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Is a columnist at the atlantic. He is the author of stand from the beginning the definitive history and racist a he is the author of how to be an antiracist. Bringing it all together with an engaging personal narrative of his own awakenings antiracism. Sarah broome has appeared in the new yorker, the New York Times magazine, the oxford american and Oprah Magazine among others. She received her masters in journalism from the university of california berkeley and awarded the waiting Foundation Creative nonfiction grant in 2016. She is the author of yellow house in 1961 sarah broomes mother ive remade thought ab and built her world inside of it. Widowed, ivory may remarried sarahs father simon broome and their combined family would eventually number 12 children. Yellow house tells a story of 100 years of her family and their relationship to a home and a neglected area of one of americas most metallized cities. Mitchell jacksons debut novel one curtis j gaines award for literary excellence as owners include awaiting award fellowships from the komen center of the new degree. Ted, the landed foundation the Ford Foundation and the center for nonfiction, his writing has appeared in the new new yorker, harpers magazine, New York Times book review, the paris review, the guardian and elsewhere. He is the author of survival map, an assistant professor of creative writing at the university of chicago. This book is an electrifying reckoning and an essential addition to the National Conversation on race and class. With that, please help me in joining to welcome our three authors for this afternoon. [applause] good afternoon everyone. I think before we begin i just want to congratulate sarah for winning the National Book award. [applause] of course if you havent read her book the yellow house, its available outside, i think it may have already been sold out but you can always get it somewhere else. Make sure you do. Thank you all for coming am very excited abwere to go up there and read okay all right. [laughter] im very excited to be reading with sarah and abram. Very much respect their work. It was there for that phenomenal speech the other night. It was amazing to be there and witness. I am going to talk about white women, thats my addition to this conversation. I have an essay called apples in my essay collection which is about them as a subject, which also is born out of my father and my mother in their relationship to white women. I will read a little expert and then chat a little bit. One morning, big chris, dad, popped up in moms job and sold her grand deal get rich in a flash scheme and borrowed 500, no small sum. Then it was no hear from current oc from cuba for long enough to be disrespectful. Two consecutive nights before the morning of this tale, mom rode by aapartment and swept for dads car. The morning, she and her sister friend dawn and her sister aunt essie crowded in her red triumph spitfire again to see what they could see, which is to say who they could find. In Matters Regarding her one true love, mom in those days was not a want for grip. She parked on the street admonished on to wait in the car and drafted her sister aunt essie to accompany her as she waddled up to unselect the department and knuckled the door. The white women who would become uncle xs bottom broad answered him with chrissy here . Chrissy back there in the room said uncle x abecause either she didnt know mom or didnt know better or both. Lasted a couple weeks or was it to be. Oh god, uncle x this woman said and tried to close the door but mom jammed her foot in and forced away in. Sc watcher, mom said as she appraised the scene she stopped toward the kitchen and hunted the jurors for a butcher knife and kept huffing toward the bedroom. She swung the door open and beheld the soon to be father of her second son asleep beside a white woman. A white woman. That white woman popped up and made the kind of faith we might expect from a woman awakened to the site of a crazed person wielding a butcher knife at the foot of her bed. The white woman nudged the dad, chrissy get up but dad in his purge tested conscious didnt budge she knows to be good get up somebodys here. Thats when dad picked his head off the pillow and cracked an eye open, door . He called moms middle name as was his custom fitted as if hed seen an apparition in omen. Dad snapped abits not what you think. Its not what you think dora. Im six months pregnant with your baby, the baby you been begging me to have since forever can you come to my job and take my 500, 500 from your pregnant girlfriend come you take my money and run off for days without a word and now here you is in bed with this white broad . Im going to skip ahead a little bit. [laughter] my father was a pimp, i always try to figure out another way to say that. Theres no other way to say it. He would often cheat with women who did not look like my mother so this essay is really me trying to investigate why it was he was cheating with women that she considered white. I came up with his idea that white women were the apple of the world and this is me trying to define what that means. The apple is part myth, grounded in harris garduno has garage. As its tree bearing immortality granting golden fruit. We could trace the myth back to hippo minutes tossing the golden apples of atalantas feet to win a race of mortal consequence the myth of the apple also features elements of eris crushing zeuss bridal shower and causing commotion among the goddesses. And of course, the epic beef between the greek and the trojans. With that golden apple of discord and though the jury is forever out on whether it was indeed an apple, im counting as part of the apple genesis the Old Testament myth of eve coaxing adam into eating the fruit that nevermore ruined our shores shot at an identical life. The apple is part fairytale she