Transcripts For CSPAN2 Clifford Thompson What It Is 20240713

Includes nighthawks, doctor kings refrigerator, dreamer, facing a good thing and Middle Passage for which he won the National Book award in 25 years ago now. 1990. Wow. In 2002 he received the arthur letters award in literature from the American Academy of arts and letters. In the format tonight will beam remarks by Clifford Thompson and a conversation by doctor johnson and mr. Thompson and then we have time for your questions. Without further ado, help me welcome Clifford Thompson. [applause] thank you, thank you all for coming. And thanks to the library for hosting this, its great to appear with doctor johnson. I thought what i would do is read the first few pages of the introduction to my book what it is and then lay out the way the rest of the book is set up. Put on my old man specs so i can see. This is from the introduction. I am a black man, brooklynbased, 54 years old as i write this, for many years as i can remember there has been at the core of my being making me who i am or who i feel i am the belief that i must treat everyone as an individual that i must not base my judgments on anything as inconsequential as skin color. For most of my adult life i have chosen to see myself as an american because of the contribution the black people have made to this country and how inextricably the country is tied to my heritage and despite the white racist beliefs that this country is there is one that it is mine. But living according to these principles has somebody been taught. In 1920s moving to integrated circles in college and beyond i sometimes felt like the only black person i knew who was not reluctant because of distrust dislike or both to be in the predominantly white settings were made interests often took me. I cling stubbornly to my beliefs and in my mid20s i found what i considered to be what i picked up somewhat belatedly the books of james baldwin. Moving aside for the moment the music of baldwin sentences the grandness of his vision the wisdom and lyricism he brings to expressing the anger and ache of being black in america he was the first model i found one who brought everything he had to bear on opposing racism without being racist himself. In the underappreciated how long the train has been gone and his nonfiction no more eloquent than the fire next time of the abloves deeply and without regard to the pigmentation. While the assassinations of malcolm x and Martin Luther king jr. Along with other aspects of the backlash against the Civil Rights Movement left baldwin embittered and disillusioned they did not ultimately compromise his humanity or make them into a racist he remained for me a model of how to conduct ones self with regards to race. Yet i still felt confusion, there was one substance of difference between me and the white people in my circle, being white i discovered to make one exempt from the question of who one is. They were americans these white people and never seem to occur to them and certainly no one ever indicated to them they should think otherwise. Many black people of course are exempt from this question of who they are by virtue of living and working largely or wholly among other black. If a persons life and interest have taken them to places where he looks different than most others that person may begin to ask where the similarities between himself and the others and of the differences beyond the obvious when began. What the basis for these similarities is and what the basis for the difference is and to watch camp similarity or difference nationality falls. With regards to the very question of whether nationality constitutes a bond or barrier between oneself or others the basis of this question is an unspoken assumption that runs so deep that is reinforced so often and in so many ways that i passed three decades of life on earth before i questioned it. The assumption that being american means being white, at best, the place of blacks in all the seem to be the one described Comedian Chris Rock that said for us america is like the uncle who molested you and then paid for your college education. As much as i would like to say i began to question that assumption on my own, i had help, it was the work of the essay of Stanley Crouch which in turn led me to the work of his mentor and soon to be mine, albert murray, that open my eyes. Murrays books beginning with the only americans proposed an alternate view that america whether simply being white monster that feeds on people of color and only the most self hating of dark skinned folks would identify with is in fact largely black creation in terms of everything from culture to physical labor and that the blood sweat and investment of generations of blacks make america our home as much as it is anyone. According to this view, the struggles blacks have historically faced or provided the obstacles over which we demonstrated the ability to triumph. As murray wrote in the army americans the legendary exploits of white u. S. Backwoods abbecome relatively safe when one sets aside the breathtaking escapes of a fugitive slave beating himself north to faraway canada through swamp and town alike seeking freedom. Nobody was chasing daniel boone. Just say im an american then is not an act of capitulation but the first step toward claiming ones birthright recognizing the setting of ones ancestor triumphs and adventures its tense amount to saying i am home. The similar for this idea the art form that allows me to celebrate this notion of laying claim to home birthright and identity is jazz. Basis of jazz, black contribution to american and world culture is improvisation. A metaphor for the story of black americans who have historically had to make a way where none existed before. Every time a jazz musician insert the passage he celebrates history. The crusty vulnerability of bed websters tenor sax the spare melancholy of miles daviss trumpet the sheer might of the colon hawkins the a beautiful eccentricity of felonious