Transcripts For CSPAN2 In Depth Imani Perry 20240713

Its an epistolary work. Its a letter, a series of letters to my sons of course its also a letter to the larger world. Both about the reality of the terror and anxiety and worry that comes along with being a parent of black children and particularly black boys in the United States at this moment but its also filled with my desire for them to lead a life of beauty and joy. And excellence and self regard. Much of which i think one defined the lessons for an extraordinary definition we have to draw from. Where did you come up with the idea to write your sons a letter . Actually have written them letters privately for years. But my editor gayatri at beacon press said is this something youd be interested in doing i think a large part because i talk about my children all the time direct post about them in social media. Initially what we both had in mind was something that was probably a bit more lighthearted. When i started to reflect on what it would mean to try to tell a story about both my expectations but also my warnings and the depth of my love and a story for both them and the world became something more sober and i reached into the archives i had in my mind of the works that for me did that and try to have a conversation with the past and the present for their future. It reads as if it flowed out of you. Thats probably not the case but it reads that way. Thank you. Certainly its the book that came out most quickly. It did flow out of me. My previous work was in and foundation for it. I wrote most of it while we were all in japan where i was working. There was a way in which that provided a space of contemplation and retreat that allowed it to flow forth but its also the case is the conversations in the book are the conversations that we have all the time. To craft those conversations to craft that message of course took time but there is something that sort of just flowed forth and to a certain extent some of the Emotional Energy i think of this path which is kind of breathless and beautiful and exciting. Stewarding childrens lives is just like that. Where did you come up with the title . Its so interesting because it has many people guess, there is a reference there to eric garners statement i cant breathe. But theres also a reference to one of the things i was saying is the city i was born in birmingham alabama had the worst air quality in the nation and the euro was born. I was thinking about the prevalence of asthma. An environmental racism. In the way that it makes it very hard to breathe actually. And then i was thinking about the kind of holding ones breath in moments of deep anxiety around the threat of violent moments of racial injustice. And also in part because its connected to my first book which was on hippo. I came abthe extraordinary skill of rapper that goes unnoticed to say all those words requires a management of the breath. I want them to breathe in a sense of taking and what they need to survive and flourish. But also managing the breath. Navigating the difficult moments, which is what it means to get out 16 bars with barely catching a breath. It was a powerful metaphor for me. Fear, fly, fortune, what do they mean . The fear part abi should say that that structure comes both from Richard Wrights native son and abbetween the world and me. There is a modification that i will talk about. The fear part i think in some ways is selfevident. The fear of the ravages of racism. Whether that be the harrowing incident that weve been seeing on video for some several years but throughout American History of the killing of unarmed black people. Often by police officers. Without any process, without just cause for the most minor infractions. Or none at all. Theres that part of the fear but the fear at large. The ways in which inequality can limit your opportunities but also get in your head. Those kinds of fears are without question ever present and part of the task of parenting for me is to attempt to navigate around those fears with the recognition that tomorrow he really isnt promised. So you have to attempt to navigate but you also cannot be completely overwhelmed by the fear over while otherwise you wont live. You have to deal with the reality of tragedy and disaster are possible. And then fly is in some ways an indication of Toni Morrison as opposed to, flight for native son is the moment when the protagonists is running away from the law because hes committed a murder thats prompted by his terror. And being lynched essentially. But i thought about flight in the sense of actually taking flights in life. So sort of an extension of the idea of not being defined by the fear but how to take flight. And thats a direct reference to Toni Morrison the song of solomon. In the idea of flying if you give up the stuff that weighs you down. Its not about inheritance and the way we tend to describe it. As riches. But actually the fortune of a tradition and ancestry of resilience, of incredible beauty, of creativity, even in the face of constraint and so i talk about everything from our ancestors who work the land to Thelonious Monk and his in the repetition of a single composition over and over which really functions as a way of thinking about how i navigate this . We have this set of notes which we could say is a metaphor for life and navigating the terms over and over again. Thats sort of the foundation of the structure. What we know about freeman and esa . This is a hard question to answer because sometimes in some ways the most important part is that they are fully and absolutely human in all of its complexity. I say it that way because so often i think black children in particular arent granted that recognition. I can talk about how they are distinctive. Esau is a brilliant athlete and incredibly sophisticated at Human Understanding understanding human relations. A beautiful writer. I can talk about freeman composes extraordinary music and he is an amazingly gifted artist and they are both really good friends and all of these things but i sometimes have to abbecause these things are true about them but i dont want to sound as though im making them exceptional because i really do believe that all children are really special. And that many children who dont have parents who can draw attention to their gifts are often made to feel as though their children are inadequate. That proportionately falls, not just on black children but black boys in particular. So they are really human as all children are. What they think about the fact that you wrote a letter to them exposing them to the world . Thus far they are okay with it they also understand that might change over time. My sons are 13 and 16. They are in a pretty intense stage of development each of them. I didnt give them veto power of the content of the books i love them to see if there were stories they didnt want to book and details that i hope maybe they let me tell later in life but maybe not. But with respect to the idea of being on book tour and the book getting public attention, thats not particularly interesting to them and i think thats a good thing. I am not, in our intimate domestic life, a public figure. That part of the day to day of our lives really isnt on display. Thats the most important piece, for them, its the relationship. From your book you write that racism is in every step and breath we take. It really is. When you actually start to deconstruct it in a detailed fashion and you see everything from how homes are constructed, how frequently the street cleaning operations take place, who can be where, what opportunities exist, who has bank accounts, who doesnt, who has stock and who doesnt, walking along the street, whose body elicits a clutching of the purse. Who gets followed in a store. Where are their bookstores . In which communities . What do the Schools Look Like . Whats the quality of the air we breathe. Its so pervasive and its part of what makes as uncomfortable as conversations about race are for so many people. We cannot function as a Decent Society without talking about it because we are in the thick of it all the time. Imani perry, on friday we sent out a tweet promoting your appearance here on sunday and in the tweet we put the words our white people irredeemable, asks imani perry at princeton university. You took a little issue with that. I did. I want to read from breathe a letter to my sons what prompted that question. We will put it on the screen as well. We will give you a chance to talk about this a little bit. Here is a confession, recently i have wondered if white people are irredeemable. Again, i have to issue a caveat for the sensitive, no i do not mean individuals, individuals are the precious bulwark against total desperation. In them we find the persistence of possibility. Of course a Single Person can be someone abut a Single Person can be a heaven too were a friend. I worry that way people are irredeemable and it scares me. What would the complete dissembling of the kingdom of identity look like . How would the visser of pulse under a cracked open surface . Would we all shatter . Could we put something together again pee dee i dont know, i am losing some of my ability to dream a world. Given those two paragraphs, sounds like we were rather accurate in asking that question, no . Let me say why the single sentence question is hard for me. Because without the larger context, often sentences like that trigger a defensiveness that becomes impossible to engage. This is sort of the difficulty of social media all the time. Its not unique. I certainly have experienced it even with tweets that i wrote. But that second sentence that is the caveat is important because people here when you say, i wonder if white people irredeemable day here all white people. They hear white people as individuals, as opposed to whiteness as an identity thats clung to. So that when i go on to the second