never allowed to be a mere woman or should i say a human. She is deemed elegant, pious, sacred, pure, virtuous, virginal, beautiful, moral, sublime, culturally, graceful shes a stereo, the equal of magical queens and processes beings who alone have been blessed with the biological gift of bearing the best of mankind. The white race. And was a fairytale without a monster. Otherwise known as the swarthy barbarians from which apples must be secured by the men who pledge their safekeeping in what is a fairytale without an antagonist the antagonist being on calmly and lascivious woman covered mere woman or less than that maligned system for details and jezebels and mammys into tainting his peer white blood. The apple is part legend, for proof i point to colonial times in the unfortunate adulteress apple branded with the scarlet a or whipped or murdered and the ones who in tobacco fields committed to womens work while the man built the colonies. The revolutionary war torn scores the women blossoming into applewood into legends. Some of whom plodded along side their independence minded husband like Martha Washington who shivered beside the future first president during that frigid winter in valley forge. Like less known others who for the whole of the worse cabg food or cooked or stone or news the wounded back to health. There was those who disguised themselves as men to join in combats and those who manage homes and children while the men were off living as little more than a husbands chattel property. They couldnt draft a will or own real estate or vote or could even sign a contract. Decades later abapples to high tea in the parlors wearing high net full sleep drugs the black market cotton they also boasted their legend by keeping plantations running while the men were off losing the civil war. The legend of apples reached its zenith following that civil war in the postreconstruction era some claim named for Charles Lynch during those care tested decades that advance among other alibis the purported protection of an apples purity from a whistle away were glance, is reason enough to turn a black man into an illinois courts. Arrows later the coveted purity catalyze dad in his northern lips to fit straight the rules, aband in many cases, my mom and her guilt into all forgiving flagellants. Much but never enough has been said about the extreme violence white men have been willing to perpetrate in the name of chivalric fraternal protection of the woman theyve invested or burdened with the expectation of priceless. Whom they waited with the lifetime roles as the incubators and progenitors of the white race. Let me call it. White men were never protecting the purity of white women for credit no mortal women satisfy his needs know how. The way i see it, the apple hasnt essential shipment enough of them for trade the white man the master race as its known would cease. Indeed the white man has committed malevolence after malevolence to secure his hegemony over the apple perforce his most prized possession she being vital to his dominion over whomever and whatever he envisaged. Im going to stop there because im just as excited to hear them read and speak as everyone else in this audience. [applause] as you can see, we are on our own appear. [laughter] which is i think the best thing that could possibly happen. Im going to read from the beginning of the yellow house, a section called maps. From high up 15,000 feet above where the aerial photographs are taken 4121 wilson avenue the address i know best is a minuscule point, a scabbed of green. In satellite images shot from higher still my former street dissolves into the toe of louisianas book. From this Vantage Point our address now might size would appear to sit in the gulf of mexico distance lends perspective but it can also shade, misinterpret, from these great heights looking down my brother carl would not be seen. Carl, who is also my brother a since his days and nights away at 4121 wilson avenue at least five times a week after working his maintenance job at nasa or when hes not fishing or near to the water where he loves to be 4015 days past the water beyond all news cycles known to man still sits a skinny man in shorts, white socks pulled up to his kneecaps one goal picture frame around his front tooth. Sometimes you can find carl alone on our lot poised on an ice chest searching the view as if for a sign as if for a wonder or else seated at a peacock colored dining table with intricately carved legs holding court. The tableware carl sometimes sits is on the spot where our living living room used to be. Instead of lord there is green grass trying to grow. See, gesturing with the long he feels like it. See his legs crossed at the ankle a long legged man knotted up. I could see him there now in my minds eye silence and hoping a beer, babysitting ruins. But that is not his language or sentiment. He would never betray the yellow house like that. Carl often finds company on wilson avenue where he keeps watch, friends will arise and pop their trunks revealing coolers containing spirits on ice. Help yourself baby, they will say. If someone has to pee they do what used to be our den or the bright blue porta potty sitting in the back of the yard where the shed once was. Now this plastic vertical bathroom is the only structure on the lot. Written on its front in white block letters on black backgrounds city of new orleans. I was stacked 12 or 13 history telling books about new orleans, beautiful crescent new orleans yesterday and today, new orleans as it was, new orleans the place and the people fabulous new orleans. New orleans a guide to americas most interesting city so on and so forth, i have thumbed through each of these past voluminous sections of the French Quarter the Garden District and st. Charles avenue in search of the area of the city where i grew up new orleans east. Mentions are rare and stair afterthoughts. There