- Just ahead on "Black Issues Forum," political updates across the state nationwide.

From foreign aid to local water standards and upcoming elections, there's a lot to cover.

And the popular social media platform, TikTok, might not be around for much longer.

We'll explore what that means for millions of creators coming up next, stay with us.

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[upbeat music] ♪ - Welcome to "Black Issues Forum."

I'm your host, Kenia Thompson.

There is a lot happening in North Carolina, so we're gonna get right into it.

One of the topics we'll be talking about today is DEI.

It's under threat of complete elimination after the Board of Governor's vote last week.

And for the first time ever, we have national drinking water standards that are enforceable by law, and many Black neighborhoods stand to benefit from this.

And a major foreign aid package has been passed by the Senate and signed by President Biden, but just how much aid are we talking about?

We'll get to that.

And these topics are just a glimpse into what we'll be covering today.

I'd also like to make note that PBS North Carolina is licensed to the UNC system.

So with that said, so much to talk about, I want to introduce our guests.

I'd like to welcome to the show Executive Director of The Green Majority and professor at North Carolina State University, La'Meshia Whittington, and Political Analyst, Steve Rao.

Welcome to the show.

- Great to be here.

- [laughs] Alright, there's a lot, like we said.

It's gonna be jam-packed.

I wanna start off with DEI.

La'Meshia, we've seen many organizations are starting to do away with these efforts.

With the programs and the efforts behind them.

Let's share what impact that's gonna have, and why are these decisions being made?

- Oh, that's such a great topic, and I appreciate our discussion on this very, very critical programmatic area and policy areas, DEI.

Well, first, what is DEI?

It's diversity, equity and inclusion.

Diversity for corporations, for institutions like colleges and universities.

It means recruiting diverse populations.

Of course, we know that starts with race.

We'll get to why we start there.

But it also includes different populations from other socioeconomic backgrounds.

How much money they make annually.

Diversity includes rural populations and urban, it includes gender, right?

When we talk about gender diversity and workplace development, when we talk about in recruiting at college and institutions, students, right?

So diversity encompasses getting those diverse populations, varying people from different backgrounds, into one space, right?

The equity part is identifying of those populations who's marginalized, who has had historic systemic barriers by which they need additional support to catch up to other communities who've already had access for years.

And then inclusion is the component about, "Well, how do we make people feel like they belong?

How do we make sure that we can not only recruit, but retain?"

When students get to the university level, there's conversations of, "Okay, I didn't go to a private school, so what is an office hour?

Is that for you as a professor, or is that for me?"

It can be literal language nuances that creates barriers in understanding language justice if there's not inclusive practices.

Or even the understanding that some institutions, the actual brick and mortar, was built by enslaved people.

So how about the impact, when we talk about trauma, mental health, of descendants becoming students and then accessing those halls that they may pass that corridor that they know their person, their family member actually worked and toiled and died and didn't receive the benefit of?

That's the inclusion practice.

So when we see the attack of DEI, we hear kind of this political jargon that it's new.

It's not new.

DEI was instituted historically in the 1960s during the Civil Rights movement.

That's how we were able to get the Equal Pay Act.

That's how we were able to actually talk about fair wages.

When we talk about movement and actual progressive policies for folks living with disabilities, those populations are included in diversity.

So if you have an issue with DEI, what do you really have an issue with?

You have an issue not just with the race of people, that's racism, you now have an issue with communities living with disabilities, because that ensures they get paid fairly.

That ensures that they have breaks.

- So what is that saying about the people that's made this decision?

I think some people are upset because the decision came about with little discussion or an announcement.

- Yes, I mean, these are all great points.

And, I mean, I think at the end of the day, this was done in a closed session.

It wasn't given the justice it deserved.

But there are a couple things I'll say to add to what Professor Whittington said.

