Hello, everyone and welcome to todays virtual Commonwealth Club program. My name is don lemon and im going to be your moderator. A few things before we announce our beautiful wonderful sunny hostin. As the club hosts Virtual Events theyre grateful to your continued support of their members and we hope youll consider making a donation, you can do it online or you can text, text donate. Here is the number, 4153294231, 4153294231. The club would like to thank for the good let event. Its my pleasure, my just overwelcomiove overwhelmi overwhelming, deeply i cant tell you how much i love this woman, but my pleasure to welcome my very dear friend sunny hostin, Award Winning journalist and cohost of the view. We talk so much, were like sisters a brothers and we fight, but its all love. And the new book, here it is, i am these truths, its a memoir of identity and justi living between worlds. A revealing look at the her incrediblestory. Sunny grew up in the south bronx, tough hard work and determination and the spart of her parents and family, she obtained a law degree. She went on to becom a federal prosecutor and soon recognized for prosecung crimes against men and children. Shes a fighter, shes in it to do good and help people after e went to notre dame law school. After sheecame a tv analysts and shooe was one of the first to look atrayvon martins death. And marginalized and voiceless people. We are going to dig into the timely thing she explores throhout her book. A quick reminder that we are going to be taking audience questions and may do it at the end, but we may dot throughout, sort of interwoven in, depends if something is relad to what were talking about. Please submit your questions in the box. Sunny hostin, how are you . Imwell. So happy to be with you. Even though its virtual, i wish we were in the same ro, but happy to be with you on this journey. So, tell me why, did you side to write. I just feel that the truth o it all is that you do hold the power to be the difference and you know that ive always believed that and i think that at this time were in the middle of a pandemic, an economic crisis, a National Debate over policing. A delayed, what i think is a delayed reckoning with systemic racism and i have been journalling for so long and i had been writing and i thought if not now, when. All right. And i had spoken to justice sotomayor, which that sounds like a huge nam drop, but its the truth. I had spoken to her a lot about sharing my story and i moo story, as you know, don, has more failures than success and i thought, it was time to share that, warts and all, because my story is painful. You grow up in the south bronx projects with teenage parents and do you want to share all that . Is it hopeful enough . Is it as sprayersal enough . Aspirational enough . And she said you should, because it is. She said promise me one thing, do it in spanish and english. And as you know english is my second language and do it so the little boy or girl can read it in spanish and have hope. And im sure you thought, what are people going to learn from me. Everybody is writing a book. Especially when you have the humility and are you going to care about what i write . You said you have more failures than you have successes. But people dont realize, thats kind of how life goes, right . You take those failures and those are Building Blocks to success. Why did you why did you feel that way . Why did you feel you had all of these failures and did you struggle with thinking that no ones going to care . Or absolutely, and you know, the age of social media, so i get immediate feedback every time im on the show. And i would get, you know, and i tried to be a voice for the voices, because that feed on the view is very important. And i would get these messages, youre talking about income inequality and youre talking about poverty and youre talking about the strule. Youreitting on the view and youre wealthy and you dont know anything about it. And remember thinking, they dont know. Peop dont know my story, they dont know how hard its been. And they see you on the view, oh, overnight success. Overnight success. And working at this for decades. Decades. Ive been a lawyer over 25 years. Ive been, you know, on television for a long time. It just this is jt success youre seeing, but youre not seeing the failures and there have just bee so many of them. And where whatid you learn from those failures . As people are listening. What did y learn from na . That . I say i like to use my haters motivators. An what did you len. Ive learned a tremendous amount of resiliee and my father usedo say you have to be twice a good to goalf as far. Ive learned that no one can take excellence from you. All right. So every time i have been fired. [laughter] there have bn many times, you know at cnn, there was a time my contract wasnt renewed, but i knew that i had done my best, that i had been excellent. And so, i could leave with my head up and i certainly learned that and i learned that there would be another day. I learned to use my voice, that it was okay. And i learned that humility is okay. And i learned recently that im not as good at sticking up for myself as i am at sticking up for others. For other people. Who told you that . My husband told me, you did. I know manny tol you that. He d. And sunday nht offices used to be across from each other and we would often look to eh other for advice and comfort and feedback. On, sunny, sorr youve often said lean in, suy, and you dont stick up for yourself,nd its so true. And i write in the book how its really easy to stick up for other people and i wasnt always telling mystory, i was tellin the story of my parents, i was telling my mothers story, my mother didnt speak to me for about a week after i wrote the book, i talk about addiction, talk out Mental Health and i bare is lot of secrets in that sense and i my goodness, did not want to talk about possibl discrimination. I did not want to raise my hand andsay, you know, this is happening to me. Is this true . Dont treat me this way. I should be valued more. I did not want to d those things. And iound that out about myself, which was a littl bit shocking, that i talk to t talk and i can defend other people and prosecute cases and stic up for victims, but it was rlly hard for me to do i for myse. Okay, so let me a you, see i want to ask you about the title of the book, but i have to pick up on something