- Just ahead on Black Issues Forum, after the Supreme Court's decision to overturn Roe V. Wade, questions about the safety of other equal protections, the influence of politics on our nation's highest court, and why #whitelife trended two days after the decision.

Stay with us.

[upbeat music] ♪ Welcome to Black Issues Forum.

I'm Deborah Holt Noel.

This weekend we celebrate Independence Day and all the freedoms we enjoy as Americans.

Heavy in the air though are recent Supreme Court decisions chipping away at rights enjoyed for decades.

Of course, we're talking about the overruling of Roe V. Wade on June 24th that obliterates the constitutional right to abortion, but also the Supreme Court's ruling a day before that eliminated a suspect's right to sue if they've not been read their Miranda rights before police collect evidence.

And the same day, the Supreme Court struck down a New York gun law that placed restrictions on carrying a concealed weapon outside the home.

It all makes that federal gun law that President Biden just signed seem like a mere vapor.

And news and social media have been lit up with protestors, supporters, and #whitelife, so we're also talking about it.

We'll meet today's panel in a moment, but first we wanted to share some reflections from two of our other regular analysts, Senator Natalie Murdock and Greg Hedgepath.

Take a listen.

- This is the first time that young women and young girls will wake up and have fewer rights than the generation that preceded them.

- For me having two little girls, I cannot imagine a world where they cannot make their decision over their own bodies, especially, I need everyone to understand this, especially if that decision in the first place to have a child wasn't theirs.

- I believe she said what she said and she meant it.

In the words of Maya Angelou, "when people show you who they are, believe them".

- White supremacy has always had a place and existed in America and now more than ever, we are seeing that there are some folks that are embracing that and playing right into that narrative.

We've got a long way to go as it relates to gun control in our nation and I think it has to start with us finding some commonalities.

And I think we're progressing and beginning to do that, but we've gotta find some common sense commonalities as it relates to how some of these crimes are occurring and what gun control has to do with it.

- So many reasons with the tragedies of Texas and in Buffalo, New York.

We need to be doing everything we can to push common sense gun reform forward.

I'm thrilled that a bipartisan solution was agreed upon.

In DC, I'll admit I was pretty skeptical.

I didn't think we would get it done.

We've been so close, but really excited that we do have some federal action because at the state level, we just don't have that political leadership right now.

- I want to welcome journalists Mary C. Curtis of the "Equal Time" podcast, political analyst Steve Rao, and professor La'Meshia Whittington.

So glad to have all three of you today for this important conversation.

Mary, what concerns you most about what's happening with the Supreme Court and their recent decisions?

- Well, first of all, thank you.

This is such an important issue.

I think when I think of the Roe decision, I am most concerned for the people that this country, as I wrote in my "Roll Call" column, we seem not to be concerned about.

That's Black and Brown women, indigenous women, women of color, who always are being told what is best for them.

And the Roe decision takes away agency and choice.

And also, let's face it, abortions are going to happen, but it will be people of means who will be able to go where they need to go or have their doctors perform them.

In so many of these states where there are very strict restrictions, we also see it's a healthcare issue.

The maternal mortality rate for Black women is three times that in this country.

Let's just think about that.

So this is a basic healthcare issue.

Also, these laws are so very confusing that we already see instances of, say, a Black woman being prosecuted, though the case was eventually dismissed, because she had a miscarriage and there are suspicions that it was an abortion.

And so these laws are going to fall disproportionately on people of color, which is also the case with criminal justice and the Miranda ruling and so many other things.

This court doesn't really seem to take the real world into consideration in what is happening.

The guns.

Mayor Eric Adams of New York said, "we had hundreds of thousands of people in Times Square.

What if a third of them had guns and just started to shoot?

What would happen?"

This court seems to have certain outcomes in mind and then they have the reasoning that will bring them to that, even though sometimes it's really contradictory.

- Yeah, it is.

Contradictory in terms of what the people want versus what those few individuals in those positions of power want.

That's what it seems to be turning to.