is no guided tours to this part of the city except for the disaster bus tours that became an industry after katrina carting visitors around pointing out the great destruction of neighborhoods that were never known or set foot in before the water except by their residents. Imagine then that the streets are dead quiet and you live on those dead quiet streets and there is nothing left of anything he wants owned. Those rare survivors still present on the scene working in those skeletal byways are addressed in blue disposable jumpsuits and wearing facemasks to avoid being burned by the black mold everywhere in their homes climbing up the walls forming slippery abstract figures underfoot. While this is going on and youre wondering whether you will find remains of anything you ever loved, tourist or passing are passing by and it airconditioned bus to snaping images of your personal destruction. There is something affirming i can see in the acknowledgment by the tourists of the horrendous destructive act but it still might feel like invasion and i do not believe the tour buses ever made it to the street where i grew up. On a detailed city map once given to me by avis rental car, the French Quarter has been shaded in light turquoise magnified in a box at the bottom of the page new orleans eased his cut off, a point beyond. A blank space on someones mental map. This is perhaps a practical matter, new orleans east is 50 times the size of the French Quarter. 70 of the citys landmass properly mapped it might swallow the page whole. What the avis map does not tell you is that to get the seven miles from the French Quarter to the yellow house in which i grew up he would take interstate 10 heading east when this portion of the interstate opened in 19 6800s of great oaks along claiborne avenue the black shopping district for my mother and grandmother had been chopped down, roots evicted from the ground. 155 houses were demolished to make way. Driving the interstate you will know that you are on track when you see signs saying view caray become a viable exit but do not get off. Stay on. After another four miles you arrive at the bridge we called the highrise for the dramatic arc it makes over the Industrial Canal that connects the Mississippi River to lake a but exiles eastern new orleans from the rest of the city. Being at the top of the highrise feels like resting on the verge of discovery. But the dissent is cool and steep. Whats traversed by native american tribes but now carry cars all the way to florida or texas chef mentor bifurcate the short industry almost ended wilson avenue where i grew up from the longer residential and of mostly birdhouses in my former Elementary School originally named Jefferson Davis after the confederate president before becoming ernest morreale after the first black mayor of new orleans. It is nameless now. A field of green grass bounded by a chainlink sense. Even though i write this im troubled by what it meant for us, me and my 11 siblings to have to cross chef mentor highway which was then and is now a sea of prostitution with cars pulling over sometimes partway onto the sidewalks, creeping alongside you even if you were only a child and an area these were mostly men in cars making deals. Cars could drag you down chef mentor without realizing it as one drag my sister karen when she was eight years old drivers and speeding cars selfdestructed on the highway elvin my childhood friend would die in this way. Someone could grab and abduct you while you stood there on chef mentor neutral ground as we call medians or are we see you standing there when you did not want to be seen as i would not, many years into young womanhood when i avoided showing people the place where i lived when i think of chef mentor highway end up being cut off from the other side of the street from the city center plane cut off i think of all this. By bringing you to hear to the yellow house i have gone against my learnings. You know this house not all that comfortable for other people, my mother was always saying. Before it was the yellow house, the only house i knew, it was a greenhouse, the house my 11 siblings knew. The yellow house was witness to our lives when it fell down, something in me burst. The mother is always saying begin as you want to add that my beginning proceeds me. Absences allow us one power over them. They do not speak a word. We say of them whatever we want. Still they hover pointing fingers at her back. No place to go now but into deep ground. Thank you. [applause] i prefer to let her keep reading the rest of the book. Im reading from the introduction to how to be antiracist this part is set when im a college abi should say high school senior. Giving a speech at an mlk oratorical contacts. I remember the mlk competition so fondly. But when i recall the racist speech i gave, i flush with shane. What would be doctor kings message for the millennial . Lets visualize an angry 71yearold doctor king and i began my remix of kings i have a dream speech. It was joyous, i started, or emancipation from enslavement but now 135 years later the negro is still not free. I was already thundering. My tone angry, more malcolm then martin. Our use minds are in captivity i did not say our youth mines are in captivity in captivity erases ideas as i would say no. They think its okay to be those who are most feared in our society. As if it was their fault they were so feared. They think its okay not to think, i charged. Raising the classic racist idea that black youths dont value education as much as their nonblack counterparts. No one seemed to care that this welltraveled figurehead floated on anecdotes but had never been grounded in proof. Still the crowd encouraged me with their applause. I kept shooting out unproven and disproven racist ideas about all the things wrong with black youth ironically on the day when all things right about black youth