Social Justice - A Conversation

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Wesley Knight 0:05
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Charles Stanton 0:18
Good evening. This is Professor Charles Stanton. I'm a professor of Boyd School of Law,

Blanca Pena 0:23
and my name is Blanca Pena. I am a third year law student at the Boyd School of Law,

Charles Stanton 0:27
and this is social justice. A conversation,

Blanca Pena 0:30
a conversation. Good evening, everybody. Welcome to our final episode of this semester. My name is Blanca. I'm it's been great. I know we'll probably get into this later, but it's, it's kind of a bittersweet moment, getting to our final episode here, and I'm sure Professor Charles will continue on, but with me dealing with the bar later, it's, it's, it's a great, it's great to be here, and thank you so much for joining us. I wanted to start the show off by talking about those viral photos that went around a few social media platforms with RFK and AOC in the middle of a heated argument. And I think it's been proven time and time again to me that it really is the people that have to really fight for their place that continue to fight back against, you know, people who were already given the silver spoon and the gold spoon and given all their positions. Because, I mean, I think at this point, regardless of where you stand, I think it's, it's objectively true that RFK just isn't qualified for his position, and neither are a lot of the other cabinet members in the government, or President or Vice President, our Vice President, but, um, someone like AOC, who, you know, started off not as wealthy as everyone else, and she was a waitress, and I think a bartender at some point, she, you know, went to college and studied really hard and and had To, you know, really uproot herself and come up from this grassroots campaign in New York and and seeing how far she's come now, I think it's a great representation that I think if there's anything that's going to really change the country, it's going to be those Americans who really know what it's like to work for what they Have, and who have empathy for others, because I think that's that's not something you're born with unfortunately and and you only really get those things by knowing what it's like to have to suffer or have to work or have to deal with factors that you can't always control. And as a woman of color, it's very empowering to see someone like that stand up to people like RFK and like the president, time and time again, because we need that. And it's it's disappointing to see how much we've, we've we've come with with everything, and we're not all seeing eye to eye. And it's even more demoralizing saying that everybody in the government is also on different footings, and I just hope that one day we can all get together to really solve the real issues. But I don't know if, if you have any thoughts on that picture. Professor,

Charles Stanton 3:12
yeah, yeah, solve the problems. Well, first thing you know that you got to, that you got to have as a as a foundation, is that people get involved in the process. People educate themselves, people become informed. Two semesters ago, when we did the course where we had the clip from the anchor man movie where Jeff Daniels gets up there and he says, you know, the biggest thing about solving a problem, the most important thing is acknowledging the problem and then being informed as to what's going on. A vast majority of the people in our country are uninformed as to actually what is going on. This is particularly true in the appointments that he's made to the cabinet and to these various agencies. Now you can be you know, you can disagree with me, although if every person out there that was listening to this broadcast disagreed with me and Ivanka, that would be okay, because that's part of what America is about, that we have different opinions. But it's there's certain, there's certain basic things that we should have in any in any organization, whether it's the government or, you know, company, you have to have a competence. You have to know what you're doing. You have to be experienced in certain matters that enables you to do your job as efficiently as you can do. It. One of the scariest things that's going on now is the decimation of the of the military, where he's removing all these people out of the military because they're because they're women, they're women of color, they're black, they're black men, they're Hispanic and all the rest of the stuff. And he's replacing them with people who have literally 1/10 or 1/20 of the experience that the people they fired had. Okay, you know, I could be, you know, I could be a person. I could be a person who, you know, was a Republican or a conservative, and I could be in charge of a department, but I know that my ability to carry out that job is dependent on being able to talk to other people in my organization, in my branch of government, that have this experience. You don't just get rid of people who've been, you know, on the line officers for 30 or 40 years, like, Oh, wow. You know we're going to this person is going to jump in, jump in. How jump in, based on what experience you have, people you have, people in our government who are really treasures, people who were like, militarily, they were in Vietnam, they were in Iraq, they were in Afghanistan. They know what it is to be in those situations, people who were involved in killing Bin Laden, and they would put that operation together. You know, you just don't pick it up off the street that somebody comes in and they're going to do it. But there's a there's a racism really. That's really what it is in a lot of these lack of appointments of certain people that like they're supposed to be, like I mentioned this before in one of the other programs, to be a one star general, and you have all these people who who applied and who were qualified for it, but we want to get rid of all the women and we want to get rid of all the minority people. Why would you get rid of them on what ground, though, on what specific ground are these people being let go? Because if it's just the color of their skin or their ethnicity, that is not a ground that is viable in any way, because we're supposed we're always talking in this and we're always talking about it. We've talked about it many times, but we always talk about that. We want excellence. We want people of the highest caliber, and that's whoever it is. That's whoever it is. I mean, I remember when I was working in the in the justice system. I don't think I ever noticed, you know, one nationality, what ethnicity was. I just wanted to get the best people and use their talents and have everybody work together. It's like, it's like sports coaching. I had done sports coaching when I was, you know, going to high school and going to college, and I just wanted the best players.

