Why the Majority Needs the Minority to Save America with Kimberlé Crenshaw

Summary

Podcast Summary

Assembly Required with Stacey Abrams

Episode: Why the Majority Needs the Minority to Save America with Kimberlé Crenshaw
Date: July 14, 2026
Guest: Kimberlé Crenshaw, Civil Rights Advocate, Scholar of Critical Race Theory (CRT), and Author

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Episode Overview

This episode explores America’s enduring cycle of exclusion, violence, and the legal structures that uphold them—focusing particularly on how attacks against marginalized groups serve as bellwethers and mechanisms for eroding democracy. Stacey Abrams interviews Kimberlé Crenshaw about the origins and purposes of critical race theory (CRT), the power of “intersectionality,” and why cross-community solidarity is necessary to rescue and advance American democracy. The conversation is a call to action to resist current authoritarian trends, reaffirm inclusive values, and organize around the true promise of multiracial democracy.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. America at 250: Exclusion and Violence as a Pattern

• Stacey Abrams opens by connecting recent tragedies (e.g., the death of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo at the hands of ICE; [01:07]) to a storied American pattern of leveraging policy and law for exclusion and violence.
• Insight: The erosion of protections (e.g., loss of TPS, threats to birthright citizenship) is not random, but the well-worn strategy of targeting vulnerable groups, stripping rights, then normalizing their harm.
• Quote:

  “Each decision targets a different group, but the strategy is identical and the timing is not coincidental. Identify a population you want to control, find a court that will help you and strip away their protections. And then the violence follows.” (Stacey Abrams, [09:17])

• Abrams stresses that this is a time for direction, not despair, outlining steps of commit, deny, and engage ([12:51]).

2. The Origin and Weaponization of CRT

• Kimberlé Crenshaw describes the intent behind CRT: to name and analyze how legal structures perpetuate racialized outcomes—not simply a theoretical or legal concept, but a lens for understanding broader injustice ([18:17]).
• Insight: The right strategically rebrands CRT as any race-conscious policy or history, using it as a Trojan horse “to bring white Christian nationalism into the center of American politics” ([20:17]).
• Quote:

  “They are trying to do is label race consciousness in anything as CRT... so if you can't think about something and you can't name a context, ... you can't organize around it, and when you can’t organize, you can’t transform.” (Kimberlé Crenshaw, [20:59])

3. CRT and Intersectionality: Not Just About Black Americans

• CRT’s historical origins may focus on anti-Black racism, but the playbook applies to all marginalized communities—immigrant, Latino, Asian, disabled, etc. ([22:37])
• Crenshaw connects ICE’s actions to antebellum slave patrols, underlining how law is repeatedly weaponized against the “other” ([23:38]).
• Quote:

  “If you know the history about how law has been weaponized to advance racial projects, then you know what’s coming, even if it’s another group.” (Kimberlé Crenshaw, [25:37])

4. Intersectionality in Lived Experience

• Crenshaw shares a formative story from Harvard Law (barred from entering a frat’s front door as a Black woman; [32:24]), illuminating how even among “allied” groups, solidarities often dissolve when intersectional issues arise.
• Insight: True justice demands “symmetrical solidarity”—not just resisting oppression from adversaries, but challenging exclusion within one’s own ranks.

5. The Authoritarian Playbook and Why Intersectionality is Crucial Now

• Abrams outlines how authoritarian regimes attack the most vulnerable communities first—DEI, intersectional identities, reproductive rights ([37:05]).
• Crenshaw highlights that legal and political efforts to control language (e.g., banning ‘CRT’, ‘bias’, ‘discrimination’, or even words like ‘women’ or ‘Black people’) are key steps in authoritarian consolidation ([38:39]).
• Quote:

  “You cannot fight against the attack on reproductive freedom without understanding that that is a manifestation of a nationalist, authoritarian regime. You have to put democracy and gender equality in the same sentence in the same way you have to put democracy and racial justice in the same sentence.” (Kimberlé Crenshaw, [40:16])

6. The ‘Evil Triad’—Language, Litigation, Legislation

• The right first demonizes language, then litigates rights away, then enshrines exclusion through legislation ([41:18]).
• Quote:

  “What seems to be missing is that the language is not the thing they're after. The thing they're after is the thing that the language is describing or calling for. You cannot pivot your way out of democracy. You can’t pivot your way away from equality.” (Kimberlé Crenshaw, [43:30])

7. The Danger of Defensive Posture & ‘Anticipatory Compliance’

• Abrams and Crenshaw urge progressives to resist ceding ground or modifying language to placate hecklers ([43:30]).
• Crenshaw: Much of the problem is the left’s willingness to “stand down,” erase programs, or refuse to name issues in hopes of avoiding conflict—playing into right-wing hands.
• Call: “We have to revisit the circumstances... that made people realize that this is not just a transactional arrangement here. There are moral imperatives.” (Crenshaw, [45:55])

8. The Myth of the 'Centrist' on Civil Rights

• Abrams probes the false notion that equal rights are a “leftist” or “non-centrist” issue ([49:25]).
• Crenshaw:

  “To maintain a centrist position means that you’re moving to the right as well. What is to the right of the Voting Rights Act? ... You're basically creating what you might consider to be a kinder, gentler version of racial exclusion, patriarchy, and white supremacy.” ([51:24])

9. Mobilization: Building a Pluralistic Democratic Coalition

• The conversation stresses focusing outreach and policy on the disillusioned and disenfranchised—not on members of the opposition unlikely ever to be persuaded ([50:57]).
• Quote:

