YouSaid · the spoken record

Abdul El-Sayed

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81

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2020-02-20

most recent

2020-02-20

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1

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Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

1. “Of poverty, of marginalization, of lack of access to jobs, of lack of access to healthcare, they were the same, whether you were in Alexandria, Egypt, or you were in urban Detroit. And that for me really framed the kind of healthcare I wanted to do, which was to say, how can I be a tool in making some small difference in access to a healthy life for people? But as I trained in particular in medicine, watched the institutions that I was”

   2020-02-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 370 — Abdul El-Sayed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

2. “So I'll be honest with you, for me, the reason I wanted to be a doctor, and I couldn't have articulated at that time was my grandmother lost two babies. That's 25% of the kids that she had died before the age of one. Just in my father's generation alone, the infant mortality rate in my family was 25%. And I could travel 12 hours to Egypt. And every time I did, I'd be traveling 10 years difference in life expectancy. And I could see it in the nature of the experiences that people had. And the crazy thing about it, though, is that I didn't have to go all the way to Egypt to travel 10 years difference in life expectancy. I could take 25 minutes south on I-75 from my suburb in Detroit to any neighborhood in the actual city. And I traveled the same 10-year life expectancy gap. And the circumstances.”

   2020-02-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 370 — Abdul El-Sayed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

3. “It was the first time I ever saw myself at all represented in politics in any way. And obviously his background is different, but he comes from a mixed household. You know, watching him do what he did and the kind of grace and confidence with which he carried himself. Even in the face of the kind of just deeply unfair attacks that I at that point become really accustomed to that was extremely both gratifying and uplifting I don't agree with a lot of the things that came out of the administration but I cannot thank him and his family enough for this space that they created in our politics.”

   2020-02-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 370 — Abdul El-Sayed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

4. “And I looked at him for a minute. I just said, you know, Mr. President, it's really kind of you to say, I really appreciate you saying that. But I don't know if you saw my first name. There are 11 letters in my first name. And that's just my first name. And he looks at me for a minute and he didn't even deny it. He was like, that's fair.”

   2020-02-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 370 — Abdul El-Sayed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

5. “And I looked at him for a minute, and the first thing that came to my mind was well, you know, I'm Brown and I'm Muslim. That's just what we do. But I didn't say that. I love people. I love science. This is how I want to serve. And he looked at me and he said, you know, you have a real, real gift for communicating. And maybe you'll run for office someday. This is 2007.”

   2020-02-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 370 — Abdul El-Sayed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

6. “The first thing I thought of was I hope my parents heard that. It was one of those moments that you don't in the moment really appreciate the value of it. And it was very gracious for him to say it was interesting, actually. We shared a conversation after that speech. And he was being mobbed by everybody who was there. Yes. I didn't want to bother him. So I started walking out and you've met Bill Clinton and he has this pretty rare ability to look into your soul. Yes. So, you know, he grabs my shoulder. We're shaking hands and he looks me in the eye, said, son, why are you going to medical school?”

   2020-02-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 370 — Abdul El-Sayed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

7. “Beyond our own choices, right? It's seen as a representation for everybody. And for me, it was either run away from that or embrace it. And in a lot of ways, I think I've tried to, in my work, demonstrate that we have an opportunity by just embracing who we are and what we value in our collective humanity to show a different view on what makes us who we are independent of our faith or our names or the colors of our skin. And so, you know, I took a lot away from that, but also realized that so much of what we have to be doing right now is breaking down the stereotypes that exist, the policies that we see in public life that are further marginalizing folks and also showing that even in the space of marginalization, there's a grace about constantly focusing on the collective rather than one's own experience or one's own first experience.”

   2020-02-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 370 — Abdul El-Sayed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

8. “In today's day and age, I might look at and say that was you accommodated, frankly, you accommodated bias by doing this. But he said, you know, what happened? I told him, well, they've been doing this all play. The refs were seeing it, not calling it. I got frustrated. And I lost control. And he said, well, look, you got to understand something. You're going to be Abdul, I'll say it for the rest of your life. And you can either use it as an excuse or you can use it as motivation. And I thought about that quite a bit. And there's, I think, a challenge that people of color, particularly from deeply marginalized and magnified communities like the Muslim community, there's a challenge we have because in a lot of ways what we do is looked at”

   2020-02-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 370 — Abdul El-Sayed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