Blanca Pena 8:07
I

Charles Stanton 8:07
don't care who they are, you know, it's, it's, it's supposed to be the American way that people come here from other places to lend their skills and their intelligence and their experiences. That's why we have always been at the top of the food chain, because we've drawn in all these people who have worked in all these different countries, faced unique problems that we haven't faced here, and brought that into the mix. And then you sit down with, say, eight, 910, people, a man that I know very well. He comes from Senegal, and he had been a businessman in Senegal, and then he came over here, and you say, This is great. He has all these original ideas, things he had to deal with that were unique to his place of birth, people from Mexico, people from Brazil, people from Asia, that's what it's supposed to be. But why is there that fear of that? You just see, this is what I don't know. What is the fear of competence and excellence and all those things that the country is supposed to stand for?

Blanca Pena 9:13
I think they're afraid of being dominated the way that they've dominated all other races. They know what. They know that they've put minorities in such terrible, despicable situations, things like slavery. Jim Crow, you know the southern border. They know what they're doing is wrong. They know that the way that the colonizers came and destroyed people's lives and killed millions of people and and all that they knew that they was that that was wrong. And I think what they're afraid of is those same people rising up and and see, as a person of color myself, I don't, I don't ever dream of like rising up and doing the same thing to white people that white people did to the right. Rest of Us, right? But I think that's what they're afraid of, that if they're the minority, that it'll be their turn to face those kinds of treatments. And I mean, they're hypocritical, right? Because they quote, unquote, want excellence, and they're gonna shut down dei because they don't want to look at those sort of things so they can just hire the best of the best and the most meritorious candidates. But it's like you have this president who is 79 years old falling asleep in very important situations. I don't know if you saw the report that they wouldn't even let him into a situation room when they were dealing with some thing that had gone wrong

Charles Stanton 10:40
in

Blanca Pena 10:41
Iran, yeah, and they wouldn't even let him in the room right, like he was throwing a tantrum on the other side of the White House because he wanted to be let in. And they were like, no, no, no. Like, don't let him in. And you have all these people who are calling the shots without the commander in chief in the room, like that is just embarrassing. That is just ridiculous and and I think it's just proven time and time again that just these people are incompetent. I think they have their positions because of of who they were born into, the kinds of families that they were a part of, the kinds of money that they already had, right? Like, I don't think Donald Trump would be Donald Trump, if not for who his father was and the money that they already had like he doesn't have the grit for that. And I think the same thing could be said for everyone else who's in the cabinet who's just as unqualified, and it's sad. I think, you know, the I question some of his followers, I completely understand why an ignorant white person would vote Trump. I understand that right, like my empathy does stretch that far. I do get it. I too would vote for a guy who lies to me if I never knew that they were lying, right and but what I don't get is people who are in those minority groups that also vote for him, because it's like, do you think he sees you? Do you think he cares about you? I don't know if you also saw this, but I think it was last week. It was Caitlyn Jenner going on on the news, saying how hard it's for her to get her passport and stuff. It was either her passport or or some sort of government document, because her birth certificate, initially, she was able to change it from male to female, but now she's running into these issues where she's trying to register to vote or get government documents and

Charles Stanton 12:31
things like

Blanca Pena 12:32
that, and she can't, because

Charles Stanton 12:33
she

Blanca Pena 12:34
now has to go back to the male classification, right? And I remember Caitlyn Jenner was a huge Maga person, right? Like she rooted for Donald Trump. And I know maybe in her mind, she thought she was the exception, but she wasn't. Because, you know what that made me think of and I had to look it up again just to make sure that I wasn't getting it wrong. When Rock Hudson, do you remember that when he had AIDS and he thought Ronald Reagan was like his bestie, right? And he really wanted help from the White House because he was struggling with AIDS. And obviously, at the time, there was this huge stereotype around these people. Nobody would even touch anyone if they had AIDS. I don't even think it was until Princess Diana actually shook an AIDS patient's hand that made people be like, Whoa, we can touch them, kind of thing, but that's besides the point. What I'm trying to say is you had someone like Rock Hudson who was really good friends with someone like Ronald Reagan, rooted for him, uplifted him, this, that and the third, okay, Ronald Reagan becomes president. Now you're in a situation where Rock Hudson is, I don't know how openly gay he was, but he was gay and he had AIDS,