monks piano the inventiveness of the Young Freddie hubbard as he played trumpet lines over and through the thundering drumbeat support blakey. For any jazz musician any black person anyone at all. So in my early 30s new father to biracial child abutting essay is to learn to earn his living aba secret after cultural knowledge i set out into the big bad world reading book after book while strap hanging on my way to and from work listening to the jazz records that were the record of my peoples contribution believing all the while in the likeness of calling myself an american as years and then two decades past. Along the way events may have shifted at the outside of my beliefs killings of brought blacks from Trayvon Martin sandra blatt and so many others name me to question whether i really wanted to call home a place where the police were seemingly paid to kill people who look like me. Yet no one had ever said i would have to fight to protect my place in this land i call home. With many others that took to the streets over those killings and believed i was doing so in service of my country perhaps some blackandwhite wondered how i could be so even killed and perhaps some white as well as black wanted me to be angry. I did not have time to be anyones conscience and there was a way for one who does other work for no pay and im not thinking of in turn so my belief at bottom held steady and then came the election of donald trump. All stop reading there and just say that the 2016 election to challenge the foundational beliefs that i just read to you about so the question for me became how to proceed in the face of this reality because especially after it came out that the majority of white voters supported trumpet even though he received the endorsement of the ku klux klan and ran a campaign that was founded on divisiveness and xenophobia that became the question that led to the writing of this book in search of the answers i decided what i needed to do was go beyond my Little New York bubble and talk to folks who thought differently from me. I talked to a small but highly varied group of people and conducted indepth interviews with people including people who voted for trump as well as a social worker and other people. The book has five chapters, the first two chapters trace my path from youth to middle age and trace the development of my thinking. Chapters 3 and four encompass the interviews and my responses to the interviews and the fifth chapter is kind of a reflection as a whole. Thats how i would describe the book. Now i think we talk, right . Okay. [silence] testing. Hes good. [laughter] [silence] testing. Okay. Its an honor for me to sit here and talk to this gentleman. We have corresponded over the years but weve never met facetoface until tonight. I have admired his work from afar, not just the essays and nonfiction but also the paintings too. And one of cliffs printing comic paintings proceed every one of the sections of this book. We have friends in common. The writer novelist mark service was one of your students and poet ethelbert miller in washington dc and arch activist has interviewed you twice he told me on his digital program. This is familiar because its one of the best writers of america and the subtitle of the book abthis man thinks. He thinks hard, he thinks critically. No clichc, no bull, theres no assumption in his thought. Somebody who wants to know the truth even if its painful. And in terms of some of your own assumptions and selfcongratulatory actions when you talk about your transgender students. And how you talk about, am i really as good as i think i am . Cliff just explained basically what its about. Here i grew up much the same way. Ive always seen myself as an individual and the only way i would approach anybody in this life is as an individual. I came over here and lyft and the guy said to me where you going. I said the library he said why. I said theres a guy Clifford Thompson have to talk to stop hes in abhes from brazil hes been in this country 20 years, he got really excited, theres a lot of stuff he wanted to talk to me about ab why he thought we had the divisiveness we do. This book is of the moment, its important, at this moment which i think is a critical moment in the history of this country. What happens right now today, tomorrow, next 2 to 3 years, i think will determine the situation of black america for the rest of the century. Thats my fear. So you and i both believe in individuals, we believe we are americans. I think our story in america is a story of heroism stop thats what i think. I think its about overcoming odds and put in the way of my ancestors, her broken the way that we not only overcame them but did what was necessary to live with other nonwhite people in this country during the Civil Rights Movement. We have a reason to be proud. But that Civil Rights Movement was half a century ago. So the question now seems to me is, can you hold onto your belief in the priority of individualism. Being happy to be an american. The i who drove me over here, from brazil, he said other people are coming to america they dont like me america. That question, can we continue to hold onto our beliefs and being individuals and evaluating people as individuals and embracing america is very much the question i set out to answer for myself. My answer is a qualified yes i guess i would say. It seems to me not just in america in 2019 but in life generally as you get older i think you find one of the challenges of life is to come almost like a game in which the object is to hold onto yourself. You can come to a point as i have come to anything many of us have come to that which you find yourself in what youve always believed to be challenged in the question then becomes, am i a fool for holding on to these beliefs in the face of this newly revealed reality or is now the crucial time the most crucial time to hold onto those beliefs . I felt it was important to hold onto your integrity. But also i wanted to see and get a