paragraph where and what, what if we took this identity part, those people would not have a different history for body but it would be a different relationship to identity that i think would potentially have, as a consequence, a more humane relationship to each other. When i went into later in the first paragraph when im saying, a person can individual can be heaven, not talking about eminent individuals, individual can be heaven, certainly both someone raised by a white man or as someone who thinks of so many figures like for example john brown or howard zen or bob zeller. I think of some of the most precious people in the world its important to me to not have a formulation that removes them from my sense of the struggle that im engaged in. One more question about breathe before we move on to some of your other books. Mothering black boys in america is a special calling. Yes. Its a sentence that my mother said to me. I think about it in a number of different ways. Of course one is there is of course all the risks so people talk about incessantly in some ways that are difficult i think and maybe not necessarily helpful about the challenges that black boys face in this world. I think about it differently. I think about it all those things are true but i think about the simultaneity of wanting to raise my children who are identified as black boys in a way that doesnt delimit their imaginations, this is that keeps them from thinking they are superior to people because they are relatively privileged. Also that keeps them away from seeking patriarchy or dominance in this society that values those things highly. So that even though those things are more elusive for black men to attain we have a society that values that part of the task is also raising them, for me, to not value that but to value their characters and sensitivity and complexity. And other people around them irrespective of what walk of life they come from. All that is a special calling because a lesson about what it means to be a man across the board oftentimes. In the lessons of what blackness is. Its often times not so good unless you counted both of those things. Its much more loving and gives a greater capacity to be fully human. In the last 19 minutes everything we talked about are these the types of things you teach or in part at princeton . Not really, which is interesting. In some ways this is a departure for me. Its the spirit with which i teach and certainly i teach the work of Toni Morrison and i taught the work of tony right. But i tend to teach much more fact driven and material driven as opposed to the kind of emotional register. I think of teaching at self as a calling. Its important to bring to that a sense of value justice and love to the students even though we are supposed to be somewhat dispassionate. How does one get a phd and jd from harvard at the same time . Unwisely. When i graduated from college i was 21 years old and i was just completely in love with the life and the mind and ideas and i didnt want to choose and i wanted to do everything and i said, applied to graduate school, law school did two years of graduate school took my orals and it was sort of a frenzied pace it was beautiful, it was amazing for me. I loved it. I learned so much and every day i was being nurtured by all of these generations of people who came before me and helped me understand the world. We want to play a little bit of music, a little bit of video. This is from 1999 [singing] of course this is jesse norman singing at the rosa parks congressional goldmedal ceremony in 1999. What is that song . That song is lift every voice and sing the song that was known as the neoNational Anthem and the black National Anthem after the 1970s. It is a song that i describe as black americas most precious song. Just that clip a rosa parks who of course is an alabama woman and jesse norman who is recently departed as incredibly moving. You have written a biography. Of the song may we favor stand is the name of the book. May we forever stand a they are author and composer they were brothers who were born in jacksonville florida, renaissance men and of course back in the day they were called race men, people who sought every achievement they had as being in service of the race. Their mothers family had been enslaved with bahamian and their families family had been enslaved in virginia but yes, of that generation that emerged from slavery with all the hopes and dreams and operations that were quickly dashed with the end of reconstruction. What was the reception in 1900 when the song was written . What was extraordinary is that the song caught allen like wildfire. It was almost immediately embraced. One of the things i try to detail in the book the United States did have not have a National Anthem at this moment. Even early on people referring to it as an anthem. The johnson brothers were both educators at the time of the composition and they left florida and moved up to new york to work on aballie as songwriters in part because there had been a terrible fire in the city. They actually werent there in florida as the song caught on. It caught on the cross, schoolchildren passed it on, black club women circulated it, they reprinted it it began to be printed in the back of hymnals. It was sort of an anthem of the communities making they did not describe as an anthem they did not intended as an anthem but black communities throughout the south said this is our anthem. If we continued playing that video we would have sent then president clinton. Who knows all three verses. Singing. Its one of his distinctions i think he may be the only u. S. President who never knew all three verses of lift every voice is. From your book may we forever stand hiphop uttered its farewell to the black National Anthem. Where you going here . One of the things, talk about this in my first book, there are something that happens in the 70s and 80s which is a transformation both of some norms and black social and political life to have to do with the kind of Civic Engagement and associational life and it also is connected to the industrialization. And there is a piece where i quote the reverend Joseph Lowery on this where he says rest in peace that black people were once the moral conscience of the nation, hiphop is absolute refusal of that position. It is bold, its not formal, its profane and insistent and not and unwilling to perform a particular kind of pop as a reveling in outlaw which is a commonplace in american culture. But its a different kind of public presence for africanamericans. That departure i think was significant but i what ive also talked about in the book is that the song keeps coming back. There have been various moments where it seemed like it was going to teeter out completely, it keeps coming back. Even though the kind of institutions, the kind of communities in which it was song on weekly or daily basis dont exist in the same way and black communities. What did you learn about the song in researching this book . I will say the biggest surprise, so much of what i read about is about how it was ensconced in institutional life. In various kinds organizations. It was so exciting to see the Graduation Program at like dressmakers academy where they sing the song or every day when Dizzy Gillespie talks about the world throughout South Carolina seeing the song of the porch of the school looking out on cotton fields. But what surprised me and was so beautiful was how many educators used it as a tool. So i encountered all these curriculum in which the vocabulary lessons that the song becomes a basis of their history lessons there are plays pantomimes in school and so it really has so many functions and to see the way that the teachers so many black teachers and segregated schools and underfunded schools took seriously the task of repairing young people, not just one more for the future but to become warriors for justice was so moving. You share your views on this in the book and i want to read that very quickly, you write, i like many other people find a singing lift every voice and saying alongside other people of conscious to be one bulwark against the pessimism that threatens to do defended every turn but when i look around the room and see so many closed mouth eyes focused on the page nervous gestures i am reminded not to be deceived about the moment in which we live grasping somewhat randomly into traditions and archives and yet in desperate need of rebuilding tradition or building a new. Right. One of the things that emerged for me as part of the book, i talk a lot in the early chapters about it associational life. Taking this from lexus awe talked about americans love to join groups. Americans will create a club for anything. It was so robust. The black americans associational life was very explicitly political in the context of jim crow. People would belong to 10 or 12 different separate different organizations and have commitments to them over a lifetime. We dont live that way anymore. Across the board not just black americans, thats americans in general. But thats precisely what was necessary certainly the civil rights revolution and its necessary to actually solve social problems you have to have a sense of being a member of the fabric of the community who are working together. There is a way in which im very emotional and may be sentimental about lift every voice and sing. But what was most important about it was that it was a tool for creating an emotional bond in the service of community so that the community itself is ultimately what was most important. More important than whether we sing that particular song is the kind of ritual and commitment that made it so powerful thats what we need to reembrace. Author and princeton professor imani perry is our guest this month on indepth. Whats a month we invited author to talk about his or her body of work and you take your calls and we reach that point of the program. We will put the phone lines up you will see them in a minute, 2027488200 if you live in the east and central time zones. 