slave owners in the nation, at one point, they had 4,600 slaves at one time.

Now, do we want to go out west and take the name off of the county, Cherokee County?

Probably not.

Or even the Seminoles, which are also known for slavery as well in Florida, taking the mascot away from Florida State.

I think if we're really honest to ourselves today, the date, November I believe it's the 16th, 2023, we have more slavery on this planet today than we've ever had before.

Matter of fact, even in Raleigh in Durham, we have child sex trafficking and slavery going on right now.

So instead of framing and talking about what has happened in the past or names of the building, which I would submit that maybe 1% of the individuals who are walking into these buildings even know who that person represented, that we should focus on the victims today in 2023 that are suffering right under our noses.

So those are my thoughts on that.

- Yeah, good points, Brett, I wanna bring you in, just a couple minutes left in the show.

As an educator, what are your thoughts?

- First of all, I'd like for us to choose humanity over hubris anyway, because these monuments were put up because the powerful wanted to remind the powerless who they were and not just the Black folks, it was other people too.

You know, sometimes in these conversations about the race wars, it's the class wars and the classes, like the powerful will not voluntarily relinquish power.

So it's gonna be taken by struggle and it's gonna be taken by struggle when the powerless decide to go against the powerful.

And that, whether it's a monument in front of a courthouse or a name on a building, and people can, like, as Immanuel said, vote with their dollars and also vote with where they send their children.

But the education part, we have to do a really good job of boosting our education system right now because our students are not getting the full context of our history or of the other skill sets that they need to survive this new global economy.

- Well, thank you all so much.

This was such an insightful show.

I know there's still gonna be a lot to talk about as we get closer to 2024 and all the developments that will be happening with the presidential election.

So Brett Chambers, Immanuel Jarvis, Mary C. Curtis, thank you very much for being here and we look forward to having you again.

- Thank you.

- Thank you so much.

- Of course.

We hope you enjoyed that show.

And we invite you to continue engaging with us on Instagram using the hashtag #BlackIssuesForum.

You can also find our full episodes on pbsnc.org/blackissuesforum and on the PBS Video app.

I thank you for watching.

I'm Kenia Thompson.

I'll see you next time.

[upbeat music] ♪ ♪ - [Announcer] "Black Issues Forum" is a production of PBS North Carolina with support from the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation.

Quality Public Television is made possible through the financial contributions of viewers like you who invite you to join them in supporting PBS NC.