For Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed, Black history isn’t just a lesson—it’s the playbook for saving American democracy. In the debut episode of The Root’s “What’s Popular?” El-Sayed tells publisher Ashley Allison that expanding democracy requires channeling the same spirit of Black organizers who fought to broaden America’s promise for everyone. Reflecting on his own roots, the public health advocate highlights how Civil Rights activism directly paved the way for immigrants like his father, urging voters to choose a “big-hearted” vision of the country over small-minded division.
This midterm election season, The Root is going straight to the candidates to hear how their vision for the future will impact Black communities. In this first episode, Allison sat down with the candidate to discuss his background, policy priorities, and what he thinks is at stake for democracy ahead of the election.
“America has always been this competition between small-minded people who want America to be small, and big-hearted people who want America to be big,” El-Sayed told Allison. “I want America to be big.”
During their conversation, Allison and Abdul El-Sayed discussed who gets to define America and who gets to benefit from its promise. For El-Sayed, an Egyptian American physician and public health advocate, the answer is rooted in Black history and the generations of Black organizers who fought to expand democracy for everyone. He recalled how a Black teacher pulled him aside after the September 11 attacks and encouraged him to study the writings of Frederick Douglass, W.E.B. Du Bois, Martin Luther King Jr., James Baldwin, Malcolm X and Sojourner Truth.
It’s that education that helped him connect to his own family history. The Immigration Act of 1965, a product of the Civil Rights Movement, dismantled discriminatory national-origin quotas and helped make his father’s immigration from Egypt possible.
“My life exists because of the organizing in church pews and Black churches,” El-Sayed said, describing his gratitude for the Black institutions and movements that helped expand opportunities for generations of Americans.
That connection informed his decision to leave his tenure-track position at Columbia University and move to Detroit in 2015 to help rebuild the city’s health department. With a background in medicine and public health, El-Sayed said his work has long focused on understanding the structural inequalities that shape people’s health and access to care.
“The problem, though, is that as I started to think about who gets access to a doctor and who doesn’t,” he told Allison, “I started to really think about structural issues in health.”
That commitment to equity, El-Sayed argued, should be measured by his record and the policies he pursues, not his name or faith. He told Allison that identity-based attacks can distract from the issues affecting people’s everyday lives, from rising costs to access to health care.
“It’s easy, if you don’t want to point to my policy, to just point to my name and my faith and make a bunch of things up,” he said. “My faith are not raising your gas prices. They are not the reason you can’t see a doctor.”
For El-Sayed, the point is to keep the conversation focused on the issues affecting people’s everyday lives rather than allowing identity-based attacks to define his candidacy. And in Michigan, it’s Black voters who are likely to have a dramatic impact on the election results.
He acknowledged that building trust with Black voters requires more than talking about shared interests. He pointed to the challenge of overcoming negative experiences some Black Americans have had with people who share his background, while asking voters to consider his record and commitment to equity.
According to El-Sayed, voting for him is the start to addressing the issues that matter most to Michigan voters. “There will not have been a U.S. Senator from Michigan who will have had as much of their foundation in public service built alongside and working with Black folk,” he said.
Tune in to The Root’s YouTube to watch the full interview.
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