7488201 for those of you in the mountain and pacific time zones. If you cant get through on the phone lines and would prefer to send a text you can send a text message to this number 2027488003 and we will put that and leave that up throughout the program so you get the correct number, 2027488003. You can also contact us via social media just remember booktv. Imani perry is the author of five books, six books. Profits of the hud was her first politics and poetics in the hiphop in 2004, more beautiful and more terrible the embrace and transcendence of racial inequality in the u. S. 2011 sexy thing on gender and liberation came out in 2018 as did may we forever stand history of the black National Anthem and looking for lorraine the radiant and radical life Lorraine Hansberry also came out in 2018 thats three books in 2018. And breathe a letter to my sons which we talked about is her most recent which just came out this year. I want to go to her first book you mentioned it a couple times. Profits of the hud we will get to the title in a moment but can you draw direct line from Langston Hughes to Biggie Smalls . Absolutely. In so many ways both of them took the beauty of vernacular language and crafted it and made decisions to tell stories that were pointed that often had a political content and resonated deeply or pleasurable to listen to to gauge with. They are different kinds of political subjects. Langston hughes is very overtly and activist and organizer but their relationship to black language both in the u. S. And throughout the diaspora and the desire to understand that as a foundation absolutely directly connected. Part of what i talk about in the book is of course the process by which it became the most popular form of music and had an audience that expanded beyond its initial core audience and produced a great deal of wealth that has been produced to hiphop. Theres something i talked about also something prophetic about it. Because there was from the very beginning and x position and elucidation of what postindustrial life and urban centers in the United States was like. And in all of its complexity. Its not an encomium to the hood. Hiphop is not. Its an exposition of it. Imani perry, you use the term mc, m, c, what does that mean . Is the word for a rapper thats more organic to hiphop. Initially it comes from others spell it emc ee. But they lectureship from the wrapper to the abrapper to the dj. Mc is a rapper its a internal to hiphop way of describing that role. I was interested really and also what made an mc good. Not just the reflection of a moment in history or condition certain communities but what did the art consist of . The mc became really important because i was doing a literary analysis of mc. From your book prophets of the hood, the historic construction of blackness and opposition to whiteness in which blackness is demonized has become part of the art forms consciousness. Right. I should say, before i go into this, hiphop has changed a great deal since 2004 although i think there are aspects of the book that are still described the format present in meaningful ways. There is a very overt play with the imagery of black people as thugs. Tupac embraced the idea of thug life. The criminalization of black people the sense of a very long history of american stereotyping of black people as both abits really played with that social reality. Lets hear from viewers as we continue to talk about your book. Charlie is in Roslyn Heights new york. Hi charlie, you are on booktv. Hi everybody. Im a progressive liberal, ive been fighting racism my whole life and im very proud of that playground and ive seen that the world is a very complex and politics is very complex situation. I dont support black nationalism because its just as bad as White Nationalism and its feeding the trump base. Theres good and bad in all groups, black people are just people, they are not inferior and they are not superior. And black nationalism is just as wrong as White Nationalism and i cant understand why miss perry is supporting black nationalism. Imani perry. And not a black nationalist, im far left. Nationalism takes on many different faces. There are certainly conservative brands of black nationalism. That politically are actually quite aligned in many ways to political conservatism. If we take an organization like the nation of islam which is politically White Conservative although advocates black nationalism and then diversion of black nationalism that youd see in an organization like the black Panther Party or ab which are about revolutionary socialism third World Politics anticolonialism that saw themselves as identified and allied with colonized people across the world. I should say that the single term doesnt mean much without the larger context. But i will say that i dont i disagree with the call that they are equivalent. Thats not a designation i would subscribe to. You say you are far left what is that mean . I identify as both someone who believes in democracy and the socialists. Because i believe against economic exploitation. I believe there really should have access to Safe Environments chemically water, good schools, a living wage. Healthcare. I believe in this extraordinarily wealthy country. That we shouldnt have children who are poor. I dont think people are poor because they are deficient overwhelmingly, they are poor because they are exploited or have a lack of opportunity. So thats what i believe and so the question inasmuch as i write and think about race, its never separate from the larger questions of the distribution of suffering in our society. Its an example of how the society has been organized in a way to distribute suffering an opportunity and wealth unjustly but i dont want, my objective is not for black people to become those who dominate. The idea for me is to become free of systems of domination to have a real robust democracy thats only possible if you have a decent quality of life for all people in a society. You were born 1972 in birmingham. Yes. What was your childhood like . My childhood was in some way very conventional and in some ways very unconventional. I was born in alabama nine years and a few years away from 16th street bombing. To a family of aband also very solidly black southern work in close culturally. I was raised by my mother who is an intellectual like most cerebral person ive ever met in my life. My grandmother who is domestic and work in the hospital, most resourceful. One of the most brilliant people ive ever known. Sent 12 children chalk college. My father and my adopted father who was my mothers partner a jewish man from brooklyn who was a communist. And activists and early person who worked against mass incarceration. We moved to cambridge massachusetts when i was five and thats when cambridge was bohemian and artistic and intellectual. It was also right after the crisis in boston. The shadow of the most difficult moment, some of the most difficult moments when it came to race in the country was always on my shoulder. I was between those places and also chicago when my dad moved. Always in circles of scholars and intellectuals from all over the world and activists. I moved around a lot. I was in a lot of different worlds from a very young age. Were you always in a book as well . I was always in a book. I was a voracious reader although something i always mentioned i also watched a lot of tv. Imagine that because people think, if your kids are in front of screens, things will be terrible. I loved reading, i would read all day, and i also loved watching television as a child. It also fed my imagination. Lets hear from lloyd in st. Louis. Hello. We are listening, please go ahead. Okay. Im really impressed with you professor dont help me, perry, im 85 years old i will be 86 march 23. I was born in st. Louis missouri and went to what you call all colored schools we would sing lift your voice and sing that instilled a lot of pride i dont know if you checked it out once upon a time the movie once upon a time we were colored, we were called colored people in those days and going through many changes but i think about you getting a phd and a jd, im also an educator and i had a masters degree and i didnt feel i needed a phd in education because i felt i was an excellent educator so i went and pursued a jd started 49 years old. This is a part of being black and being black you have to wear many hats. Im so extremely proud of you and have a paper im going to send you but i just need your address at princeton new jersey. Carryon the good work sister, i love the song of solomon and all the other good things you said. Now i will hang up and listen to you. Thank you very much. Lloyd, before you hang up, you mentioned some of your education credentials, what have you done as a career . Did you teach all your life . I taught middle school, i taught math and Language Arts and then i went to law School Starting at 45 years old. Did you practice law . Yes. I practice parttime, taught School Middle school the daytime. I did not love the Legal Profession but i would Never Exchange that experience because of the background that it gave me. I promote encouraging black males and females to go to law school because this is what we need but i think about the time you have people like Thurgood Marshall who went all black, colored whatever its called, and the environment we were raised in years ago, Thurgood Marshall predates me of course. I think about you mentioned different organizations and the origin and many fraternities and sororities and i wont tell you which unless you really want to know. I do want to know. ab many of those members are descendents of slaves. Firstgeneration its amazing what they developed in those days. Im get a let you talk but im going to send you