I mean, first of all, I'm the parent of students in the UNC system, Tar Heel, graduating next month, a UNC NC State freshmen, and we want our college children in a global economy to learn how to work with people who don't look like them, who don't think like them, who come from different ethnic backgrounds, sexual orientation, right?

Because that's the real world, right?

Point number two is the marginalized communities.

You know, I started on the Racial and Equity Task Force League of Municipalities, and there was one day a presentation that had a slide, and it said, "Equality is when we're all in the same room watching the same baseball game, but one view is higher than the other.

But equity is when we're in that same baseball game watching it from the same view."

Take into account these things.

So that's why it's important.

But then the third reason, which I think is really important, is economic development.

I think Governor Cooper hit it on the head nail when he said that the innovators, the researchers, the scientists are gonna be looking at the decision.

And, you know, that's not good because, remember, we lost $4 billion from HP2.

And that made me think of HP2.

But you think of Apple, you think of Google, you think of Amazon, you think of all of these jobs that we're bringing into North Carolina, well, all of it's off the table because, you know, Silicon Valley is diverse.

Seattle is diverse.

I mean, there's a talent shortage.

And so we need diversity to recruit the talent to grow these organizations.

- I guess what I'm waiting for is to see, what is the replacement, right?

If we're taking this away, is there anything that's gonna be put in its place to still help with these equitable spaces?

- That's the Civil Rights movement all over again.

We as a community and allies, we have to realize that everything that our people have gained in progress on the front lines, that is what's being threatened in policy.

It may be given a new term, like DEI, but that was already in those policies how many decades ago?

That's what we're losing.

So we will lose at the ballot box if we're not voting in people who were actually in that general assembly who will make or break it.

- So let's talk about that.

Let's get to elections, right?

So we're slowly inching our way closer and closer to 2024 elections.

Let's talk about the governor race.

We've got Josh Stein, Mark Robinson.

Mark Robinson has been kind of in some trouble.

- This is gonna be one of the closest watched, expensive gubernatorial races in the history of our state and probably the country.

And I will say this, I mean, I think that first of all, Attorney General Stein's poll numbers have moved up over the last few weeks.

- Yes.

- And I don't think it should surprise any of us, because we've seen this movie play out before.

In 2022, Trump-backed MAGA gubernatorial candidates all lost, Arizona, Pennsylvania.

And so I think the same thing will happen in North Carolina.

But in terms of Robinson, he didn't file his federal taxes for five years.

- Five years, yes.

- And I think if you're gonna be the governor of the state, regardless of whether you're a Republican or Democrat, you need to make sure that you're paying your taxes on time.

- [Kenia] Right.

- You're running a state with a $30 billion budget.

It's the ninth largest state in the union.

And I think the people of North Carolina, when I wear my political analyst hat, I think they're gonna look at the governor's office and say that things have been going really well under Governor Roy Cooper who led us through the pandemic.

- Yes.

- Who's bringing billions of dollars of investment in the state, working with President Biden to do things from broadband, expanding Medicaid.

So I think the voters, the independent voters are gonna go, is it time for on-the-job training, or do we want somebody whose mentor was one of the best governors in the history of the state?

- [Kenia] Good point.

- To go at.

So I think that that's what I think is gonna happen, but it's never over 'til it's over.

- [Kenia] Indeed.

- And Attorney General Stein's gotta get out there and eat barbecue across the state and keep doing what he's doing.

He's working very hard.

- Anything you wanna add, La'Meshia?

- I just have to double down and agree with everything you're saying.

We always talk about in community, some folks are disenchanted with the process at the federal level.

They're not excited, I've heard that a lot.

- [Kenia] Yeah.

- They're not excited about elections.

And the thing that we say oftentimes is the closer the office, the closer the impact.

And so you have to be an informed voter and know that whoever you are voting in, not only in your local county governments, your local city governments, but they're going to support whoever becomes the governor of the state of North Carolina.

And they all need to match with their efficiency and their education.

