Transcripts For CSPAN2 Imani Perry Breathe 20240714

Studies in program and law and Public Affairs and gender and sexuality studies at princeton university. Thats the longer title. A scholar of legal history, cultural study and africanamerican studies, professor perry talks on issues, literature, laws and looking for lorraine, the life of lorraine hansbury, the winner of the panamerica award for biographies and New York Times notable book for 2018. Her newest book breathe, a letter to my sons will be published in september. Other works include, may we forever stand, the history of the black national anthem, a 2019 naacp image award nominee and gender and liberation. She wrote the introduction to the barnes noble classic tradition of narrative journal of truth and professor perry received a bachelor agree from yale university. Jd from Harvard Law School and a ph. D. From harvard university. We are so honored [applause] yes. We are so honored to host her today on this return visit to s us, please give a warm welcome. [applaus [applause] good morning. Im so happy to bring amani perry to chitaqua. There was a day of biblical rain. Torrential. We had to stop recording two or three times, we had to stop recording two or three times because the nature of that rain deafened it. We were able to create a program from it. But it was hard and the production complicated so im delighted to bring her back and we will not be interrupted. Thank you so much for having me again. It was wonderful despite the rain. You know, many things have changed. And also, we were the sound is incredible in this amphitheater. Congratulations. Also, there was no tweeting back then. Right. No questions by tweet. We talked a little bit yesterday about the many definitions of the word grace and this is a week of expansively taking that on. I wanted just to read a few lines from imanis new book called breathe which we will discuss in a few minutes where you actually take on one definition of grace and we may come back in the conversation. In the catholic tradition theres a form of grace, the sanctifying one of your soul. Its not defined by moments of mercy or opportunity, it is not good things happening to you, rather, it is the good thing that is in you, regardless of what happens. You carry this down through generations, same as the trauma of a violent slave master society, that the grace is the bigger part. It is what made the ancestors hold on so that we could become. [applause] thank you. So you know, one of the things i think about a great deal in these years is the fact that in my profession of journalism in particular, and in the academy, i think, were very sophisticated and skilled at investigating and telling the catastrophic and destructive narrative and story of our time, and not as sophisticated as telling that story of the generative narrative of our time and who we are and can become. Yes. Which is not to deny what is going wrong, but it is also to take this other part of us seriously that i feel you just named. And you know, as were going to discuss in your life and in your story, you contain so many, in your personal story, it touched on so many of the stories of our time. So i want to delve into that for all of us in the room and everyone who might eventually listen, to help to see the world in our time through that lens of your life. And i want to just start. You describe yourself as a cradle catholic. Yes. Born in alabama. Indeed. How oh, there you go. See . See . Its divine intervention. Theres a jinx. Okay. Okay. A moment of silence while the alarm wind down. Just, but one thing thats so interesting, too, in some place i found in your writing, youre a cradle catholic no. siren sounding i dont know what that alarm means with the word catholic. Im trying to work it out. Is it the weekly tornado alarm test or something . Like the okay. It just does not work with radio. Radio. But you also describe yourself as a child of the fragments. Yes. Oh, no. [laughter]. We have to let that die down. Okay. Four or five seconds. Okay. Cycles. All right. Four or five . So that should be three. Right . [laughte [laughter]. [inaudible conversations]. I guess we could make small talk up here, but im not prepared for small talk. [laughter] okay. This is really ringing in i guess when you have it as a speaker you talk through it, but when were recording you cant do it. Yeah, cradle catholic and yet, also a child of the fragments of christianity. Yes, and really multiple traditions. I mean, you know, theres in my own life theres this kind of dns between a very kind of traditi traditional black southern coming of age, my foundation, and on the other hand my family is catholic which is rather unusual for that part of the world and you know, and i grew up in massachusetts and i spent summers in both alabama and chicago. And in all of those places, theres these sort of multiple encounters, both with a variety of types of people. Yes. And also spiritual tradition. And so as a consequence, for me as a i think of myself as a seeker and i respond to that which resonates within, so my Spiritual Life is as kind of promiscuous as my intellectual interests. Lets say interdisciplinary. Okay. You know, but i like to take whether its threads from, you know, protestantism, catholocism and traditions that speak to me, i follow that pathway. And. What strikes me between the time that, you know, we spoke in 2014 here at chattaqua, and now its not that many years, but its been a really tumultuous moment. Switch culturally, and i dont think that i saw it the same way when we saw it before. Your mother and grandmother are catholic. Your mother was a former nun for a while and your greatgrandmother was baptist, your birth father was lutheran. Your father who raised you was jewish and white and what i also see, what i see rit large right now, you straddle so Many American divides, not just black and white, but south and north. Theres alabama, theres chicago, theres princeton, theres the religious and intellectual. Yes. Polarization, and theres kind of a multiclass identity, which is extraordinary in a moment