this package i developed about being antiaffirmative action with the beneficiaries of affirmative action have been some of the people who have been antiaffirmative action. Lloyd, thank you so much. We will get a response. If he sent it to imani perry at princeton it would get to you. Absolutely. Any response for lloyd . Im so appreciative for your words of encouragement. One of the things that has been so profound in my life, i think its worth mentioning in public frequently is that older black people have offered me the most, generations older than me, the most consistent support and encouragement handed particular, appreciation for both my writing and earlier in my educational aspirations and i think they get left out. Often times people abwhich i think is the greatest generation is the civil rights generation are often sort of discounted or diminished by younger activists. I think its important to give offered appreciation for not just what they did to transform the nation but also what they continue to do to hold together the foundation of all of our work. And made the work possible. Im very thankful. We will play one more piece of music if he could identify it and talk about it. Okay [music] imani perry, who was written who is she singing about . That was nina simone and she was singing a song she wrote in honor of her dear friend Lorraine Hansberry who had passed away. She takes a line from a speech that hansberry delivered to young black writers in which she said that it was a gift to be young and gifted and black. It was a song that in fact, a certain moments people thought this might become the next lift every voice and sing because was so incredibly popular as a beautiful old to hansberry. Had nina simone moved overseas by that point . That was in 1969. Did she end up in paris . Yes and she was also in west africa. I dont remember the exact dates but it was four years after lorraine had passed away. Speaking of Lorraine Hansberry, this is what you write about her, she was a black lesbian woman born into the establishment donica stopped black middleclass who became Greenwich Village bohemian leftist married to a man a jewish communist songwriter. She cast her lot with the working classes and became a wildly famous writer. She drank too much, died early of cancer, love some wonderful women and yet lived with an unrelenting loneliness. She was intoxicated by beauty and enraged by injustice. I could tell the stories as gossip but i hope they will unfold in this book as something much more than that. Sounds like an American Life in some way. Hansberry, although politically she was a internationalist, she used to say before she passed away, people always talk about going to europe, i want to travel the americas. She thought she was captivated by the story of the americas. So it is google clearly american story. Between chicago and the village and between the small but prominent black bourgeoisie and her radical comrades in between her activist community and her lesbian circles in new york. She crossed a lot of boundaries. Broadway, 1959, what happened . A raisin in the sun opens, its the first play by a black woman on broadway. It is an astonishing success. Hansberry, this woman who has been. She was 30. She was so young shed wait tables she would work at camps. Shed been a journalist. It was surprising as it she wrote an extraordinary play. Its the most widely produced play by a black playwright in the United States. It has constant revivals, three versions. She hadnt yet turned 30 when the play went up. Shes 29. It was phenomenal. And also hard. It was hard for her. Where did you research this book does she have relatives living . She does have her cousin Gail Hansberry abher cousin Gail Hansberry who lives in washington dc who i met we shared tears. Her best friend from childhood lives in new york but i actually talk to them after i finish the book her papers are at the Schomburg Center for research in black culture in harlem. The archivist tease me because i say i sort of moved in because i would take my kids to school in the drive to harlem. I live in philadelphia not princeton a little bit longer drive. I would stay as long as i could and drive home to pick up my kids from school and come back the same day. The next day. Its an extraordinary collection and i could use other archives so i could see a ai could see james baldwins letter to her back and forth there. Was a friend of hers . He was a close friend. Shes at the crossroads of all these people and as he was dying, she wrote him an extraordinary obituary, that talked about his significance not just a scholar but as an important social and political force. As she is dying. Something like heartbreakingly poetic about their relationship. Robert, new york city, hi robert you are on with professor imani perry. Hi imani, how are you . Am fine thank you. I wanted to ask you if you could elaborate a little more on your concept that aband if indeed that still resonates at all with our current Cultural Landscape as an africanamerican abas a person work with abshe always said that ballets for black people because i want to hear a little more of your thoughts on that and especially in philadelphia, and cotillions and all that were very large part of the community there at that time as well, which i heard stories about. Thats it. Thank you thanks robert. Anything to respond to him . Black formalism is a term that i actually use in may we forever stand. I use it to distinguish between a concept that has gotten a lot of currency and really important to talk about, which is the politics of respectability. Which is basically the idea of a tradition of black people performing certain forms of sort of respectability in order to make the argument for full membership in the society that if we are respectable therefore we might be embraced. Black formalism is distinct because it is not actually to make an argument to the Larger Society is a form of self regarding ritual. Black formalism would be rules about how you dress and comport yourself in civic associations or church or various types of events. The question about whether its sustained is not nearly as much of the west was because theres less of that civic culture but i think we do still havent certain pockets and particularly in the south there is a lot of rules about how to act right in certain terms of places that are not about looking externally bitter about whether the rituals that have been inside a community. Use another term and of course im going to lose it and all these books i have in front of me racist people that i get the right term . Yes. I use that term thats a racist bodies. What it means what it means to be registered as other because of race. Because of the designation. I operate as i think many scholars do with the deep knowledge that race does not reel any biological sense. There is no race gene that these categories are socially constructed that we create them. I wanted to use the term to talk about the way the race is described to people as opposed to this idea that interest is. Even though the fact that its described as incredibly powerful. In shape so much of our lives. Something placed upon us by us as opposed to something that just is. I think sometimes thats confusing because its like people with differently. We dont have to make a meeting of that. Race has been making a meeting, not just the way different people look but their genealogy. I skipped over this a little bit, how did you have three books come out in 2018 . That was not planned. I never work on a single project at a time. I worked on all of them for the seven years between 2011 and 2018. And i anticipated they would come out in sequence and then at a certain point i realized at a certain point the book is out of your hands it was like old or older to come out in the same year, which was pretty overwhelming. But it was also nice to see the fruition of the later but sometimes i think it kind of looks like it was a parlor trick of some sort i would work on this for a year and then work on that and then a month at a time and they just emerged at the same time. Whats the difference between academic and mainstream but in the construct in which you do with it . That is such a good question. Its not a hard and fast distinction. Certainly academic books tend to focus on a conversation within a field. Part of what distinguishes them is that in that conversation within an Academic Field the conversation becomes somewhat interior. The people who are reading you assume have a certain set of body of knowledge a certain set of books they read. As a scholar have always wanted to write in ways that the require people to have read the same 100 books beforehand. I tried to write in a way that even in the most scholarly of works that invites people in and pointed the footnotes and certain sections. I also think obviously a trade book or general market book by and large tends towards serving the pleasure of the reader much more directly. I think its important for all books. I think you want to engage the reader emotionally as well as intellectually. Teach them something so that its about knowing something but also feeling something. For me the development has been, have this foundation is a scholar and then i can consistently also build my craft as a writer. So the books take on slightly different balances but i wouldnt say that i give up the priorities of either genre when i moved between them. This is a text, professor perry, if you have a daughter what letter would you write to your daughter in 2019 . I asked that question in the book and they said why did you write that and i said because i have sons, but i dont think the book would be much different had it been a letter to my daughter, probably the most significant difference would be that i would write about much more extensively about the way girls and women in particular lack girls in particular are often expected to sacrifice themselves in service of others, so i probably wouldve had a different angle on the question in that respect, but largely it would be the same. That 61 to 63 thing is so powerful and i wrote actually in essay in harpers last year and one of the formulations about how its almost like an ossified city in the way people regard me and images that come up usually in january sometimes or september, but a city that has grown and change and was even much more complex than its given credit for in 61 and 63 in terms of the various politics. Of there were people that believed in armed selfdefense. People had rebellion or riots in the streets in birmingham. People turned turned into becoming a black nationalists them all the sorts of things in the city and then we had a major transformation with the election of mayor arion team and he was the mayor for a guest 30 years. Hes still alive. He saved the city from the ravages of the industrialization of my first black mayor of the city. You brought the hospital industry in and he we lost Steel Industry and coal mines so theres all this history that has intervened and theres in general and erasure of the urban south in the society, but also a sense in which these similar to angela davis. We see the picture of her with afro in the 1970s and shes a living breathing person who had a long history of extraordinary scholarly accomplishments of us i dont know the why necessarily , but i think its part of my task, kind of unfrees that place . Host at the same time you talk about taking your sons to alabama and mississippi and you talk about the fact that in your view those two places are quite unique. They are unique and hallowed ground, i mean, so i think we can cherish and embrace history and also acknowledge that life continues to happen in and around it. One of the stories i tell about went to a reunion in mississippi and so there are all these veterans of the movements or current organizers of the beautiful intergenerational event and also at the campus where we gathered it was a reminder that you have this extraordinary history and yet the struggle continues because the prison labor looks like all the organizers in the group and many of the organizers who were working on Voting Rights and Economic Justice than our working on massa kars ration or educational there is a continuum, so i guess what i mean is it important to cherish history, but not too treated as if its something frozen. Host if you cant get through on the phone lines can send a text message to imani perry and heres the number 2027488003 and we will get to as many of those as possible, but right now its amy in tallahassee and you have been very patient, amy. Think you are for holding and youre on the air. Caller good morning doctor perry. I enjoy your work. Im a 50 somethingyear old, closer to 60, but i am a native floridian and in florida we get a lot of hick, but i have to tell my florida history a little bit. You started out with the origins of the different voices thing. He gave a nice little summary, but the backdrop to that song or two that point is much deeper. I dont know i didnt read your books i dont really know how far you got into this host amy, are you talking about the fact about florida schools and why they chose jacksonville . Caller yes, about that the poem was originally written for the students and johnson was the principle there at the time, so he wasnt gone. Guest but, he moved after that. Caller okay and then booker t. Washington, the orange parks issue and integration of schools and sheets and florida was the best funded among africanamerican schools at the time in the south, so i just wanted to to to my little florida horn. Guest all of that is in the book, so i think you would appreciate it. Host sounds like she knows her history. Johnson, corning california, hello. John, you have to turn down the volume of your tv otherwise you get that delay. Can you do that Start Talking or do we need to move on . John, i apologize. If you could on the air, in turn down the volume otherwise youll get a delay and hear everything through your phone, or promise. Amber in like charles, louisiana. Its your turn. Caller good morning, doctor perry. Guest thank you. Caller thinking about your research and black men and women in history, my question is in the 21st Century Health gathering sources [inaudible] host another thing, if you use a cell phone please talk into it clearly and dont use your speaker because sometimes baguettes garbled sometimes baguettes garbled. Did you understand her question . Guest i think the question is how the 21st century changes and technology will affect research in the creation of archives and i to get a great question. Its not one that has we havent completely explored it, you know those of us that think about it, but certainly is there is a couple of different potentially challenging forces and one is both the quantity and the fungibility of materials and by that, i mean, so we take for example exponentially more photos that we did in previous generations. We have constant communication. A lot of that is not printed. When we lose a device we may lose all of that, so its not as though when you have letters that you keep it a folder or letters so the archives are both too big and too small or at least to vulnerable fighting this is a real question. What it suggests is that people we had to increasingly be deliberate about what we preserve and probably should be preserving a great deal more in physical form and not just in digital form because as platforms change its unclear how many translations are going to be possible. Host historians 30, 40, 50 years from now will have more trouble with archives. Guest guests, and weeding through them and collecting them in making decisions about what goes into an archive, what accounts. Also, i will say this, sometimes things that look like they include everything are deceptive. So, for example, if you ever google something you know happened and you cant find it on google, you are reminded even with incredible abundance not everything is there and so that is also a question for historians because if you think you have a full archive you in fact may not. Host next call from new york city. Hello. Caller hello, good afternoon. Great great program. I guess i have a twopart doctor perry, i want you to speak to a boy seems to be or some of us stunned by it, but at present moment with a lie has become normalized and incitement of division and even violence has also become normalized the, so i would like you to speak to the patriarchal aspects of it and also you mentioned about the identity of whiteness, your projection of since its not based on biology, its a social construct how we might go beyond what the future might hold in terms of the very identity of whiteness and i will listen over the air, can i, peter . Host yes, do you have a followup you want to make . Caller that is it. Host i promise if you hang up your phone now and turn on your tv you will hear the entirety of your answer, but if you feel more comfortable staying on the line we will leave you on the line. She is gone. She has not. Caller thank you for that question. Guest series of questions which i thought provoking a meme me say this come i certainly is an individual could not answer the question of how we get past the way, the idea of what whiteness means hinges upon exclusion and notion of a superiority and that notions of greater depth of humanity, but i do think that there is a huge body of work that we need to present pursue and grapple with and one of the challenges it and i think this is similar to the question of patriarchy, one of the challenges is we spend our entire lives being taught to value certain things and it to think in a particular way and as americans, one piece of that is we invest deeply and mythologies of the nation. We invest deeply in the idea we are as individuals in a set and thats what makes you virtuous and that combination is really difficult if we are trying to address inequality because the immediate response, the fact of inequality becomes defensiveness because you have to be innocent be virtuous as opposed to what i think the truth is which is grappling with issues makes you virtuous, challenging oneself. The mythology of what it of the history makes it very hard to confront the ugliness of the past and even the mythology of our personal history, you know. So, i think certainly a piece of it is those of us who take this work as our lifes work has to tell the story with greater truth, with more robustness, sensitivity and grace, but when it doesnt lean toward myth, but leans towards the notion that history serves as. The reason we draw certain aspects out of our histories because we want to build the good society and so to do that we have to think about how to tell history in a way that is honest about the failings and is also honest about the heroes that have led us towards values that are more inclusive and decent and beautiful. I dont have all the answers, but i do think thats without question a part of it. Host and in her book, more beautiful and more terrible imani perry writes that racial inequality is a National Cultural [inaudible] guest it was really important in that book for me too say that one is that we are not just living with the impact of the past, but we certainly are so when you look at Something Like the wealth gap you see that the impact of 20th century policies that created wealth gap the reality is when and for that book i researched so many fields, neuroscience, media studies, literature, social psychology, economics and what i saw over and over again is that people disadvantaged others based upon the membership in racial groups most dramatically black people disadvantaged, but its not exclusively white people that even includes a significant number of black people who did end up disadvantaging a black person, so its not really about this question of the individual attitude. These are learned behaviors. We exist in a culture that teaches us that as my colleague says that why People Matter more and that i wish that book had been written before i wrote this book because it wouldve been useful, but if you understand that it is a culture becomes very clear why it is so hard to address it, why policies because you need a cultural shift. We have to actually be intentional about the process. One of the common places in our society is that people often think its impolite or not nice on comfortable to talk about race, but one thing we know from research is talking about race actually helps people behave in a less discriminatory fashion. Its evidenced and so thats a cultural shift that needs to happen. For me it was really important that it wasnt one that we understand that we can all participate in transformation, but that this is not a matter of kind of individuated attitudes or individual behaviors. Host how many self identified conservatives take your courses at princeton . Guest thats a hard question to answer. There are particular courses that i teach that are more likely to attract students who identify as conservatives. I teach a course on the history of race in american law and so that tends the conversation to more likely go across the political spectrum. I do think African American studies tends to be a selfselected group towards more of more to the left, but one thing i think people are not aware of is that across the self identified political spectrum people hold very conservative ideas about race, so its not as though the process of kind of educating and sort of demythologizing doesnt happen even if i have a class room full of selfdescribed liberals. There are people by virtue of their Something Like some of your kind of niceness might identify as a liberal and yet hold very conservative ideas about race work stereotypical ideas about people based upon racial groups. Thats important because for me the role as an educator is not so often those of us on the left are accused of that is not political indoctrination. My objective as an educator is to teach People History and range of ideas based in fact an episode and events and some tools for interpretation, so many years ago this doesnt happen now because of social media where its very clear what my politics are, but when i taught law school many years go host at rikers . Guest at rutgers. They would say we dont know your politics are which is hard to imagine because now they are all out there. Rigor is important to me so strong ideological commitments, but rigor is more important. Never can a writer say anything that isnt backed up with a substantial body of evidence and im also not going to function in such a way that my evidence cant be contested. Host next call for imani perry comes from daniel in minnesota. , daniel. Caller hello. Host go ahead. Caller mia on tv now . Host you are. Caller really delightful to have this moment. I sort of i really believe in what you are doing. I know for a fact because im sort of like the opposite part. I am a man, i am white, but im racist because of my color on my end but my life in history what happened and whats happening as far as of the structure and i have the means in the manner and what sparks how i can inspire my life, but im not a good writer. Im not welleducated. And not a good in school because i have adhd, but im an artist, inventor and i feel like black and white sweated together and made the contractor of my races but not only that because of my father and what he did as a green beret and what he had done, intelligence and host daniel, before we go too far want to come back to comment that you made that you consider yourself a racist in some ways because of who you are . Caller no, at the moment in time im not black and white, but i feel like if i was black i would be the racist part but im white racist because of the archives of my history. Host because of the archives of your hair streaked. Lets hear what professor perry has to say about that. Guest this is challenging to parse, but i think its really important. I dont think why people dont are not necessarily racist because of the history of this country are the world. I think that is not true or particularly a helpful formulation. I think it is very difficult to transcend the messages that are racists because of the way our history is told, because of the way our society is organized and because of whats obscure and i also think its extremely important to not talk about race in such a way that it becomes the only or gender the only mechanism of thinking about any quality any quality. Educational access, disability, poverty, regional distinctions, all of these things are extremely important in the distribution of opportunity and so sometimes i do worry that people read the conversations that others have about race as implication that if you are right and mail therefore you have everything. Obviously thats not true. I was born in alabama. I have been to appalachia. Thats not true. The thing that is so [inaudible] it creates a barrier, so often between why people who are suffering the same kinds of any quality that black people are where race actually functions to disassociate so that where white people think who are poor and foldable think of themselves as aligned with those exploiting them more than the black people on the other side of town who are also suffering being exploited the doctor have adequate healthcare , so i just went to parse it out because there will never be a case and i have had these discussions and debates and certainly not everyone in my field agrees with me and i think many if not most do, but race is not everything. I dont think that it was concerned with injustice can ever be your only only analytic. Host los angeles, good afternoon. Caller how are you doing, sir cracks thank you for having me. Hello . Host please go ahead. We are listening. Caller heres my question to professor perry, are we ever going to be living in a free society . Before she answers, i was born in guatemala for 10 miles from british honduras, all races, all sorts of people and to me it was a color free society. Are we ever going to it seems to me like africanamericans are obsessed with race. I understand, i truly understand the situation by the then the United States for 45 years. Ive lived in kentucky, tennessee and the army, are we ever going to leave though wars of doctored king [inaudible] whos going to take the first step. My final question is, are africanamericans obsessed with race, is it because of the product of so many hundreds of years of oppression . I do appreciate your work. I dont know how she was able to do a jd and phd. Amazing. Host before you leave, where you come down politically . Caller i am a far left, a yellow dog democrat. Host thank you, sir. Guest i will say a couple of things in response. I appreciate the question. I do think it would be our that africanamericans obsessed with race and a thank goodness because were we not it would require us to be deeply self hating people. When something profoundly shakes every aspect of your life and your history and denies you opportunity, if you are not obsessed with the question its hard to understand how that would make you someone who can have any self regard. So, yes, i am unapologetically obsessed with race. I think thats whats necessary to get to a more just society. I would take exception to the characterization of Central America latin america as race free society there they are not. There are places where one doesnt talk about race in the same way, but if you look at Central America, black communities that are deeply marginalized or the Indigenous Community has opposed to other communities or if you look at the way in which call it functions as a stratification in brazil and colombia, puerto rico, in the dominican republic, so not talking about race actually does not impact how materially racial inequality functions. Latin america is a mother wonderful example because of the evidence of how deeply stratified things are along the lines of complexion even though the words are different, a sign of not talking about a dozen make it better. Host february 6, 2016. What happens happened . Guest im drawing a blank. Im sorry. Host you were arrested. Guest thats probably why. I was arrested. I was pulled over for speeding and then i was told i had a unpaid parking ticket and later subsequently told my license had been suspended for nonpaid parking ticket in philadelphia and it became National News because i talked about it. I will say save some details are really the part that was most significant for me. One of the details was that the person there was a male and female officer, but the person that searched my body for weapons was a man, which i was not pleased about. Host why were you searched . Guest i dont know. Then i was handcuffed. I said can i pay the fine and asked if i could call the president of the university announced told no one i was handcuffed to a table and taken to the Police Station and it was very clear to me that they were skeptical of my claim to be associated with the university, which is fine. Whatever what i learned and i made this very clear is that people are arrested for tickets in princeton, something i think is a bad policy. I dont think that the use of the police power is appropriate for that. I think finds are appropriate and i said that. Also, it is the case that black drivers are disproportionately stopped in princeton, so both are true. Plenty of white people have been arrested for tickets in princeton. Black people are disproportionately arrested and certainly the officers discretion, i thought, was an appropriate in things like handcuffing me too a table and also details i didnt talk about, that i could not pay within atm and had to pay with cash. They would not take me too an atm and had to i dont