Originally published in the LA Progressive
But when I recently sat down with Karem for what was supposed to be an informal conversation, I was interested in something beyond his reputation as a combative journalist.
I wanted to know what made him that way.
More specifically, I wanted to understand whether his experiences had shaped his views about race, power, and the institutions that govern American life.
At LA Progressive, we have long maintained that America’s racial hierarchy is not some peripheral problem that can be addressed after we solve our economic and political challenges. It is central to understanding why American democracy has never fully delivered on its promises.
Karem’s personal history offered an unexpected starting point for that discussion.
Growing Up Different in the American South
Karem was born in Louisville, Kentucky, into a family with Lebanese roots on his father’s side. Growing up in the South, he experienced the hostility directed at people who didn’t fit neatly into America’s racial categories.
He recalled being subjected to anti-Arab slurs and learning early that prejudice was not an abstraction.
But his family’s response to racial injustice may have been even more influential than the discrimination he experienced.
His grandfather, a Kentucky judge, knew Muhammad Ali and had a personal relationship with the legendary boxer.
Karem told me that his family helped Ali navigate conflicts with the people controlling his early boxing career. He also recalled a revealing confrontation between his grandfather and a neighbor who insisted on calling Ali by his former name, Cassius Clay.
His grandfather refused to tolerate it.
As Karem remembered the exchange, his grandfather insisted that every person had the right to determine what they would be called. Anyone unwilling to respect Ali’s chosen name was no longer welcome in his home.
It was a small but consequential lesson about dignity, self-determination, and the importance of refusing to participate in another person’s degradation.
Karem also described meeting Ali as a nine-year-old participating in a Louisville boxing program. Ali visited the young boxers, and Karem had an opportunity to shadowbox with the heavyweight champion.
The encounter left a lasting impression.
Karem grew up in the same city that produced both Ali and journalist Hunter S. Thompson. Looking back, he sees those two figures, along with his parents, as important influences on his willingness to challenge authority.
Ali demonstrated that one could stand up to powerful institutions without surrendering one’s identity. Thompson showed that journalism could be irreverent, confrontational, and unwilling to accept official narratives.
Those influences helped shape Karem’s understanding of his profession.
The Journalist’s Job Is Not to Make Presidents Comfortable
Karem’s first experience questioning a president came during George H. W. Bush’s administration. He told me that asking that question cost him his job.
His confrontations with Donald Trump produced a different outcome: litigation over his press credentials.
Karem takes considerable satisfaction in having prevailed in court. He describes his record against Trump as three victories and no defeats.
But he rejects the notion that challenging a president constitutes rudeness.
He considers it the fundamental responsibility of a journalist.
Early in his White House career, Karem encountered two legendary reporters, Helen Thomas and Sam Donaldson.
Thomas impressed upon him the importance of asking questions even when officials refuse to provide meaningful answers. Simply putting an issue before the president establishes that the question has been raised.
Donaldson encouraged him to learn from the experience of the veteran reporters surrounding him.
Together, they helped shape a philosophy Karem has carried throughout his career.
The White House press secretary’s responsibility, he explained, is to present the administration in the most favorable light possible.
The journalist’s responsibility is entirely different.
It is to hold government accountable to the people.
Karem also offered a definition of journalism that deserves serious consideration: good journalism, he said, is the application of the scientific method to mass communication.
Journalists will make mistakes. They will sometimes get facts wrong. But the obligation is to investigate, correct errors, and continue pursuing verifiable information.
For Karem, public officials are not our rulers.
They are our employees.
And employees must answer to the people who pay their salaries.
Race, Class, and the Politics of Division
Our conversation eventually returned to the subject that had prompted much of my interest in interviewing him.
Race.
Karem readily acknowledged the destructive influence of racism and misogyny in American political life. But he situated both within a larger economic struggle.
His argument was that the wealthy benefit when working people are divided against one another.
Poor white Americans, he observed, have far more material interests in common with poor Black Americans than with the wealthy people who dominate the economy.
Yet racial hostility and other divisions can prevent people from recognizing those shared interests.
It was a familiar argument, but one that raised an important question for me.
Does economic inequality explain racial hierarchy, or has racial hierarchy been one of the principal mechanisms through which economic inequality has been created and sustained?
The distinction matters.
America’s history of slavery, segregation, exclusion from property ownership, discriminatory lending, and unequal access to political power cannot be understood simply as unfortunate byproducts of class inequality.
Race has helped determine who could accumulate wealth, whose labor could be exploited, whose rights could be violated, and whose suffering could be disregarded.
Karem and I did not fully resolve that question. But his recognition that racial and economic divisions are deeply intertwined provided common ground for a broader discussion about democracy.
Protest Is Not Enough
Karem was particularly animated when discussing political participation.
He has covered demonstrations involving thousands of people, including the No Kings protests. He described people traveling long distances, making signs, and devoting entire days to expressing their opposition to government policies.
Yet he has encountered protesters who do not vote.
That contradiction frustrates him.
He believes demonstrations matter, but they must be accompanied by sustained political participation.
Voting, organizing, helping others reach polling places, and even running for office are among the tools Americans have available to exercise political power.
I agreed with the larger point.
LA Progressive exists in part because we believe political outrage must be connected to understanding, organization, and action.
It is not enough to identify what is wrong with the system. We must also develop alternatives and work toward implementing them.
Karem emphasized that Americans too often forget the degree of power they possess collectively.
He worries that political alienation has become so pronounced that some people are willing to entertain authoritarian alternatives when democratic institutions fail to deliver.
His answer is not to abandon democracy, but to make it more responsive and accessible.
He also believes schools must restore serious attention to civics and the social sciences.
That brought us naturally to the institution that has occupied most of his professional life.