were on display. I started pacing wildly back and forth on the runway for the pulpit gaining momentum. They think its okay to climb the high tree of pregnancy. They think its okay to confine their dreams to sports and music, applause, had i forgotten that i am a not black youth was the one who would confined his dream to sports and i was calling black youth they stop who on earth did i think i was . Apparently my placement on that illustrious stage had lifted me out of the realm of the ordinary and thus inferior black youngster and into the realm of the rare and extraordinary. In my applause flights of oratory i did not realize that to Say Something about a racial group is to Say Something is inferior about a racial group. I did not realize to Say Something is inferior about a racial group is to say a racist idea. I thought i was serving my people when in fact i was serving up racist ideas about my people to my people. The black judge seemed to be eating it up and clapping me on my back for more. I kept giving more. Their minds are being held captive and our adults minds are right there beside them. I said, motioning to the floor. Because they somehow think that the cultural revolution that began on the day of my dreams burst is over. How can it be over when many times we are unsuccessful because we lack intestinal fortitude, applause. How can it be over when our kids leave their houses not knowing how to make themselves only knowing how to not make themselves . Applause. How can it be over if all of this is happening in our community, i asked. Lowering my voice. I say to you my friends. Even though this cultural revolution that even though this cultural revolution may never be over, i still have a dream. I still have a nightmare. That the memory of this speech, whenever i muster the courage to recall it anew, it is hard for me to believe i finished high school in the year 2000 touting so many racist ideas erases culture had handed me the ammunition to shoot black people, to shoot myself, and i took it and used it, internalized racism is the real black on black crime. How is a dupe, a chomp, who saw the ongoing struggles of black people on mlk day 2000 and decided that black people themselves were to blame. This is the consistent function of racist ideas and of any kind of bigotry more broadly to manipulate us into seeing people as the problem instead of the policies that ensnare them. Language by the 45th president of the United States offers a clear example of a whole this racist language and thinking works. Long before he became president , donald trump like to say laziness is a trait in blacks when he decided to run for president in his plan for making America Great again, defaming latina immigrants as criminals. He promised a total and complete shutdown of muslims entering the United States. Once he became president he routinely called his black critics stupid. He claimed immigrants from haiti all have aids while praising White Supremacists as very fine people. In the summer of 2017. Through it all, whenever someone pointed out the obvious, trump responded with variations of a familiar refrain, no, no, im not a racist. Im the least racist person you ever interviewed that you ever met, that you ever encountered. And i would probably add now, and the least racist person anywhere in the world as he said this summer. Trumps behavior may be exceptional but his denials are normal. When racist ideas resound, denials that those ideals are racist typically follow. When racist policies resound, denials that those policies are racist also follow. Denial is the heartbeat of racism. Beating across ideologies, racist in nations. Its beating within us. Many of us who strongly call out trumps racist ideas will strongly deny our own. How often do we become defensive when someone calls something weve done or said racist. How many of us would agree with this statement racist isnt a descriptive word its a pejorative word. Its the equivalent of someone saying i dont like you. These are actually the words of white supremacist Richard Spencer who lack trump identifies as not racist. How many of us who despise the trumps and White Supremacists of the world, share their definition of not racist. Whats the problem with being not racist . Its a claim that signifies neutrality. I am not racist, neither am i aggressively against racism. There is no neutrality in the racism struggle the opposite of racist is not racist is antiracist. Whats the difference . One either endorses the idea of racial hierarchy of the racist or racial equality as an antiracist. One either believes problems are rooted in groups of people as a racist or locates the roots of problems in power and policies as an antiracist. One either allows racial inequities to persevere as a racist or confronts racial inequities as an antiracist. There is no in between safe space of not racist the claim of not racist neutrality is a mask for racism. This may seem harsh but its important at the outset that we apply one of the Core Principles of antiracism which is to return the word racist itself back to its proper usage. Racist is not as Richard Spencer argues, a pejorative. Some of the worst word in the english language, not the equivalent of a slur, its descriptive and the only way to undo racism is to consistently identify and describe it and then dismantle it. The attempt to turn this usefully descriptive term into an almost unusable slur is of course designed to do the opposite. To freeze us into inaction. The good news, youll want to talk about good news . The good news is that racist and antiracist are not fixed identities. We can be a racist one minute and an antiracist the next. What we say about race what we do about race in each moment determines what . Not who we are. I used to be racist most of the time. I am changing. Im no longer identify with racist by claiming to be not racist. Im no longer speaking