Charles Stanton 13:40
and

Blanca Pena 13:40
when it came down to life or death, guess what, no one was there for him, and I think that was unfortunately his fault in thinking that he would be the exception. No one is the exception. I think even people who are white and who are cisgendered, even they will become victimized by this administration. I think they already are, yeah, they're losing their health care. They're losing, you know, thing, access to education, but they don't see it. They they they are so uneducated that they just won't see it yet.

Charles Stanton 14:12
Well, a lot of it is a lot of it is denialism. It's interesting that you mentioned, you know, Rock Hudson, and that whole thing, because I worked in politics during that time, and the catastrophe of AIDS was more than just that, you know, you had a terrible disease. It was the non action of the government for between eight and 10 years, that absolute did absolutely nothing. And you had all these people that were dying. And, you know, people talk about, people talk about, you know, comparisons between covid and AIDS. That's an incorrect analogy. If you got AIDS, you were. Gonna die.

Blanca Pena 15:00
Yeah,

Charles Stanton 15:01
there was no, there was no out for that. But because they looked down on gay people, transgender people, etc, lesbian people, they did nothing for 10 years. And then finally, through the through Larry Kramer, basically, and Dr Fauci, things change. I think Magic Johnson changed a lot of things too, when he came out that he had AIDS, that was another enormous thing. But I think that, I think that people are very much indifferent today, and that indifference is a poisonous thing, because they they see, they see, ultimately, certain things that are wrong, as you and I see them, but there's themselves. Like, it's a society of people. It's very strange, like, because on the one hand, we're the most technologically advanced world that has ever been with AI and all these different things. So you figure this is great, you know, got all these capabilities, but in a way, it's bred an insularity where people are just themselves. I'm going to be on the I'm going to be on the thing for four or five hours, and some of these social media sites and all the rest of stuff, but you're not interacting really with anything that's real. You're just hooked into this thing and and, you know, you keep going on and on and on and on while the country is going whee down, down to the bottom. You know, it's crazy. One of the interesting things that this man, there's an article that you taken you, I'm going to mention to you, but, well, there were two articles. One article, let's, let's get to that. First was the thing with the Supreme Court. And I was, I was a little bit astounded at reading that article. Because, you know, when you're going to law school, when you become an attorney, you have certain things that you sort of believe in that inspire you to be, you know, following that path,

Blanca Pena 17:08
yeah,

Charles Stanton 17:09
but the article about the Supreme Court like, was like, the goose was cooked, the cat's in the bag. Like it wasn't even like there was going to be an honest discussion of these issues that call one another up at night and they said, well, we need to vote quickly, two or three sentences, no discussions, no oral argument, no nothing on, like, huge issues,

Blanca Pena 17:33
yeah, and what sucks. It's like we we've gotten here through a culmination of events that that implicate both the right and the left. Because if you if we go back to Ruth Bader Ginsburg and how stubborn she was and letting go of that dang seat, you know,

Charles Stanton 17:52
yeah,

Blanca Pena 17:52
it's, it's, it's the fault is on both sides, and even people that we think we should look up to, like RBG, I mean, it, it was known, right, that she was racist, like, Sure, she was more of a feminist leaning justice and whatnot, and she was very progressive in those regards, but not in other aspects too. And it's just even, even with the just how popular the genocide has gotten in Palestine, right? The fact that Pete, like Democrats now still, some of them still stand with Israel, or they, or they are afraid to say that there is a genocide going on, despite the fact that multiple international courts have already ruled that it is a genocide. It's like,

Charles Stanton 18:38
I think it's fewer, though I think there's, I think there's it could

Blanca Pena 18:42
be but I think even in when Kamala was running for office, I don't even think she was willing to denounce what was going on in the Middle East at that time, because they were all so divided and scared. And that's the thing. It's like on both sides, we have these, these very like, the these very unpredictable events that happen, and then one thing led to another, led to another, and now we're here dealing with the Supreme Court who fight, who make these decisions with barely any reasoning, if that,

Charles Stanton 19:14
yeah,

Blanca Pena 19:14
and it's just the laws are crumbling. It feels like, like it doesn't even matter anymore?