clear idea as much as i could of what that reality is, what is my ultimate decision to be informed by that reality. Thats what led to the series of interviews i conducted. The interviews, there are several people that cliff talked to who voted for donald trump. Bob is wanda, i think jack is another. And then there is a black man, the last of the people you talk to. You and the book with this. He started an africanamerican gun range and he went to it for the first time i guess. Talk about, if you would, talk about why did the people who voted for trump like him . What did they see in him . What did they see in trump . I think, i talk a lot in the book about what i call rootedness. The idea that his very difficult to get to this life without a basis and belief set of beliefs and community or something thats larger than you. I think i would say that a lot of trumps base is made up of people who are not necessarily racist at least not necessarily identifying themselves as racist but people who are rooted in these certainty that america is abthey are resistant to anything that challenges that belief because that belief is so central to who they are. So that when somebody like truck comes along who seems to, who seems to stand for what they already believe, then they will embrace that. Part of being rooted in that belief in america ais not seen what a lot of whats happening. When trump talks about building a wall and i think it speaks to a particular rootedness that these people have. They are rooted in belief of the american dream. And everybody you ask you talk to you ask whats most important about this country . And also the same thing. They believe its a country of the tree and if you work hard, pull yourself up by your bootstraps and so forth, they will do well. There would be any obstacles to your success in america. A lot of very republican talking points before trump. They been there for a long time. They believe that if you didnt make it in america it was your own fault. You had to be the cause. And even ask yourself throughout the book is there something black people couldve done . Is there something we could have done to make our situation today better . When do you come to rest with that . In saying that i was trying to be as honest as i could about my own feelings in past years about the situation of white people in america and there is often kind of a abi know about racism in pretty much every area of American Life and yet i wondered if in spite of that there was something that we could be doing that we werent doing. And this feeling is not rooted in any data or anything like that it was more of a feeling based on i dont even know what. I think when it comes down to an individual to the individual level there are things that things that some individuals can do that theyre not doing but thats not the main problem. Thats not the main challenge facing us and thats the difference in my attitude now in my attitude in the past. Whats the root of the problem . Racism and in so many areas, institutionalized racism, there is redlining there is underfunded schools. There is what they call the school to prison pipeline lack of opportunity i could go on and on. I think thats what i would call it. He interviewed trump voters. You interviewed a woman who, whats your name . a social worker. Yes. What was her response to your questions . What did she see as being the necessary solution for the problems we face. Her big thing was fairness. She works with schoolchildren often and what she sees is the inequity of the way that black and brown people are treated as compared to white children. If something horrible happens in a predominantly white school what are they due . If theres a killing or some other traumatic event. They send in psychologists and social workers and try to work and make sure the students are okay. And then they send in cops. They have metal detectors. As a punishment. Other than trying to help. [inaudible] is there anything else that you point out as being necessary . I think her big thing was fairness. There is an apparatus in place and it was interesting she talked about families are very fearful of being separated from having your children separated from them which is a reality in the communities where she works. So they will go to Great Lengths if they have a child in their family who is misbehaving or are doing poorly in school they will isolate that child so that the rest of the family is not split up. Theres a great inequity. And bureaucracy that gets in the way. What struck me about what she said, it really left this as a take away for me. She said everybody wants to fail a nobody wants to fail. Ever he wants to succeed but sometimes people dont know how. You have to provide them the means by which they can understand how to succeed. She would be somebody who would feel and i guess this is my assumption is president obama the government has a place in the lives of people to help conversely the other side, they want limited government. As little government as possible. I think you point this out, youve got two conflicting polarizing visions of what america is. Sometimes you could hit a middle zone america is not completely indifferent to the plight of people, not since the new deal when we first had to address this. This book is very important for our discussion right now. Im curious, why did you end, what is this guys name . a philip smith. I guess thats his name with the africanamerican gun association. Why did you put that in there . In trying to talk to a varied group of people, while i was thinking about that, it came to my attention there was this Organization Called the National Average american gun association. I thought about that name. The term africanamerican has been around for a generation or more and we use it we almost dont hear it but i still find this especially in this era i still find the word africanamerican to be a very provocative term. Because of the way that things and people of african origin are often