to the mask of racial neutrality, and no longer manipulated by racist ideas to see racial groups as the problem. I no longer believed black person cant be racist. I no longer no longer policing my every action around an imagined white or black judge trying to convince right a white people against my equal humanity. Trying to convince black people that im representing the race well. I no longer care about how the actions of other black individuals reflect on me since none of us are race representatives. Nor is any individual responsible for someone elses racist ideas. And i have come to see that the movement from racist to antiracist is always ongoing. It requires understanding and snubbing racism based on biology ethnicity, body, culture behavior color space in class. And beyond that it means standing ready to fight at racisms intersection with other big trees. This book is ultimately about the basic struggle we are all in. The struggle to be fully human and to see that others are fully human. I share my own journey of being raised in the dueling racial consciousness of the reagan era black middle class and right turning onto the 10 lane highway of antiblack racism a high rate mysteriously free of police and free gas and veering off onto the twolane highway of antiwhite racism where gas is rare and police are everywhere before finding and turning down the unlit dirt road of antiracism. After taking this grueling journey to the dirt road of antiracism, humanity can come up on the clearing of a potential future and antiracist world you know its in perfect beauty. It can become real if we focused on power instead of people. If we focus on changing policy instead of groups of people. Its possible if we can overcome our cynicism about the permanence of racism. We know how to be racist. We know how to pretend to be not racist. Now lets know how to be antiracist. [applause] i have some questions. [laughter] we got two minutes. Heres one question. I like at the end of the prologue how you have movement in it. You are moving, physically moving at all see you start with like a panorama going from top to bottom and i wonder if there was some symbolism in movement connected to racism and maybe how it and more fastidious. Im throwing that out. That is so good. Thats a great question. Is this on . When i was trying to do was, you do this beautifully in your work, think about economy and the power of what language and what kind of structure could do for the work itself. In thinking about movement in a vigorous way in this work. In thinking literally about physical movement through time and looking about the past and the present. In thinking about the complexity of leaving a place you feel tethered to and coming back to it over and over, the aggression of that. Im thinking about migrations, forced displacements, and im thinking also about how little we learn when we helicopter ourselves over a group of people and i really wanted to make a point about how much is missed when you are that high up but also recognizing that that distance is perspective too and told us many things but to list my brother carl who was evidently lovable is a big thing to us and that somehow in the course of the narrative what that allows me to do is just write about people. They dont have to stand in for a kind of idea of who black people are in the world. They can move as characters. All those things. Im trying to think about this in reference to my book because what i think of movement if there is a particular word that epitomizes africanamerican history it might be movement. Whether we are talking about social movement against slavery or jim crow or mass incarceration or the movement out of the clutches of plantations or jim crow. My head was there but to answer your question, for me the book is largely chronicles my conceptual movement. I thought of i wanted to showcase and chronicle that to sort of provide a guide for people. Early on we were trying to figure out how we were going to write this. I easily could have given more of a topdown lecture, this is what you need to do in america to be antiracist. But we decided to be much more compelling if i shared my own personal journey. Succumb to the ideas that i hold today because as i sort of narrated another time in my life i was on the other end of the spectrum. This happens in survival mass. Because you are charting a history but then within that history there are all these wonderful what i call tangential digressions could you talk about that . I was prepared to ask another question. I think movement to me symbolizes could symbolize a kind of growth in a different kind of perspective and i was really interested in the way that things that seem like in spaces to me actually when i applied a different perspective to them like how much it changed and even think you took over a decade to write abit took me seven years to write this book. So how much you even change from first sentence to last edit in a book is hopefully a kind of growth. I got another one for yall. Then we are going to keep asking him questions. [laughter] antiracist is a term and i think its a very fitting term. Imagine how the place where you live had a former name and now it is a unit named. I was thinking about that the greek name is destiny. And how this is almost like a reclamation giving place a name and then also you giving this terminology to something that existed but that was it. Now its like you claim the power over it. I wondered if you thought about that. . Naming is may be for me the most powerful force in the world. Which is why i always try to call names, always. Even in my own life. To call the names of places as they used to be or as i have connected to them really is a taking back because the other thing that i found in the course of doing research is that for instance my mother would call a place where it was called in 1942 and it never changed for