live in princetons all those details. At the thing that was really harrowing and this did not make it in the news is that after i talked about this incident, i received consistent email messages on social media , calls on my cell phone and calls on work that were filled with the most disgusting slurs you could imagine. I am not the only person in my building at work who experiences that kind of harassment on a regular basis. We have increased security in africanamerican studies building on campus because we experience the most threats and they are very ugly and given the current climate they feel real. So when people on the one hand say, would he mean Racial Discrimination . There is no Racial Discrimination and then respond with that thing, thats an indication of the world we live in. That was what became monster back about it. At the moment of the rest i was terrified because abhad just happened and she had been killed and it was just a traffic infraction. So when people respond like that strips proportionate, i had seen the footage of her and i was terrified. But the worst part was actually the venomous response to be speaking about the incident. Corrected the University Stand by you . Absolutely. The university stood by me Committee Group of black women academics from all across the nation and abroad spoke out among the half, my students stood by me. It was a saturday on my way to campus for a student conference on black women and one of my students who i saw yesterday she is a graduate student elsewhere now but was organized had organized the conference. I received a great deal of support that was essential from an institution and my community so i wouldnt want to wet will give the impression i was not surrounded by love because i absolutely was but i was also afraid and afraid because as much as there is this conversation about the importance of free speech when you say certain things, you are under enormous threat. Did you ever hear from the Princeton Police and because of your association with university issued an apology . Any type of a you know where im going . Yes. Right. Like the skiff games incident. I will say this, the judge in my case because i had to go to court was very gracious but it was remarkable because we walked to princeton you dont see very many people of color but in the Traffic Court you see lots of people of color. Lots of black folks. Lots of asian folks. Middle eastern asian. So on the one hand, i was treated well and i do think that was in part because of not just my association with the university but the attention to the issues it created. But on the other hand in the midst of being treated well is able to see evidence of inequality. Even if they had issued a personal apology i dont know that it would have been appropriate for me to embrace that given what i see in the town. There are plenty, i should say, i dont know abi have friends who live in preston who experience it, people of color who experience a place they were in embraced, respected, and cared for. I dont abits a set of observations. We have about 25 minutes left with author imani perry, bill is in asheville North Carolina you are on we are listening. Go ahead. Thank you very much for accepting my call. On behalf of all americans to professor perry i would like to apologize for such an incident thats heartbreaking. For that to happen to you. To my point, are you familiar with the book the southern passed by William Brundage . Yes. Can you give some discussions or some at least bring the audience and the rest of the viewing listening audience uptodate on some of those some of his writings and talking about how the monuments and the Confederate Monuments came about in the south . Bill, why is that a book of interest to you . Because it parallels the story of after the civil war and how a lot of these monuments in the self compared with monuments came about but it also parallels the from the dominant culture and it parallels to the african culture, their stories and how they also were living during that time after the civil war and how their societies also came about and grew as she referenced earlier a lot of the fraternal organizations and so forth for the africanamerican community. Before we get an answer, give us a snapshot of yourself. Retired from stanford university, im also currently living in asheville joined the southern jazz club. How wonderful. Thank you so much. From stanford to asheville. That sounds like a delightful journey. [laughter] i think that what hes referencing is that its really important to note in the midst of all these debates around the Confederate Monument that the monuments were placed by in large as retaliation against reconstruction as opposed to coming up after the civil war to honor confederate soldiers. Actually as part of the reassertion of White Supremacy during jim crow. So they had this public, they were a Public Statement that we, as white people, run the south again after the reconstruction governments came out. I was talking about this with one of my friends the other day, the United States sort of conceives of itself as a nation that had not been defeated but we have a region in which people think of themselves as having been defeated by the nation. In that region there is also the largest proportions of africanamericans who are the peoples whose liberation of the civil war wouldve fought over. So its a complicated dynamic and what has often happened is that there is almost, i talk about in the dissertation of former reunion like a concession drawn like we will let you keep the south as a kind of white supremacist state and is stay in exchange of getting back for the nation with cost being felt by black people in the jim crow era but we have the repetition of this through many of the conflicts over the Confederate Monument. I am often saying that on the one hand while im opposed to the monuments because obviously they were placed to celebrate the enslavement of my ancestors but i also am very cautious about the fact that we placed disproportionate attention to those types of monuments as they exist in the south as opposed to the nation at large. There was a moment when the president said, i think a couple years ago, what are they going to do next . Attack George Washington . George washington was a slaveholder. Dc where we are if we are going to raise the questions about monuments or what we celebrate, lets raise it broadly. Must not just talk about the one region. Lets talk about as a nation how do we want is a wonderful friend of mine is doing this project in philadelphia where he thinks about what kind of monuments do we want to have two celebrate our city or our communities. I think those are good questions to ask lets bring it a little closer to home at princeton university. The Woodrow Wilson school of International Affairs exist as the Wilson School of International Affairs . I will say this, i dont like the name of the school. Wilson wasnt unapologetic racist. I think the students who organized against the name of the school and the money metallization of wilson did an enormous service not just to the school but to the nation. He took the nations backwards on issues of race. I think as an institution we did collectively address ai wouldnt put it at the top but im grateful for the conversation and if certainly would prefer another name. So far social media pages was lift every voice and saying ever considered in the running for being the National Anthem for the u. S. , i recall hearing that a number of years ago and this is devonian and margaretabin mount vernon new york. I think what shes probably referencing is James Earl Johnson and others suggested as a defense of the charge. The criticism of the song is how can black people have a National Anthem . Youre trying to be a part of this nation at large. Thats part of why the naacp which has a song as its official song does not refer to it as the black National Anthem or the negro National Anthem because they have a history of strong integration agenda. Johnson abeven though it tells the story of black life in these epic terms. It was never in the running in the nationals. There have been discussions that the values that are asserted in the song and the beauty of the composition are without question universal. He could tell a particular story about the struggles of africanamericans in this land and it has messages that are meaningful for everyone. Next call for author imani perry is dave in oakland. Thank you cspan. You are on the air. I live in a mixed neighborhood and i have five grandsons to go to school, the school is probably 65 percent to 80 black. I would like to know what i can do to teach my grandsons to be better americans so we can get past this. Because i make no connotations or denotations to color with the kids in our neighborhood. I say, the boy across the street, or i say that girl across the street. Because this really breaks me up to watch our nation go through this. Its breaking me up now. Are you white . Yes im white. It just breaks me up to wonder what my grandkids might go through. I feel the pain of what little black kids probably went through. Lets get a response. I dont want to make assumptions about daves story but i was very moved by what he said. I think that there is a complicated and rare and precious circumstance for white families living in predominantly black communities. On the one hand its very powerful because white flight was and is a real thing. Whatever is a Critical Mass of black people move in communities by and large the majority white people depart and so the prospect of integration its also the case, i gleaned that from what he was saying is that its always hard to be one of the few edits particularly hard to be one of the few in areas where people are economically vulnerable, which is a vast majority of predominantly black communities. I imagine his reference to his grandson, its probably