despised. And marginalized. And if you put that word african together with american, does that what you saying when you use that term . Is that a term of defiance . Are you saying, yes im an american, of african descent, deal with that. Or is it an act of capitulation to attach american to the african part . I come down on the side of it being defiant and proud. I think its political. I think the term africanamerican is political from the beginning. It was chaffee abchampioned by jesse jackson. I use black american. I have a buddy in San Francisco who is a screenwriter he works with young black males in the prisons, he is furious whenever he sees the term average american. I dont think its accurate. I have friends who are african. The chairman of African American studies at Boston University abwas my colleague at uw before he took the job at bu and he can clearly say American American because hes from an african country. Nativeborn black people, its different. You point out, their cultural differences, he has a rich cultural history. We have one here too. I use the term black american. For very specific reason. But it does have a political intent and you point out what it is. It is to bring together the African Diaspora in terms of your thinking and who you identify with. You can still identify just like the guy at the end of your book because he says he talks to people in africa and feels a connection. Talk about this guy little bit. When i heard the Name National africanamerican gun association. Ive been thinking about the term africanamerican you throw guns in there and things become interesting. Just the notion of self. I thought it would be very interesting to talk to him at this moment in history to get his take on things happening. Hes actually fairly conservative politically. But he did not vote for choppy voted for hillary clinton. He describes himself as being prolife, profamily and all the rest. He could not bring himself to vote for trump. He wanted to talk a lot about guns actually. Probably i shouldnt have been surprised by that but i eventually managed to steer the conversation around to the way toward his feelings about just being american. Which he was very proud to call himself even though he feels when he talks to people from africa he feels a Spiritual Connection but he also very much identifies as an american. I thought that was very interesting. But he is very much about the right to own a gun. Second amendment guy. Yes. Talking to him gave me an idea for the very last image in the book. Which is, admit to philip smith at a gun range which planted the seed of wanting to experience what that was like to be at a gun range and shoot at targets. I did that and it provided the last image in the book. Im at the gun range and i have, kind of a fantasy about being a different kind of person who has had a harder life and more acquainted with guns and what the individual might think about doing in this era. So that i wanted to use as a symbol for justifiable black anger. Not a call to arms so much as a symbol of anger. During the 60s there was deacons of defense. Then during the slavery era in the north there were black people who were armed who would protect recently freed black people who might be taken back. White americans have always gotten, weve always been into selfdefense. Nation of islam and malcolm x and all that. So why that image at the very end do you think we need to arm ourselves and harm ourselves . Not necessarily. The occasion for writing the book was just how badly my world was rocked by this election. I cannot bring myself to end the book on a completely placid note. I thought it was necessary to have an image that registered how much i felt unsettled and what a volatile moment we are in and that is what went into that final image of the book. Its a very interesting image to end the book with. I say that primarily because i think im very saddened by the end happy absaddened by the violence in every week. Violence like places and schools and so forth. To be extraordinarily disturbing. I did an event at the university of michigan and the writer and founder of the program is a guy named nicholas del blanco, he founded the program there and this is some years ago hes retired now. We were at dinner and i was talking about something we were talking about life and politics and i said, ill take americans like each other very much right now. [laughter] i dont think we like each other. He grew up in the uk he said americans have never liked each other. [laughter] i thought, you are right. So where do we go from here . We havent liked each other from the very beginning. How do we deal with this . That is a really good question. I like to say, a group in the area of before cable tv when they were three news stations and the most popular news anchor was of course walter cronkite, uncle walter. This was a time when even if americans disagreed about what was happening, they all kind of, even if they disagreed about the news what was in the news, they got the same news. Now, i pull up my phone and look at the newsfeed and there are news stories that are like tailored to things that i googled, and getting my own dam news. If youre getting your own news then how do you know whats going on with anybody else . You dont. The people i talked to the interviews i conduct are part of what i found revealing about them was how little or rather how often i would respond to one thing and it would be very important to me and the person i was talking to didnt know what or who i was talking about. And vice versa. There is eric garner who was killed who was strangled and his friend was selling cigarettes on the street. He said, i cant breathe, which did not stop the Police Officer from choking him to death. This to me is a symbol of whats wrong in this country. One of the guys i talked to i mentioned the name eric garner and he said, yeah, thats familiar. He couldnt place him. For him his equivalent of that was a woman named lois lerner, who name i did not recognize, lois lerner turns out to be an employee of the irs who was accused of denying taxexempt status to conservative organization. That to him was a symbol of what was wrong in this country. The liberalism had run a mock. We are sitting across the table from one another and we live in the same country but we may as well live across the world from each other for all that we have in common in terms of our responses to whats going on or even our knowledge of whats going on. When you talk about like each other or not liking each other, i dont even know if i dont even know if thats possible but i think maybe what needs to be worked toward is some sort of commonality in terms of just values and information, how we do that i do not know. The question for me is, do we have avalues anymore . Did we ever . As i write in the book, its so much of the divide comes down to just fundamental difference in attitudes about how the country should work. As you pointed out, when i talk to people and said, whats the great thing about america end they would say, the first thing they would say is freedom, you are free. I think for them the flipside of that is it means you dont have a jailer but you also dont have a nanny. For them because they dont understand the challenges facing people of color if you talk about things like affirmative action or giving somebody a hand, that to them runs counter to the notion of freedom which in their definition is all about, you make it on your own. You are free to be whatever you can be but you have to do it yourself. Any sort of Big Government assistance to them runs counter to what they believe in. I can do this gentleman all night long and asking questions but i want there to be time for people here to respond and ask questions as well. Insofar as those who asked that question if you are so smart, how come youre not rich . That boils back down to what you just said about people not understanding what people of color indoor. The lack of understanding is the problem. The commonality that you seek can only come from education the problem is freedom to be ignorant and be apathetic, to be nihilistic, to be cynical. Case in point, we have the freedom to believe where we came from, what our origins are as it stands you got a swath of population who believes that the paintings and the stainedglass windows you see in churches are supposed to be photographs taken by time travelers. As if time travelers went back in time found a naked version of brad pitt and Jennifer Aniston Walking Around central park having a conversation about talking about a magic apple but a talking snake. So they believe this is where we came from. That millions 60,000,000 300,000,000 voted for trouble talking about the fifth of the population. There is grass tighten, carl sagan would say we evolve from africa. And they can boil it down to about 200,000 years ago when the planet of the apes looking monkey people lost their body hair and had to so close basically African Fashion is the origin of human civilization. Because they found her clothing line scientifically csi forensics they did the science and found life in the closing, clothing that found African Fashion is the beginning of civilization. You have to mandate this knowledge you have to accept this as objective reality. Now difference of opinion a scientific fact. They can even accept Climate Change reality and now we are going to have the challenge of trying to convince the 60,000,000 300,000,000 that voted for that monster that we all evolve from africa. The commonality that we are all human. Shared value is Bernie Sanders economic bill of rights. Question. Hi there. Thanks for your coming. Your observations are complex to say the least. My question to you is, what is your perspective on the impact of the kind of shrinkage of american significance in the world stage and globalization . What profound impact it may have had abthe issues you are talking about. What impact you may you think it may have had on the issues you are talking about. I think theres been a reduction in sheer community or even awareness of other communities. Whats the impact of globalization and shrinkage of american significance on a world stage on these issues you just discussed . I may have to toss that one to you. The danger in these forums is that someone will ask a question that is so far out of your area of expertise that you start to sputter. Ill turn this one over to you. [laughter] i will take a shot at it. In the last century it was predicted that the 21st century would be the chinese century. In america would become how long do democracies last. Roughly 200 years for democracies. We passed that point in 1776. Where are we, where is this country in relationship to the other countries . In this world that want to assert themselves in terms of their own interest and so forth like china or russia which really would like to see i think the breakup of nato and pull england up out of that. This is dangerous time is not just dangerous in my opinion for america is dangerous for the world. We see lots of trunk like people popping up in other countries. That works against the nationalist impulse this is a very interesting and dangerous time i think. You know what i dont want to see, i dont want to see the rise of fascism, here or anywhere else. I think freedom is fragile and one of the natural tendencies of human societies do when they organize is suppressed the individual . Take away freedoms. Any have authoritarianism and totalitarianism and fascism. Thats one thing i dont want to see for my grandson. What he said. [laughter] we have a question over here. Thank you for coming. I find as i grow as a human being, socalled american dime constantly questioning you talk about africanamerican. Thats a term that the term i find disgusting because i feel like it marginalizes us. Like especially if its coming out of a white persons mouth, my question is, did you ever find yourself as europeanamerican . You call yourself white. Its okay to