her. It sort of triggered for her a sensual feeling the kind of relationship so that she wasnt always morning a loss of something because she was still tethered name wise and then also the idea of which also exists in your book in an interesting way the idea of namecalling that new orleans east is a place that is subject to namecalling. People will call it the land of nowhere. There are human beings living in the land of nowhere. So that is a kind of namecalling which i want to turn around and say but this is how i call it and how i see it. I think for me as it relates to the name antiracist but even more so the name racist we have in this country a scenario in which Everyone Wants to name someone else racist. Then they define racist which then gives them the power to name everyone else is a racist in a way that fundamentally and always exonerates them. [laughter] by definition a racist is anyone who is not me. The american definition of a racist. Im saying this because americans swear commonly that they are not racist. You asked them, so you are sure youre not racist . Im sure. That means you must know what a racist is. Americans commonly cant define that term. So what that means to me is they are naming themselves in a way that that name has no meaning. When something doesnt have meaning, you can place it and attach it anywhere and no one is going to have a problem with it. For me one of the things im trying to do with my work is give meaning back to the term racist. And give meaning to the term antiracist so that we can name people and name ideas and name policies what they truly are. That question about naming want to exalt the names of places and people in my work. I think about Toni Morrison saying like a home is your memory of a place and of those people in the place and in my work what im really trying to do is make you all know that northeast portland exists in the world and by that i mean that these people that grew up with me generation before me also exist in the world and to do that, there are places in my first book even in this book where there is a paragraph or page of just the names of people that ive encountered. I remember being at the club and seeing a guy, id mentioned every basketball player i thought could really play in my neighborhood over some generations and the guy was mad at me like cornered me in the club like why wasnt i in there so i think also people recognize the power and being named and feeling like someone. How much time . Maybe audience questions. You see what happens when the writers are in control. What time is it over . [applause] i think questions, right . Now its time for the audience questions. There we go. Please line up behind this gentleman if you have a question. This will be the last time writers are in charge. [laughter] name we need some direction yell. [laughter] the question has to do with reparations. Its been brought up this afternoon and there was an audible sigh most from all the white folks. I dont know what space representation abi dont know what space reparations taken on over should be on the table. My question is your respect individual views on the subject of reparations . [applause] i could elaborate. [laughter] one thing i will say is that i meet a lot of americans who claim that they are serious about equities, that theyre serious about racial equality, if you talk to them outside of conversations about race, they will talk about how critically important it is for someone in this society in order to thrive and have wealth and economic resources. And when you put those two things together and then you reflect on the fact that currently white people are ten times the median wealth as black people. The racial wealth gap is growing, forecasters estimate by 2053, between now and then white wealth median wealth is expected to grow and black median wealth is expected to redline at 0. The question that i have for those people who claim that they are committed to Racial Equity and justice and to also say theyre opposed to reparations, how do you eliminate or even begin to reduce the staggering racial wealth gap without reparations, i continuously ask people that question and they continuously give answers of a particular program that would not even begin to eliminate that gap which says to me that theyre not serious about Racial Equity. There like so Many Americans its popular and cool and they dont want to be racist but theyre not serious of supporting policy proposals that are actually going to create equity in this country. They both said it but i want to say this is also a moment were talking about what were called and i feel around the issue of reparation is a moment where people mean Something Else when they talk about reparation. All of these fears and emotional things come to stand in for very real and practical issues. Theres a wonderful book called race craft by karen fields which you should all read. Its about the ways in which like the kind of witchcraft where people talk about race, they leave their logical senses and start to think sadly essentially. And i think this is quite frankly a very practical matter and if we thought about it that way, the way we just heard it presented it might change the conversation. I now realize this might be a word that is now one of those words which is integrated in schools, how important as we continue to work on her own racism is it to find neighborhoods for our children to grow up in that are really integrated . Also very quickly that im more concerned about integrating resources then i am integrating hobbies. And if we integrate resources then the bodies will come. And to me i should also add, this is something that the older black folk live during the era of segregation, this is one of the things that they say quietly, there are things that are lost during that era and one thing the most speak about his black teachers and a ministry displayed and most recently a study came out that a series is a study that found that black students tend to do better with black teachers. Particularly lowincome lack students. Theyre more likely to finish high school and go to college and more likely to get better grades with black students. And then i realize in the late 1950s when there were the efforts to desegregate the schools, none other than marth n luther king jr. Question that precisely because, so youre talking about white teachers who view black children as intellectually inferior than being responsible for the intellect, is that what youre imagining and currently we have a system in which 80 of the teachers are white and the mortgagemajority are true studef color. A child cannot be taught by anyone who despises him. I think funding, were saying the thing thing, we dont necessarily need to talk so much about integrating the schools are funded equally and if there is a distribution of resources. I felt like it said all students were actually doing better by teachers of color so there you go. [applause] i am not sure how to phrase the question but i read the book from the beginning and i thought it was a really useful book, economics and greed lead to behaviors which were racist and then i read the review of your second book and i have not read the book yet. My daughterinlaw has it for me. But i said it was contradictory in some way your first book, not having read the second book, i dont know in what way. With did you review . It may have been a poster review, i read the post from the d. C. Area. I also read the article in the post, the long article on you. But im wondering you know what theyre talking about and can we understand that . How can i say this, the reviewer who reviewed how to be an antiracist for the Washington Post is notorious historically for basically going after black writers who are identifying the problem as racist policies and power and instead he wants us to consider the problem is black people. So obviously my book was rejecting his philosophy of the problem and so obviously he was going to review it in that way. So i think people were surprised that he was selected to review it, with his history. And i think thats the irony that you matched reviewers with books and sometimes it doesnt and sometimes it does match. Thatll happen. I read that review in the post and in the times and those were great reviews. So it was somebody else who reviewed. Oh someone yells. You dont remember. Thank you so much i think this opinion in miami we have a bit of a narrative that perhaps were not deep south and more diverse and multicultural and to deny our history of deep racism like the kkk having parades down the street to miami. And many things, when i hear about new orleans east, those are everywhere and within spitting distance of us is our own over town. Overtown has an incredible history and it has the highway they designated it and went through it and the aftermath. In these things in everyday county, i feel are not celebrated enough and its awkward. In the prejudicial language against these neighborhoods and the overlooking, not just that but the other predominantly black neighborhood, i dont know if i really have a question per se. Im so sorry. Thank you. It is great that you mentioned that and its something im very perceptive to and when i come to a place i try to hook up with the people who know the place like my great friend in the front row and learn about these neighborhoods that arent in the official narrative. And so what is interesting to me and maybe what ill be obsessively writing about my whole life are the ways that narratives cemented culturally and in a place in this is the thing that happens all over the world but i think its particularly american in a singular way, we have decided what the story is and then we gain a collective amnesia so the story never shifts or changes and then we have a very hard time reacting to any new story which is why im particularly interested in coal talk graffiti the things underneath the story, if you never on a map and no one can find you, how do you become part of the story. Its all the visuals that you ever see of a place are about one particular theme or idea, the reductionist way of thinking about a place and we never build on the story and even with my own book, there are people i know who have taken trips to new orleans were trying on to engage with new orleans. So why is that is the question. I love that you brought that up because i think in every single city we should be thinking about this. This is connected to urban planning and connected to city planning and this is quite simply about what the view is from your window and how valuable that view is and who is deemed important. If i say briefly [applause] you started out talking about people in miami as not part of the deep south, one of the more fascinating things malcolm x once said, he said stop talking about the south, if youre south of the Canadian Border yourself. [laughter] [applause] i guess my question would be the really think it is possible to be antiracist without being antidiscrimination of the whole, i guess because there are different types of people and i feel that this being antidiscrimination really helps antiracist cause. You are absolutely correct, you can truly not be antiracist unless youre challenging reading much every form of bigotry. Because every human being is not just a racial identity but the chances the racial identities have an ethnic identity, class identity, Sexual Orientation and chances are the racial identity is intersecting with other forms of bigotry to demean and denigrate them and explain their position on the lower end of a particular racial disparity. In order to be antiracist, you have to be feminist, you have to be striving to challenge capitalism, you have to be challenging homophobia, annable is on and so on and so forth. [applause] hi