  “It’s either we’re gonna try to date the people who dumped us 30 years ago and haven’t shown any interest in hooking up with us again... or dancing with the people who brought you to the party. And that is the disenfranchised.” (Crenshaw, [55:20])

10. Universal Benefit of Inclusion

• Crenshaw uses disability rights as metaphor: righteous accommodations benefit everyone; inclusion is not zero-sum ([58:14]).
• Research Insight: When definitions and stories about DEI are clearly presented, approval jumps to 70–80%, even among some Republicans ([61:28]).
• Call to Action:

  “We give up before we start fighting... We have to redouble our efforts. We've got to retake the high ground with the values.” (Crenshaw, [62:12])

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On cyclical exclusion:

  “The details might have changed, the rules get rewritten, but the Supreme Court continues to reinterpret bigotry in service of ideology and to call it law.” (Stacey Abrams, [07:34])

• On defensive postures:

  “The mistake I think I made and a lot of other people made was thinking that they were making a mistake... No, they’re using [CRT] as Trojan horse.” (Crenshaw, [19:19])

• Intersectionality in the real world:

  “My assumption is, we're not going to take any exclusion. We're all on the same page. Their understanding was, no, we're not going to take any exclusion based on the one thing we have in common.” (Crenshaw, [34:50])

• On legal triangulation:

  “When we value inclusion, that doesn't take something away from people who are already there unless their value is on exclusive inclusion... I don’t think that many people who are worried about DEI are worried because it will bring people in and that the presence of them undermines their access.” (Crenshaw, [59:15])

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [01:07]–[15:16]: Stacey Abrams’ Opening, America’s Pattern of Exclusion, Violence, and Cycle of Authoritarianism
• [15:19]–[22:37]: Kimberlé Crenshaw’s Introduction, Origins and Weaponization of Critical Race Theory
• [22:37]–[26:46]: Why CRT Reaches Beyond Black Communities; Example of ICE & Fugitive Slave Act
• [32:24]–[36:38]: Crenshaw’s Harvard Fraternity Story, Importance of Intersectional Solidarity
• [38:39]–[43:30]: Gender Intersectionality, Protonatalism, Authoritarianism’s Targets
• [43:30]–[48:50]: The Evil Triad: Language, Litigation, Legislation; The Perils of Anticipatory Compliance
• [49:25]–[56:09]: Myths of Centrist and Bipartisan Approaches to Civil Rights
• [58:14]–[63:13]: Metaphor of Disability Rights; Inclusion Benefits All; Polling Data on DEI
• [63:38]–[64:41]: Crenshaw’s “Homework”: Join Back Talkers Academy at AAPF.org; Building a Movement

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Actionable Homework (from both Abrams and Crenshaw)

• Visit & Join: AAPF.org Back Talkers Academy to learn, connect, and start “backtalking” against injustice
• Buy: Kimberlé Crenshaw’s An American Memoir and support educational initiatives for marginalized communities
• Support: Local detention center commissary funds, United Negro College Fund, and the Acacia Center for Justice
• Share: Define terms (DEI, CRT, intersectionality) clearly in your circles; tell the stories behind the policies

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Final Call to Action

“Will we be the generation that finally gets it right? Or will we be another chapter in this endless story of exclusion and violence? The choice is ours, and it starts now.”
(Stacey Abrams, [14:42])

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This episode is a rich, urgent argument for understanding the tactics of exclusion, embracing historical clarity, and organizing—locally and nationally—so the promise of true democracy can finally be fulfilled for all.