Charles Stanton 19:20
Well, I think that. I think the three, I think the three things tie in together, which you say correctly, you have the presidency, which is what it is we know what it is. You have the Congress, which has completely failed,

Blanca Pena 19:35
right?

Charles Stanton 19:36
And then you have the Supreme Court, who, in a sense, is validating all that. But in this, in this article that I read, which ties into this, this man, Steven, ends well. He writes this huge article in the Times,

Blanca Pena 19:48
and

Charles Stanton 19:48
he talks about, you know, Donald Trump was the worst president. Okay, okay, so by now we know that he's but he goes, he

Blanca Pena 19:55
goes fork, founding kitchen,

Charles Stanton 19:57
yeah, but he goes through, he goes through all of. He goes through all of it, and, you know, he says that he's done all this harm. But he ends the he ends the essay in a very, very interesting way. And I've been mentioning this to people, my students, and you know, people that you know I get to talk to on the campus here. And he finishes, he finishes this by saying, he says, you know, and the guys talked about all the stuff that Trump has done. He says, Yeah, all of which points to one more indelible bequel,

Blanca Pena 20:33
Oh,

Charles Stanton 20:33
I like the way you use the word bequeath,

Blanca Pena 20:35
bequeath,

Charles Stanton 20:35
yeah, sort of like, if you like, if I left money in a will, I would bequeath the some

Blanca Pena 20:43
right.

Charles Stanton 20:44
Okay, Special Brew, the stain on America left by the record. And I'm saying to myself, well, yeah, it's a stain that's been left on the record. You know, all these terrible things have happened. But he says, voters in this country, twice elected a president with no ethics, no empathy and no end to his narcissism. That's the bequeath, though, okay,

Blanca Pena 21:11
the bequeathed, but,

Charles Stanton 21:13
but what it made me think, what we made me think. And I said this to somebody, and everybody looked at me like, you know, where did you get this from

Blanca Pena 21:20
right?

Charles Stanton 21:21
It reminded me of Shakespeare, because in Julius Caesar, when the the conspirators have murdered Caesar and have tried to take out to take over the government,

Blanca Pena 21:34
yeah,

Charles Stanton 21:34
Brutus laments all the things that they did and all the mistakes that they made. And you know, the spirits are against us, etc, etc. And Cassius says to Brutus, he says, the fault, dear Brutus, lies not in the stars, but in ourselves that we need to assess ourselves as to what we haven't done.

Blanca Pena 21:59
We

Charles Stanton 21:59
need to look individually at what we could have done and still can do now to make things better. But people like people check out,

Blanca Pena 22:08
yeah, and

Charles Stanton 22:09
if you check out, then don't complain that the Bridge is falling down

Blanca Pena 22:13
because

Charles Stanton 22:14
you haven't had any interest in keeping it upright.

Blanca Pena 22:17
Yeah, I'll piggyback off that just, just because today, the filming of today we're doing. It's the Michael movies coming out today. And so because of that, in honor of Michael Jackson, I, I'll, I'll throw in the the man in the mirror, right? That song where it's like, you need to look at the man in the mirror, because that, that's where the change comes from, right? It's like, I we can sit here, right? And we can criticize everyone. We can point the finger at everyone but ourselves, right? But it's like, if we never turn that finger into ourselves, like, onto ourselves, like, what difference will it make? Right? It's like, if, if we're all just so down and ready and happy to criticize, but we don't have that same enthusiasm to reflect and to change and to do things within ourselves, then what is that?

Charles Stanton 23:10
What

Blanca Pena 23:10
is that really going to do? Right? Like, I think one of my favorite examples that I can think of is like, when we criticize the fact that there's a huge homelessness problem in the country, right? But then I never help someone on the street who's there, right? It's like, well, sure, I can criticize it all I want, but I'm also not doing much to help. Yeah, I'm a part of the problem.

Charles Stanton 23:34
Of course, that's right, no, oh, absolutely, absolutely. It's, it's the truth,

Blanca Pena 23:40
yes,

Charles Stanton 23:41
the truth, it's, it's, it's the truth. It's the truth about the society, but it's also the truth about people who don't want to face their own truth. So it just multiplies. So all these things go on and you, oh, wow, that's happened. Wow, that's crazy. How did it happen? Like, how then

Blanca Pena 24:00
you move on,

Charles Stanton 24:01
then you move on to the next, you know. And I think it's also, you know, you know, a lot of the effects of the economy today are hitting the middle class and the poor with with, you know, inability to feed children, medical care, all those things.