that you said because i think being where we are in this buness, theres a lot of advice that we can offer people thats not just in this business, but in professional le anywhere, you said that you wldnt stick up for yourself. Often times when you get in these positions, its a pyramid, rarified air. And very few of these jobs, you want to stick up for yourself and other people and you worry, if i do that, am i going to lose my platform and therefore, the wont be anyoneike me, you know, with this voice. Was that part of it . It was a huge consideration. There isnt a day that goes by that i dont g an email or a eet or, you know, precovid id objecten the street and mothers a even young people come up to me and say, oh, my god. Thank you for being who you e. You represent me a that meant a l for me and then i thought, if stick my neck out, even for myself,here won be someone like me on the view or on television and i remember one of the reasons and i read aboutt in the book, one of the reasons, don, that i always wanted to be a broadcast journalist because we had one tv when i was growing up, and i read a lot of books so we didnt watch a lot of tv. What we did watch was 60 minutes. We watched it every sunday religiously. And i would pretend to be one of the reporters, but there werent any that looked like me and my parents were like, dont do that because youre not going to be able to feed yourself. So, i remember the power of representation and so the thought that i would, you know, take a chance and risk being that representation for those people that would stop me on the street was nerve wracking, and i remember asking my family when i was like typing the forward, i typed in like 25 minutes because it poured out of me, i remember thinking, is this the is this smart . And i showed it to my husband and i said, this is professional suicide, right . And he said, yeah, probably. [laughter] and i was like, im going to lose my job, right . He was like, maybe. And i didnt it anyway. Lean in. I leaned in like you often tell me because i felt like my goodness, pandemic, economic crisis, National Debate over policing. Africanamerican as people of color affected more by this crisis. By everything. And i dont have the courage to do what i talk about every day on the show . From a privileged position. From a privileged position. I would be a hypocrite. Yeah, there you go. There you go, girl. And this is a new i can so relate to you because you remember when i came out do you remember how hard that was. I remember, we talked about it and you go i was going to lose my job and i was like im never going to work in this business again and i leaned in and it was the total right thing to do. It was the right thing to do. You were i was living i always tell people to walk in their own truth. Living in your own so youre living in your own truth. Is that where is that where that name came from, i am these truths,where did that come from . I came up with the title of the booafter it was written im in my home office at my desk whe i did a lot of writing. I havehese stickies, stickies were things on it. Remember. Quotes fm the constitution. Really. And do you remember i used to keep a nstitution keep a copy of the constitution on my desk . T little ones, we hold these trhs to be selfevident that all men are created equal, it should be men and women. Thats why im going like this. Sorry, sunny, go ahead. That all men are created equal and i just started thinking about the themes in the book about equality and systemic racism and pay and equity and im finally telling the truth and these are my truths and i hope it encourages people not to be ashamed where they come from and just fell the truth and i was like, wow, i am these truths. If thats where it came from, because its very powerful to say that the truth of it all is that we are equal and that we hold the power to be the difference. And you are you are people of color, immigrants, you are the american story. So when someone tries to otherize immigrants and people of color its doubliy insulting because of the work that they did, slavery, building things, doing things and people try to otherize you and make you feel like youre not an american, is that infuriating for you . Its painful. It used to make me angry, but now its painful. And one of the things that i thought about when i was writing the book, you know, like why do people still question my background, my ethnicity . Why is it so odd . When i was writing, we had just come after it just come up again, we had interviewed a family on the show and it was a spanishspeaking family and one of the family members, the grandmother didnt speak english so i conducted the interview of her in spanish. And i would translate for the audience. And i got all of these obnoxious tweets like sunny must be spanish today. Why is she speaking with a spanish accent. It was just that i was pronouncing the words properly. And i realized that my parents got married in 68, just a year after the decision when interracial coues were allowed to be married. And you met my mom, white hispanic and jewish descent and my father is a black guy and when they got marrie it had just become legal and there werent people thatooked like. D they stared at my familiment and tried to live in georgia, iwas crazy and the kkk ran them out of town and for me i have been otherized all of my entire life. An even though im just 50, thats why ive lived the life of a struggled identi, but it saddened that 50 years later people still question it because they still want to put you in this box. The category. People have to be able to categorize something to feel, to be comfortable. Yeah. I can understand a little bit, but not as much as you. I wrote about in my book and talk about the experience in louisiana, the brown paper bag, the light skinned and in the winter i cou hang out with the light skinned, and in the summer and the color thing,don, people on cnn, theyont know that im lana, they think in terms o africanamerican, most of the country, africanamerican, black and white. And sunn let people know that youre latina. Its okay. But you felt stuck in that world, that no mans land, sort of am i this, that, am i both, do i have to choose one. I did. And it was for a lot of reasons, and it was weird because our offices were right next to cnn espanol. They never asked me to do any reporting, thats kind of weird. And i think, one of the