Transcript

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Welcome to Assembly Required with Stacey Abrams. I am your host, Stacey Abrams. Last week, ICE killed another human being, not a migrant or a threat. A man, Lorenzo Salgado Araujo lived in the United States for more than 35 years. He had children, a family, and he was part of a community that must now mourn his death because an armed, masked paramilitary force continues to menace our neighborhoods with the authority of government and the funding of a small nation. Mr. Salgado Araujo's killing is not an isolated incident. It didn't happen in a moment of pure chaos, but in a moment that tells us something deeply important about where America is right now, as we recognize 250 years of calling ourselves a democracy. Because his death is about timing. The timing of violence matters. Right now, we're living in a moment when the Supreme Court of the United States has just stripped temporary protected status from people who came here legally, who've been here for decades, who've built lives and families and contributed to our communities, the same Supreme Court allowed birthright citizenship to survive, but by the narrowest of margins. And ICE has quietly stopped publishing the death toll in their custody because the numbers have already outstripped 20, 25, which was itself one of the deadliest years for immigrants in modern America. In this moment, when the legal ground beneath immigrant communities has been pulled out, when the message has been sent loud and clear that you are not protected, you are not safe, you do not matter, that's the time when violence comes. That's when it settles in and it stays. That's when it becomes normalized. And that's why, in step nine, in the authoritarian playbook this is the most dangerous step. This is not new. When this country was founded 250 years ago, we wrote a constitution that was supposed to protect everyone. But the Naturalization act of 1790 made clear who. Everyone. Free white persons. That's it. Not the Chinese workers who built our railroads, not the Latino gauchos who built the west, not the Irish farmers, not the refugees fleeing religious persecution, and certainly not the black people enslaved to. To build this nation's wealth from the ground up. For more than two centuries, the full measure of human and civil rights was denied to those who built this country from theory into life. And that's what I need you to understand. This time, we are living in the same story. The details might have changed, the rules get rewritten, but the Supreme Court continues to reinterpret bigotry in service of ideology and. And to call it law. But the fundamental question that we have must remain the same. Who belongs here? And the answer America keeps giving us is not them. The Supreme Court decision stripping TPS is not an isolated legal ruling. It is part of a pattern. It is the same pattern we saw with Shelby county and Russia and Branovich and the Calais decision and Milliken or all gutting the Voting Rights Act. It's the same pattern we saw with Dobbs taking away reproductive freedom. It's the same pattern we saw with students for fair admission trying to dismantle access to higher education. Each decision targets a different group, but the strategy is identical and the timing is not coincidental. Identify a population you want to control, find a court that will help you and strip away their protections. And then the violence follows. It's not always physical violence, although that happens too often, as Lorenzo's death reminds us. But there's violence in policy, violence and exclusion. Violence in the message that you do not belong, that you are not safe, that you do not matter, and that violence begets physical violence. So what does this moment tell us about where America is at 250 years? It tells us that America hasn't learned its lesson yet. We are still a nation of immigrants whose immigration laws single out persons based on their origins, not their promise. We are still a nation whose constitution, that foundational document, built with a structural deficiency from the very beginning, is being used not to protect people, but exclude them because. But here's what else I know. We don't have to accept this. We don't have to be complicit in this cycle of wrong. They might have a playbook for taking power, but we have a playbook to Take it back. Because we've been here before and survived the dark times, have visited us and tested our resolve before. And while we as a nation have struggled to find our way, we continue to move forward, sometimes despite our best efforts. The question is whether we will move forward now, whether this generation will finally break the cycle. And that's not a rhetorical question. It is a call to action. Because our time is now. Look, I don't care about Donald Trump and his minions, because after him, another despot or autocrat will rise and carry on the banner of white supremacy and Christian nationalism and. And protonatalism and xenophobia. I don't accept the warnings that tell us polling for Democrats means we have to be silent about the harm being done to immigrants in our name. Because cowardice is never right and silence in the face of violence is cowardice. But I also don't believe in commentary as a cure to harm. I might start with it, but I don't stop there. Because as many of you know, I believe in action. Best laid out in our 10 Steps campaign as the 10 Steps to Freedom and Power. And I want to walk you through three of them right now. Because this is not a moment for despair. Our time is now. And this is time for direction. So our first step is to commit, which means understand what's happening. Really understand it. Not the surface level new cycle version, but the deep historical pattern. Lorenzo Salgado Araujo's death is not separate from the TPS decision or Brett Kavanaugh's Weasley response on birthright citizenship. They are connected. They are part of the same story America has been telling for 250 years. You cannot fight what you refuse to name. So name it. As loudly as we named the murders of Renee Goode and Alex Preddy, as often as we decried legislators who funded ICE's violence, but not their accountability. Commit to keeping Lorenzo's name in the public conscience until justice is done. The second step is deny. Refuse to be complicit. Houston is hurting and they are not alone. Now is the time to create communities of action. Practice non violent civil disobedience. According to Representative Sylvia Garcia, the ICE agents never turned on sirens, never secured a judicial warrant, never turned on their body cameras or their dashboard cameras. So we must do their work for them. Whenever and wherever you see ice, make sure you record their actions. Share what you learn. And if you're afraid, reach out to organizations like the ACLU Democracy Forward, or the National Immigration Law center for advice on how to use what you know and do not accept. Accept preemptive compliance. That's what I call it when institutions say, well, the law said we have to, so we'll just go ahead and do the worst version of that law before anyone even asks us to. No, that's not right. Compliance is not a values decision. Real values require you to push back even when it's uncomfortable, even when it costs something. And our third step is engage. Work with your elected officials at every level of government to compel them to stand up and speak up. Declare where they stand. And if they refuse, introduce your own policies. How? Show up to hearings and use public comment. Organize petitions. Whether they listen or not, your neighbors will hear you. That's how we build power at every level of government. Because defeating this cycle of targeted exclusive exclusion is not a cinematic moment. It's thousands of individual, community and institutional actions stronger and more consistent than those who would oppress us. You don't need to be an expert. You don't need permission. You just need to start where you are with what you have, working among those you know. So as we mark 250 years of American democracy, I am not here to ask us to celebrate. I am here to ask us to demand something better. I'm asking us to look at Lorenzo Salgado Araujo and say, never again. I'm asking us to look at the TPS decision and say, we will not comply with injustice. I'm asking us to look at 250 years of the same pattern, this relentless, exhausting, documented pattern, and finally four, finally break the cycle. What is demanded of us is this. The forward progress of dismantling discrimination against any person based on their immigration status, their race, their origin, their gender, their disability, their sexual orientation, their religion. Our time is now. Because these are the very differences that once made us the envy of the world. And when we ignore or exclude, exclude anyone, we risk our very future. The question before us is simple. Will we be the generation that finally gets it right? Or will we be another chapter in this endless story of exclusion and violence? The choice is ours, and it starts now. Joining me today for our conversation is American civil rights advocate for scholar of critical race theory, and Columbia Law School professor Kimberle Crenshaw. Her new book, American Memoir, is out now anywhere that sells books. Assembly required with Stacey Abrams is brought to you by Blissey. I've worn my hair natural for years, which makes taking care of it at night even more essential. 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[A]

Thank you for having me. Really delighted.

[B]

Well, I've got a lot to talk to you about. I have been following your work since I was a student at Yale Law School. I have admired your work long before I knew who you were. And since then, I've seen you as someone who's a bit of a griot. You tell stories that get lost, but you're also a bit of a prognosticator. You see things before they happen. And most importantly, I think what you do so effectively is collect information and organize it so that we've got the language to describe what we all feel, but we don't necessarily know how to articulate. You end up doing a lot in a day. I appreciate that about you.

[A]

I have to say there are some moments when I say to myself, why didn't I just specialize in tax or something like that? So that new developments, they won't necessarily, you know, go to the depths of my soul. But it is the job that chose me, I think. And so there's a lot of work to be done these days.

[B]

Well, if it helps you out at all, I am technically a tax attorney by training, so, yeah, that wouldn't have been a help. Man,

[A]

you know, what you got out of your lane. I'm sure that people say, like, what all this stuff about democracy got to do with tax.

[B]

Look, and we can have a whole conversation about if our tax system worked better, our democracy would work great.

[A]

It.

[B]

Sure.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I will make that a plug for our. Our producers for another day.

[A]

Absolutely.

[B]

But let's talk about something else that people have very, very, very keen feelings about without necessarily fully understanding what they're talking about. Tax policy is one of it. Critical race theory is another. And this is a term of art that you coined, and you were describing a legal framework by the black legal scholar Derrick Bell, and you expanded the framework to also include what you termed intersectionality. And it really became core to how we understand the American experience today. When the attacks on CRT started a few years ago, I was one of the people who said I studied critical race theory in law school. I'm fairly certain that this is not part and parcel of a fourth grade education, but that's not to say it shouldn't be. And one of the challenges that I found in how we responded to the attacks on CRT was this defensive posture that said, well, we don't teach it to third graders, as opposed to, why not? Even though it was a legal framework. And so I would love to start this conversation by having you talk about why it was so important for you to both give language and context to what was a legal framework, but pull it into our lived experience.

[A]

Yeah. Well, Stacy, let me join you in saying my initial response was exactly what yours was, which is, what are you talking about? You know, there's. Critical race theory is not being taught in K through 12. And I felt like I should know about it since there are only two textbooks on it. And I knew that I didn't see a bump in my receipts at any point. So I was like, what critical race theory are you talking about? And the mistake I think I made and a lot of other people made was thinking that they were making a mistake, that they were misinterpreting what critical race theory actually was. And it was only when I saw one of the chief antagonists tweet that, you know, we're not. We don't care what critical race theory really is. They're going after a framework in an effort to gentrify it, to redefine it so that it serves a particular purpose. And I've been saying that that purpose is to use it as a Trojan horse, frankly, to bring white Christian nationalism into the center of American politics way from the right, right into the center. And they've been effective at doing that. It was only then that I began to really understand that what they are trying to do is label race consciousness in anything as critical race theory, race conscious history, race conscious policy, race conscious politics, race conscious archive, anything that actually tells the truth about why there still remains such a shadow from the past, and it gets reproduced in this current moment when we ignore it. So once I understood it, I think that it was a lot easier to tell stakeholders, not just racial justice stakeholders, but stakeholders in democracy. What they are coming after is your thoughts, your imperatives, your commitments to building a truly multiracial, inclusive democracy. So the ways that you think, the thoughts that are prompted when we see stories about voters being disenfranchised, the connections we make when a young man doesn't come home from a trip with his white friends, the inferences that we make when a young boy is killed by the police who's 14 years old, all of these histories and the meaning that we bring to it is thinking critically about race, and they don't want us to do that. So if you can't think about something and you can't name a context or a set of dynamics. You can't organize around it. And when you can't organize around it, you can't change it. You can't transform. And that is on brand. If you want to make America the way America used to be before it was firmly committed to being an inclusive democracy, before all the laws of the 60s were passed, you have to erase the memory of what that really was. You have to take away the vocabulary that came out of the efforts to transform our society. And that's precisely what they've done with banning concepts like critical race theory, intersectionality, but also words like bias, discrimination, injustice, women, black people, basically. Stacey Critical race theory and intersectionality is part of the vocabulary that we need to transform our society by being able to name the realities in order to transform them. And that's why it has been such a useful attack for them to distort critical race theory and turn people against what is a reasonable, rational way of describing our reality.

[B]

And I appreciate the fulsomeness of your answer, and I want to dig into a few pieces of it. So I want to start with why critical race theory isn't just about black people. Yeah, you and I both know they always start with the black community because we are the easiest to knock off.

[A]

Yes, exactly.

[B]

But that. That the attacks on critical race theory encompass a much broader set of conversations about, as you pointed out, multiracial democracy. And I would love for you to talk about why other communities need to be just as concerned. Even though Derrick Bell really did focus his approach on the legacy of laws and a legal system that did explicitly target black people, even he acknowledged that that was the blueprint for how they also attacked every other community of color in this country. And so I'd love to start with you giving us a little bit more about why people who aren't black need to be not only aware of, but defenders of critical race theory.