And if they don't know how to manage money, that's why we have aid dollars that are sitting in the bank right now that isn't being accessed by community.

Because some of our officials are still trying to step up to the education of how to do that.

So we can't afford to elect someone in, I'm not choosing any party, I'm unaffiliated.

But we need to be talking about the issues and saying, what is your education on applying for federal dollars and then managing that money if you can't manage your taxes?

- That part.

- That's my question.

- And then he's also filing for bankruptcy for the third time.

- Yes.

- And that's problematic.

- Yes, exactly.

So I think people are watching these things and it's gonna be interesting race, but I do think that Josh Stein is prepared to do the job on day one.

And I think that people in North Carolina will most likely elect him as our next governor.

- We shall see.

So let's move on to another topic, one that you've been working on for a little while now.

Water standards are now in place.

- [La'Meshia] Yes.

- And I remember the first thing I thought to myself when you pointed that out, is how have we gone this long?

First time ever in the nation, correct?

- For PFAS, for this chemical contamination.

- [Kenia] For PFAS, okay.

- Yes, yes.

- So explain that to us.

What does that mean and how's that gonna impact our Black communities?

- Yes, okay.

So I'm very excited we could actually talk about this because it impacts every single community.

Namely Black communities who have had, we have the most landfills, we have the most pollution in our communities due to historic redlining and even due to the old plantation eras, which is what informed redlining.

And that's why we have all these plants, corporations that spew filth into the water.

So that's the outgrowth of PFAS.

If folks have relatives, like my great great uncle worked for DuPont and retired from DuPont, many of us have a legacy of potential exposure to P-F-A-S. What that is is those are thousands of chemicals that was created.

Think about your Teflon non-stick pans.

If you had a Teflon pan, that non-stick coating, that's PFAS.

That's why they say don't scratch it.

Because if you consume it and it goes into your bloodstream, of course that is a high risk for rare cancers, kidney, lung issues.

And you can even cross it over an embryo in the embryo stage.

- [Kenia] Wow.

- And through actual breastfeeding and even of course formula if it's made with contaminated water.

- [Kenia] Wow.

- So we have to understand the gravity of PFAS to really understand the gravity of the history that was made that this administration per administrator and Michael Regan of the US EPA who is a son of North Carolina, Goldsboro, and a graduate of A&T University, HBC.

We have to understand the power that came from this state.

Us, I'm very excited.

My organization was one of those that has been working on PFAS for six years.

And we were like, we have to get our water cleaned.

And because of that, and because it went all the way up to the presidential level per Administrator Regan, we have for the first time PFAS standards that says every single water treatment plant in the entire nation where we get our tap, if you get tap water from your county government, your municipal county, your municipal government, they will be required to clean out those chemicals.

- Yeah.

- And not only that, the administration has given and allocated $1 billion so that every water treatment plant, all 66,000, also have money.

That aid has been moved.

So it's not just, here's the rule, here's the law.

No, here's the money that you can now afford to do that.

And they have to do it by a certain amount of time where they have to clean our drinking water of PFAS.

- [Steve] Yeah.

- And that is historic.

- And, yeah.

- Let me ask one question really quick.

- Yeah.

Is this here to stay or can this be undone with new administration?

- Oh, so it is here to stay.

- Okay.

- But remember, there's always a risk with policy if you don't vote in the right people.

- [Kenia] Right, right.

- If you have a different, when you look at Congress and who you're voting in local, but all the way to your congressional level, if there is a persuasion, if you get in a new EPA administrator.

- Right.

- Right.

That policy that could be voted in in Congress can then tell EPA what they can and cannot regulate.

Remember your EPA, your DOJ, your DOE, all these federal departments, they can only enforce policy.

They can't make it.

So it can be overturned Congress.

However, we hope that our elections will not take us one step backwards.

- Yeah.

You wanna add?

- The the only thing I would add to it is that it's really exciting.

I mean, 100 million Americans will now have clean drinking water.