call me black. Or i just call myself a person of african ancestry. To pay respect to those who came out on those ships. I call myself american by default. We forget there are people here, tribal people, way before the rebels or africans came. Im thinking like this term american ab what exactly is that supposed to mean . I constantly find myself having to put that in quotations. I know theyre supposed to be liberty and freedom and democracy and all that but do we ever see the hypocrisy . Being an american to me a [inaudible] the thing is, the thing about humanity, the thing about humanity ablet me start again. The thing about any sort of organization or organized entity the problem with any organization or entity like that is that its run by humans. If something is run by humans is by definition going to be imperfect because humans are imperfect. You can come up with you can found something called the United States of america based on the principles of freedom and then you have to run it, human beings have to run it and thats where the problems come in. So the progression of the story of america to me is a necessarily imperfect attempts to realize these grand ideals. Or dreams. But since we are human we are going to mess it up but the beauty is in the attempt and to me the story of black america is the story of a group of people trying to get the country to live up to its ideals that are professes. Thats what i call myself american. I call myself a black american because im proud of the fact that my ancestors have contributed this effort to narrowing the gap between the ideals and reality. Thats what it means to me. Actually doctor johnson i prefer the term black i use africanamerican. They did a poll the debate first came up and majority of people white people pulled they wanted black american. It didnt stick. It became accepted for journalistic use part of style manuals everybody uses it. I like black for aesthetic reasons, i just think its cool. [laughter] black. You know. Of the questions i have one down here. Mr. Thompson, you mentioned interviewing people who thought differently from you. You mentioned that among their values were freedom and fairness and im wondering if you also observed in that in the people that you interviewed, grievance. Im sorry . Grievance fairness and grievance because perhaps they felt it wasnt fair for them. You mean the trump voters . Yes. What became clear in a few of these conversations was that the people i talked to had a very limited understanding of what people of color were facing this country. If you dont understand what black and brown people are up against then if you are a generous person you might think theres a group of people who are enslaved and they learn these habits in slavery and they just perpetuated them through the generations. I think this is what these people actually believe. So in their minds what has to happen is that they just need a different mindset in order to succeed. So that the answer is not any sort of Government Intervention or anything like that or affirmative action so when there are things like affirmative action or then thats where the grievances come in because to their thinking these are just unfair measures for people who just need to help themselves. Yes. I think we have another question appeared. Can you really dumb it down for me and kind of give me the top three or four reasons why a black person voted for trump. Why a black person voted for truck . I didnt interview any black trump voters i actually dont know any, do you . There seem to be some. Its interesting. I get together at christmas with family in dc where i grew up and my brother is much older than i am has a girlfriend and we were sitting around talking about trump at one point and she said what ive heard other people say a line about trump, at least he speaks his mind. I dont know if she voted for him maybe she did i dont know but there seems to be this perception or in my per opinion misperception that thats whats happening that he speaks his mind. You can trust him because as insulting as crude as he may be lecs telling you what he thinks. Which i dont think he is. I heard the same thing from my lyft driver. He shoots from the hip. He isnt part of the political professional Political Class of washington and he wants smaller government. I heard some of that from him coming over here about why people might potentially like this guy. [inaudible] it looks like we have a question in the middle. I wanted to follow up on that because what im sensing is to the fact that he shoots from the hip and speaks his mind is, its ultimately giving license for folks that actually have racist ideas or thoughts to then speak it freely and not be as covert or just use discretion or choice words when their speaking you think thats all true . Sure. People complain every day about the things trump does and says but to me i think we might see this one of the most damaging aspects of his presidency is just the lowering of the standards of civility and children growing up watching him fear to think about what the effect will be on them. You got two kids on the playground calling each other names how do you tell them not to do that when the leader of the country does that everyday. I did explain that . I think the kinds of damage hes doing i think its higher up then we may know. I think we have time for one more question i have one here i think. Okay. We have one more question here. Last one, but you think of this . I think in todays environment everything is about showtime. Showtime. I think that trump is a real marketer and entertainer and hes picked up on that trend because if you look at stylistic music and all that, rap and all of that, not putting any of that down but its all shot from the hip you say what you want, people relate to that, they appeal because thats how they talk. Some of these other more profound individuals come across as somewhat elitist. I think theres a major distrust of that. Do you think of that . I think you are right. I think at some point it seems to me there was a shift in what people look for or valued in a leader. They went from and maybe maybe the myth is that this time ever existed when we wanted our leaders to be smarter than we are and know more than we do. Maybe that time existed maybe it didnt but at some point we got to the point where we got to the most important criteria do we want to have a beer with the sky. More people wanted to have a beer with bush than gore i suppose. I have a couple thoughts on this. 1971 9071 published an essay called culture now. This is 71 hes saying this. And what lewis is pointing out is the fact that thats what trump is. Its about showtime, its about amusement, its about surfaces. That to me is extraordinarily troubling. The other thing that comes to me are two points that you came to with your conclusions when you look at all the Trump Supporters he said the one thing that characterize them all of them, one was indifference and the other was ignorance. They go together. Could you just to conclude talk about indifference for a quick second. Sure. That was a large part of the conclusion i came to was that i sort of identified three factors and beyond just simple out and out firebreathing racism. Reasons people might of support trump. I ask one of the voters, can you tell me why you voted for trump. I said what you think of the fact that the clan endorsed trump . Should he have renounced that. If somebody does that you take two giant step back. Given that he did not, why did you voted for him . He said to a lot of is that came down to the lesser of two evils and we couldnt stomach hillary clinton. You can overcome ignorance. I think denial is an important factor. Its hard to overcome. The thing about denial is in back of it, is morality. If you dont want to think of doing the wrong thing, then deny. If you think you dont want to think its wrong to vote for tom g9 the conditions that you and i are talking about. Wrong to vote for donald trump. Ignorance of course, you can overcome with education. What do you do about indifference . Thats a tricky one. If its not happening to me, i dont care. Thats really hard. I will leave it at that. I dont want to turn this into the mutual society. But i was rereading your novel. The last line, the very last thing is, its narrated by a fugitive slave. At the very end, the slave says this is my tail. On the surface, the ending may seem an innocuous ending to a story. But i think every word is important. The one i focus on is, this is my tale. Im an individual. My expense may not be yours. May not be the same as other black peoples but this is my tale. And i think its an important story because im a human and these are my experiences. That attitude helped inform the writing of my book. So i was happy to come upon that ending again. Because i felt like we were kind of on the same page there. Thank you for reading that again. Thats a terrible book for me in terms of my life. But somebody who you might take a look at mentioned by clifford is albert murray. And his writing. I used to encourage my students to read, writing students. His essay. But i guess youd say, one of his major works is the omni american. Which is his word for africanamericans or negroes or colored or whatever we used to be called. Theres a reason for that. So there is a book i would recommend. Thats a good place to start. Thank you so much. Lets give Clifford Thompson a round of applause but that was wonderful. [applause] thank you all for coming. Thank you to forbeing here. They have copies of lots of book. Both doctor johnson and Clifford Thompsons book. Have a great night. Tonight at 9 00 p. M. Eastern on after words. New York Magazine contributor Peggy Orenstein discusses her book, boys and sex. We need to reform the pentagon. This is a tired, bureaucratic structure. I try to remind people, the was built in 1943. 22,000 people using carbon paper and manual typewriters could manage a worldwide war. Now we have ipads, smart phones, etc. We still have 23,000 people. Its maniacal. Of course it slows everything down and makes everything too expensive. We have huge reform we need. The chinese are mopping up all sorts of organizations by basically bribing these companies. Having picked the leader for an amazing range of international organizations. We are not prepared to start thinking about a campaign of the scale and complexity that we will need in places like the food and agricultural organization. Its astonishing how methodically successful they spin. I think we will have to, if we are serious, and we are determined to overmatched the chinese. We will have to really get our act together. Go through very painful and profound reforms. Part of the reason i wrote trump versus china, was to set the stage for people to have this conversation and to recognize everything the president s doing which is i think the right general directionis about 10 percent of what we need to do it for only able to compete with china. Pornography has become the de facto sex educator because we dont talk to them. We dont talk to them as parents or in school. Curiosity about sex is natural. For that matter, masturbation. Whats different for this generation is with the internet and payroll on pornography sites, they can get anything they want. A whole lot of things that nobody wants at the touch, at their fingertips. After words airs saturdays at 10 00 p. M. And sundays at 9 00 p. M. Eastern and pacific on booktv on cspan2. All previous after words are available as podcasts and to watch online at booktv. Org. We k salena zito. The book is called the great revolt inside the populist coalition reshaping american politics. Good sunday morning. Thank you for being with us. Guest thank you for having me. Host overall the message is what . Is whatmessage brad and i wanted to understand is the 2016 election. It a fluke . Republicanew coalition that is the Republican Party . He decided that 2016 was not a fluke. This is the new Republican Party