reasons i write in the book, one of the reebs reasons. I changed my name. My real name is ascension. I call you ascension. Thats my name. Did you morph it to make it more american or cuter or friendlier, and i know you write about it, but i want to tell people. The story is ive been ascension, my family called my ascension, my friend were back in the day all call me ascension. And when i was in college, there were a couple of people that would say, aaand i noticed it and i said you can call me what you want. And they said how about sunshine. Sunny, and sunshine. And when i started doing court tv, she couldnt pronounce my name. And she would say the cohost today is ah and you could see the struggle. And at one of the breaks,he said can i sayomething to you. And i said yes, nancy, what do you say . This name ing, ascension, no one can n pronounce it, a and and change t name. And i have this legal legend telling m this name is it not going t cut it. I said a lot of people call me sunny. Right then, she said change the chir, change it to sunny. I didnt have a spelling for it and she changed itnd i just went wh it, to be honest with you. And i didnt like it, but i went with it and after at, my career kind of took off. She knows tv. She knows tv. At the thing is, sometimes, sunny, people get and rightfully so people get offended, but sometimes people are looking out for your wellbeing and they know she knows this will work for you because i know tv. Thats what she sold me. And the role with it and lean in. Thats what she told me, don always tells me to lean in and thats what i wrote in the book. She said youre going to make it in this business and i havent seen anyone do this well without training. And she says that name is going to hold you back and youve got to change it. She was write, but i felt like i sold a piece of myself. And my grandmother never forga forgave me for it, and people would stop, hey, sunny. And she was like and i feel like at cnn i was ascension hostin just like soleda dch soledad bryant, and then i would not have changed my name. Would you not have . No, i would not. And Everybody Knows me now. My first news director, not in when i was a reporter, left new york and went to birmingham. She wanted me to change my last name and she didnt like the last name lemon and if its snappy a something thatou can remember. And don lemon, thats a name someone changes their name to. She wanted it to be don clark, don johnson, something simple and i said no one wl ever remember that. No. Eveone will rember don lemon. On lemon. Eryone remembers sunny. I know. E know who you are. I want to ask you this because you talk about, you know, your too light skinned forhe black community, too dark skinned b and people didntet it. This is f. Scott fitzgerald, an esy, the check of first rate intelligence is the abili to told two opposed ideas in mind at the se time and still retain thebility to function. Why do you think its so har for people, even intelligent people youve worked with in the past to understand tha someone can be black and lati latina . Its fascinating. Lookt barack obama, the president i half black, half white. Nody can reconcile that. I think a lot has to do with the history of this untry. The one dro rule, where if you were one drop black, you were considered black. And i think you know, i remember growing up, you ments wt can we just talk about that a little bit. That one drop was important. Because you could be 99. 9 something else, but if you had just a smidge o black in you, you were you were black. Go on, im sorry. And because of that history in the countr you know, legal documents reflect that, and you know, race is just a social construct anyway, and so my Life Experience reflected that. And so, you know, on my birth certificate it says black and then it also says hispanic, which is interesting, because i looked back at it. And it says mother white and then interesting, right . But when you would fill out any standardized test you had to choose black, white, or hispanic and i would sometimes try to circle everything and of course, you did. [laughter] the form. And i think, again, it just goes back to the history of our country and the way people are indoctrinated to this day and if you i remember feeling if i choose one, does that mean my mother doesnt exist . If i choose, you know, the other, does that mean my father doesnt exist and who i am in all of my complexity . I really believe that that is it is unique to this country because ive traveled a lot of places and im accepted and more complexity in those other places than here. Thats america, thats an american thing. So, i think that personifies what were going through right now. Inform got to put you in a box. So, even now people want to put you in a box, everyone is so divided. Theres no nuance. I know that now it is worse than its ever been. I remember holding that skill when i prosecuted cases at the justice department. I read about in the book in the sense that i would argue to the judge in the courtroom, if you were the defense attorney you knew when i walked in i needed to win because i was prosecuting child sex crimes and i felt that i was on the right force and coming in to save the day, interested in my way. I went to the war with it. We would argue and then we would go out for drinks at some of these Defense Attorneys were my closest friends, much like you and i are dear friends and we would battle on scene in error, much like we do on the view. People are always shot that megan and i are friends even though we may battle it out and set all kinds of crazy things to each other on air. We can go out and drink our bourbon later. Unfortunately, i think that kind of respect for difference of opinion is gone in our country right now. Its just gone, and it requires this kind of relationship that we have, don. Requires a respect for a difference of opinion. A level of forgiveness and of being curiousather than judgmental. It definitely requires intellectual curiosity. Right. A lot of people unfortunately dont have that and they certainly dont have a respect for difference of opinion. When you talk about intellectual curiosity, what that meansn my view is why is this person saying that, and what experience has led this person to say that . I see value i that . Theres always value in a different opinion and how that person got to it. If only for you to strengthen your feelings about som