Blanca Pena 24:18
Oh yes.

Charles Stanton 24:19
But it's also about corporate America. Corporate America has been, has been morally bankrupt and doing ensuing basically nothing but any of these social problems,

Blanca Pena 24:30
just profiting, just draining everybody.

Charles Stanton 24:33
And then, you know, like, it's like, you see, I mentioned her before because I think she's a really good person. Jeff Bezos, ex wife, and the woman has done so many things, so many good things,

Blanca Pena 24:46
yeah, and

Charles Stanton 24:47
she's, she's basically out there by herself, and you have all these people who have all these resources, and it never would occur to somebody just do a kindness. Do. Mitzvah do something to help somebody.

Blanca Pena 25:02
I think about that when I think about these celebrities who, I mean, a lot of them are Nepo babies, right? And I it's like, you have your Kylie Jenner's of the world, and then you have your Greta thunbergs of the world. And what's really unfortunate is that there are more Kylie Jenner's than Greta thunbergs. I I would like to think that if I was born into such a wealthy family that I will, you know, focus on helping everybody out in the world as much as I could. I don't know, like, obviously it's easy for me to say that now, because of my upbringings and because of my passions and and everything that has led up to me even sitting in this room with you right now, but the truth is, like we just never, we never know. And it goes back to that movie that we watched, that from the class the devil's advocate. That was one of my favorite movies that we saw. By the

Charles Stanton 25:51
way, mine too.

Blanca Pena 25:51
It's so good, but the fact that, you know, vanity was the devil's favorite sin, but it's unfortunate that, you know, we all sort of fall victim to the temptation of just wanting to be selfish, or wanting to have things for ourselves and and not looking around us and being like, well, maybe I should do more to help. Because if I think of, you know, if I think of myself, for example, like I I have been able to do things, but I would have never been able to do it if I didn't have the kind of support that I had. And that's even more than just my family, who, I guess, like kind of, arguably, they felt like they had the obligation to help me, but even just outside, people like professors and friends and people who have really supported me in times of need, without any of that, I wouldn't be where I'm at. So I can't I wish we could do that more for people to continue to give back, to just help everyone else, because the more that we help out each other, the more that we grow, and the more that we grow, the stronger we stand and in situations like this, I think the stronger we'd

Charles Stanton 26:57
be. Yeah, well, I just want to say, I just want to say a couple of things as we end our semester and end this year of the program, what a great experience it's been for me to do this program with you.

Blanca Pena 27:11
I appreciate you.

Charles Stanton 27:12
I really have enjoyed every single every single session that was done. I've appreciated your spontaneity. I've appreciated your your truth. But even beyond those things, your empathy and compassion that's come through in all these broadcasts, which I think is so is so inspiring, because in our society today, people are doing their thing. Everybody's doing their thing. But you know, you have, you have a tremendous amount on your plate. You know you're going to be graduating from Boyd and, you know, studying for the bar. But you, you have that wonderful spirit that you you you're not just looking straight ahead, you're looking also at all the things on the side, and all the people that you can help and do good for and that I know, when you you know finally achieve the goal of entering the legal profession, those thoughts will be paramount in your mind as to what you want to do. So I want to say, on behalf of myself, and I would say pretty surely, everybody who listens to our program that we wish you only the best things in the future.

Blanca Pena 28:27
Thank you so much, Professor, that means a lot coming from you, I have grown so much in just this short it has felt like such a short year of doing these episodes with you. But I think your wisdom and compassion and humor have really made an impact on me. I think I am a different person than when I started the show, and I'm grateful that you reached out to me to do this. I never thought I'd ever do a podcast ever in my life, and it has truly been one of the most rewarding and fulfilling experiences. And that's thanks to you. And Wes without West not do this without

Charles Stanton 29:04
you the

Blanca Pena 29:06
whole show.

Charles Stanton 29:07
We

Blanca Pena 29:08
love him so much. Yeah, and I love you professor. And thank you so much for for everything and for believing in me. And I'll take a piece of you with me.

Charles Stanton 29:17
Oh, good

Blanca Pena 29:17
in the future.

Charles Stanton 29:18
Sounds good. Well, on that, on that, on that hopeful and lovely note, we're going to say goodnight, and we look forward to talking with you folks down the road, and we wish all everybody well and God bless. Good

Blanca Pena 29:35
night.

Charles Stanton 29:36
You.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai