00:00I think you did an excellent job with that student, by the way. That's gone viral.
00:05But tell us, what do you draw on that enables you to endure such insults and mischaracterizations?
00:15I appreciate the question. I appreciate the support.
00:19I'll be honest with you. I'm not in the business of defending myself.
00:22I've had a really unlikely good life.
00:28I'm my grandmother's grandson.
00:30My grandmother is the smartest, wisest person I ever met in my life.
00:34She never had the chance to walk into a school building, not once.
00:38She was born and raised in mid-century Alexandria, Egypt.
00:43She was the ninth of 14, gave birth to eight.
00:48Two of her babies died before their first birthday.
00:52Her eldest was my father, who watched his two siblings die before he turned five.
00:58And I used to spend some of my childhood summers in Egypt, and I would be with my grandmother, and
01:04she would impress upon me just how lucky I was.
01:07I remember one summer, I'm landing, and you know, when you got family back in another country, you take gifts.
01:14So I had two suitcases, one for gifts and one for my stuff.
01:18And so I just get done being like, you know, this 13-year-old version of Santa Claus, giving all
01:22my cousins all these gifts.
01:24I feel pretty good about myself.
01:25My grandmother pulls me aside.
01:27Habibi, come sit down.
01:29Points to one of my cousins.
01:30That one's smarter than you.
01:31The other one, I don't have to tell you, is taller and better looking, works harder than you do, nicer
01:35than you do, all of them.
01:36So I'm sitting here, puddle on the floor.
01:38I asked my grandmother, I was like, so, Teta, what do I have going for me?
01:41She said, you're the best thing of all.
01:43Okay, what's that?
01:44She said, you get to go back to America at the end of the summer.
01:47The rest of your cousins stay here.
01:49Here's the thing my grandmother could never have imagined.
01:51I didn't have to go 15 hours to travel 10 years difference in life expectancy.
01:55I could go 15 minutes north into the city of Pontiac or south into the city of Detroit, and there
01:59were kids whose lives looked a lot more like my cousins than mine.
02:03And so I had a front row seat to the privilege that I had my whole life.
02:07I got through to amazing public schools, amazing public university, my medical education paid for by the federal government.
02:12My cousins couldn't have imagined that.
02:14There are kids growing up not too far from here who could never imagine that.
02:17And so I'm not in the business of defending myself.
02:19I've had a nice life.
02:20It's not about me.
02:21It's about a whole lot of folks whose lives have been made so much worse because of politics and hate
02:30and racism that affects communities in structural ways.
02:34And so I've tried to make my career always about taking whatever I had to try to create opportunity for
02:40people who didn't have it.
02:41It's the reason when I graduated medical school, I came back to the city to rebuild a health department alongside
02:47Detroiters, department that shut down because of emergency management.
02:52It's the reason I ran the first time.
02:53It's the reason I'm running now.
02:55And so for me, you can say what you want to say about me.
02:58That's fine.
02:58Say whatever you want to say about my name.
03:00Say whatever you want to say about my faith.
03:02At the end of the day, it's a distraction.
03:03We all know that racism is a distraction.
03:06We all know what it's about.
03:08It's about trying to distract people from paying attention to the issues.
03:11And I'll just tell you this.
03:12I've had the privilege over the last 18 months to get to travel across this incredible state, be invited into
03:18people's homes and in their basements and living rooms and into their churches and their synagogues.
03:22And Michiganders are good people, man.
03:24They're good people.
03:26And we're earnest and we're gritty.
03:29Earnest and gritty.
03:30We expect the best and we give the best.
03:32And we're willing to work hard.
03:34And it didn't matter if I'm up north.
03:36It doesn't matter if I'm in the heart of the city.
03:37People extend that grace they once was good for themselves and their kids.
03:41And the thing that I try to channel when I get that is to remember what Michiganders need and deserve.
03:47They're trying to distract us because they don't want to talk about the price of gas.
03:51They don't want to talk about the price of groceries.
03:52They don't want to talk about seeing a doctor.
03:54They don't want to talk about why you breathe dirty air or drink unclean water.
03:58They don't want to talk about their war in Iran.
04:00They don't want to talk about their stupid tariff policies.
04:02They don't want to talk about any of it.
04:03So instead, they're trying to distract good people from paying attention to what is bad about their policies in their
04:08lives.
04:08I'm just going to keep talking about what's bad about their policies in their lives and what we can do
04:14to actually solve it.
04:15Because in the end, that's what my grandmother would have told me to do.
04:18And I am my grandmother's grandson.
04:27Download the One India app now.
