Mitchell jackson. [applause] even came to his new times bestselling author and the founding director of the Antiracist Research and policy center at american university. A professor of history and International Relations and a frequent public speaker, hes a columnist at the atlantic. He is author of stand from the beginning which won the National Book award for nonfiction. And the black Campus Movement which one the wb doughboy book prizethat is the author of how to be in how to be an antiracist. In this book its combination of ethics, history, law and sciee bring it all together with an engaging personal narrative of his own awakening to antiracism. Sarah broom 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 was awarded a a foundation created nonfiction grant in 2016. 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 they define racist which gives them the power to name everyone else as a racist in a way that exonerates them. So my definition of racist is anyone whos not me. The american definition of a racist. Im saying this because americans swear commonly they are not racist and then you ask them, so you are sure you are not racist . Yes, i am sure. That means you must know what a racist is. Americans cap define the terms so what that means to me is they are naming themselves in a way that name has no meaning. When something doesnt have s meaning, you can attach it anywhere and no one will have a problem with the. For me, im trying to give meaning back to thehe term. So we can name people and policies what they truly are. Theab question about naming. I want to exalt the names of people and places. The home is your memory of a place it in my work, trying to make you all know that it exists in the world and i thought, these people who grew up with e for generations before me also exist. There are places in my first book in this book were theres a paragraph or page of just the names of people i have encountered. I remember being at the club and i saw a guy, i mentioned every basketball player fokker plate and the guy was mad at me, me and said why wasnt i in the . I think also people recognize the power in being named in feeling like someone. See what happens in the what time is isar over . [applause] now its time for the audience questions. Please line up behind this judgment. This is the last time the writers will be charged. We need some direction joe. The question has to do with preparations. It is brought up this afternoon if there was a audible sigh and i dont know what space reparations takes. I dont know how much reparations should be on the table so i guess the question is, your respecting individuals views on these subjectsti. If you stole some money from somebody, he should pay them back. [applause] i could elaborate. One thing i will say is that i meet a lot of americans who claim they are serious about equity, 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, pop wealth and economic resources. S. To me, when you put those two things together and then reflect on the fact that white people are ten times as wealthy as black people and its growing and by 2053 between now and then, meeting 12 is expected to grow in black medium wealth is expected to redline at 0, a question i have for those people who claim they are committed to Racial Equity and justice who also say they are opposed to reparations. How do you eliminate or even begin to reduce staggering racial wealth cap without reparations . I continue it ask people the question in the continuously give q answers of a particular nrogram that wouldnt even begin to eliminate that cap. Assist me that they are not serious. About Racial Equity. There just like so many americans, popular, they dont want to be racist but they are not serious about actuallys supporting policy proposal that would help. This is also a moment, we are talking about this link to calls. I feel around the issue of reparations is a moment where people mean Something Else when they talk about reparations. All of these fears and emotional things come to stand in for a very real and practical issue so theres a wonderful book called race craft which you should all read because its about the ways in which, like a kind of witchcraft when people talk about race, they leave their start to bad and i think this is a very practical matter and if we thought about it that way the way we just heard it presented, that might change the conversation. C i realize this might be a word that is one of those word, which is integrated schools. How important, as we continue to work on our own racism, is it for the neighborhoods to grow our children that are really integrated . [laughter] ill say quickly, i am more concerned about integrating resources. Then i am integrating bodies. I think if we integrate resourcesan, the bodies welcome. To me, i should also add, this is something that the older black folk who lived during the era of segregation, this is one of the things they say quietly. There are things that were lost during the era. One of the things they most speak about his black teachers and administrators. Most recently, a study came out, a series actually came out that found that black students tend to do better with black teachers, t particularly low income black students. They are more likely to finish high school and go to college and get better grades. Then i can realize in the late 1950s, when there were these desegregating schools, none other than junior question that. Precisely because youre talking about white teachers who view black children as intellectually inferior than being responsible for their intellect. Is that what you are imagining . Currently we have Public School systems which are 80 teachers are white and majority students are of color. You cannot be taught by anyone who despises him. I think funding, we are essentially saying the same thing. We dont necessarily need to talk about integrating, schools are funded equally. As a distribution of resources. I think i read somewhere that all students were doing better when taught by teachers of color. So there you go. He [laughter] [applause] im not sure how to phrase the question but i read the book in the beginning. I thought it was a really useful book. Economics and leading to policies and behaviors which were racist. Then i read the review of your second book and i havent read the book cap. My daughterinlaw has it for me. It said it was contradictory in some ways. My having read the second book, i dont know in what way. A poster from you. I also read the article on you. Im wondering, do you know what they are talking about . Can you help me understand . How can i say this . The reviewer who reviews for the Washington Post is notorious historically for basically going after black writers identify the problem as racist policy and power. Instead, he wants us to consider the problems black people. So my book was obviously rejecting his philosophy about the problem. So obviously he was going to review it in that way. I think people were surprised he was selected to review it. With his history. I think that is the irony, you have reviewers of books and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesnt. I read that review in the post and the times and they were great reviews. So it was somebody else who reviews. Dont know. Okay. Thank you. I think his opinion in miami, we have a bit of a narrative, perhaps we are not deep south, perhaps we are diverse and multicultural. To deny our history of racism here, things like the kkk miami, many things, Miamidade County. When i hear about new orleans east, those are everywhere. So within sitting distance of us is our own town. Over town has an incredible history and has the highway that went through it. These things in Miamidade County i feel are not celebrated enough. Its off course. The prejudicial language against these neighborhoods and the over looking, not just the other predominantly neighborhood block. I dont know if i really have a question. Se. [laughter] sorry. Thank you. Its great you mentioned that. Its something im very perceptive too. When i come to a place, i try to hook up with the people like my great friend in the front row and learn about all of these neighborhoods that arent in the socalled official narrative. So whats interesting, to meet in the navy when ill be writing about my whole life are the ways that narratives cemented culturally and in a place. This is i think that happened all over the world but i think its particularly americans in a singular way. We have sort of decided what the story is and then we start of gain a collective amnesia so the story never shifts or changes. Then we have a very hard time reacting to any new historic which is why im interested in the role. Things underneath the story. If you are never on a map and no one can literally find you, how do you become part of the story . If all the visuals you ever see a place are about one particular theme or idea, this protectionist way of thinking about a place, we never ever felt on the story. Even with my own book, there are people i know who have taken trips toen nordlund were still t trying to engage with the idea. So why is that . 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 city planning. This is about what the view is from your window, how valuable that view is and who is deemed important. If i could say briefly [applause] you started out talking about people in miami, its not part of the deep south. One of the more fascinating things malcolm x once said is, he said stop talking about the south. South of the Canadian Border is the south. [laughter] s. My question would be, do you really think its possible to be antiracist without being antidiscrimination as a whole . Are different types of people and i feel being antidiscrimination really helps to bolster antiracist cause. Cant truly be antiracist unless you are challenging pretty much every form of bigotry. Every humanuc being is not justa racial identity but identities have an ethnic identity, class and sexual orientation. Chances are that racial identity is intersecting with other forms of bigotry, it explains their position on the floor and of a particular disparity. In order to a be antiracist, you have to be a feminist. You have to be challenging homophobia. You have tooo challenge enable s him and so on and so forth. [applause] s. Thank you so much. All three of you have written about times in your youth and your own past. Im wondering how your perspective on those times in your life may have evolved in te course of writing a book. I was ignorant. I think now i see some of the mechanisms which allow that to be a part of me. I dont feel like a dummy so i feel like if i hadnt had some information when i was younger, i couldve made decisions but there are so many things that ntnt into why i was in a certain place, who i was able to see, what kind ofd housing i had, et. The short answer is, i hope all of us have a different perspective than we had when we were teenagers. Hello. First of all, thank you so much. I really appreciate hearing from you. My question is regarding this idea of being racist is a person of color. Im having difficulty time understanding this because the way i have been able to learn racism has been through an understanding thatan racism is n issue that has been made through power and prejudice. Historically, people of color havent really held power in america. Y im trying to understand how people collect can be racist. I do realize people of color can potentially have racism. Any other isms but grappling with the idea of being a person of color and labeling oneself a racist or saying that one has been racist. Thank you for asking that. One of the things io tried to do in the chapter that have this idea of notions of power but even before thought, i think it is vertical for us to recognize the difference when we Say Something like collectively, black people are not being racist or i would argue being antiracist. When we say every single individual black person is apparently antiracist at all times, because i would argue theres noou such thing as a not racist. Every Single Person of color at all times is either racist or ucantiracist. What my book looks at is the concept of the individual. Not necessarily collective. L, then when i look at the additional power at an individual level, there are three forms of power. The ultimate form of power is policy making power. For those who literally have the ability, whether they are Corporate Executive or politician, shape policy that leads to equity or in equity. People carry out a policy that other people need. Its critical for us to recognize that you help individuals recognize policies are leading to injustice and inequities in figuring out ways to circumvent those policies eveninin though theyve been chd with carrying them out. Then you have othern people who are like this is how im goingow to get promoted by essentially executingse these racist policis to my best ability. Okay, i will do that. We have to recognize the distinction between those two individuals and also recognize they have the power to do both. Then finally, every single individual has the power to resist. T why is it that certain people of color resist racism and other people of color spend their time resisting people of color . For me, when i found this people of color that people of color other problem and spend their lives going after other people of color, its because they hold the antiblack racist ideas about people of color. They largely consumed them butut the effect of it is been with them to spend their time not resisting racism. 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. We are essentially saying people of color are slaves. Lypl slaves and enslaved people. People who are enslaved were resisting. Youre talking about somebody whos in slavery not resisting. People of color are not slaves and when we say white people are allpowerful, we are wondering white people drive. Last i checked, white people are not god. Theres this notion that people of color dont have power, it takes away our agency, our Historical Agency we used to resist white racism. For me, thinking about an individual, i would have to towns. You didnt mention this but people also say that people of color dont benefit from racism. Collectively, people of color do not benefit from racism but individually, people of color still benefit. His victims were black girls and black women. For us to not recognize how you have black Police Officers who benefit from the fact that the person they shot and killed was black as opposed to a white person in minnesota, these are things we have to recognize. My work, thenn i will shut up [laughter] one of the things i want us to do is shift from perpetrator to victim. So when we have a victim perspective, we are fundamentally focused on it doesnt matter whos doing this to the series of black girls, they targeted these black girls. We spoke from victims than we are more focused on outcome as opposed to intent. The intent language has allowed so many racist to continuously pray on people of color and say it wasnt my intent. But if we are focused on outcome and it changes the dialogue. [applause] thank you. That was excellent. Wonderful session. [laughter] another round of applause. [applause] he will be signing books outside. Please make this transition so we can welcome in the next group. Recently at George Washington university in washington d. C. , nikki haley recalled her time as a United Nations in the trump administration. Heres a portion of the program. They are still asking the question, why did nikki say they were sanctioned . Whats happening . So i called multiple people in the administration, chief of staff, secretary of state, national security. I said look, we caught a problem. Theres nothing wrong with the president changing his mind, just go out there and tell the truth. You need to fix this and they would say okay, okay. I was monday. Tuesday morning happened. I said okay, this is the deal. Either you fix it by 5 00 today or i will. Trust me, it will go a lot better if you all fix it. Nothing happened. And i inc. It was like 4 45 p. M. Or so and my friend goes out in front of the press and the asked the question about the sanctions. I think he just got momentarily confused. So that was it. I happened to look at the television and they were writing to get on fox and i call my friend and i said, can you call me real quick . She called and said hey whats up . I said i need to put out a statement. She said okay, what is it . I said will you just say one sentence . With all due respect, i dont get confused. [applause] she said thats it . I said thats it. Ill text it to you so you have it. In writing. So she goes and she doesnt. Within ten minutes, larry called me. Im so sorry. You know i love you. I had my tell between my legs. Im so sorry. I said larry, at one point. Do you say i am confused . He said i know, i shouldnt have done it. Trust me, ill make it up to you. I said he will make it up to and you will tell them you are wrong and i wasnt. He said i cant do that. I said yes, you can and you well. He did. Then he immediately contacted a reporter but what was surprising to me is how it went like, it is a simple moment of me defending myself. How it went viral across the country on tshirts, mugs, everything. It goes to show so many people have been in a moment. I hope the lesson to take from a is, no one is going to protect your integrity but you. To watch the rest of this talk, visit our website booktv. Org. Search for nikki haley or the title of her book, with all due respect. Using the box at the top of the page. Next dump tvs afterwards, joe offices becoming an entrepreneur. Is interviewed by former wall street investor banker and author, william cohen. Afterwards is a weekly Interview Program with guesthouse interviewing top nonfiction authors about their latest work. All afterwards programs are also available as podcasts. Thank you for being with us here today. Its his heckuva book. It is well told. Why did you decide to write this
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