EarthX Website: https://earthxmedia.com/
Enjoy this blast from the past from the EarthX Archives. #OvercomingOvershoot was one of the first shows we produced and aired back in 2020. EarthX Media has grown a lot since then, but we still like to look back on these insightful conversations and see how far we've come.
Professor Frank Morris, Ph.D., discusses at length the costs slavery has taken on the environment, the difficulty of compromise, and the costs of not trying.
About #OvercomingOvershoot:
#OvercomingOvershoot takes a deep look at the myriad symptoms of ecological overshoot by way of thoughtful conversations with experts and visionaries exploring not only what’s going wrong but also what solution pathways are available to overcome overshoot. Moderated by eco-rockstar, Gary Wockner, this show will serve as an essential hub to connect people from around the world on this most pressing concern.
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EarthX is a media company dedicated to inspiring people to care about the planet. We take an omni channel approach to reach audiences of every age through its robust 24/7 linear channel distributed across cable and FAST outlets, along with dynamic, solution oriented short form content on social and digital platforms. EarthX is home to original series, documentaries and snackable content that offer sustainable solutions to environmental challenges. EarthX is the only network that delivers entertaining and inspiring topics that impact and inspire our lives on climate and sustainability.
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Enjoy this blast from the past from the EarthX Archives. #OvercomingOvershoot was one of the first shows we produced and aired back in 2020. EarthX Media has grown a lot since then, but we still like to look back on these insightful conversations and see how far we've come.
Professor Frank Morris, Ph.D., discusses at length the costs slavery has taken on the environment, the difficulty of compromise, and the costs of not trying.
About #OvercomingOvershoot:
#OvercomingOvershoot takes a deep look at the myriad symptoms of ecological overshoot by way of thoughtful conversations with experts and visionaries exploring not only what’s going wrong but also what solution pathways are available to overcome overshoot. Moderated by eco-rockstar, Gary Wockner, this show will serve as an essential hub to connect people from around the world on this most pressing concern.
EarthX
Love Our Planet.
The Official Network of Earth Day.
About Us:
At EarthX, we believe our planet is a pretty special place. The people, landscapes, and critters are likely unique to the entire universe, so we consider ourselves lucky to be here. We are committed to protecting the environment by inspiring conservation and sustainability, and our programming along with our range of expert hosts support this mission. We’re glad you’re with us.
EarthX is a media company dedicated to inspiring people to care about the planet. We take an omni channel approach to reach audiences of every age through its robust 24/7 linear channel distributed across cable and FAST outlets, along with dynamic, solution oriented short form content on social and digital platforms. EarthX is home to original series, documentaries and snackable content that offer sustainable solutions to environmental challenges. EarthX is the only network that delivers entertaining and inspiring topics that impact and inspire our lives on climate and sustainability.
EarthX Website: https://earthxmedia.com/
Follow Us:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/earthxmedia/
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Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/EarthXMedia/
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@earthxmedia
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@EarthXMedia
How to watch:
United States:
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- AT&T U-verse (1267)
- DIRECTV (267)
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#EarthDay #Environment #Sustainability #EcoFriendly #Conservation #EarthX
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TVTranscript
00:00Thank you very much.
00:32Hi, friends.
00:33I'm Gary Walkner, host of Overcoming Overshoot here on EarthX TV.
00:44The title of our show today is, Does Polarization and Partisanship Help Save America's Environment?
00:54On this show, we try to have some of the hard conversations that the environmental movement
00:58doesn't always prefer to talk about.
01:00And today we're going to jump right
01:02into the belly of the beach, so hang on tight.
01:05Today's discussion will include the topics
01:07of African-American history, population growth,
01:11immigration, the Sierra Club, and Black Lives Matter.
01:16And we have one of the leading experts
01:19in the world on those topics, Dr. Frank Morris.
01:23I guarantee you that if you thought you knew everything
01:26about these topics after this show is over,
01:28you might be thinking something different.
01:31Frank Morris was born in 1939, and he has lived it.
01:35Frank's resume is very long,
01:37but I'll just hit a few high spots.
01:40He had a decorated career in the U.S. Foreign Service,
01:44served as chief of policy planning and analysis
01:47for the Federal War on Poverty,
01:49was director of the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation,
01:53and then held various high-ranking roles
01:55in university administration.
01:58Frank received awards and honors
01:59from civil rights organizations in Maryland,
02:02Illinois, and Washington State.
02:04In addition, Frank ran for the Board of Directors
02:08of the Sierra Club in 2004,
02:11and he is a founder of Progressives for Immigration Reform.
02:17Welcome to the show, Frank.
02:19Thank you, Gary, glad to be here.
02:24You know, before we kind of get into the meat,
02:26I want to do just a little bit
02:27of kind of a biographical question,
02:29because I also grew up in Illinois, sort of Central Illinois,
02:34and, you know, in the late, in the 40s and 50s,
02:38Cairo, Illinois, where you were born,
02:40it wasn't exactly the South,
02:41but it was pretty darn close to the South.
02:43And I just sort of wonder, you know,
02:46what about your upbringing sort of caused you
02:49to move the direction you did,
02:51which was somewhat unconventional for, you know,
02:53an African-American man in the 40s and 50s?
02:56Well, Cairo, you're being generous, it was bad news.
02:59It was a sort of like a Southern,
03:01really part of Illinois, plant activity was strong.
03:06I was sort of born in Cairo by accident.