tough to be white kids in those schools. I think we can acknowledge that instilling knowledge that in a society and large its not tough to be white. So for how those kids to navigate on the one hand the reality of racial inequality but also that they may feel slighted or cast aside or marginalized in their school environment, i think its important and i think it requires sensitivity and they always requires sensitivity with children. In the best way, certainly i think, im the person whos light, policy, structural changes, legal changes, at the neighborhood level as to what i talk about is right relation its slow work but i think its essential thats the best you can do as an individual. He cant shape the fortunes of all the kids in the neighborhood. But having at the relationships with them sharing knowledge, sharing information. Am sure you saw a couple days ago Michelle Obama was talking about white flight out of herself chicago Lorraine Hansberry South Chicago neighborhood. The wall street journal had an order tutorial tying it in with the strike in the Chicago School they were fleeing black families they were fleeing poor schools and high taxes. Some of the other issues. Theyre not just making it about race. As part of what i read about in more beautiful and more terrible as those are not contradictory statements. Federal policy dictated explicitly in the early 20th century that neighborhoods were less creditworthy and homes were valued less simply by virtue of the proportion of black people in them. Including racially mixed neighborhoods. Therefore it was harder to get credit in those neighborhoods. Federal government policy made it so that it was a bad economic decision for white people to live in integrated neighborhoods. Thats the function of racial inequality and it becomes, the question is, now it accumulates. We dont have those fha guidelines anymore. We dont have the rules that make it such that you cant formally get credit if you cant buy a house in a black neighborhood. But we have now generations of the notions that neighborhoods where black people are are worth less and we know that the price of house depends on what people will pay for them. We have a system where the assumption is if the neighborhood had a lot of black people its worth less and would not pay that much to live there. There is a perpetuation of what some socially only just called this accumulation. So that the value doesnt accrue in the same way. And black neighborhoods even all other things equal. Its also true that black neighborhoods get less Services Even affluent black neighborhoods. Its harder to get a grocery store. The consequence of all that is because schools are funded by virtue of local taxes. Is that yes the schools are poor because if the schools dont have nearly as much money and nearly as much investment and nearly as many adults who can supplement the School Funding because of white flight then the question you are posing at the individual level is that i dont want to live there because these things are better. At individual level, sure. Its important to understand that the whole structure is a consequence of how race is functioned and if we want to change it its going to require that people live in neighborhoods that they think are undesirable and contribute to them. One of the things we like to do with every author that appears on in depth is asked what he or she is reading and some of their favorite books. Imani perry listed two Toni Morrison books mercy and song of solomon along with Herman Melville moby dick, molson hamid exit west and Pablo Neruda Canto general. Part of the reason it connects to a lot of what weve been talking about i read him in english and spanish. He has had this capacity and feels like hes alive in my mind. To capture extraordinary beauty and love of the natural landscape of south america intimate passions and always sustain political content. Critique of the united company. Critique of the exploitation of the land. Critique of various forms of indigenous people. That there wasnt a sense that you had to make a choice and that you could tell a story that resonated deeply with all your readers and also hold fast to a set of commitments to justice so he is a role model in many ways. Is there a difference in the translation . Is it more beautiful in his native spanish . Yes obviously i might be completely wrong on this. Neruda as well as gabriela marcus, they both translate really well. There are other writers i read in spanish and the languages at work. They both work extraordinarily well in english and that to me is also a mastery of the craft at the level of the idea along with the language so that you can communicate the booty with the ideas put together even if the words dont have the same melody. Why moby dick . I spent a lot of my youth obsessed with whales and wailing, which was a little strange. This epic tale of life aboard a whaling ship with all these people, which is the whaling industry was like. I grew up in massachusetts and spent a lot of year in massachusetts. You can still see the remnants can be go to new bedford bears abthey are, black people, portuguese people, you can see the remnants of that history so on this ship the crosssection of the world is on this ship. Facing incredible danger. And kind of ablater. Life and death of the most grueling but poetic of some consensus. Paul, brooklyn, good afternoon your own with author imani perry. Hello, its an honor to be on booktv and a huge honor to be talking to doctor perry. I certainly admire your work. My question is, Martin Luther king has been quoted in saying the vast majority of White Americans are racist either consciously or unconsciously. He said variations of that one or two other times. I wanted to get doctor perrys view on that. I know its just the quote out of context but i would like to know what she feels about that 50 years after his passing . Sure. Thank you. Thank you peter. [laughter] that means im getting old. I think the quote is one example among many that i think people are drawing attention to that the standard narrative of doctor king that we get is narrow and sanitized. To remove the things that were most challenging that he said. My sense of why doctor king said that in the reason that i say probably the things that i say that are most provocative its an extraordinary moment of grace as much as it might not feel like that. Because its a challenge. Its issuing a challenge to reject the dominant order of things the dominant way of thinking. And to do so by shaking people up. Its always complicated and i will say, in my own journey i moved back and forth on how to do this. One day wrote more beautiful and more terrible i decided i didnt want to use the word racism. I wanted a word that didnt actually trigger certain things. Even though i think racism is pervasive and i use it much more in my writing now because we are sort of in a all gloves off moment in American History. Sometimes those ways of making the point are more provocative than others but the point always is to try to figure out how to enact change how to transform the world we are in. We have one last call other call from brooklyn and this is jay, hi jay. How are you doing . Hello ms. Perry. How are you doing . And doing well. I like to state, its obvious, White America, white people have a very long history of Violence Toward black people. Black people have been trying to get along with white people in the country ever since ab slavery, jim crow, black people have been trying to get along with white people. Its obvious that white people dont want that, white people want america to be abyou didnt discover america, you started this in america but you project to the world that you are innovated so much in actuality you are not community would have a culture. So in saying that, i feel like White America people are really trying to get a race war started because the federal government is going to fight with you, the state police, everybody is going to be on the side of the white people and black people just really tired. Everyday i wake up i think god for social media today, you are seeing a white cop killing a black person whether a man or woman. Or you see an ordinary citizen white citizen running around here using nword. Just blatantly attacking black people. You are trying to start a race war and black people are tired. They are really tired of africanamerican afor freedom are just trying to just live normal and raise your children. To have to tell your child before you leave home what to do to try to avoid the police and not get murdered. J we have to leave it there we are almost out of time. Professor perry. What he gave voice to come of the experience of feeling tired is true. The general sense. This is always the complication and this goes back to where we started, the formulation that he said White Americans are trying to start a race war. I wouldnt say that by any means. I think actually the people there are people in this country, militias are white nationalists who are trying to start a race war, i dont think thats the majority and i think its important not to identify that as the center because that actually for me is not where the battle lies. I think the battle lies in the transformation that is no less potent but appears less subtle and much more and certainly much more nuanced. But the sense of being tired, the sense of worry about your children when you leave they leave their home, absolutely. And i think its fair to say the sense of rage and devastation about the last three years in this country is warranted. Because if you think there have been all these generations that have fought for every step in being barreled back into the ugliness of outspoken over racism in the public arena and doesnt seem to be any countervailing force to pull it back that is strong, thats harrowing. That winds up making many black americans when we take about all our