9. “Yeah. Football sports for me were extremely cathartic and a space where you could really engage with a group of people to do something together. And after 9 11, we actually didn't play the week of 9 11. All games were canceled, but the week afterwards, we did play. And I remember, you know, I was being double-teamed off play and just called names that I would, you know, frankly would follow me on every athletic field for the rest of my athletic career. And it was the first time I'd heard them in any real way. The thing about is my brother's name's Osama. And he was an elementary school at the time. And this was a source of really serious consternation for my family. And I remember at one point one of the opposing players called me Osama in the kind of way that was meant to denigrate me. And I responded. I sort of, it was third quarter, so I'd had two quarters of this. And of course, the refs saw it. And I sort of socked him under his helmet. I got pulled from the game and I had this really interesting conversation with my coaches. And it's the kind of thing that, you know,”

   2020-02-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 370 — Abdul El-Sayed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

10. “On 9 11, I went from being a brown kid with a funny name to being a very particular kind of brown kid with a very particular kind of funny name. You know, for me, to be honest, it forced me to look deeply into The conversation that we were having both before 9 11 and after 9 11, and frankly to like engage with my own faith in a real profound way, it was painful, both the event itself, watching as people in the name of my faith killed people from my country, and at the same time watching my country respond by going out and stereotyping and killing people of my faith in the name of my country. And being on both sides of that both times was exceedingly painful.”

    2020-02-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 370 — Abdul El-Sayed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

11. “The wealth that's generated in it up to the top. And the people who lose are people like him, people like his neighbors, people like the folks who goes to church with. And he doesn't have to worry about Muslims because he's not Muslim, right? And I wish that all of us were big enough to say, is this good for everybody? But when you look at a space in your life where the people around you that you see every day are suffering, and you've got one candidate who's telling you that it's all in your head and another one that's telling you that really you ought to be upset, but wants you to, you know, take on and walk a really ridiculous and crazy path with him. Who do you pick, right? I always sort of think about it as a parable between two doctors. One that tells you that your pain is not real and one that tells you it is, but you got to drink this crazy concoction that they've created. You always are going to pick the one who validates your pain.”

    2020-02-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 370 — Abdul El-Sayed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

12. “Yeah, I've got an uncle who voted for Donald Trump, and you can imagine the awkwardness of knowing that your family member voted for somebody who wanted to ban people who pray like you from this country is one of my favorite uncles. He was the guy who took us snowmobiling in the winter. He would always drive the boat when we'd go skiing in the summer. And it was a moment for me when I had to step out of my own experience of this catastrophic election and this fundamentally flawed and broken human being who was elected president and ask, why did you support him? And the fact of the matter is that despite the fact that he's my uncle, he and I live very different lives. And he's somebody who was a trucker his whole life. He built a company. But he's watched as his own community has been decimated in an economy that fundamentally has, even as it's recovered, moved more and more of...”

    2020-02-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 370 — Abdul El-Sayed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

13. “One of the probably if there's any silver lining in the cloud of having been stereotyped my entire life is that I've learned not to believe the stereotypes. And so I think there's a space always for finding what makes somebody tick and who they are and what they believe. And you'll find even when you disagree on 99% of things, there is something about your shared experience just being human that can create a space for connection. And I found that, and it's hard to occupy, especially in a moment where, you know, we think that the world is transacted into 180 character tweets. But you can at the same time hold a conversation with somebody that says, I deeply disagree with you, but I still value you and love you. And I want you to be happy, but I just think that the pathway for that isn't what you think it is. And that's an uncomfortable place to sit. And it's a lot easier to take our”

    2020-02-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 370 — Abdul El-Sayed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

14. “An outsider, but also constantly finding those moments of humanity, those shared experiences and norms that allow you to be a part of something. And being able to grow up in a family like that where even just the exercise of living our daily life was an exercise in cultural engagement and translation, I think taught me a lot about what makes us whole and what makes us human and finding those moments of shared experience and meaning that are the substrate of building real relationships. And so I really valued that. I didn't appreciate I was having it. And I was getting that experience so early. But, you know, as I grew older, and especially in the work in healthcare where it's so much about finding a shared space with somebody, I found that my life had really prepared me well for that kind of work.”

    2020-02-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 370 — Abdul El-Sayed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

15. “I did. I did. We didn't see each other all that much back in the day. You didn't have the tools that we have now, FaceTime, Skype. But I'd see her at least once or twice a year. I've had two siblings, two sisters on that side when they were younger, and so she moved back to the States, and I saw quite a bit more regularly then. But my stepmom, Jackie, who raised me, you know, her family comes from a very different background than my father and mother do. And so, you know, we have this whiplash I told you about going to Egypt in the summers. But I come back midway through the summer and hang out in a place called Montcalm County, Michigan, where my family's had cottages on a lake for the past 60 years. And, you know, we talk about code switching, the ability to talk to different groups of people from, you know, within their own cultural perspective. And you learn very quickly how to think about yourself and how to engage is almost always the consummate outsider. Because even as a full-blooded Egyptian kid, when I went to Egypt, I was always the American. And I didn't walk quite right. I didn't dress quite right. And then I'd come back. And obviously my culture identity, the color of my skin, my name marked me. And so you're constantly.”