03:10My mother never married my dad,
03:13and she was sent out there to sort of have me,
03:17and so for the first six years of my life,
03:19I was raised in, not just in Cairo,
03:24but in St. Louis and in Carbondale
03:26by people who were not related to me.
03:27And then I, at six years old,
03:30I moved back to my paternal grandparents
03:33and my aunt in Boston who raised me from there.
03:36But briefly, most of, it's been tough
03:41if you were African-American to not to be overwhelmed
03:46by the power in the 40s and the 50s of the culture
03:51and the slave, of the culture of the oppression
03:54of both segregation, et cetera.
03:57I remember traveling cross-country with my dad
03:59and seeing a proud man after asking,
04:02places like Illinois and in Nebraska,
04:07could a colored man eat here?
04:09Or could a colored, could you go to a, for a hotel?
04:13This is outside of the South now,
04:15and in sundown towns in the Midwest, et cetera.
04:20Things which folks have no idea are happening now.
04:23Matter of fact, my grandchildren live in Edina, Minnesota,
04:27one of the prosperous suburbs of Minnesota.
04:29They didn't know it was a sundown town
04:32back in those early days.
04:33So it's, growing up, growing up in Boston,
04:40which was supposedly an enlightened place,
04:42civil rights, hub of the abolitionist movements.
04:48But I found that even in Boston and growing up in Roxbury,
04:53you better not show up after dark
04:55in some of the parts of the city
04:57that were not African-American,
04:58that were in South Boston or East Boston
05:01or Charlestown or Jamaica Plain.
05:03So this has been with us so constantly.
05:06And I, and so even when I went away to college,
05:09I got a big scholarship there at the Colgate
05:13and in the late 50s in classes
05:17talking about the bad segregation of the South
05:20or of how bad it was, overt segregation.
05:24I said, well, wait a minute, look, I come from Boston.
05:27I better not show up in parts of the town after either.
05:30So it's just been, one of the things we'll get into later
05:34is how much of this real history of the U.S.
05:39that really has impact on it.
05:43That still continues to impact on us.
05:45It's just really not recognized.
05:46And because of that, the susceptibility
05:51and the vulnerability to American people
05:53to disinformation and lies
05:57or the rejection of truth about environmental
06:02and population issues is so strong
06:05because it's never been challenged over time.
06:09The great, the story of our culture
06:14that was not questioned, that was wrong
06:16has led Americans to believe that there's no cost.
06:20There's no cost to accepting lies,
06:23whether they're about Confederates,
06:24whether they're about traitors,
06:27whether they're about savage Indians
06:30and so forth and so forth.
06:32And you know, it's a perfect segue
06:34because we want to talk a little bit about the polarization
06:36and the partisanship that we're seeing.
06:40I think people who are maybe younger
06:42might think it's the worst in history,
06:44but you've been around a lot longer.
06:45So I wonder how it's kind of changed over your life,
06:48the polarization and the partisanship
06:49we're seeing in the public sphere
06:51and also around not just civil rights issues,
06:54but also environmental issues.
06:56Well, you know, it's sad that we Americans
07:01or that the way history has been taught
07:02has been so rote or about dates or times
07:08and not about flow and processes
07:11that we still have the effects of.
07:15You know, it's really, it was before my time,
07:18not only were things bad,
07:23it was much worse before the time of my own time.
07:27My great-grandfather was a slave.
07:29Slavery was not that far.
07:31I mean, you know, I might be in my early eighties now,
07:34but my great-grandfather was born a slave
07:38and he lived under slavery.
07:41So we're not really that far.
07:43I mean, I have great-grandchildren,
07:45but my great-grandfather didn't live as long as I've lived.
07:49But so the period of time that we don't talk about
07:54was when, you know, my relatives,
07:57my dad or the most intelligent man that I ever knew,
08:00my grandfather was in Alabama and a boon man
08:07or a labor dock worker in Mobile,
08:15and then later a law person.
08:17But he was brilliant.
08:18He started, he and his boon men under segregation
08:22because the city would not, the state would not provide it,
08:24would not provide schools for black kids
08:26beyond the sixth grade.
08:27So they built their own school and petitions
08:31to the government and got the teacher,
08:35then provided the teacher, which was the first in Alabama.
08:41Had an uncle who went to a missionary school
08:45that was later burned down.
08:46So I'm simply saying that there are costs.
08:51There are costs that we still are paying
08:53for not knowing.
08:54And history was much, much worse then.
08:56Great books, such as Blackman's book,
08:58Slavery by Another Name, really point out
09:01that some of the worst times for African-Americans
09:03were not just during slavery, which they were,
09:05but afterward, after the 1877 compromise
09:10where white folks in the North got tired
09:13of fighting the battle for maybe blacks in the South
09:17and wanted to unite with their, you know,
09:20white brothers in the Southern Democratic Party.
09:22And they wrote off the effectiveness of not the 13th,
09:27but the 14th and 15th amendments,
09:30which was supposed to guarantee voting rights
09:33for black males, which of course it didn't under terrorism.
09:37So these periods of time, and in a time after slavery,
09:42when there was not a 40 acres and a mule,
09:45but, and folks were left to fend for themselves.
09:48When the power of the state would put people in jail,
09:52African-Americans in jail, if they couldn't show a job,
09:56and then the jails in Alabama would contract them out.