like this. Theres some word of James Baldwin at the beginning of your book which you named after these words of his, more beautiful and more charitable the embrace and trance sen dense of racial inequality in the United States. The American History is larger longer, more beautiful more terrible than anybody said about it. I kind of feel that you in your person embody that prism. Thank you, i mean, i think that that is my experience and you know, the the transition for me personally from sort of feeling like im this kind of strange person entering all of these worlds, to actually thinking about it as a source of insight and offering me a capacity to connect with a variety of people. Thats part of the process of maturing. So, recently, i was thinking about being a little girl in chicago and having lots of friends who were undocumented, largely from mexico. When were you growing up . Yeah, when i was growing up and the window into that experience, including things like, you couldnt when i went to visit my friends, you couldnt knock on the door there was a near it might be immigration. Well, you would knock on the door and Walking Around the back steps and going through the basement and seeing my friends who were 10 and 11 working financial negotiations work for their parents. So that now, right, in this moment in history, with are in some ways were repeating the worst parts of our history. When you see children being ripped from their parents in a way thats reminiscent of slavery. Thats really the repetition of the worst parts of our history and for me its will also a recollection of those intimate ethical questions which is why they belong. Some of that is through story and i think some has to be through encounter. So to whatever sort of little job my callings do, i think part of it is just sort of bring those stories through to add to the conversation. A couple of things that that sparks in my. I also think, and i want this to run through our conversation today. Id like to i have a long view of time and i think that comes out of the kind of conversation i have. And i like to play this i like to play this thought experiment. What will people looking back 100 years from now, what will they actually see . And it may be that what we think is important going on is not at all what will rise to the surface. What i also know is that when time becomes visit, therele be a us, right . They will look back at us as a us. As a us, yes. Although its a fraught thing to use we for any individual person who use we and mean a lot of other groups so thats interesting, and also the connection between human and humane, in french its the same word, but somehow that move is where our salvation lies. Absolutely. Yeah, i mean, its funny because one of the kind of reviewers in the process on gender said, you keep using this word we, and thats thought of as a problem, but the we shifts, right so that we is a collective we, but also sometimes a smaller we. In this moment for me, especially with the question of 100 years in the future, the thing that i think about on a daily basis is the earth and, you know, the earth screaming and i think about it also in terms of my personal history. So as a child of sort of the movements, right. Yes. I remember being five and six years old and the way that some folks thought the greenpeace folks were kind of ridiculous, you care about trees and birds and not human beings suffering. Right. And at this point weve come to, i think, fully, we, those of us who are people of conscience and who you know, theres no separation of those questions, theres no separation of the question of the environment and human suffering and the wide variety of injustices in the forms of violence so theres an imperative to think about we in the global sense, as much as we sort of break off and in the multiplicity of the kind of silos and factions. Yeah, and thats a complicated move for us to make, that juggling all of that at the same time. You know, you wrote an article a few years ago in 2016, probably, called 2016, the year of black memoir. Yes. And you were talking about the genre of book, margo jeffersons book, and a book by rosemary freeney and Rachel Harding no, that was the child of. And i wasnt familiar with this book honestly called remnants, but here is something you noted in that article that in 2011, there was a professor, Kenneth Warren who declared that there was no longer any sort thing as africanamerican literature because we had the first black president in the white house. Right. Of course, where my mind went was in 1989 and i lived in divided berlin in the 1980s, the declaration that this was the end of history. Right. And then at latest on september 11th 2001 we understood that history was back and never had gone away. Absolutely. And i feel that resonates also in your writing. Yeah, i mean, you know, one thing to ask us what is the investment in declaring an end, and i do think that part of the investment comes from the desire for the new. Right . And so while its often a mischaracterization to say this is the end of history, the desire for the new is something thats meaningful, right . Kind of regeneration, rebirth, right, after the kind of post a after we have these sort of post apocalyptic films and novels. We want to think about what happens after disaster. How do we clear the air. But we dont the air is never really clear. We dont want it dwell on what its going to take to actually clear the air. And we have to live with the residue. We have to live with the pollution. So you know, you try to we revitalize our commitments, but you cant wipe away history in the midst of it. Not because theres a risk of repeating it, but it lives inside us, right, all of the ugliness dwells inside us and we still try to do things that are meaningful and live meaningful lives. Yeah, so, yeah, and i i think that, you know, declaring the end of history in 1989 was not to take in the consequences of history that just hadnt shown themselves yet. Absolutely. And when you and i spoke a few years ago and when you wrote this article about the end of africanamerican