    2020-02-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 370 — Abdul El-Sayed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

16. “Yeah, my mom had moved abroad. And so my family decided that it was probably best that I grow up here in the States. And so I did. And so I was raised by my father and my stepmom.”

    2020-02-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 370 — Abdul El-Sayed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

17. “Yeah, my mother actually trained as a doctor in Egypt, and when she came here, had kids and decided to go all the way back through education and become a nurse. But I was raised by my stepmom, Jackie.”

    2020-02-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 370 — Abdul El-Sayed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

18. “The kind of society where all of us have a voice and can say what we choose and believe in our rights to choose who our leaders are and hold them accountable. And when that goes away, the reverberations, they're not just government that suffers. The reverberations in terms of the kind of flourishing in society.”

    2020-02-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 370 — Abdul El-Sayed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

19. “You know, lo and behold, the reason he got impeached in the first place. And our democracy exists in our minds and our choices.”

    2020-02-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 370 — Abdul El-Sayed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

20. “Is violating those norms, whether it's creating a culture of cronyism. Whether it is in a very directed way, trying to remove what he thinks are his opponents.”

    2020-02-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 370 — Abdul El-Sayed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

21. “And he was like, you know, he's American, you can't do anything to him. And they left. Don't appreciate that our norms are Moors, our democracy, it's not bolted tight. It exists because people respect”

    2020-02-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 370 — Abdul El-Sayed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

22. “I'd never seen him afraid until that point. And he said, Go get your passport. And so I brought my passport and he almost like held it up like a talisman.”

    2020-02-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 370 — Abdul El-Sayed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

23. “We got a knock at the door, and it was a group of plain close cops. And they asked where is that boy who was saying those things? And my grandfather, I mean, he sold vegetables his whole life, one of the toughest guys you'll ever meet. I think...”

    2020-02-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 370 — Abdul El-Sayed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

24. “I used all the choicest words that my cousins had taught me about Mubarak. And my grandmother goes nuts, pulls me back into the shade and then upstairs and gives me a good scolding. And I was like, see, nothing happened. We're fine until later on that evening.”

    2020-02-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 370 — Abdul El-Sayed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

25. “Haven't been back for about 10 years, the unrest there. My father was a pretty big agitator for democracy. And I went back quite a bit when I was a child the first time, in fact, that I went back. I went back alone. We went with a family that had gone and my dad was a little bit worried about going back.”

    2020-02-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 370 — Abdul El-Sayed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

26. “And it was either Detroit or Bayreuth, Germany. And he really wanted to come to Detroit. And that's how my family got here.”

    2020-02-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 370 — Abdul El-Sayed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

27. “Old, and my grandfather showed me that this is the place where my dad would study. And I saw that lamp, and I can imagine my dad sort of sitting there after a long day between school and selling vegetables, in effect, studying the future I got to live into existence. And so, you know, profoundly grateful for him.”

    2020-02-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 370 — Abdul El-Sayed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

28. “My father was the eldest of six, born and raised in a pretty low income working class part of Alexandria, Egypt. And his mother still to this day is the wisest, most intelligent person I've ever met, but she never got to go to school. She was illiterate, raised six kids. He was the eldest, had an additional two who died before the first birthday. And he would spend most of his days helping his father with the vegetable salt where he sold vegetables. He sort of knew that his pathway beyond that life meant that he was going to have to study. And so they had one bedroom. And I remember going back in the summers and hanging out with my grandmother and grandfather in that one bedroom apartment. And his siblings would usually go to sleep by nine o'clock. And that would be the time that he'd finish with his chores. So he'd study on the rooftop of that building by the light of a lamp across the street. And I remember specifically being 13 years old.”

    2020-02-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 370 — Abdul El-Sayed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

29. “And I told him my name was Abdul Rahman Sayyid. And he looks at me, he's like, Which one, where are you on this list? And he's showing me the list of everyone else on the plane. I was like, you probably shouldn't be showing me that list. But there are six ALSAids.”

    2020-02-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 370 — Abdul El-Sayed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

30. “So, you have to tell them what your name is before you step in for security. They need to make sure you're registered on a plane.”

    2020-02-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 370 — Abdul El-Sayed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

31. “That's right. I always say it's the Mike Smith of Egypt. I remember a story one time, I was getting on an airplane in Egypt sometimes the security is a little bit lax.”

    2020-02-20 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 370 — Abdul El-Sayed · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source