[A]

Yes. Well, you know, Stacy, there's a saying that there really is nothing new under the sun. There are new applications for old ideas. So let's look at ICE right now, for example, the way that ICE has run roughshod over the Constitution, in particular the rights of individuals to any number of ways in which their security and their personhood is meant to be protected. Of us who knew the history of the Fugitive Slave act, the slave patrols, the ways that the logics of one limited legal system of enslavement was then federalized in a way that made everybody who was phenotypically in the same category of enslaved people, insecure. In other words, the ice of enslavement were deputized in individuals who would terrorize black communities across the country. Being empowered to do so by a law that said anyone who looked black might in fact be a runaway slave. So let's figure out how we can weaponize this for broader purposes. And that ability to build into the law to the right to terrorize people is something that never was fully drawn back again. So if you want to know what's going to happen when Trump started saying, well, we are going to just go and find the undocumented criminals, any of us who knew that history knew it was never going to be that. Any of us knew that there were going to be people swept into this. Any of us knew that this was going to be a justification for a race based strategy to frighten, to apprehend, to disrupt, to terrorize particular communities. And we knew it was going to be communities of color. They're not going after Canadians, they're not going after Australians and other Europeans. If you know the history about how law has been weaponized to advance racial projects, then you know what's coming, even if it's another group. So that's why to think critically about race means that we look at all of the ways that non white people, people who are not seen as having an inherent right to being considered residents, Americans, part of this community, are going to be made vulnerable by that. So those communities that don't understand are dealing with a level of illiteracy we now see is a deadly level of illiteracy.

[B]

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Experience the new standard in comfort and support from honeylove Another part of what you explore and I want to introduce your new book Back An American Memoir into the conversation because you open with this prologue and you take your readers on this journey about your first encounter with intersectionality at Harvard Law School, and you talk about how you weren't allowed to enter the front door of a frat party because you were a black woman. Can you talk a little bit more about that experience? And on the other side, I'd love to ask you a question about how intersectionality feeds into this larger conversation.

[A]

Yeah, well, I start the book basically saying this is a book that's not a treatise, it's not a legal argument. It's not designed to be a defense of theory. It's designed to answer those who wonder where these ideas came from, those who say critical race theory, intersectionality are un American. They're foreign ideas, they're cooked up in some laboratory. No, I want to tell the story of an American set of experiences that shaped my life, that shaped the way I thought about my life, that then shaped the scholarship that came out of those experiences. So it is as American as apple pie and as the lynch rope. All of these are deeply American experiences. And at the same time, I wanted to make it clear that back talking sometimes requires you to take issue with the people who are standing beside you, the folks who you have a solidarity understanding, a pact, those who in some ways share some of your experiences but may not share all of them. What does it mean to have solidarity packs that sometimes run out of juice exactly when you need the other folks to stand up with. And I think we're seeing that in spades across the country. So, you know, the story that I was trying to tell was just simply when we have solidarity packs among our racial group, for example, African Americans. The story is basically about how a friend of mine and I go to a very exclusive club at Harvard, and we agree that we're not going to take any. I use another word in the book, but we're not gonna take any stuff. And we are in greed, and we get there, and our other friend, who's also a black male, doesn't allow us in the front door. We think this is the beginning of the pack. Right? We're not. This is the stuff we said we're not gonna take. And when he came out, he said, it's not what you think. It's just that Kim can't come through the front door because women aren't allowed to come in through the front door. They have to go around to the back. And my assumption is, we're not going to take any stuff means we're not going to take any exclusion. We're all on the same page. Their understanding was, no, we're not going to take any exclusion based on the one thing that we have in common with you, but on this other thing that we don't have in common with you. Sorry, you're on your own on that. And that was a moment when I. And as you know, Stacy, I succumbed and I went around to the back door and I got sick. I physically became ill that night. And partly because my memory of that moment of bowing to the demands of, will you put your issue at the back of the bus, or we'll come around to get you later? Or please don't act out, or don't force us into a performance in which we're ashamed of you. All of these thoughts come back physically when I'm asked to give up or not demand the kind of symmetrical solidarity that we need to advance racial justice, gender justice, democracy itself. So this is the experience out of which back talking is framed as something not just that we have to do against those who want to infantilize us, those who want to tell us that the world we live in can't change without taking something away from somebody else. That back talking is pretty clear. But sometimes we have to backtalk within our own ranks, within our families, within our communities, within our party, and that is the reality of the struggle.

[B]

And I think what is so fascinating about your work and so timely about this book is that if we want to save democracy back. Talking and intersectionality are the linchpin. I spend a lot of time on the show talking about authoritarianism and that step seven in the authoritarian playbook is attacking vulnerable marginalized communities or basically attacking DEI and intersectionality. They go after the vulnerable.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

And over the last few weeks we've had guests on to talk about disability. If you do not experience disability directly, you benefit from the solutions to disability. You benefit from having the divots in the sidewalk. You benefit from the choices that have been made because you may not be permanently disabled. But I mentioned once I cracked my kneecap and my life changed when I had to try to navigate the world without the full mobility that I was used to. I had on we have a number of conversations about immigration to your point. Immigration and how we think about the treatment of those who lack paperwork speaks to our broader conversation about what we see as the other in this country. And one of the intersectionalities that I'd love for you to dive into, and this hearkens back to something you said earlier, is the gender intersectionality. Right now, this is not only an authoritarian regime that is hard pressed to raise white supremacy and white Christian nationalism, they are also aggressively protonatalist. They want women giving birth and shutting up. And we have seen it enter the mainstream conversation in very terrifying and incredibly normalized ways. And so I would love for you to talk about why intersectionality at this moment, especially for white women, is such a crucial conversation and how we should be thinking about it, particularly given your experience.

[A]

Stacy, I am so glad that your conversations have lifted this up because there has been, I think, in the pro democracy spaces, an absence of dot connecting between all of the ways that now this newly empowered white Christian nationalist ideology is playing out. So, as you say, one of the ways in which authoritarianism catches hold is by heaping burdens and other discriminatory dynamics on groups that are seen as either powerless or not in the place that they need to be. They're seen as being outsized or outsourced. That the conditions that we are in are now a disruption from the way the world should be. Nothing explains that more than the traditional patriarchal, I would say, misogynistic politics of white Christian nationalism. We go back to the idea that women's bodies are not their own. Well, if women's bodies are not their own, which is effectively what the attack on reproductive freedom means, then they are functioning simply as conduits for some other purpose. And that other purpose is basically to recreate the nation in the Image of those who think that the nation is a white one. You cannot fight against the attack on reproductive freedom without understanding that that is a manifestation of a nationalist, authoritarian regime. You have to put democracy and gender equality in the same sentence in the same way. You have to put democracy and racial justice in the same sentence. When you don't do that, you create a chasm that this Trojan horse was able to just march right on through. And then, surprise, surprise, we're at a point where there are actually people who are arguing against women having the right to vote.

[B]

Exactly.

[A]

You're arguing against the idea that women should have free agency, not just with their bodies, but with their political beliefs and their preferences. One thing comes right after the other.

[B]

And I think it's so important in this moment that we not dismiss the salience of that conversation. When I launched American Pride Rises, which is our collection of DEI protection organizations, what we did with apr, I. I started off by talking about this triad, this evil triad that they use so effectively. And they start out by demonizing our language. They attack the words we use, the thoughts we have, and they convince us to, you know, spin in circles, trying to accommodate their distaste by trying to change what we say.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

You know, being pro abortion in the 1970s was not anathema. The Southern Baptist Church was not opposed

[A]

to it, was not opposed to it.

[B]

But we found ourselves after Reagan realized that he could use it and weaponize it. After the 76 election cycle, we found ourselves shrinking into the space that we thought they would allow us to occupy. We did the same with affirmative action and dei. We did the same with women's rights. And part of what I worry about is that what we saw in real time in 2021 with the attacks on CRT, which then led to the proliferation of litigation and legislation. We are watching happen right now with women and the right to vote. And you can see it embedded in the SAVE act when the SAVE act says that women who change their last names would be disqualified as a matter of automation from being allowed to participate. Unless you go and get additional paperwork that sits side by side with pastors being platformed to say that women don't have the right to vote. And part of what I'd love for you to talk about is in this triad, it starts with demonizing our language. It then moves to litigation to dismantle the rights we have, and then eventually to legislation to ensure we can never build them back. And as a legal scholar, I'd love for you to talk about how you are seeing this moment. And in addition to the ones I've just named, what are you seeing moving into this process, this evil triad that they use so effectively?

[A]

Yeah, Stacy, you put your finger on something that our side has yet to fully figure out how to respond to. Because, as you point out, what typically happens when we're confronted with an attack on our language is an effort to change the language, an effort to pivot, an effort to accommodate. And what seems to be missing is that the language is not the thing that they're after. The thing that they're after is the thing that the language is describing or calling for. You cannot pivot your way out of democracy. You can't pivot your way away from equality. And that's just been, honestly one of the most surprising dimensions about this moment. I frequently say MAGA is on brand. They're doing what they need to do in order to make this nostalgia from a past that was never the way they want to describe it attractive to people. We, on the other hand, seem to be giving them the heckler's veto. So when the right decides they don't like structural racism, they don't like critical race theory, they don't like diversity, equity, and inclusion, rather than us going 10 toes down to say, too bad you don't like those ideas. We do. More importantly, we know these ideas are absolutely fundamental to securing a true multiracial democracy. So if we believe in these values, then we can't allow the heckler to talk us out of or frighten us from telling the truth about what it is that holds us together. What I'm seeing now is, as Timothy Snyder often talks about anticipatory compliance. Not only are we giving up our words, we're also erasing many of the projects and the programs and the laws and the policies that make those ideas really accessible. I have sometimes said that the real struggle that we have, if we are to use a horror movie metaphor, the call is coming from inside the house. The people are telling us to lay down our arms, to stop using the tools that we know are effective in creating greater equity opportunities and are key, key to making sure that the shadow of the past doesn't continue to darken our future. When they tell us to stand down, they are effectively joining the chorus of opposition to what we're doing. So at this point, a lot of the fight has to be against those who say, we can't afford to talk about the disenfranchisement that's happening. We can't afford to put racial justice on the list. Of, of demands that we march under when we're marching together, because those are not popularizable ideas. Well, if they're not popularizable ideas, it's because we've allowed them to be redefined. We've walked away from them and we've, we have, you know, we've, we've been looked at in the eye and we blinked and they saw that we blinked. And so now they're going with all they have. So at this point, we've got to go back to the original inspiration, the things that made those people on the Edmund Pettus Bridge continue to march, even though they saw with some certainty what was going to happen to them. We have to revisit the circumstances, the places, the spaces that made people realize that this is not just a transactional arrangement here. There are moral imperatives that underscore the Voting Rights act, that underscore equity and inclusion, that define what it means for us to stand tall and firm against those who want to take us back. We've got to. I've been calling for a revival, going back to the sacred spaces and moments to dip our toes in our spirit, back into our all of the thoughts and the sacrifices that were made to get us to where we are right now. All new drinks are now at McDonald's with refreshers like the Strawberry Watermelon Refresher and the Mango Pineapple Refresher with popping Boba. To crafted sodas like the Sprite Berry Blast with berry flavors and cold foam. Who knew ice cold drinks could be so fire six. All new drinks are here now at McDonald's. Refreshers contain caffeine.

[B]

I love how you frame this, especially not in backtalker, but even in this conversation. One of the frustrations that I have right now with my political side with the Democratic Party, and it's not the whole party, but it's enough of it. That's loud. And I know you're a legal scholar, not a politician, but I'd love to talk for a moment about why it's politically malpractice to dismiss these issues. And I keep coming back to this argument that it doesn't poll well, that people don't like it.

[A]

It.

[B]

And I think about the fact that if you look at the 90 million people who didn't vote in 2024, if you break apart, who's there? People have glommed onto this line from a set of analysis that was done by, I think, both Pew and Catalyst. Well, if that cohort had voted, they probably would have voted for Trump. And I pushed back on that. And this comes to my question. I think that we spend so much time focusing on trying to persuade those who do not share our moral values that we not only avoid, but we actually reject those who do share our values and simply need to believe that they can be mobilized to do something about it. And when I think about what the Voting Rights act does, what the Civil Rights act did, when I think about all of the laws that we have passed to guarantee equality, this isn't about correcting progressive excess. This is about actually reminding people of what progress yields. And I would love for you to talk about it both from a legal scholar position, but also as an American. What does it mean when you hear people say that they're. That it's not centrist to talk about these things? Because my personal belief is I don't know what the centrist position on racism is. I'm not sure what the moderate posture on sexism looks like. So I would love to have you give me a little bit to use in my next argument.

[A]

You know, these arguments make my head explode, Stacy, partly because they've been around for so long. You know, let's just sort of place it in geography for a moment. If we understand that our country is moving to the right, and there's no question about it, right it is. Moving to the right. To maintain a centrist position means that you're moving to the right as well. What is to the right of the Voting Rights Act? What is to the right of equity? What is to the right of gender equality? You're basically creating what you might consider to be a kinder, gentler version of racial exclusion, patriarchy, and white supremacy. It drives me crazy about that. But the thing that really, I guess, is most triggering is that this is not simply a conceit of the centrists. Every space that I've been in, and in fact, Critical race theory itself, comes out of a moment in which those of us who were thinking very critically about the law, we were part of what was called Critical Legal Studies. And Critical Legal Studies was a group of progressives, people who said they marched with King. Who knows if they really did? People who came out of democratic movements on the left, people who were very much pro working class. And we were really good at talking about how the law shored up inequalities when it came to class. We were really good at talking about how the law often frames itself as being neutral, even as it creates the rules of the game. It calls the game. And many times it does so In a way that reinforces class hierarchy, inequality. The superpowers that corporations have over consumers and individuals really, really good at that. We wanted to take that framework and talk about race, how law actually creates race. It doesn't simply neutrally call the game. It decides what it means and what you can do in terms of what's excluded, what is included, what you get for being born as a white person in this society, and what you don't get if you're not born that way. These were all ways in which we wanted to take those tools and talk about the ongoing dimensions of racial inequality. And what these progressives said 30 years ago is the same thing that moderates are saying today. We can't afford to do that. It will tear this organization apart if you continue to insist on talking about these issues. You are MAU Mauing us and any of our historians of colonial that to call us MAU Mauing is basically to let the cat out of the bag as to what side of power they were standing on. But the point is that the discomfort with confronting head on the legacies that this country was built on, of theft of labor, reproductive labor, land, is a discomfort that is probably a bipartisan discomfort. The problem is that the Democrats rely on us in order to stay in power. So how do you at the same time refuse to address what is a clear and present danger? We are beyond even the warning. The thing is happening, and it's happening in part because millions of us have been written out of the equation. They're not thinking that the way to grow political power to address this effort to push more Americans out of the democracy is to mobilize those Americans is to go to them with a framework and an agenda that they see as a real one. So, you know, it's either we're gonna try to date the people who dumped us 30 years ago and haven't shown any interest in hooking up with us again. And if they were, we would have to completely change ourselves in order to be attractive to them. So there's that or dancing with the people who brought you to the party. And that is the disenfranchised. That's the group of people who were sitting it out in large part because politics have not been shown to be receptive to them by those who are calling many of the shots.

[B]

I think that's perfectly said. I think about this cognitive dissonance that people experience when they know my work as a state legislator, where I worked very closely with Republicans, to defend projects that I thought were important, like preserving you know, Pre K for 4 year olds and making certain that even though we were in the minority, that we had a voice because real people had to experience what happened on the other side of lawmaking. But at the same time, I was very competitive in my ideas. And there are those who would argue that in order to work with someone who has differing political values, you cannot hold true to your own. And I would argue that what you've laid out in your work and in your conversation about intersectionality is the proof point that that dissonance is actually resonance, that we have to have these things, we have to be able to hold these multiple truths if we are going to have a pluralistic, democratic society. And so with that in mind, I'd love to close out with this question to you for those who do not think that this matters to them, the people who are watching the changes at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and Chair Andrea Lucas, who said that the agency is going to focus on cases where white men feel discriminated against. It's easy to either shake our heads and assume that everyone agrees that that's ludicrous or that maybe they've got a point, but they are experiencing the same dissonance, saying, well, we can't have dei, we can't have equality, we can't have equity without exclusion. How would you explain to someone who might be sympathetic to that argument that there's a bigger project in mind and you've said a bit of it, But I'd love for you to close us out with how do we bring in those not the ones who want us to get a makeover before they'll talk to us again, but those who don't think they're ever going to have a seat at the table, no matter who's in charge. How do you bring them into the conversation?

[A]

You know, Stacy, you hit upon that yourself a few minutes ago when you were talking about what happened when you were temporarily dealing with a disability. You were able to see that the kind of strategies, the kind of policies that were created for those who experienced obstacles and barriers actually benefited you. At the same time, when we create on ramps, it's not because we're trying to show preferential treatment for people in wheelchairs is because we know that for them to have access to the things that we have access to, we have to build into the structure of things, points of access. The wheelchair ramp doesn't take anything away from my access to the building. It creates access for someone else who wouldn't have it without that. Take that metaphor. And apply it across the board to employment regimes, to education, to the environment, to politics. When we value inclusion, that doesn't take something away from people who are already there unless their value is on exclusive inclusion. It's valuable to me because you don't have it. And I don't think there are many people who would confess to that. I don't think that many people who are worried about DEI are worried about it because it will bring people in and that the presence of them undermines their access. Although we do have to acknowledge that there are some. I mean, we remember it from the eyes on the prize where you had the waitress saying, giving you your civil rights takes away from my civil rights. That's a faction in this country, but I don't think that's the majority of people. I think it has to be presented to them in the way in which it actually functions. Dei, inclusion. These are not about taking some people out and putting other people ahead of them. They're not about putting people who have no qualifications into jobs. It's not about taking people out of seats that they have earned. It's about erasing those structural barriers and impediments that mean that everybody won't get access to the things they have a right to. The problem is our side hasn't been as effective at actually talking and telling the truth about what these programs have been, about what these laws do, and about how everybody benefits from them. I think they accept the idea that it is a loser, and so the best approach is to avoid it. But here's what I want to lift up. As we conclude, we actually did some focus group and polling as well, and we went into the focus group and went into polling with actual definitions of what these things are, with actual stories about where the policies have come from. Pretty much taking some of what I talk about in the book and telling these stories to people and ask them, so now what? What is the fair approach? Or is telling this story a useful thing for our children to hear? We found that once you define these concepts, the approval rating goes up 70 to 80% approval ratings within Democratic voters and also within some Republican voters. So when we run, when we allow the hecklers to veto what has been painstakingly put together, we lose the opportunity that we have to speak to values that most people say they support. So we give up before we start fighting. And that's why we have to redouble our efforts. We've got to revisit the sights, the sounds, the feelings of the moral imperative. We've got to retake the high ground with the values. Honestly, Stacey, I am taking myself and hoping others join us to Montgomery, where the modern civil rights movement started to remind people of what it was about, to dispel the myth about what the movement has done and to collectivize our willingness to fight back when we see we're not alone. As your work also does, it redoubles people's commitment to do the right thing, to stand up and not allow the vision of a greater, deeper, more inclusive democracy to fall by the wayside of political expedience.

[B]

Professor Crenshaw, I'm going to ask you to do one last thing, although you've done most of it, for those who can't make it to Montgomery, I'm going to tell everybody to buy your book. So that's one step. But on this show, we like to give people homework. So what's one additional piece of homework that you would give to our audience so that they can see how they are talking back and moving us beyond resistance and toward building a more just democracy? Go.

[A]

Well, I'm going to ask people to look at our website, AAPF.org where we have a Back Talkers Academy. And so that's where we're joining up and welcoming people because everybody's got back talking. It wouldn't be a concept if it wasn't a recognizable tendency that people have sometimes suppressed to talk back against authority or to talk back against pictures of the world that don't jive with what they know to be true. Join [e-mail] where you can get access to Backtalker Academy. We'll also be uploading some information that comes out of Montgomery. And stay tuned. Montgomery is going to happen July 27th to the 31st, and we're going to make sure that we'll be sending out dispatches from Montgomery to make sure that everybody is part of the revival.

[B]

Professor Kimberle Crenshaw, author of An American Memoir. Thank you so much for joining me today on Assembly Required.

[A]

Thank you. Stacey Abrams, it's been a pleasure.

[B]

As always. At Assembly Required, we give you actionable tools to help make a difference. Let's be curious. Pick up a copy of Kimberle Crenshaw's excellent new memoir, An American Memoir and her book on selected writings. And if you want to add something else to your cart, say her name, Black Women's Stories of Police Violence and Public silence. Number two, let's solve some problems. We need more scholars like Kimberly to help us understand our history, the current moment and the promise of our future, especially as programs that support students of color are decimated by this administration. Consider supporting the United Negro College Fund and other programs that provide opportunity for our next generation of Black scholars. And number three, do good. As we saw in Houston, ICE activity leading to violence, detention and deportation has not gone away. It continues to escalate. Donate to your local detention center's commissary fund to provide detainees living under harsh conditions with basic essentials. Each Step home at each step home.org is a model organization. You can also support the Acacia center for [e-mail] which builds, strengthens and expands immigrant legal defense programs for adults and children across the country. And thank you to those of you who share questions and comments via my substack, Assembly Notes, Crooked Media's Discord and other platforms. Keep the questions and comments coming, tell others about us and add us to your feed. Let me know which episodes resonate and what you want to learn more about. That wraps up this episode of Assembly Required with Stacey Abrams. Do good out there and I'll meet you here next week. Assembly Required is a Cricut Media production. Our show is produced by Lena Minkowski and Ferris Safari with Katie Long and Adrian Hill. Our team includes Matt de Groat, Ben Hethcote, Kiril Palaviv, Jordan Cantor, Charlotte Landis and Jay Banks. Our staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East.