thank you so much. All three of your written about times in your youth in your own past and im wondering how your effective almost times in your life may have evolved in the course of writing your books . I think now i see some of the mechanisms which allow that i felt like if i have not had some information and perspective when i was younger i couldve made different decisions but theres so many things that went into why i limit to a certain place and what schooling i had in housing had et cetera. The short answer is, i hope that all of us have a different perspective that we had when we were teenagers or youth. Hello and thank you so much, i really appreciate hearing from you, my question is regarding the idea of being a racist is a person of color, im having difficulty understanding this because the way that i have been able to learn racism and has been through an understanding that racism is a systemic issue that has been made through power and prejudiced and historically people of color have not really helped, im struggling to understand how people of color can be racist, i do realize people of color can perpetuate systems of racism in any other isms but im grappling with the idea of being a person of color and labeling oneself a racist were saying that one has been racist. Thank you for asking, one of the things i try to do in the chapter that really interrogated this idea was to interrogate notions of power. But even before that, i think its critical for us to recognize the difference when we Say Something like collectively black people are, lets say not being racist or i would argue being antiracist. And when you say every single individual black person is apparently antiracist at all times, because i would argue theres no such thing as a not racist. So every Single Person of color at all times is either being racist or antiracist. So my book looks at the concept of individual, not necessarily collectively and then when i look at the issue of power in the individual level, theres three forms of power. The ultimate form of power is policymaking power, those who literally have the ability whether there are Corporate Executive or politician to shape policies that lead to equity or in equity and then the second level is policy managing power, you have people who carry out the policy that other people have made and its critical for us to recognize that you have individuals who recognize policies are leading to injustice and inequities and figuring out ways to circumvent those policies, even though they have been charged with carrying them out and then have other people who are like this is how i will get promoted by essentially executing these racist policies to the best of my ability. Okay. I will do that. And we have to recognize the distinction between those two individuals and recognize they have the power to do both. And finally, every single individual has the power to resist. We have to think about why is it that certain people of color resist racism and other people of color spend their time resisting people of color. And for me, what i have found is people of color who think that people of color are the problem and spend their lives going after other people of color its because they hold the same antiblack, racist ideas about people of color as white people do. They largely consume them but the effective it is for them to spend their time not resisting racism. And finally, i think its critical for us, i think when we say people of color have no power, we have to recognize what we are saying. Where essentially same people of color are slaves. And im distinguishing between slaves and enslaved people. Because people who are enslaved were resisting their enslavement, youre talking about somebody was in slavery who is not resisting and people of color are not slaves and we say white people are allpowerful, were rendering white people. And last i checked white people were not gods. In one of the things that happen through this notion that people of color do not have power it takes away our agency. It takes away our Historic Agency that weve used to resist white racism. And for me, thinking about it as the individual level, i want to challenge that and finally you did not mention this in people color do not benefit. But individually people of color do benefit and are telling is benefiting right now because these victims were black girls and black women. And for us to not recognize how you have black Police Officers who benefit from the fact that they shot and killed was black and latino as opposed to a white woman in minnesota. These are things we have to recognize and my work then ill shut up. [laughter] one of the things i want us to do is shift from perpetrator and victim. When we have a victim perspective, we are fundamentally focused, it does not matter who is doing this to a series of black girls, they have targeted these black girls and that is a racist. We are more focused on outcome as opposed to intense. The intent language has allowed so many racist in the last years to continuously pray on people of color and say that was not my intent. But if were focused on outcome it completely changes the dialogue. [applause] thank you so much. Thank you that was excellent. Wonderful session. At this time i like to have another around of applause. [applause] these authors will be signing books directly outside of the session, please make your transition so we can bring in the next heres a look at tonights prime time lineup. First up, youll hear former Ohio Governor and republican president ial candidate john kasichs thoughts on how to bring about political change in local communities. Theologian Karen Armstrong argues that religious texts have been misused by fundamentalists through narrow and literal readings. A group of journalists discuss the anonymouslyauthored book a warning, w

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