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Social Justice - A Conversation
Announcer 0:00
You're listening to local programming produced in KU NV studios. The content
Wesley Knight 0:06
of this program does not reflect the views or opinions of 91.5 jazz and more the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, or the Board of Regents of the Nevada System of Higher Education.
Charles Stanton 0:18
Good evening. This is Professor Charles Stanton, I'm a professor of Boyd School of Law,
Blanca Pena 0:23
and my name is Blanca Pena. I am a third year law student at the Boyd School of
Charles Stanton 0:26
Law, and this is social justice, a conversation,
Blanca Pena 0:30
a conversation.
Charles Stanton 0:32
Well, good evening, everybody. Welcome back, Professor Charles, along with my cohort. Blanca Pena, it's good to be with you as always. And we have another full plate of stuff today or tonight, I should say. And, you know, before we, before we came on the air right now, we were talking about, you know, the state of things in our country and and where our country is going and a couple of things that that that jumped out at me, that are couple of things that were not, we would say as major stories, but a couple of things that jumped out at me. One thing that jumped out at me was the whole creation of the alternate entertainment show for the Super Bowl, which to me, I honest. When somebody told me this, I just said, like, come on, you know, you're talking crazy. Why would there be an alternate show at the Super Bowl the NFL, you know, has, you know, you know, it's got one of the most popular, if not the most popular, entertainer in the world, a man of great, you know, achievement in his crafts, Man who won the Grammy, a man who, in my mind, gave a very inspiring talk when he was at the Grammys about different things and is our society? Is our country so frightened of someone telling the truth that we have to create alternate entertainment because of the person who is a true entertainer and a true person of loving other people. We got to close that voice off, but we got to bring in somebody from, God knows where they came from, kid, rock out of all people to do, to do it, to do a show. So I was taking that in. I was taking that in. Okay, well, I guess you know this is America, so if you want to do another show, I guess you can do another show. It doesn't, doesn't make any sense to me. But okay, so then, so then, Friday morning I was, I was looking through the phone, and they had this thing about about social media, and about to social and how they had concocted some kind of AI video, AI video of of, I guess it was set in the jungle somewhere, and the President, the President was a lion, and President Obama and his wife were baboons or apes, or however you want to put it. And that was one, actually, where I said to myself, now, this is this is this has got to be a hoax, right? I mean, no one in the right mind, in possession of their faculties, would put out a program like that on their own, on their own social media site. I mean, it's clearly I know you say racist and proper, inappropriate, however you want to say it. And no, they it was actually put out there. It was actually put out there. And then they had, and then they had, I guess it was Tim Scott, the senator from South Carolina. And he says, Well, you know, this is this is racist, and he's a black man. He said, This is racist, and he says, I can't believe that they would put something out like that, but I'm saying to myself, well, why wouldn't you believe it right way? After all those things that have gone on,
Blanca Pena 4:36
it's not shocking at all. It, but it's mind boggling to us, because we would never do it. We're decent people, I would like to think. And I mean, yeah, why wouldn't we be surprised? Like this man back in the 90s, wouldn't rent to black people when he owned buildings in New York. Of course, he's racist. We've been known this. But I think when it comes to Donald Trump. He's built his platform on, on pushing the boundaries every, every chance he has. And I think at a at a certain point, you know, in the beginning, people just, like, laughed at him, and then it just stopped being funny, you know, like, the more, the more you realize how, how serious he's being and, yeah, and how much power he actually ended up taking up, yeah, yeah, that video was gross.