09:59Blackman's book points out that in 1893,
10:02one quarter of the revenue from the state of Alabama
10:05came from contracting out black laborers
10:09to mines where many of them died and to steel mills,
10:13the early parts of U.S. steel in Alabama.
10:17These are, and the lynchings, the American terrorism,
10:20after the thousands of folks who were there,
10:23and it wasn't just black folks, they were Jewish people,
10:26they were sometimes Catholics,
10:28but the overall majority were blacks,
10:30were terrorism, especially about voting.
10:34So it's these times which are much, much, much
10:37more difficult and worse than what we're under now.
10:41But American children are not taught that,
10:44they're not taught this.
10:46So they don't know that our greatest achievements
10:49have not been because we are so different,
10:53we were so enlightened, we were such a great country,
10:56but it's been the struggles that we were not,
10:58that our founders who were basically,
11:02mostly, not all of them, but slave-owning,
11:06who believed, did not believe in democracy,
11:09that's why we have a republic,
11:10but basically slave-owning folks
11:13that put the document into the Constitution,
11:16that our great struggles, not as the originalists say,
11:18but the fact that we've changed,
11:20that we have been able to evolve,
11:22the struggles that make us so much better
11:24than what we were, and that history has not been told.
11:28And so therefore, it's a comfort history,
11:31our comfort history of lives for some people
11:34that we live with, and we're paying the cost of that today
11:39in environmental movement, in the climate movement,
11:44and in the justice movement.
11:47And when you say we're paying the cost of that,
11:49I mean, flesh that out just a little bit more.
11:51I mean-
11:52One of the things that, if folks don't know our history,
11:58one of the reasons we have polarization
12:02is that many in the Republican Party
12:07believe in limited government.
12:09They believe that their status in America
12:14has been because of excessive individualism
12:17and sturdy individualism that made a country
12:21out of the savages from the indigenous people
12:27to out to the West, where indigenous pioneers,
12:31with no help from anybody,
12:33was able to carve out a life of rugged individualism.
12:39When in reality, there was, it was collective efforts,
12:44collective efforts from the protection
12:47that was served by the Army to subsidize railroad fortunes
12:52that brought in many kinds of things,
12:55to sometimes of substance relations,
12:58positive relations with Native Americans
13:00that saved the winter colony from starving
13:03and so forth and so forth,
13:04to the fact that the West was made
13:07because white folks could get,
13:10from the Homestead Act of 1862, 160 acres by claiming.
13:15Black folks were not, you know, black folks,
13:19some black towns evolved, but not through the Homestead Act
13:22because blacks, not only the Homestead Act,
13:25but later on into the New Deal,
13:27were excluded from the kinds of federal benefits
13:29that many take for granted.
13:32Even those who served in World War II,
13:35if you served from the South and you came back
13:38and fought for a country, came back with GI benefits,
13:41because Roosevelt had felt he had to have
13:45the Southern support for the New Deal,
13:49he granted local autonomy in the administration of that.
13:52So that meant that black folks were left out,
13:55and even social security, because in 1935,
14:00when it was first proposed,
14:02it covered everybody except two categories of workers,
14:05agricultural workers and domestic workers,
14:08which of course at that time were disproportionately black.
14:10So the fact is that this history, if you don't know it,
14:14and if you, you are strongly polarized based on ignorance
14:22or based on values that you, it might not be ignorance,
14:24you just might prefer those values.
14:26I mean, if I would prefer the value to believe
14:30that I'm unlike the other,
14:34because that there are things that I can contribute
14:37that I do or my parents did,
14:40not because of systemic benefits,
14:43which we may have received and the other have,
14:46because if I can show that it's individualist effort
14:51in work and the others are not where I am
14:54because of individual problems or individual failures,
15:00then I have no responsibility
15:02to any kind of systemic things
15:04to deal with any kind of failures,
15:07because that's not my reality.
15:09And I feel better, so I'm gonna fight for that.
15:12And that's a basis of a strong basis of polarization.
15:17One of the topics that you have chosen to speak out
15:21about over the last 20 years
15:24is certainly one of the more polarizing
15:27and complex topics in American history.
15:29And that is the federal government's immigration system
15:33and our immigration policies.
15:35And you've taken some fairly strong opinions.
15:37You've written about it quite a few times.
15:39And of course you helped start an organization
15:42called Progressives for Immigration Reform.
15:45And I think, and I know this story
15:48and I know that I've heard you say it before.
15:50I want you to sort of tell us why
15:52so that others can hear it.
15:54Why a man such as yourself,
15:56who's deeply rooted in African-American scholarship
15:59and history, has the opinion that you do
16:03about the policies of America's immigration system?
16:07Well, once again, folks don't know the history.
16:11If you know, and this really is surprising
16:14to many young black folks today,
16:17they have no idea about how,
16:21that I'm on the side of not only black scholars,
16:24but black activists about concerns
16:26about high American immigration
16:28because African-Americans have always been the last hired
16:31and the first fired.
16:33And if there was any alternative,
16:35especially white alternative or non-black alternative
16:38to African-Americans,
16:41then this was the preferred labor route,
16:44you know, after slavery.
16:45Slavery was preferred first, but after that,
16:49then you couldn't get contract labor or sharecropping.
16:52Then, you know, then you really did not want
16:57to value hiring African-Americans for whatever reason.
17:02So African-American historical figures
17:06have been where I am on this.
17:09Booker T. Washington, Frederick Douglass, W.A.B.B. Du Bois,
17:15A. Philip Randolph, a labor person,
17:19Marcus Garvey, that's where I am.