literature was written, we had done, we had elect add africanamerican president which was an extraordinary thing and accomplishment and yet, one way ive thought about it is that that also served to surface all of the unfinished reckoning. Oh, absolutely. And thats not what everybody expected. You know, that was heartbreaking for me somewhere. Once upon a time in 2008, you said we were all wistful that our grandmother didnt live to see a blackman as president. And our grand mother collectively. Right. I mean, that night was extraordinary. I was in philadelphia and we rode through the streets and people were just in the streets cheeri cheering, but ive also written after that, im so glad that my grandmother isnt here to see this moment. I had this you know, you have these periods where you sort of are overwhelmed with grief and tears and one of the things i said with respect to my mother. My mother came of age in jim crowe, alabama so my mother lived her youth through a White Nationalist society and it has come back. Openly officially White Nationalist society. Its reared its head again and the feeling of sort of what will it take, you know, what will it take for the nation, us collectively, to take seriously our creed as foundational, right . Not something that you can move in and out of. Right, based upon anxieties or fears for resentments, but actually as a core value. And i and the question, i dont know, right . And thats terrifying to not after all of these generations of struggle and resistance and transformation, to not know what we do know you, its frightening, frankly. So one of the ways you have been working through this is through this book youve written. Yeah. Weve talked about the many identities that you had and this is your identity as a mother. Yeah, the most important one. A mother of two sons, a mother of two black sons. Yes, and so when you and i were at chattaqua, they were eight and 11. You know, it was very we were halfway through the second term of a black president. What was very present in that moment was the shooting of trayvon martin, now, we discussed that here and ferguson and so many other milestones that are now part of our cultural imagination for better and worse were yet to come. I remember you talking about how your sons just wept when George Zimmerman was acquitted and across the years ive ive actually thought of you and your sons because we had that conversation in that moment. Yeah. And i feel in this boom, you both reflecting to that and speaking to the rest of us. You know, you started with a quote you attribute to everybody and their mother. It must be terrifying to raise a black boy in america. Yes. Im a bit tired of that question. Are you . Yeah. Okay. Because it often feels voyeuristic. Yeah, i wanted to acknowledge that and you say that in the book. You say that, yes, that you feel people you actually wrote, the indelicate assertion hangs m mid air. People speculating as this is a matter of fact, hungry for your suffering or crude with sympathy. So, i do actually want to acknowledge that right here. Yeah, and its an echo of deboys 1903 hearing the question how does it feel to be a problem to which i seldom answer a word. And there is and theres something to the fact that 100 plus years later the same question remains. And part of the what im trying to work through is that, yes, there is terror, but theres also incredible beauty and theres a way in which the repetition of the narrative of the terror almost evacuation the full humanity of their lives, and my life, and also the incredible beauty. And so the question for me is both, you know, how do how do we acknowledge this social reality of deep inequality, of mass incarceration, of death of innocent black youth, right, and also recognize that, you know, its important to assert and reassert the full humanity and beauty of their lives and also to offer them a vision of their lives thats meaningful. All right. And thats what im trying to do and to give them that tradition, right, so that they understand. These are not new questions, these are questions that are definitive of the black experience in the United States, and notwithstanding their persistence. We have gifted this society and this world with some extraordinary lessons and beauty, and art, and witness. And a kind of witness that i think actually speaks to the entirety of the Human Experience. Yes, yes. Yeah. So what i want to invite you to do, or ask you to do is, as we talk about this for the next few minutes, if the question i ask isnt a good question, if its not a question that you want to engage, i want you to tell me what question you do want to engage. I also feel like part of whats going on in this moment is, you know, those of us who are reckoning, we still dont know how do we say, clear the air. We are a figuring this out. And i actually think that part of what has to happen is this kind of, you know, you saying to me, im weary of that question, its not that you dont want to talk, its that we have to Learn Together and from each other and i have to learn from you how to engage this particular aspect what you say is not just a piece of your story, its a piece of our story. I mean, i theres this question in the book that you know, again, it will me if this is you know, that you say this is you speaking to your sons, how do you become in a world then are you not being and not becoming . And so, i wanted as a mother i read that and i want to know, unfold what you see how very particularly how that unfolds in the lives of your son and as a mother. I im sorry, im going to let you speak, but its true that if you begin your journey as a black or brown child in the United States from the very beginning of your life, youre less likely to receive decent medical care, quality education, teachers who have High Expectations of you and less likely to live in a Safe Community and thats not true of your son and yet. And yet. This question is something you live with. Absolutely. So just, it was very important for me to acknowledge the class position of my sons and the rarity of their experiences, not just for black children, but for children in the United States, and then we have remark you know, they live in a home literally with thousands of book. They have remarkable resources, right, and i think its important to acknowledge because i dont want to participate in the fiction, right, that often i think follows when those of us who are black people have a large public voice to represent our experience as the experience. And at the same time they deal with race and racism every day of their lives. They see it, they know it. I can give examples from the time they were five years old of encounters with racism in progressive schools, right, on the street. And so the reality is that i have to arm them, not simply with kind of a set of skills and intellectual tools that allow them to flourish in school and ethics and values, but also way to make sense of the hostility they encounter every day from people at times whose responsibility is to treat them as community members. Right, thats the world they occupy. The people who are closest with them. Sometimes people who they spend more hours with every day than they do with me and thats a complicated task. Part will visit all of these things, but when we have these sort of cross racial encounters or cross class encounters and attend up to the respectful of them in part because as talked about americans are addicted to were so busy, im not bad, im not the thing i dont want to be that it becomes very hard to engage incorrectness of our behavior. So i want them to be able to access what they are experienced to not internalize the vin number that sometimes to have sort of antidotes at the ready but also to feel as though there are spaces where they can return and actually acknowledge the experience of suffering and pain. That that is part of the work of intimacy that they have, part of the actual work of intimacy and our families. Can you give an example just maybe something thats happened recently that kind of illustrates how this turns up innocently . How many examples wax its not that recent, but there was an incident, this was when my younger son was very small, at school, and a child said i dont they were doing some carafes and she was like you, you, you come and i dont like you. My son of course said is it because we are black . She said yes. And my son said that means youre a racist. And the a other child, you know, was really hurt, who was one of the ones put out. And my child had this indignation. The teachers dealt with it appropriately. There was discussions, et cetera, etit cetera. But what stuck with me is that the parents of the child who said this, who i had been never spoke to me. Like, would never look me in id speak to me in school everyday. Identified themselves as liberal. Identified themselves as aggressive unrest. Not just wouldnt speak to me but wouldnt speak to other black parents. They had taught this child this lesson. How was she to make sense of it any other way, right . So who would never said anything icing negative about black people but when you see however innocently, right, a refusal to even have the barest interaction with black people from your teaching children a lesson, right . And i think, and thats not an indictment of those parents. Its actually i think it demands a mayor of us. I can think of corollaries along the lines amongst class of black people, right, in terms of goosing, for those of us who are bourgeois, who were seen as acceptable, who are, the our efforts to distance ourselves from. What seemed like rather modest, moments that are resolved that action or not at all resolved. Right. When we resolve the moment but not the underlying drama. Yes. You know, so what that leads into Something Else i want to talk to you about, which is whiteness, which is a feel like at least, this doesnt necessarily mean a huge amount of progress, but theres that word that is out there, and there is no, i would say a dawning realization that whiteness is a thing, that its a construct just like race is a construct, that white people of the mystic knowledge that the race, that the race discussion is not about everybody else. I mean, theres so many angles to this and i want to hear, i would love to hear your thoughts about it. And but theres something you wrote about in here that i found really useful, which was the analogy of foot binding. This fascination with foot binding as a Cultural Practice in china. And you said whiteness is a potent form of binding. So would you kind of cheese that out, that imagery . I mean, i think that it is a constriction. Ru it cuts off to ship the metaphor of it but its cutting off the blood supply. It disciplines or threatens to discipline white people out of identification with other human beings, which i i think is a natural state of things. Im always struck by how often people act as a racial differentiation is natural. But thats sort of a i dont think thats natural actually. I think the natural condition is for human beings to actually have the capacity to resonate and identify with one another. The creation of whiteness actually does some thing to close up it creates the difference. And it creates the sense of potential terror in nonholding the boundary. I mean, its not incidental that there were laws against black and white people playing checkers together in alabama, right next i mean, this absurd thing that is implemented to discipline, particularly working class white people from identifying people who were much closer to them than the elites who were making laws. So i do think about sort of the prospect of the emancipation of white people from white imagination to a human one. That isnt sort of bound up in this identity that often doesnt get articulated, but one is reminded constantly, so whether its media, television, how were educated, right . Even the genealogy and often telling my kids things like him its sort of strange that greece is figured at the beginning. , the history of the west for americans when it such a tiny Greek American population. Or how marginalized greek is actually currently in the west. Theres all these mythologies are taken at face value, and we could imagine differently. So i think i will say this though, and its a little bit off topic but it relates to question. In a subway jessica when people people started showingop the videos of whatever, black people being killed by Police Officers or others, right . There was this idea that if white people know, they just dont know, and if you show these if people know, then something will change. I was skeptical of it then. Im very sure now that actually the repetition, and you never know. Ular group of people suffering they have the capacity to make one identify but it also made stigma. To me out of the question isnt so much the visual. There are a lot of ways to think about this. But i dont think that it is whether or not it must seem visually. The issue is the disbelief about the death of an inequality and ritualized violence in the country into the disbelief is actually at the cornerstone of the structure. We can see different versions in the 18th and 19th century. It wont work unless they are disciplined in certain ways and they are fundamentally criminal. All of these ideas are still circulating. That is what has to be. Its not whether there is a visual recognition, its the ideological commitments that is a cornerstone of American History that has to be i think that is so helpful and useful to focus in on the disbelief as the thing to be working with. You say to come back to this analogy you were just kind of the doing this thought experiment. You said, your talk about foot binding, and i wonder what happened when in a cultural upheaval these women could been told all the lives that this was the way toir be beautiful and respectable ands noble. Was over. It doesnt let you get a free. I think that we would do an ethical wrong if we didnt acknowledge there would be enormous and growing pain. One of the things one of the things that shows is that if you tell white constituents, potential voters about the coming ethnic plurality, that it will be, it wont, United States and however many years when the loan to be the majority white nation, sort of the collection of various groups. Everybody will be a minority. That leads to increased conservatism amongst white voters. That is a huge, thats just a demographic shift which is a very different question than sort of political or moral or ethical shift. But even that causes a great deal of discomfort. Its a transfer nation that not sure how that will blend in this country but change is hard. Deliberate or not. We dont deal biologically were learning, theologically it stressful more stressful for some than for others. Yeah. And it just think its important, i mean, i try to do this myself in this book, but also to acknowledge that weve all experienced the difficulties of change in transformation and tragedy. Some give it much worse than others, right . I want to actually read a little bit from your book, breathe. We are at, and i will come back to the subject of grace which is the theme to this week but start this reading a little earlier in the book. Mothers like me once had no recourse. No power to hold off the lash, told on indefinitely, to fight back when the crust your heart and life. I think back then i wouldve been like Frederick Douglass his mother. I wouldve bared one of my scars. I wouldve bared one of my scars like the one on my knee from when i was six, told you to remember me by it in the crowd of endless labor, to know me by it. And if i didnt have a landmark on my flesh, i wouldve made one for you, carved into my right arm. So this life we have his grace. In the catholic tradition there is a a form of grace, the sanctifying one, that is the stuff of your soul. It is not defined moments of mercy or opportunity. It is not good things happening to you. Rather, it is a good thing that is in you regardless of what happens. You carry this down through generations say messy epigenetic trauma of a violent slave master society. That the grace is the bigger part. It is what made the ancestors hold on so that we could become. [applause] yeah. I mean, you know, one of the things so earlier this summer i was in florence and the saw nicola angelos sculpture and one of the questions i asked, you see this repetition t of mothers who had the sense taken away and i am resistant to the repetition that could have been my son, because its not, we shouldnt sort of rob the moment with our selflf interest goodness of the tragedy here were supposed to front the people who confronted the tragedy love, but there is something that is carried through history and generations of the most devastating tragedies, and we live to spite them and with it within. I the question is not, theres a part of it that is what does that tell us about how to be human, better, that we ought to be sort of listening to history and the world. One of the things with Toni Morrisons passing thatt ive been taking about and talking about is that what our work has done for me, and i think for many others, is to really have an ordinary tragedy, of devastation. With historical awareness, right, so their specific forms of tragedy that we have a responsibility to respond to act, but its also their something universal. And to be present with both of those and do not, every time i go through some heartbreaker something devastating, i go back to her workac at a read the ente body of the work. In part, do think this is peculiarly american where we are always try find a way to the charmed life no disaster ever happens. I think its a human thing that americans right. Life we cant even talk about that. But we all are going to be there, right . Were all going and god willing, you know, every meaningful relationship with him our life will end. And i say god willing because that means that we loved and lost. We have lived long enough to love and lose. Every relationship, even the most important, and death, right . Or another kind of fracture, and so all of this is to say a really fundamental human question. So theres social question, social and political questions about how we organize the society. But i think webe also have to tp into the kind of universality of them to evenn begin to answer them, right . Theres a reason, my favorite metaphors of one of the guitar strings. If youre sitting next to someone and you both have guitars and if youre close enough and the wind makes the strings on the other guitar reverberate, right, to me thats a metaphor of like, like the capacity of human beings to connect with one another. Thats what i think we have to be looking for. Not in a pollyannaish since. Itss hard. I dont know what else we do. And that is for each and every one of us interior work as much as work that we do in concert and in conversation. Thats right. And its, i think, its why i love all forms of art but theres something very special about reading, right . Because you entering into world with otherau human beings, but its very interior. Theres something for it in it, and so theres, you know, its why im a writer. Theres a possibility to get to that. Lets open this up and ill say again whats going to happen is we are actually going to come back and finish the radio conversation for ten minutes after the q a. But right now will open this up for a back and forth from the audience. Its as if we plantnt this, r first question from twitter is about that interior work here one of her questioners asked, do you have any advice on how to advocate for Justice Without resorting to attacks . It feels like the more i see underworld, the easier it is to let hate into my heart and unintentionally and body what i seek to help stop. Yeah. So thats, i think its a really important question. Attack is such a complicated word nowadays because so, often what is a kind of freight confrontation as expensive as attack a special and social media because people feel kind of invested in this presentation of themselves in the public so when itst confided people get really defensive. Its one of the perils of the social media age. So i do think we have a responsibility to be able to hear, toe listen, to sit when people confront us. And on the other hand, well, actually not on the other hand. And likewise, theres a lot of good reason to be furious right now. There is such a thing as righteous rage, righteous anger i dont want to dismiss that. The question is just how you experience that and also channel at into something productive, which is slow work, you know. Part of the palm is the way we have been taught the history of social movements. Its like everything is this dramatic event, this dramatic march, this dramatic, bra burning or whatever. And point of fact, its always slow work, its deliberate work. And, in fact, marches in after 15 him and one at 50 years. Right of work. Right. Out. Y in and day you dont tell that story in a long art. Thinking like whats the function of history and part of the function history is for us to move forward. I think that speaks to thinking about how we tell history in order to put it to work today. I feel like something you said is important, is that, i think its a feature of this messy moment that we actually had to live in that discomfort of righteous rage which needs have its place and also knowing we need to try to be listeners and stan conversation. And its not going to feel, its not going to work all the time. Right. Some conversations were absolutely breakdown. Another question related to channeling, what are your thoughts about reparations and formal reconciliation to begin to potential move our country towards a a place of grace and healing . Yeah. Im supportive of reparations. I think theres lots, theres a wide varietyf of potential modes for it. But i will say this. Reparations will not eradicate the a systems and structures of racial inequality. So, for example, in my second book one of the things i wrote about is the process of this accumulation which is like, so my grandmother, you know, bout a home in 1964 and its probably worth, i d dont know, 18,000 today. Because of the neighborhood. The third black family to live on the block there was immediate white flight. Its not an airy concentrated poverty, so it has an economic dimension. Neighborhoods that have a lot of blackk people and are devalued irrespective of the quality of house, all the sorts of things, because there are black people there. I discovered as a social economy of race. So reparations, so, for example, if its a monetary grant doesnt get away from the structure of rationalization. That money is going to be worth less than a generation by virtue of the fact that this is part of the operation of race. When women are paid less, black people are paid less, thinks associate with black people are valued less, et cetera, et cetera. That process will continue. So my only hesitation is to think of reparations as a cureall. Its not. It would not be and yet i do think given unbelievable wealth, the wealth of the nation is built on king cotton. Thats flatly. Of course reparations makes sense. E. [applause] to take it back down from our personal level, going back to the child of the arts and crafts table. If their parents were able to look you in the eye, could you imagine force the conversation you wouldve liked to have had . O, wow. I mean, honestly i havent thought about the substance of the conversation. I thought about the fact that conversation. The a idea that acknowledging me and my children as members of their community. So hello. Would be meaningful. [laughing] [applause] this is not, i should say, utah, anybody here, you talk to the black people in your life, you will hear stories up on stories of being misnamed, ms. Ms. Recognized by worked at an institution for seven years and i promise you, every time is about princeton. Every time i step off campus the majority of my colleagues would not recognize me on the street. I would say hello to people and they wouldnt say hello back. And again, liberal progressive people, right . So theres something about to understand that there are people look at me and see black. I mean, its as crude as that. I mean, thats serious work that has to be done and it requires cant tell one more antidote, im sorry but this is kind of funny to me. So i had a colleague at one point to isolate the train station to relive around the corner from each other any set to become hello, kim. My name is imani. Then he said again and he said at the time and i said im not kim. [laughing] kim is a wonderful person but shes literally six inches shorter than me, shaved head, totally different complexion, different build. And then he was so embarrassed he didnt speak to me anymore, which is not the appropriate response. And i understood his embarrassment, but the question is how do you e work i think this im sure these parents were embarrassed, but working through the embarrassment as the post actually further isolating me and my children would be a appropriate response. As a catholic how has the does your faith tradition help you frame living a life with grace which he talked about otherce pastries ship in your life. How they Work Together to form your vision of a graceful life . Yeah. So i do think that theres something, i have not, i did not come if not raise my children s catholics, and one of the things i thought were in breathe, have i messed up by not giving my children this a good religion . A lot of it just has to do with the doctrine of the church in disagreeing with the doctrine. There are all these examples for me in spirit and religious practice that are stored in the celebration of mass, right next and all the incredible beauty, the ritual, what it means to speak with other people, professions of faith. Its like chanting in another tradition. The emulation of the lives of the saints, the recognition of the grace of mary. All of these things that are deeply important to me for imagining now to live my life, and yet its also an institution that holds these doctrines of exclusion that i cannot abide. Its very similar to being in a marriage. Theres all these beautiful things. I have this extraordinary experience actually at a Pentecostal Church. A dear friend a of mines mother passed away, and i went to the service and i have not been in the Pentecostal Church before. Ive been in baptist and methodist all these various and i was absolutely blown away largely because the virtuosity of the women in the church. These women, many of them elderly, they are singing, the piano playing. I mean, it was unbelievable, the extraordinary art in that moment. And this extraordinary art for this church. It wasnt an exchange for money or recognition. It was for this community. And i was like this is the best of what it means to be human. And celebration of life, right . And sending someone home, a home going service. And so for me its like something is wrong when on the one hand, this extraordinary beauty and grace also finds itself attached to denigration of people because of their sexuality or because of their gender, or because of their family structure. On the one hand. And on the other hand,tr we have anav idea of the sole purpose of art being money or accumulation. That is something weve done to the most beautiful parts of being human thats ugly and that leaves two different ways, and so im just trying to draw out the beauty, try to distill the beauty and use it in in a way t doesnt feel like im part of the engine of producing human suffering. That may be an aspiration that is foolhardy, but im trying. [applause] i i think with time for one more. And that is, you talked about the history inside of us and i think the questioner has a sense of their waiting this of that. We here have wrestled with how to take what were learning and act upon it. How how did you do in your lifed not get paralyzed all that is clearly you know, how does that not weigh you down . To be really honest, its a combination of my grandmother, my late grandmother, and my children. Once in a while people will say to me, you know, how could you be hopeful i do think as a mother its a natural responsibility to be hopeful. Thats, you know, the task is to invest in our children as a way of investing in the world and investing in humanity. And i think, my grandmother, and i say this in the book, its a cliche for those of us, black people from the south with workingclass roots always like my grandmother was the smartest person i ever knew, i really do mean it. [laughing] this is a woman who did not complete high school, had 12 children, cleaned homes, that all 12 children to college. [applause] i mean, she was extraordinary. And had a brilliant husband, but who had struggles of his own. He passed away before i was born. Born. And she got up every day, you do, she lit a prayerful life. I went through a part of my life where i would try to pray unceasingly. A lot of it was modeled after her, so she would say thank god for his Many Blessings every day. Even in the most difficult of moments, she led every day. She saw a sense of meaning in every meal and every interaction. Added you think theres something about a life in which you understand the meaning of the small moments of grace that actually wars against the feeling of being overwhelmed. Its going to come, right . But she also, one more thing, when she had those moments she would rely on your friends. So she would call mrs. Stewart or mrs. Mackall, they would talk, and talk or through when she was feeling overwhelmed. And so she had, she modeled intimacy. She modeled friendship. She modeled the ideal for me of maternal love it and so i sort of feel like im living, im living through im also living what i think this big part of me that is trying to be what she would s have been had e circumstances of her life been different. Im trying. Im not her. She was extraordinary but im trying. Thank you. [applause] thank you. You know, sometimes people ask me if, what i like recurring themes or ideas that pop up everywhere. I said it doesnt really work thatreth way, but when i find, because i feel like what were trying to do it our project is kind to listen to the culture and listen to the world as much as where listen to what people try to what happens is suddenly something services and then its in every conversation. Right. Andnd right now what that is, which you so echoed some things that happen in a conversation yesterday with two young women, working in a very different sphere, not princeton professors, not imani perry, but what is surfacing right now and recently also with a poet and a garter ross gay, i dont know if you know him. Yeah. Which feels countercultural is an insistence on hope and an insistence on joint and taking the light were ever and those are muscles for inhabiting these difficult times. And what your grandmother knew, that wisdom, that its not the american thing of pulling out your own joint bootstraps. Its about also understanding that we cant carry those things alone. Any of us cant carry them on any given day. Absolutely. Its funny. I use in my book a poem that ross gay wrote about the joy of a woman, limiting him on his feet, how beautiful his feet were. You know, and its hard, its hard to talk about without i think for some people, it sounded like an invasion. Its really, in some part, its a thing worth fighting for. The Human Experience that we are fighting for the proliferation of so that life is not designed primarily for so many people by suffering and violence and hardship, but actually the saying that all of us possess, which is this incredible capacity for joy and beauty. That its not ego driven. So we are not of the instagram generation in this room, by and large, but the instagram generation is with us and theres lot of display of joy. Or theres a lot of kind of quick pleasure, a rush of excitement. Joy is something much deeper than that. Its not surfaced to get something deep inside that at the most painful moment is a moment of connection. Its not another person with the earth. I watch my cousin come with a very similar disposition, my cousin jillian, was gardening with her children all the time, and she shares the sunflowers and the tomatoes and the beans and the basal, and that is both light giving literally speaking but also spiritually giving. So, yes, i think that kind of resistant joy is essential. You can applaud. [applause] you wrote as you are writing to your sons in breathe, there are still a future come as harrowing as it might be, i bit i try to give you everything and every bit of o sweetness to untl and to do spoil and to delight. Theres enough of the other stuff for everyones lifetimes a million times over. Because, general, and i dont theres this sensibility that is like, we have to arm kids and prepare them, and discipline. And i just, life is hard enough. I just want them, i want them to be moral and ethical human beings so theres constant i think we all have responsibly with young people, and not just children, but we have the responsibility to experience it from elders, to listen, and also to teach. But also toav lavished with lov. I mean, i think thats a big part of care today. Im not taking any of that away from them. They are emotionally spoiled people. I would like to close with you reading from your book but i think first, so this near the beginning. I think you have to explain your references to the greek god. Okay. [inaudible] so i start with this part begins with a quotation from my mother. Your grandmother said it this way. Mothering black boys and american, that is a special calling. How do i meet it . What is it like . How do i meet this calling works isd a like cultivating diamonds, pressure that is so tight that it turns you black into Something White and shiny and precious and valuable . Thats no good. Do i feel like coal, something that needs to be burned up and use for the work of others, or the constellation prize on christmas. Thats no good either. Do i cover my poem in the blood of a proverbial sacrificial vote frank that we are passed over, that the bloodthirsty feared lances some off elses door . I am tempted but i know that prayers dont prevent tragedy. They hold you up as you pass through it. Sometimes. Is that like stalking through a deliberate avoiding the snow white minotaur . Maybe. Was it ever so apparent that we need to have this reckoning . Maybe i am theseus, a living location but alsom simply livig with beckoning. And that is what it feels like. Its tanner and tells ship with the shadows of each day, it is always there. Sometimes it screeches. Sometimes it shrivels and warbles. Sometimes it is a perfect, suite pitch. Thank you, imani perry, very much. [applause] recently on after words, democratic representative of florida interviewed stanford professor Jennifer Everhart about her new book on implicit racial bias. Heres a portion of the program. There are a lot of studies on this by social psychologist, can look at, like what are the conditions under which buys is most likely to be triggered . And then how do you manage that and how do you be mindful of those situations so that you can understand and you could so things done. Thats one of this is one of the areas where you are more likely to have bias get triggered. Its when youre having to make a decision really quickly, when you have to think fast, we can go on automatic pilot and we are just kind of sort of basing our decisions and everything on how were thinking on what we learned before our what seemed to be associated, you know, before pics of this is, youre not leaving thoughtful about it. When youre in that situation, buys is more likely to get triggered and affects our decisions and influence our behavior. And so you want to slow things down, so that would really need to be there. We are more likely to have our biases emerge when we feel threatened, when we feel fearful. In some of the situations that are situations that cops learn. Like if youre feeling threatened and fearful and jeff to make a decision really quickly, you know, you could be more vulnerable to racial bias in that situation that if you have had time to sort of think it through. To watch the rest of this Program Visit booktv. Org and type the authors name in the search box at the top of the page. Good morning. Everyone please take your seats. Good morning. Welcome to everyone here, everyone watching live online. My name is dylan croup and im intern at young Americas Foundation. 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