- [Kenia] Wow.

- [La'Meshia] That's right.

- And I tell you, for me, I had the honor of meeting Chief Administrator Regan at the UNC CleanTech Summit to spend a few minutes with him.

And what he said was environmental justice.

And he got very emotional when he spoke to the audience because he said, as he was traveling, the President of the United States, Joe Biden was the first time he used the word environmental justice in the State of the Union.

But what Director Regan said was that when he was in Louisiana and he saw children that had to use port-a-potties during the pandemic, when he's traveling around the country and seeing people with hook worm, it brings tears to his eyes.

And I think this is so important.

So what PFAS is doing, getting rid of the forever chemicals is gonna help prevent cancers.

I mean, even the people that are on the Cancer Moonshot for the Biden Administration.

They're excited about this, so kudos to the president and Mr. Regan, and I wanna thank Lamisha and her organization for everything they've done, 'cause we need clean drinking water for all Americans, regardless of where they come from or what circumstances of life they're in.

- Mm-hmm.

Well, this transitions into my next question and thought, because not everyone gets access to this water we are dealing with in Wake County.

About 40 people who've been living in tents, specifically off of US 70 and Highway 401, and they've been told, and I believe now at this point they've evacuated, they've been told that they need to leave, and advocates have quoted, saying this is an act of unmitigated cruelty.

North Carolina Housing Coalition reports that the number of people experiencing unsheltered homelessness is increasing here in the state.

Between 2020 and 2022, the number of North Carolinians experiencing unsheltered homelessness rose from 2,558 to 3,625.

Obviously, I'm kinda tying this to recovering from the pandemic, but more in my mind, I'm thinking of unemployment, right?

Where is this stemming from?

Is there a solution to this?

I think we're seeing growing populations of homeless people now, or people experiencing homelessness.

Steve, what have you been hearing on this front, if anything?

- Well, I mean, I think there's a lot of factors that are contributing to this.

I mean, you know, we are living in an economy with housing prices at unprecedented levels.

Housing crisis.

We are seeing, you know, mental health issues continue.

The opioid crisis, which Attorney General Stein has negotiated a lot of settlements, but that's a big problem, and when you add all of that together, it's really putting people out on the street.

We've got people who served our nation, veterans.

No man or woman who served this country should be homeless.

So, there's a lot of factors, and I think that we talked about the election.

I mean, I think, you know, inflation is coming down, but not as fast as we thought.

Prices are still rising, and so this is making it harder, and so I think it's gonna take leadership at the federal level, state level, and local level.

Now, we're already seeing some examples of that, so one, a good example is, I think the Wake County has a $10.5 million program, and it's called, I think, Bridge to Build, and it actually provides money to those that can provide services to the homeless, for builders and people to build more homes.

Wake County is working a lot.

I wanna commend Shinica Thomas and the Commission, Wake County commissioners in Wake County for making investments in affordable housing, so they see it in Wake County where I live.

Now, I don't know what's going on around the state, but we should address it, and I think the ARP money did go into some of these programs that could help address homeless, but I think we need to look at it with open eyes, because it's here and we gotta do what we can to get rid of it.

- That's right, that's right.

- Anything you wanna add?

- Oh, complete agreement, and we saw a population explosion in North Carolina.

You know, since the last census, we've had well over a million new residents join North Carolina.

We have rural communities like Brunswick County that has been known as a beachside kinda rural-esque community.

They have seen explosive growth to the point where they're number one in growth in the entire state as a county, but they were also number one for PFAS contamination in the entire nation.

So, you have people moving into communities that are not familiar with the culture, the legacy, and the impact, and that is also a systemic legacy of what we've been trying to amplify in the state as needs, right?

- Isn't that reflective though of the nation, because I think people are coming here because we may be complaining, but compared to other states, it's really affordable to live here in North Carolina.

- Absolutely.

- For now.

[laughs] - For now.

- For now.

For now.