But Steve, let me pull you in because Governor Cooper did issue a statement saying that he will "continue to trust women to make their own medical decisions as we fight to keep politicians out of the doctor's exam room."

So women in North Carolina do have a choice and, like Mary said, it's gonna be limited based on where you live.

How politically secure do you think that choice is right here?

- Well, I think in North Carolina the woman's right to choose is in real danger.

Let's look at the facts.

First of all right now, Governor Cooper has a veto, but all it takes is 3/5 of the General Assembly and the Senate for them to be able to override that veto.

Right now, they have 69 votes in in the House.

They would need three seats.

And they've got 28 seats in the Senate.

They would need two.

They would pick up the supermajority.

Then they would be in the driver's seat.

They could significantly restrict abortion rights.

They could join the number of states, 22 states, that are already implementing these things.

So, I think it's critically important for the people of North Carolina, to understand that this North Carolina is gonna be a battleground for this, like other states like Mississippi, like other states around the country where they're banning abortion.

And I'll end with this.

I mean, I think that, I mean, Speaker Moore has said they're gonna bring this up in the Long Session next year.

This was a year ago, they said that they weren't gonna change abortion law.

But what really is concerning to me is, typically the court has always been our high court, immune from partisan politics.

But now we've made it subject to the partisanship of the White House and the Congress.

And conservative courts always adhere to stare decisis, which is precedent.

So the role of the court has always been building on the precedent, going slowly, even under the tender of Justice Roberts, so that we can actually expand rights, not take them away.

And in just two days, we've overturned a decision that was in place for 50 years.

We've struck down a gun law in New York that was in place for 112 years.

And basically, this decision was radical and there's so many other rights that are also could be taken away, like gay marriage, contraception.

So, this is concerning for other rights that can be taken as well.

But yes, North Carolina's women's right to choose is in severe danger of being lost in the state of North Carolina.

- Thanks for that opinion.

LA, some argue that Roe v. Wade was about America doing better than offering abortion as the only alternative to a "complicated pregnancy."

Others argue this is a wedge issue, just a political pawn.

What do you say?

- We have to be very careful using our, at least, supporting dismissive language as political pawn, especially when we note that anything political, anything that's determined in the courts, has a grave impact on everyday people, especially Black and brown communities.

What is political for some, political can mean life or death for our communities.

And so when we talk about constitutional right, we're seeing the federal courts many times over, this isn't the first time and I really wanna ground, that we are in a continual state of the desecration of our democracy, if we are not careful.

At 2013, the Supreme Court made a determination to step back and to gut parts of the Voting Rights Act, a legislation that was passed in the 1960s, 1965, to protect Black communities from being racist gerrymanders, right, away from those discriminatory gerrymanders.

And their determination to gut that Voting Rights Act was saying that we were in a post racial society and states no longer needed to be governed by the federal government.

They can make their own self-determination on how they made their political voting maps.

Why do I bring this up?

Because this is the exact same tactic and argument that the Supreme Court used in order to do what?

Gut Roe v. Wade.

It is the exact same precision.

And the fact that our communities have been sounding the alarm, fighting in courts, fighting in communities, saying it is coming to everyone next again, just because it starts in Black community, doesn't mean it ends in Black community.

We are a sounding alarm to say if our rights are taken, as full citizens, as Americans who are still fighting to be recognized as Americans, guess what, it's coming for everyone because these are the same tactics.

So when we're talking about political pawn, we've gotta be very careful of that dismissive language, because the determination of the federal courts to say we are no longer going to tell the states, again, how to govern and what to do in terms of reproductive health, is the same precision of targeting populations, especially marginalized populations, that they've been using, whether it's redistricting, gerrymandering, voting rights, Miranda rights, the like, it even, the Supreme Court, the last thing I'll state on this.

In the last week, the same week the Supreme Court ruled that North Carolina Republican legislators could intervene on behalf of the voting rights ID, even though we already have an intervention that is underway, which means our ID law is once again, back on the table, and the Supreme Court, even though they've said as a federal government they shouldn't intervene, they've intervened in our state's decision on implementing, potentially, the voting ID law and making it hard on Black and brown and lower populations to actually cast the ballot.

We are in a serious situation but it didn't just start with Roe v. Wade, it is a continuation.

- And you're right.

It is a strategy.

We watched it happen with voting rights.

We've watched it happen with Roe v. Wade.

Right now, I'm concerned because what has gone undercover a little bit with all of these other news issues, is what's happening in schools, the information that gets communicated in school, that's still out there.

And I think about Brown versus Board of Education.

Nothing is a sacred cow right now, LA?

- That's right.

And I feel it preposterous in the light of celebrating Juneteenth.

Someone, a expert said to me, "Isn't it something that we celebrate Juneteenth, but we've been fighting against such legislation as critical race theory, to even tell children what Juneteenth is and why we celebrate it."

And just that irony of coming into this month and saying, "Well, look at that, we have a celebration for freedom, but we can't talk about it in schools, of what is the historical impetus that led to that emancipation."

Right.

You're exactly right.

And so, as we talk about the impacts on education, as we talk about the impact on Medicaid and Medicare, we also know that healthcare, access to healthcare, has been under attack for Black and brown communities for years.

We know that 16% of all Black women and girls who are reproductive age, are actually not covered by health coverage.

And that was in the wake of the implementation of the Affordable Care Act.

This has been an ongoing attack, especially rural hospitals closing, there's so much.

- So we all need to be on alert, paying attention, voting, but it's not even down to voting.

It seems as though even more needs to be done, but I do wanna move on.

The Supreme Court's decision has raised concern, as we've said, over other precedent setting decisions in the opinion on this decision.

Justice Samuel Alito wrote, "To ensure that our decision is not misunderstood or mischaracterized, we emphasize that our decision concerns the constitutional right to abortion and no other right.

Nothing in this opinion should be understood to cast doubt on precedents that do not concern abortion."

But in the very same document, Justice Clarence Thomas wrote that the court should reconsider all of its substantive due process precedents, and he specifically named three court rulings that protect contraception, same sex relationships, and same sex marriage.

- Mary, what are your thoughts about not entitlements, but equalities being on the line and what strategy needs to be employed in your opinion to try to steer the ship straight again?

- Well, I don't think we should be reassured too much by Alito's reassurances, because these are so many justices who said when they were being confirmed that Roe was settled precedent, as Steve said, and they sort of ignored that.

And I do believe when Thomas puts this in a document, you can believe him.

And also remember, Roberts and Alito and Thomas, they were in the dissent for same sex marriage.

And so we can expect, now that it's a much more Conservative Court, for them to revisit this, because remember Kennedy, Justice Kennedy was the swing, and he's not there anymore, okay?

So I think that they need to have allies.

I had on my podcast, a transgender woman who's a lawyer for Lambda Legal, and someone from Equality North Carolina, and they are looking at other court cases that they are going to actually try to come together and make sure that these rights are solid.

Because when they're looking at intimate partner relationships and same sex marriage, these were decided on the same issue as privacy, which Roe was, and we see how they ignored that.

And, as LA said, so much is going back to the states and states' rights, well, that has never been a good look for minorities because that was the issue of slavery.

One person brought up the issue of loving, interracial marriage, maybe we should look at that, Brown and Amy Coney Barrett, she did not commit that Griswold, the case on contraception, was decided correctly.

So I think, yes, everybody said they will never overturn Roe until it happened and now we can see that these other issues and rights are up for grabs.

So all ally communities are not gonna be able to step back and say, "This doesn't concern me."

Because as LA said, all of these things, well, yes, it does concern all of us.

- It absolutely does.

And we've established that there are other rights, other equal rights that are on the line if Justice Thomas said it and put it in writing, you can believe it.

Steve, I want your feedback on this, as well as the strategy of liberals to try to address this.

It's one thing to say, wait till November and make your vote known at the ballot box.

But once again, there are people who are coming out in large numbers and voting and yet it's not those large numbers of vote, it's not the popular vote.

It's what a minority of people want to do, it seems.

- Yes, exactly and I think just building on what Mary Curtis has said, I mean, I think that these rights, other rights, are in jeopardy because traditionally the right to privacy that was guaranteed by Roe V. Wade was extended to provide the right to contraception, marriage between the same sex.

And so I think that all of those rights are gonna possibly be taken away with this new Court.

And let's not forget affirmative action is also at play.

There's a lot of other cases that are coming before the Court.

In terms of strategy, I think the key right now is that Democrats often play really good defense, but not enough offense.

And what do I mean by that?

So protests and rallies are good, but they're not enough.

This decision by the Court did not happen overnight.

This took decades of investments and Republican legislatures taking over their legislatures, investing in taking over the White House.

Justice Ginsburg did not resign, I think if she had, it might have been easier because they wouldn't have had the votes.

And so it's gonna take Democrats in terms of strategy, Deb, they're gonna have to reach out to women, not only in the safe urban areas, but women in rural areas, independent women, Republican, moderate women to make them understand that their right to do whatever they want with their body has been taken away and to understand and educate to people that the very Republicans who are supporting this decision by Roe V. Wade were the very same Republicans that said, "I don't wanna wear a mask.

I don't want to take a vaccine because you can't tell me what to do with my body."

But they're willing to stand by a decision that the government can tell a woman what she can do with her body.

I mean, even in North Carolina, they're gonna relitigate a case that had a 20 week ban on abortion, that was struck on by the Federal courts.

They're gonna be bringing that back into litigation and bring that back in General Assembly.

So we've gotta be strategic.

We've gotta play offense if we're gonna be able to prevent this from happening, even at the state and local level.

- Made some great points, Steve.

LA, when Biden says his hands are tied, when the Democrats say that their hands are tied, how do you receive that message?

How do you think voters receive it?

- Sure, so first I really wanna say that Steve just dropped the mic, just really landing that point of just how we see the flip flop and it goes back to the question depth of what is the determination of power when we're talking about again, Federal government.

I really wanna ground that local elections are critical.

When we talk about state's rights, we have to talk about it's coming home base.

The determination of what our rights will look like on an everyday impact is determined by our legislators and our local elected officials.

In North Carolina, July 26th is election day for municipals and a local second primary and you folks know that.

The deadline to register is today.

It says July 1st.

When we talk about the general elections coming in, yes, but do not miss these municipal elections.

Look it up on the website, the Board of Elections website to make sure is your election day on July 26th and why I say that is because as we have seen the black voter turnout in 2020 was the reason that we had, guess what, the White House taken by and powered by the Democrats.

It was the reason the black voter turnout.

When we saw that data spoke that black voters were second in the entire nation compared to other ethnic groups, we were second for voter turnout, the second highest, right behind white people.

And the fact that we have seen this impact on our lives whether it's the increase of gas every single day and this recession that is upcoming.

And the lack of response from the Federal government, the lack of response because we are still in a pandemic, yet somehow it's mysteriously disappeared from mass media.

We've seen the impact now with Roe V. Wade, we continue to see the lack of responsiveness from a government when we showed up in droves to elect to make sure we had Federal representation, we have to make sure we have local representation.

- Because the same local folks that we are, guess what?

Staying against to talk about, well, wait a minute, pro-choice versus pro rights, look at the impact on our healthcare, are the same people who elected in those local elected leaders, who are taking our rights away.

We have to look at local elections and we have to begin to steer that ship now, because we're already behind and stop looking at the federal government, just to be very blunt.

- And understand, and to understand that the black vote counts.

It wasn't long after news broke on that Roe decision, that pro-lifers and conservatives celebrated and hit the circuit with victory speeches.

One in particular by Congresswoman Mary Miller of Illinois, generated an interesting trend on Twitter, #whitelife, roll clip.

- On behalf of all the MAGA patriots in America, I want to thank you for the historic victory for white life, in the Supreme Court yesterday.

- Mary, reaction?

- Well, she said what she said, and as one of your former [indistinct] said, quoted Maya Angelou, "When people tell you who they are believe them the first time."

And this actually wasn't the first time for this person.

She had come under fire for saying good things about Hitler.

[chuckles] And she later apologized when she got some blow back.

And with this statement, she didn't apologize in the moment.

but to not even catch yourself and then to not even come out personally with a comment.

- Oh no, no.

And the thing of it is, is she was at a Trump rally and we all know that Donald Trump is not really particularly sensitive when it comes to matters of race, and the crowd cheered, which meant they were on her side, and she took in those cheers.

And also we have seen from the language from Amy Coney Barrett and others, that many feel that women are a vessel, and they are there to give birth, and yes, people will adopt them.

And they've talked about the shortages of people to adopt, and so this really follows a trend, it did not come out of the blue.

And so I think that no one should trust that she misspoke, because she has a background of this, and the crowd I think, really appreciated what she said.

this isn't a gaffe.

- Steve, does it not matter?

- And we see this more... Yeah- - I wanna pull Steven on it, too, because you made a really important statement there.

You've got the Twitter verse saying, "Oh, this hashtag is out there."

But does it matter?

- I mean, I think it does matter.

I mean, first of all, she'll probably get away with it, say it was fraudulent slip, we all can say that, but I do think it matters, words matter, words matter.

And, we're all in media, you gotta write your words down, you gotta know what you're gonna say.

We may make a fraudulent slip, but I'm of the belief that there's something in the subconscious, when someone says something, they mean it.

If you're late to work and your boss says, "Don't worry about being late."

That means it bothers them, that you shouldn't be late, right?

She said, "white life", she's made statements about Hitler.

I think it's easy to assume that she thinks it's okay for saying that and then the base is gonna pick up on that.

So I think it does matter, we have to pick up on these behaviors and do what we can to make sure that we held people accountable for their words.

Hopefully, it won't happen again, she'll probably get off with a slap on the wrist, but you know- [chuckles] - But the thing about it, Steve, there's the outrage, but then there's also the hurt and the pain because you know what?

Children are at these rallies, children are watching this content, and how does that brown child feel?

How does that black child feel when they hear that there's a great value for white life.

And I'm sure that the response from some white communities might be, "Well, how about Black Lives Matter?

How do you think we feel about that?"

LA, what would you say to them?

- What I'll say is the white replacement theory.

And so the white replacement theory is the ideology that has been more in recent times, in the past year, five years, from Dylann Roof up to the shooting in Buffalo.

We've seen it, but the white replacement theory is a theory that has been written in many forms since the beginning of this nation, the inception, and published since the 19th century.

It's a belief in doctrine that there is a plan to eliminate the white population and make them a minority, it's the crux of the theory.

And as a result of this theory, over the generations this theory has literally led to forced sterilization, the perfection of eugenics that was conducted on black communities at the turn of the 19th century, including the inception of Planned Parenthood is at top of that century by Margaret Sanger, and other pro-eugenic leaders.

That eugenic movement was then used as a curriculum to enact the Holocaust.

So when we talk about even global connectivity and the causation, it is not like Black Lives Matter because that is a response to protect ourselves from the incidents and violence and mass shootings and other state sexual violence against white replacement theory.

We have been very clear what this means.

- And there is LA Whittington, Mary C. Curtis, Steve Rao, thanks to all three of you for your insights and honest perspectives.

- Happy fourth, everybody, thank you.

- Happy 4th of July.

I wanna thank our guests for joining us today, and we invite you to engage with us on Twitter or Instagram, using the hashtag #blackissuesforum.

You can also find our full episodes on pbsnc.org/black issuesforum, or listen at any time on Apple iTunes, Spotify, or Google podcast.

For "Black Issues Forum" I'm Deborah Holt Noel, thanks for watching.

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