17:21And the young people have no idea that,
17:25and it isn't because black folks
17:27have not been sympathetic to immigrants.
17:29America has been sympathetic to immigrants
17:32and more sympathetic to immigrants
17:34than they have to our own.
17:36Immigrant opportunities were opening up in labor unions,
17:41in the white unions, the skilled,
17:43first the skilled unions, the gills,
17:46then the AFL, and then later the CIA.
17:49And these were open to immigrants
17:52that always were resistant black folks.
17:55And so therefore, you know,
17:58we still feel the effects of that.
18:02That's part of the reason of the 10 times differential
18:05between black and white wealth.
18:07And as Katzenbach's book,
18:12when affirmative action was white,
18:14it was not called affirmative action
18:16when blacks were excluded for more than 100
18:20or almost 200 years.
18:22And so therefore, you know,
18:25folks have no idea that you've had white affirmative action
18:28through racial discrimination that continues,
18:32but you don't have it for black.
18:35But the point is that you,
18:38this distortion, this distortion of reality.
18:41Someone said that, and it's sad about polarization,
18:47but I think it's relevant polarization,
18:49that sometimes truth has a liberal bias.
18:52And I think that this is one of the kinds of things
18:56that conservatives, and they're holding,
18:59they believe that that is either somethings
19:03or a matter of opinion, such as IE,
19:06the cultural adaptation acceptance of the lost cause theory
19:13from gone with the wind and birth of a nation,
19:16right on, you know, right down to contemporary names
19:20of Confederate who were racist traders of forts
19:26where some of my mentees, black mentees
19:28that I've sent to West Point
19:30have to go to these Confederate fort named places,
19:35named after traders here in 2020.
19:40I mean, you know, outrageous if you're black,
19:43if you knew what William Bedford Forrest did
19:47to black soldiers or AP Hill or Benny.
19:55So all I'm simply saying is that this history
20:01is just so fundamental and it's been misrepresented.
20:06And it's a tremendous boss, not just the black folks,
20:10but the cost of not really facing truth until now.
20:15Now, if we come to the more positive things at the end
20:19is the fact that we are facing it now.
20:21For me, that is a great positive thing
20:23that some of us are being forced to have the opportunity
20:29to bring the reality and the scholars that are doing,
20:32historical scholars are really doing a great job.
20:34There's some really tremendous historical scholarship
20:37that's coming out now that was either suppressed
20:41or just simply wasn't valued in the past.
20:43And one person you didn't mention was more recent,
20:45that's Barbara Jordan, right?
20:46And Barbara was, she was a Congresswoman from Texas, right?
20:50And she was-
20:51She was, as a matter of fact,
20:52one of the things that I'm really proud of
20:55is that while I was a Dean at Morgan State,
20:57which is the largest historical black university
21:01in Maryland, we gave Barbara a, before she died,
21:05an honorary degree.
21:07And I put the, as a graduate Dean, put the hood over her.
21:11So that's one of the, and she was,
21:14she was magnificent in speaking,
21:16but that's absolutely right.
21:18And many young black folks are not aware of that history,
21:22are not aware of where Barbara's,
21:25and she just simply said a simple,
21:26fundamentally part about immigration.
21:30We should let those who should come in, come in.
21:34And those who should not be here should not come in
21:36or should leave.
21:38A simple, fundamental fact of American law,
21:42or it should be of American law and American practice,
21:44but it has not been.
21:47And what's really worse is the fact that American policies,
21:52especially policies, you know, one of my,
21:55I'm a senior, former retired senior foreign service officer
21:58in economic development for eight,
22:00decorated matter of fact,
22:01but one of the real tragic facts
22:03is that a lot of our immigration policy
22:06has been driven by bad US policies,
22:10bad US trade policies of where we dump our subsidized corn
22:15on Mexico and poor Mexican peasant farmers
22:18are driven off the land because they can't subside
22:21or are subsidized.
22:24You know, it's always subsidized.
22:25It's not corporate welfare
22:27when it goes to powerful agricultural incident actors.
22:31So our corporate welfare, sugar beet subsidies
22:35and our corporate welfare,
22:37sugar cane subsidies in place like Louisiana
22:41where we have a world surplus of sugar market,
22:44but those subsidized markets
22:45are thrown on the world market.
22:46It drives further economic prices down
22:50and economic migrants.
22:53Or our cotton subsidies, cotton welfare,
22:57going to big growers that affects African cotton producers
23:02and around the world.
23:03So it's the fact these are never discussed.
23:08The fact that both parties are donor driven
23:14and a good book by Gibbons in political science,
23:17Affluence and Influence points out
23:18that for both major parties,
23:22you know, there may be polarization,
23:23but it's not polarization on this.
23:25Both major parties are more responsive to their donors
23:30than they are to their voters.
23:32And this is the kind of thing
23:34that we must address.
23:35You know, I wonder if we can ever address
23:37any of the social justice,
23:39the environmental or the population
23:41or the battle for the commons
23:47until we can recognize
23:49that our constitutional amendment is needed
23:52that says that money is not speech
23:57and that corporations are not people.
23:59Things that Supreme Court interpretation
24:04have put in the law that were never,
24:06that the founders,
24:07the original founders would never have dreamed up.
24:12And, you know, just to tie a few of these things together,
24:15you know, I'm aware from a number of things you've written
24:17that you support restricting immigration
24:21into the United States,
24:22especially for, you know, low wage jobs
24:27and that kind of thing.
24:29And there's a number of reasons for that.
24:30It's because of the America's economic policies
24:35and trade policies,
24:36especially in Mexico and Central America,
24:39but then also because it drives down wages
24:43in the United States.
24:44And you feel that black Americans
24:46are often the first to suffer
24:47because of the lower wages.
24:49And then finally, it drives up population
24:53in the United States and sometimes dramatically,
24:56which has its own set of environmental impacts.
24:58Would that be a nice summary?
25:00That is more than a summary.
25:03Matter of fact, but it isn't just me.
25:04It's the National Academy of Sciences
25:06with their book,
25:07A Common Destiny,
25:08or they're updated on one more recently.
25:10It points out that the assumption
25:12that no one is hurt by high rates of immigration
25:15is not true.
25:15It's not only low skill and less educated black workers,
25:19but Hispanic workers also,
25:21any of the low skill workers.
25:25And yeah, it's absolutely true.
25:29There was another,
25:30what was the last point that you said?
25:31Because I think that I wanted to bring-
25:33Well, that it drives up population growth
25:36in the United States was my, yeah.
25:38Oh yes, absolutely.
25:39You know, we're number one
25:43in a couple of the wrong things.
25:46We're maybe 4.5% of the population
25:49and we're using 25% of the world's resources
25:54and account for maybe a little bit more than that
25:57of, well, depends on how you want to count pollution.
26:02And look at our deaths,
26:05our virus death.
26:09And the same thing,
26:10we're 4.5% and we're a quarter,
26:13about, or 20%,
26:14between 20%,
26:15depending on how much the undercount
26:17of our cases by the virus,
26:20death by the virus are in the United States,
26:2325%.
26:25And look at what we are doing.
26:28We claim that we're being humane
26:30by policies which drive peasant farmers
26:34off from fairly sustainable lands,
26:39from our subsidized products,
26:41and then force them to have to come,
26:44sometimes across other countries,
26:46but across deserts to try to get opportunities
26:50in the United States.
26:52And, or to assume that we,
26:54the United States,
26:55we are 4% or 5% can take up the 2 billion.
27:01The last time I figured,
27:02last time I saw figures
27:04or for surveys around the world,
27:06it's estimated 2 billion people
27:07would like to migrate to the United States,
27:10basically because of economic,
27:11as economic migrants.
27:14And the tragedy is that we should be accepting
27:16refugee, true refugee migrants
27:19who are in danger of their life.
27:22We cannot absorb all the economic migrants
27:25and what we shouldn't do.
27:26And that's one of the reasons
27:28I have committed,
27:30or I'm a retired senior foreign service agent,
27:34agent, senior foreign service
27:39worker,
27:42was the need for us to be really investing.
27:46We should be,
27:48and the environmental movement should be,
27:50I think they probably are,
27:51are to be holding our congressional people accountable
27:58for our spending,
27:59our military spending and empire.
28:02And instead of having some of that money going,
28:05not just with domestic kinds of things,
28:07but for some of the rest of the world
28:09that would probably stimulate our exploits.
28:12If we really were stimulating the development,
28:14we would find out that our,
28:16that our economy would actually,
28:19it would be like an investment to stimulate our economy
28:21because especially in Central and South America,
28:23where I visited and I'm very familiar with,
28:27if we really stimulated growth
28:29and fairer opportunities there,
28:32they would be buying our products.
28:34They've always preferred American products
28:35to European products,
28:38or Asian products.
28:39Well, maybe not anymore in parts.
28:41I mean, the Toyotas and some of the others,
28:44but we would benefit
28:47just as we refuse to acknowledge that if the gap,
28:54not just the income gap,
28:55but the wealth gap between black and white Americans
28:58is we pay a terrible cost.
29:01Recent studies have shown
29:02that we lose trillions of dollars because of that.
29:07Black folks would spend the money.
29:09If black folks had that difference
29:11between the $17,000 of wealth and the 177,
29:16which is the, I think the media,
29:19no, it might be average for me, I'm not sure.
29:21Man, this economy would be booming a hell of a lot more, bro.
29:27I want to jump forward just a little bit
29:31because a lot of the listeners to EarthX
29:34are younger people and they don't know some of this history,
29:37but they also don't know
29:38some of environmental history, I think.
29:41In 2004, you ran for the board of the Sierra Club,
29:44and you were an African-American man
29:48of high standing at the time.
29:50You had a great resume, you were retired,
29:52you had some time on your hands,
29:54and you wanted to diversify the club
29:57and you wanted to bring in more environmental justice
29:59in the Sierra Club.
30:00In addition, I read that you opposed
30:03the presidency of George Bush
30:04and you were trying to get a better environmental president.
30:07You would think that that would be the perfect formula
30:12to get on a board like that
30:15and serve the environmental community.
30:17And so, in your own words, kind of what happened?
30:22Well, folks have been played,
30:27and including many, I think, Sierra Club voters,
30:31there was a power struggle going on.
30:34Dean Griffin and Spielberg, DK the G of that,
30:39had turned out later, had told David Pope,
30:44the Sierra Club head, that if they changed
30:46or did not hold his belief of the stand on immigration,
30:50he would withhold $100 million, which the club later got,
30:54because they did a job on Dick Lamb,
31:00David Plummetall, and myself.
31:02And one of the things that the Sierra Club
31:09did not want to see me on the board,
31:14because there are questions.
31:17There are questions in the past
31:19about the club's responsiveness to environmental justice,
31:26the great book of Ballard,
31:29their insensitivity toward that,
31:31ranging to even questions about the impact of the club
31:37from the founder, David Muir's values on race,
31:42that raised questions.
31:44These were not things that the club wanted to deal with.
31:47Not everybody on the club, on that board,
31:50we had Ben Zuckerman and the wonderful guy from-
31:58Oh, Watson, yeah.
31:59Watson, yes.
32:00So there were some voices on the club that were open,
32:04but the majority and the staff,
32:08we had a campaign from the staff against us, too,
32:11as well as basically...
32:19We were insurgents
32:20that appeared to threaten the status quo.
32:23And whenever you do that, it's...
32:26It was interesting.
32:28I testified before Congress that year,
32:32and there was Representative Cannon from Utah
32:36on the House Judiciary Committee.
32:40I was speaking for reduced immigration,
32:44and he said,
32:46you know, Dr. Morris, even the Sierra Club,
32:50I understand the Sierra Club is being taken over
32:53by some Afghans who are white, a white racist.
32:59I said, gee, you know, Representative Cannon,
33:03that must mean me,
33:05because I must be the only white racist
33:08that's ever been nominated for the Sierra Club board
33:11by the then Deputy Director of the National NAACP.
33:16And everybody cracked up.
33:17That's my best line in Congress.
33:19I never got a better line than that.
33:21So...
33:24I'm sure you wouldn't want to go back to that.
33:26So...
33:27Yeah, I'm sure you wouldn't want to go through that again.
33:29And I recently heard Dick Lamb say
33:31he wouldn't want to go through that again.
33:32Of course, Dick Lamb is former governor here in Colorado,
33:36who took strong positions on growth
33:37and also on immigration.
33:40I wonder though, you know,
33:42because the way it played out in the race
33:45and also the way it played out in public
33:47was as a racist issue.
33:49But the way you describe your position on immigration to me
33:53sounds very progressive.
33:54You want there to be a different foreign policies
33:57that don't drive immigrants away from their lands.
34:00The pushbacker, absolutely right.
34:02That's not in this past.
34:03No one discusses that, Garrett.
34:05No one discusses that.
34:06And you worked in foreign service.
34:08You want more foreign aid in those places.
34:10And you actually support higher refugees.
34:14Absolutely.
34:15And you also are supporting higher wages
34:18for people in the United States,
34:19especially black Americans.
34:20It sounds like a very progressive thing,
34:22but it didn't play out that way, obviously.
34:24Oh, well, because, you know,
34:27there's a political correctness.
34:29One of the things that I see nowadays,
34:31and I think we might get this if we talk about my concerns
34:35or my support of the Black Lives Matter movement,
34:38but I feel they've made some strategic mistakes
34:40and I'll talk about that.
34:42But one of the things that I see play out
34:47is that folks are vulnerable
34:51when they don't know their history
34:53and because they believe there's political correctness.
34:55As a former professor, dean,
34:59and before that as a student,
35:02I have been saddened to see the movement
35:06towards safe spaces in American academic institutions.
35:09And they've been led by,
35:11many of them have been black people.
35:12I mean, look, hell, if we needed safe spaces,
35:16we'd need them the days when I hit Colgate
35:21or Syracuse, where there were a few if any black students
35:25on campus, but we can't be safe
35:34if we're not prepared for the world.
35:37And why would we insulate ourselves
35:40to think that we should feel safe or comfortable
35:42on university campuses
35:44when the world wants to kick the hell out of us?
35:46You got to get the hell kicked out of you
35:47when you step off.
35:49It makes no sense to me.
35:52And I regret that.
35:53And I really, I think that by searching for safe spaces,
36:03you don't prepare yourself for the ability to persuade
36:09or to recognize what you're going to be coming up against.
36:14Because the world out there,
36:15especially for black people has not been
36:17and will not be safe.
36:21And I actually got my master's degree in education
36:24many years ago.
36:25And I thought I wanted to be a university administrator,
36:27which is kind of an odd thing to think you want to be.
36:30I went ahead and got my doctorate
36:31in environmental studies though.
36:32And I've done that pretty much since.
36:34But the university system has changed quite a bit
36:37just in the past decade towards the direction I think.
36:41And there's some profound things that have happened
36:44to make universities, I guess,
36:48more narrow-minded and less safe.
36:49Is that kind of what you're saying?
36:51I think that to a certain degree, yes.
36:54Absolutely, yes.
36:54I think also, I see the overstaffing,
36:59even though I was a university administrator,
37:01the overstaffing with the administrative function
37:03vis-a-vis the faculty.
37:06And I see the abuse of adjunct faculty.
37:08I mean, I tried to make sure they were not abused
37:11when I was in charge.
37:12But the fact that universities acting
37:16as if they are corporations and reducing,
37:23and reducing, I guess I heard an amen there.
37:26Yeah, yeah.
37:28Act as if they were corporations
37:29and for profit maximization.
37:33And so therefore, having adjunct professors
37:38paying them little and having them do most of the work,
37:41the teaching work, is a shame.
37:46You recently wrote a piece for the Galveston News
37:50about population growth in Texas.
37:53Yes.
37:54And you've been there in Dallas.
37:54And of course, EarthX is in Dallas too.
37:57It is, I think Texas is the fastest growing state.
38:00That's exactly, exactly right.
38:02They're fast.
38:03Yep, and a lot of people are moving there.
38:06A lot of people are moving there.
38:08They're moving there from other states in California.
38:10No, the fleeing of California, Texas is a destination.
38:14And also, of course, there's,
38:16you're a border state with Mexico.
38:17And so there's a lot of immigration in Texas too.
38:20So, I mean, what spurred you to write that op-ed
38:24about population growth?
38:25I mean.
38:26Well, you know, one of the things
38:28that I've been constantly trying to fight for
38:32is for environmental standards.
38:34You know, and it's at risk.
38:37If we're talking climate
38:40and we're talking the Earth at risk,
38:42then we can't ignore population movements,
38:45especially when you have population moving
38:47from a more sustainable place to one like where we are,
38:52which is less sustainable for the planet as a whole.
38:55And to, you know, the sad fact is that quality of life
39:01is consistently at risk.
39:04It's at risk for people who are moving here
39:06and it's at risk for people who are here.
39:09In Texas, especially with its non-regulatory policy,
39:14everything, people are moving into Houston
39:17and they're gonna be closer to refinery,
39:22pollution, all kinds of,
39:24in Houston, they would move into areas
39:26that are flood plains.
39:29America is the only country in the world
39:33that bought the crap that says that regulation is bad
39:39and that an unregulated private sector
39:44works in the public interest.
39:46Nobody else would believe that in the rest of the world.
39:48That profit generating folks that are,
39:51you know, it doesn't value the commons
39:53working in the public interest.
39:55You gotta be kidding, but that's never questioned.
39:59Also the efficiency of the private sector, you know,
40:03as one who has served in government, you know,
40:06government is really much more efficient.
40:08But once again, the lies that predominate,
40:11for instance, the assumption that Americans
40:18have a highly efficient private sector in health.
40:22You know, and government is inefficient.
40:24Heck, Medicare has an administrative cost
40:27between one and 3% private sector administrative costs
40:31because, and profit maximization is more than 20%
40:35in many cases.
40:36Matter of fact, the law had to cut them down to 20%
40:40because if they go over that, they'd have to get back,
40:42they'd have to repay to the people.
40:45But it's just these common lies that dominate
40:48without question.
40:49In Texas, one of the things I pointed out in my article
40:52is that it makes no sense to be subsidizing
40:56additional oil refineries as Texas is doing
41:01for heavy oil that should be left in the ground in Canada.
41:05It makes no sense for the state to subsidize
41:07these additional kinds of production facilities.
41:12You brought up Black Lives Matter earlier.
41:15And of course, certainly, you've kind of lived
41:20through the arc of the civil rights movement.
41:24And this certainly was a new point
41:31in the civil rights movement in the United States,
41:33I think, in 2020.
41:35And so, I mean, I think that's a good question.
41:39And so, you know, I mean, sort of having seen it
41:42in the 60s and now-
41:45I didn't just say it.
41:48Believe me, brother.
41:49Yeah, that's what, I apologize.
41:51I meant that you lived through it.
41:54And then, of course, now living through it again,
41:56of course, right there in Dallas,
41:57there were a number of marches going on in Dallas.
42:00You know, give us some thoughts
42:03on what you think happened, why it happened,
42:06you know, what you think was good about it,
42:09and maybe if there were mistakes were made,
42:10that kind of thing.
42:10Yeah, let me start with the mistakes,
42:12because I want to say to my younger brothers and sisters
42:15who've been active in the movement
42:16that one of the things that's so positive
42:18is that the issues that you've been raised
42:21and the fact that really the most depressing time for me
42:26is when nothing is happening,
42:28when it's the acceptance of the damn status quo,
42:32which is very-
42:33So I applaud young brothers and sisters.
42:37And matter of fact, one of the things that's so pleasing
42:40is that the number of white participants,
42:44the number of white folks,
42:46the 40% who didn't vote for Trump, maybe,
42:49but white folks who understand,
42:53young white folks who got a consciousness
42:56that my generation, my age cohort,
42:59certainly often does not have.
43:02But to the young brothers and sisters,
43:04there were certain things that we could tell you,
43:07could have told you,
43:08that could have made you much more effective
43:11in some of the marches that seemed to have gotten out,
43:14some of them got out of control
43:16in places like Portland and some of that.
43:18I say got out of control,
43:19was that the leaders of the marches did not keep control.
43:24One of the things that in our data we understood
43:28is that you're going to have civil rights marches.
43:30You don't have to have them at night.
43:32It does you no good to have it at night
43:38because you run additional kinds of risks.
43:41Police can't shoot straight in the daytime.
43:44So you don't figure they're gonna shoot straight at night,
43:46put it bluntly.
43:49But I think that you lost control of the movement.
43:51One of the things we also had in our movement
43:54was we would have monitors when we march.
43:57And we would have monitors that were,
43:59often young football players,
44:01young black football players.
44:02And we'd teach them,
44:03we'd go through all kinds of training.
44:05You better say, yes, ma'am,
44:06you better make sure you're there
44:07to help the older folks, things.
44:11And we kept control of our marches.
44:15We even had, and this wasn't widely known,
44:18one of our areas and ways of keeping control
44:20was to align with folks.
44:23And in some of the marches I've used,
44:27one of the most effective monitors
44:29were some of Farrakhan's boys, the Nation of Islam.
44:33These little guys, black guys with their suits
44:35and their black bow ties.
44:38And everybody in the hood knew
44:41that you don't mess with them.
44:42That they're gonna come,
44:43they're gonna be nice to you.
44:45They'll say, sir, you should be sitting in line.
44:48You can't go out there.
44:50And the toughest dudes in the hood, okay, okay.
44:55Because they knew that if you mess with one of them,
44:58you're gonna have the whole damnation of Islam
45:00on your freaking back.
45:02And they were playing.
45:03So I'm simply saying these kinds of things
45:06we could have suggested to our younger people,
45:10but I don't think they thought
45:11they had to learn anything from us.
45:14And I think that that's sort of the tragedy.
45:17I mean, I think that there is an assumption that if you,
45:20and I see that from,
45:21I've seen that from some of my children,
45:24that if you don't know something
45:28and you don't have to worry about not knowing it,
45:32you don't know what you don't know.
45:33And so therefore what you don't know is not important.
45:36And I think that that's been one of the things
45:38that I, because no matter what they did,
45:43they're gonna be criticized.
45:45They're gonna be criticized by,
45:46and so most of that criticism is not reasonable.
45:5093% of the marches were,
45:53and just like the fact that America ignores the fact
45:57that the greatest threat to,
45:59terrorist threat to Americans were,
46:01have been and are the white supremacist-based
46:04and radical right organizations.
46:07No one really wants to talk like that
46:09because they're trying to show some kind of parody
46:12with Antifa, which is really nothing,
46:14which is really minuscule.
46:17So it's these kinds of things that I would love
46:21to have been able to have young people.
46:25I do, we still have young people.
46:27I still have something I'm mentoring and so forth.
46:29And so, some young people are still wise enough,
46:32including one of my, a couple of my grandsons,
46:34are wise enough to listen to the old man and so forth.
46:38But I think that's,
46:41we see some mistakes and keep our mouths shut,
46:45but we wish that we could have,
46:47just simple things they could have learned from us.
46:51You know, as an environmentalist, of course,
46:54we all either watched or participated in it
46:57and the environmental community was, you know,
46:58in part involved in some of the movements
47:01that occurred this year.
47:03And, you know, I just saw-
47:04That did not happen in the sixties.
47:06See, that's one thing we need to recognize
47:08that I'm so glad, you know, I recognize that this is,
47:12that's one of the more positive things
47:14that where you were not with us
47:18and we were not with you basically in the sixties.
47:21You, we were together.
47:23No.
47:24If you had to kind of wrap things up here,
47:27you know, our show is called Overcoming Overshoot
47:29and it's about how humans are kind of
47:32weighing late to the landscape
47:33and, you know, have overshot our resource space
47:39on many levels.
47:40You know, what could you offer as a sense of hope
47:43and to kind of end the show here for us?
47:47Let me just simply say
47:49that one of the most important thing in politics,
47:52and I say this as a scholar of politics,
47:54now a founder of the National Association
47:57of Black Political Scientists.
47:59I've spoken before on political science groups
48:02before Congress and so forth.
48:04One of the most fundamental things that is important
48:07is the agenda.
48:09What goes on the agenda?
48:12The most positive thing,
48:14and I hope that we don't lose it,
48:18is that we've got on the agenda now
48:20because we probably have to have the climate change.
48:23We haven't had population
48:25in relationship with immigration yet.
48:28The comprehensive answers are not clear.
48:34I can say one of them is clearly
48:35get money out of politics
48:36and so that people who could run for office
48:39really reflect their society
48:41and not just the super rich
48:43or those who donate to campaigns.
48:46But at least we've gotten on the agenda.
48:50And if we fail,
48:54if we become complacent,
48:56if it is on the agenda and nothing happens
49:01and we stop actively fighting for it,
49:06the real glory of the United States in our history
49:10is the struggles,
49:11the struggles that have been long
49:14and for many years unsuccessful.
49:17And they're unsuccessful when they're dormant.
49:20They're unsuccessful when people are not complaining,
49:23when people have been beaten down and oppressed so much
49:26that they see hopelessness.
49:28Well, I see movement among young people
49:33and an enlightenment among young people,
49:36the younger millennials.
49:37Congratulations to you guys.
49:39You certainly seem sharper than we old baby boomers.
49:41But we had our day.
49:42You know, we had our day.
49:43We were kicking a little ass too, man.
49:45So, but it's really fundamentally important
49:49that it goes, it continues,
49:52that agitate, we fight, we fight, we fight.
49:54Frederick Douglass says that power concedes nothing.
49:59And those who expect to concede
50:01is like expecting the thunder and the lightning
50:03to go away and get rain without thunder and lightning.
50:05We've got to hopefully unify,
50:08but we don't have to be unified.
50:09We've just got to keep the agenda
50:12and fighting for the agenda for climate,
50:16for racial justice, for social justice,
50:17for economic justice and for, you know, sustainability.
50:23All right, thank you very much, Frank Morris.
50:25This has been a wonderful conversation.
50:27You know, I could do this every day and we could,
50:29and maybe I'll come sit on the couch there sometime
50:31and we'll have a nice chat.
50:33Always welcome, Gary.
50:34We're outside of Dallas.
50:37Okay, thank you very much.
50:39Again, thank you for watching us.
50:42I'm Gary Wagner, and this is Overcoming Overshoot
50:44on EarthX TV.