- We don't know how long that's gonna stay.

- And then the population changes that, and so when we look at the population growth and those dynamics, our housing infrastructure wasn't in a place of stability for the existing population, and now you have new industry that is bringing in new population, attracting to new jobs, but then what happens to the existing population?

To your point, when you have inflation, okay, folks are now having to move back out to rural communities that some of us grew up in, but what infrastructure's in that rural community that is prepared for them when we are just trying to catch up to water infrastructure from the 1800s that is still outdated.

- Yeah, exactly.

And the thing I forgot to mention was the job displacement.

I mean, we know artificial intelligence is automating many routine jobs.

I mean, IBM's CEO just last year said 8,000 white collar jobs are being eliminated.

We're starting to see a lot of companies eliminate these jobs, so the jobs that we had are leaving very fast.

I'm bringing John Chambers here next month who ran Cisco to talk about AI in our future, but he does say those, he ran Cisco, he's from my home state of West Virginia, I knew his parents, but he said that, you know, we can create a lot of new jobs, so we have to focus on community colleges, training, education, to make sure that we're giving these people that lose their jobs the ability to transition back into the workforce.

The good news is the jobs are there.

John made it, likened it to the cloud revolution.

You know, when I asked him, you know, he said, well, during the cloud revolution, a lot of jobs went online, but then companies came along like Google and Amazon, and we could put human beings in much higher value positions, and we saw GDP growth, so I'm an optimist, but it's happening very fast and we need a national and state strategy to address it.

- Well, let's go up a little bit to national level.

Also international.

So, Biden has just signed a foreign aid bill providing crucial military assistance to Ukraine.

Total bill is worth $95 billion.

This is 61 billion in aid to Ukraine, 26 billion to Israel, and 8 billion for the Indo-Pacific.

My question, and it's always been the same question, is how does this impact us, right, because I know there's two different buckets, and Lamisha, I'm gonna pivot this to you.

There's two different buckets, but it's got to have some sort of trickle down effect to us.

- That's exactly, and I love the framing of the question, because I believe charity starts at home first, and as we just, we're discussing the explosion in houselessness and other impacts that's happening locally, we know we need a lot of charity, right?

And so when we talk about the impact, I'm honest with, again, we have to start at home and we have to make sure that we're taking care here domestically before we can continue to influence, negatively or positively, global affairs, and I know we've had conversations about that previously, so I won't go down that rabbit trail, but hopefully folks know where my stance, you know, is on those issues, are on those issues.

But when we talk about home, I do have to ground, the truth of the matter of this administration has given unprecedented amount of historic dollars in federal aid to our nation.

The American Rescue Plan Act was passed in 2021 that gave $1.9 trillion with a T in aid to the entire nation, and in that 1.9 trillion was, like, $350 billion on direct assistance.

It was direct money for housing, billions, with a B for housing, billions with a B for education, that is actually sitting in county government and state government, either bank accounts, or it is eligible for them to apply for direct assistance in the form of grants.

That's the first bill.

The second one was the bipartisan infrastructure law, which gave $1.2 trillion to COVID relief and fixing our infrastructure, like our water infrastructure.

- Yeah.

- PFAS alone has gotten over $10 billion.

$1 billion, like I just mentioned.

So when we wanna frame, we have to understand that we have actually received aid, unprecedented amounts in the last three and a half years.

But the issue is why aren't we seeing that in community?

- Right.

- And it boils back down to you have to understand who you're electing and being an informed voter when you get to those polls, because the question is, and we said this, when we're looking at the gubernatorial race, but we have to say this for every single person on the ballot, "What is your experience with applying for federal dollars?"

Because what we've seen on the frontline, in our organization, is one, elected officials either are not informed and they have no experience, and they're saying, "Wait, I'm not confident with applying for those federal aid dollars because I don't wanna mismanage."

We've seen two, folks that just don't have the heart.

We've actually helped communities like the town of Ivanhoe get 13 plus million dollars for a predominantly Black unincorporated area.

That's historic!

But now they're facing fights against people who don't want them to have it.

We have folks without the heart.

And the third, we have local electeds that do have the heart, and do have the education, they don't have the capacity.

- [Kenia] Yeah.

- They don't have the staff to even apply for that funding and to follow the process.

So the aid is here, it's been sitting here, but what's happening with the barrier of progress for our local elected officials to get to that aid that is there for them to apply for as elected officials.

We've had some folks even take money and buy new office furniture.

- Oh!

- Yeah.

- Okay.

- I know.

- So is there education behind being able to understand how to apply for these?

And we only have like two minutes left in the show.

- The only, yeah, well, the only thing I would add to that is I think that we have, everything she said I agree with.

We need to look at how we get some of these dollars going locally.

But I do think a vibrant Ukraine is important because if Russia wins the war, - [Kenia] Yeah.

- What's gonna prevent Taiwan from being invaded?

The entire rules-based system is at play here, right?

And then I think for the Israel, China, we're fighting China in the Indo-Pacific.

With Israel, we spend three and a half billion dollars a year on Israel.

But what we're seeing is the impact here locally, with protests and everything.

- [Kenia] Yeah.

- So the more we support Netanyahu with millions, thousands of Palestinians dying, we're having more protests and everything, so.. - I wanna make sure that we get to all our topics.

TikTok is last on the list.

No, it's always not enough time, right?

- Sorry about that.

- So Congress passed a bill that could ban TikTok.

- [Steve] Yep.

- Behind it, the reasoning behind it, security concerns because of its ties to China.

What is this gonna do for our creators?

- It's really gonna hurt innovation.

I mean, I understand the security concerns.

- Yeah.

- Cybersecurity, watching what American citizens do, intervening in elections.

But my son is a TikTok user.

He has hundreds of thousands of followers on TikTok.

He's an artist.

But creators use this platform to share their ideas, to create ecosystems in all walks of life.

Whether it's art, music, entertainment, learning about things, right?

So I think regulation is good, but banning it outright, I feel like it is just going a little bit too far.

I know that Jeff Jackson's watching this very closely, who's running for Attorney General.

He has lots of followers on TikTok.

The good news is it won't be banned until another year.

It'll take about a year for them to do this.

You won't be able to get it in app store.

But yeah, I think innovation and creators, it will affect them, because it affects their income streams.

- And 30 seconds, anything to add?

- That's right.

Well, and it's also a suppression of our freedom of speech.

There has been a revolution of independent journalism, - [Kenia] Yes.

- That has allowed for people to get lifesaving aid by just sharing information.

It's been a way for us to actually, in rural areas during disasters, be able to say, "What can we do?

What can we do?"

It's actually educational and informational.

So we have to make sure we're not severing the actual bedrock of our Gen Z-ers, our millennials, and other folks who have used this as a lifeline in very dark times in the middle of a pandemic.

- La'Meshia Whittington.

Steve Rao, thank you so much, so much to talk about.

And we jammed it all in there, and you guys gave wonderful nuggets of information.

So thank you very much.

- Thank you so much.

Great to be here.

- Of course.

Before we close out today, I wanted to take a moment to honor the memory of a remarkable young man, who left us far too soon.

Joshua "Rowdy" Rowsey, also known as Mr. R, host of PBS NC's Classroom Connection, has passed away.

Josh was a kind, creative, and brilliant collaborator and educator who made a huge impact in the community and across North Carolina.

His absence will be felt, not just here at PBS, but by everyone who was fortunate enough to experience Josh.

Our condolences go to his family and his friends.

And I thank you for watching.

If you want more content like this, we invite you to engage with us on Instagram, using the hashtag Black Issues Forum.

You can also find our full episodes on pbsnc.org/blackissuesforum, and on the PBS video app.

I'm Kenia Thompson.

I'll see you next time.

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