Charles Stanton 5:27
But you know, the other thing, though, of course, is from a calculated point of view. And I, and you know, we on, we on the show, obviously, do not think in that vein. And I don't, I don't imagine very many of our listeners come in that vein. But there must be. There must be. And I say we must acknowledge this. There must be an awful lot of people in this country who who buy into something like that, and I'm saying to myself, Oh, now, wait a minute here. Now you can, you can disagree with a person politically that I can accept, but there has to be, like, a certain floor level of what behavior is acceptable. And for the last close to 10 years now, what's been happening is people of color are continually being demeaned, and it's become almost so normalized that no matter how outlandish or how racist or how insane it is, people just go with it because, well, that's another day, and the demands are racist and everything. When the original campaign started to I wouldn't just say, I wouldn't just say to elect him, though, because I think that's too small. I don't think it's I mean, I don't see him. A lot of people look at him in a certain way. I look at him in a different way, though. I look at him as a figurehead. I look at him as somebody. Yeah, he's saying all this stuff, and he's got all this power and everything, but I think he's the representative of all these people, in a profound sense, when the campaign started in 2015 and he come, came walking down the escalator and he gave his talk about the Mexicans and, you know, the all the stuff, all these Lies and all this craziness, right away, on that day, you knew what it was, right. But obviously, obviously, this is something that resonates with people. And I believe, I believe, that the validation of that is their excuse to be the way they are and hate the way they do, because you have dehumanized these people so many times that in your mind, you are not bound by the roles, roles of conduct or democracy or anything. They are inferior to us, and because we have created this, this malevolent idea that, you know, people who don't look like us are inferior to us than anything else goes the immigration stuff goes, ice goes, anything goes, because you Are you are dealing with, in a sense, sub human creatures. And this is what's happened in the country, yeah.
Blanca Pena 8:47
It's, yeah, I agree with you. And when you have someone who's, you know, already been, been famous, when, when that becomes the mouthpiece of it, it's like, there's no, there's no stopping him, because there are people in the country who think that way, and I think to them, they were finally seen, right? Their their thoughts were finally normalized on a on a platform, they felt like they were valid, right? And I would take it even further back then, then that first speech when he got off the escalator, I'd probably take it to his very messy divorce with his first wife, with the way that he treated her, you know, like just there were so many portraits, you know, of him and the character that he, that he holds, right, and it was never taken seriously enough. You know, I sometimes laugh when people say, you know, oh, women should be, you know, put in prison for false allegations towards a man, because that can ruin his life and his reputation. Absolutely not. Trump is still not in jail right now. You have Chris Brown still out there making money. You have. Of all these people who abused others, yeah, man and female. And they're, they're still, they're still out there, they're, they're, they're fine. And it's interesting. I'm going to take it back just a little bit to bad bunny and everything. It's very interesting, the the juxtaposition that's happening right now in the country, because it's so easy to pull the good things out of other cultures, right? People, people love, you know, Latino music, or they love Latino art, even even things that were that were started by black people, right? Like so many, so many, you know, they cherry pick what they do like, which is usually the arts and everything, and at the same time, you know, so you have this guy who represents all of us, who's speaking Spanish on an album, who is very unapologetically Puerto Rican and Latino, and IT people, people take that in, And it's crazy, because he wins the biggest Grammy to exist, while at the same time, people that look exactly like him are being ripped apart from their families. They're being killed left and right. They're being taken out of the country. They're dying in cells. It's it's crazy. And I remember when, when Rene Nicole, good first, you know, died and everything. And that video came out, it was so jarring to me, because they were so quick to dehumanize her, and I don't think I had ever seen that before. For this country to dehumanize a white woman, a white US citizen woman, right? I couldn't help but think about my family or my friends who look like me, like if the person in that video would have been swapped out by someone that I know, or someone that looks like me, or even me, how much easier it would have been to dehumanize our character, our human, our life. Yeah, it's, it's really no, no telling where, where it's gonna go anymore, because they were so quick to do it. And it's, it's, and I mentioned this, I think, the last week, but it was frustrating to know that it took a white person dying for for all of this to come out.
Charles Stanton 12:16
And yeah, I know, I know what you're saying. It's you. It's a long history of these things going on, and I think, I think there's two, well, there's three things that we're dealing with. One thing, of course, is the history. And the history is terrible, okay? The treatment of people of color, whether they be black or Hispanic, obviously, you know, has no has no validity, but it's gone on forever. We know that. We know that the legal system, the system of justice, is not applied fairly or equally to, I would say, not just Latino people or black people, but our female population as well. This is just an accepted thing that women's voices are not going to be heard. So this goes on for a long period of time, and it becomes normalized. Then you have the whole thing with the education system, where they want to revamp the education system, they don't want they talk about the diversity, equity, inclusion, but even way beyond that, they don't want the history told. They don't want they don't want people to know exactly how bad things were, yeah and how bad things are, yeah, because that's what they've been doing for years. But the solution to it, the solution to it, if there is a solution, is ultimately an individual solution. It's a solution of people opening themselves up to not being afraid, to discover ideas and thoughts and perspectives that they never entertained. That's one of the great purposes of the university system. The university system, although we know in olden days, you know you would go to school when you'd get a job, and all the rest of those things, which is, which is okay, but ultimately it's, it's educate you as to how to behave, as to educate you as to what your purpose is. Here that goes beyond getting a job or any. Of that stuff, but how you are a good citizen in the country, that you could do good things, that can help other people, that you show compassion, you show empathy, etc, etc, etc. And that's possible because you have diversity. Diversity is a threat to these people, because diversity really, is getting a whole bunch of people together who think in a very regimented way. It would be like if this, this university was all white. That would be fine by them. But when you bring in people of color, when you bring in people who are who are black, Latino, Puerto Rican, Mexican, Asian, whatever it is you're bringing in people who come from totally different perspectives, and the perspectives of those, those people you've never engaged with are going to rub off on you. This is what they don't want. They don't want the younger people to have those other alien ideas be transmitted, because then people will say, Well, you know, it gave me, I gave me food for thought about, you know, how things are going on in the country. You know, I was raised in a certain way. But now, you know, I know. I know Puerto Rican people, I know Mexican people, I know black people, and I take in their experience here in this place. And I and I said this one time, this was a few years ago. I said, this, I guess it was Dean's of one of the schools here. I said, I said, I think this place is a miracle. I said, this place is a miracle. I mean, this place really should be everywhere. You should have this in every state in the country, something like this, where people come together and, you know, eventually it becomes a family in a lot of ways. Now I'm not saying, I'm not saying that, you know you can, you can cure all racism or sexism or stuff like that right away. But I do think when people are exposed to these ideas, and not just the ideas, but getting to know other people that they never knew before, hanging out with people who are, who are Asian, who are, who are black, who are Latino, and they, and they come from a regimented, you know, background. It knocks down the mythology, because it shows you like, wow, you know, this is a regular person, you know, I could go out with them. We could have a date. We could be in a club together, or something like that, and that's what they don't want, so where they don't want the history, and they don't want the interaction, yeah? And that's, and that's what you're fighting, yeah?
Blanca Pena 17:50
I mean, it's, it's pretty evident when they desegregated schools, and then the private school system became a thing. And, yeah, you know, they ended slavery, but then the prison system became a thing that there was always a reaction to some sort of to any little bit of progress. There was always a, you know, something that came after that that sort of just reshaped it. It didn't make it go away, the problem didn't go away. It was just reshaped. And then that new version was normalized. And you're right. I grew up around a lot of different people from a lot of different backgrounds, and I never thought that I was neither inferior or better than than the rest of them, because we all lived in the same area. We all went to the same schools, we all laughed at the same jokes. We ate the same food. And I think back to what you said earlier about how you know certain groups or people are being dehumanized. I think that's what people need. People need to meet others, and they need to feel comfortable in being challenged, because if no one challenges your beliefs, you never get better. You know, you never, you never progress in your own mind. And I think that's really sad. I think if, if these people who hate immigrants right now, if they just met, if they knew someone who was like that, which, by the way, I don't even think that's needed either. You know, I don't think you need to meet another human being to know that their life matters. And I think that's what we're seeing a lot now too, especially with everything happening in Palestine and Congo and here, we're losing lives every single day. Even one losing one life is such a huge loss, because that that affects a giant group of people, even if we're not personally affected, but we're we're losing 1000s, we're losing hundreds. It's so many people that we're losing and it's like we're getting numbed out. You know, you hear these statistics of like this, many people died of this thing, and no one bats an eye. And I think the the progression and the accumulation of things like this. This has led us to what we have now with the Epstein files, where this the all of these truths come out, these, these horrible, horrid, disgusting, atrocious facts come out about what other human beings have done to other people. And I mean, it's beyond me. I mean eating babies intestines, like, like, hitting children it and you know what you you mentioned it earlier about how in the education system, like some people now, don't want certain things to be taught. But I remember even back then, learning about, for example, slavery, right? All I really was taught was that these people were forced to work for free, and that they were whipped right? It wasn't until later, when I started doing my own research and reading books and watching documentaries, just how boiled down that was, that was such a soft version of what really happened. People were getting raped. People were getting cooked. People were like it was, it was so much worse than that. And the Epstein files are just a whole other it's its own monster, but it's, it's still very horrible. And I don't know how we can read these files, hear about these things, and either have a group of people excusing it, you have Donald Trump saying we should just move on. No, no, we should be prosecuting right now. Like, why? Why are why am I still forced to go to class and act like everything's normal, when, in all reality, the billionaires of the world who are doing these horrible things control everything. It's so demoralizing, It's so upsetting, because I feel like all I can do is watch, yeah, when I wish there was something more that we can do, yeah.
Charles Stanton 21:50
Well, it's certainly that particular case, although there's tons of other ones. Makes manifest to even the most non believer of what I'm going to say that there clearly is not an ecosystem of justice. And we've, we've talked about this before, and you know you spoke about in the class, and you know correctly so. But what we're seeing now basically, is a group of people who basically run the country. You can call them the 1% or the 1/10 of 1% or whatever, however you want to call them. And terrible, horrible misdeeds were committed against young women and children over a very sustained period of time, if not, if not with the participation in these things, but certainly the acquiescence of a lot of people who knew better as to what was going on in the media, in the banking industry, in the legal field, in the entertainment and all of that, and the fact that we and we have reached a point now where it's obviously a massive cover up, you don't, you don't even have to be A legal scholar to know that the truth, the truth has not come out, and the truth, the truth will, the truth will not come out until drastic action is taken to make the truth come out. The Civil Rights Movement was, was made whole by just massive, continuous demonstrating and putting across these ideas, what Dr King did in Memphis, what Dick Gregory did. There were a whole bunch of people, what we need to do. And I said this on a I actually said it in the class. What we need to do, in the case of Jeffrey Epstein, is we need to gather up all the people who were harmed. And I don't know how many people that were harmed. But I imagine a rather large amount of people against against probably because of the harm they have suffered, the inclination to be more public than they are, go to the White House and be at the white house every day, and you get four or five, 610, 1000 people, maybe more than that, and you're there and they said, We want to meet with the President. We want to know why the truth hasn't been brought out. Because this is a cover up. The documents are covered up. The. The the names of people are redacted even now, even now, there's no record of the conversations between people in the Justice Department as to how these documents were being processed, who was reviewing them, who was redacting the stuff, and that's the only way. But what was interesting, what was interesting, though, is, yeah, unless you, unless you do that, you're not going to get you're not going to get any action. I remember when they had the shooting down in Florida at the school, and, you know, there was always calls for gun control and everything like that, and they brought the students to meet with the President. President, totally disinterested, right? Didn't want to, didn't want to be there, etc, etc, etc. So you have to use, you have to use the ultimate, the ultimate tactic is you have to bring them to him, and he has to see all these people, and you have to bring them to him on a basically continuous basis until they're going to take action even, even if the action is going to result in a lot of people going to jail.
Blanca Pena 26:16
I mean, would, I mean, I'd hope so you they arrested the guy who ran the ring, right, Jeffrey, they arrested the woman that helped him out, but they haven't arrested anybody who actually part took in what happened in there. And it's, I don't know. I think with Trump nowadays, I don't even think, I think they can show up to the white house every day, and he just wouldn't care. You know, I there's a part of me that he he truly is not ashamed of anything that he's ever done. I don't know if you saw the clip of the CNN reporter asking him, and he started saying, Well, why don't you smile more? Why would she be smiling when talking about survivors of rape and violence, right? And it's so disgusting, the way that he talks to all of these female reporters. He never does it to men, though. He never does it to men, but it's he's so quick to get quippy with women, and it's gross, and he has no shame.
Charles Stanton 27:15
Well, I'm gonna, before I turn it over to you to to close out our program, I'm going to say this, the nation needs a cathartic event, and that can be the cathartic event. It's to bring, it's not just to bring the people there, but to bring the people there with their stories of exactly, and I know this is not going to be easy on them, exactly what was done to them by who and why and the whole thing and where are, why aren't any of these people that we know what they did to us? Why they're not in front of the in front of justice?
Blanca Pena 27:52
Yeah, yeah, totally. And if there's anything you know, if you're listening to this and you're wondering, just like me, what, what can I do? What should I do? I wish I had all the answers. The best thing I can tell you is to keep educating yourself, no matter how hard you know, look at the facts. Don't let people lie to you and unionize. Love people. Organize with people. And I hope, I hope, we can see a change soon. Thank you all good night.
Charles Stanton 28:18
God bless you all good night.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai