Transcripts For CSPAN2 In Depth Imani Perry 20240713

Up next its booktv is monthly in Depth Program with author and Princeton University professor imani perry. Our books on race and africanamerican history include prophets of the hood, may we forever stand, and the recently published breathe a letter to my sons. Its a letter. Its a series of letters to my son, but of course, its also a letter to the larger world, both about, you know, the reality of the terror and anxiety and worries that comes along with being a parent of black children, and particularly black boys in the United States at this moment, but its also filled with my desire for them to lead a life of beauty and joy and excellence and selfregard. Much of which, i think, one finds a lessons for in an extraordinary tradition that we have to draw from. Where did you come up with the idea to write your sons a letter . Well, so, i actually have written them letters privately for years, but my editor, at beacon press said, is this something youd be interested in doing . In large part because i talk about my children all the time and i write posts about them on social media and initially, you know, my i think what we both had in mind was something that was probably a bit more lig lighthearted, but when i started to really reflect on what it would mean to try to tell a story to them about both my expectations, but also my warnings and my the depth of my love and a story for both them and for the world, then it became something more sober and i reached into the archives that i had in my mind of the work that for me did that and tried to have a conversation both with the past and the present, and for their future. It reads as if it flowed out of you. Thats probably not the case about you it reads that way. Thank you. I mean, its certainly the book that came out most quickly. I mean, it did sort of flow out of me. My previous work was a foundation for it and i wrote most of it while we were all in japan, where i was working for the summer, and so there was a way in which that provided a space of contemplation and retreat that allowed it to flow forth, but its also the case as the conversations in the book are the conversations that we have all the time and so, to craft those conversations, to craft that message, of course, took time, but there is something that sort of just flowed forth. And it has to a certain extent some of the emotional energy, i think, of this task, which is kind of breathless and beautiful and exciting, i mean, during the childrens lives is just like that, so where did you come up with the title . So, its so interesting because as many people guess, theres a reference there to eric garner statement i cant breathe, but theres also a reference to one of the things i was thinking of the city was born in, birmingham, alabama had the worst air quality in the nation the year i was born and i was thinking about the prevalence of asthma and environmental racism and the way that it makes it very hard to breathe, actually, and then i was thinking about the kind of holding ones breath in moments of deep anxiety around this threat of violence, moments of racial injustice, and also, in part because this connected to my first book which was on hiphop and i came of age with an art form thats largely about black control. I mean, the extraordinary skill of rappers that often goes unnoticed is that to say all of those words requires a management of the breath, right . So i want them to breathe, of course, in the sense of having taken in what they need to survive and flourish, but also, managing the breath, right . Navigating the difficult moments, which is what it means to get out some 16 bars with barely catching a breath, is that it was a powerful metaphor for me. Fear, fly, fortune. Yes. What do they mean . Well, the fear part and i should say that, you know, that structure comes both from Richard Wrights native son and between the worlds and me. Its a modification that ill talk about. The fear part, i think, in some ways is selfevident. The fear of the ravages of racism, whether that be the kind of the harrowing incidents that weve been seeing on video for several years, but have been throughout american history, right, of the killing of unarmed black people often by Police Officers without any process, without any without just cause, right, for the most minor of infractions or none at all. So theres that part of the fear. But the fear at large. You know, the ways in which inequality can limit your opportunities, but also get in your head, right . And those kinds of fears are without question ever present and part of the task of parenting for me is to attempt to navigate around those fears with the recognition that tomorrow it really isnt promised every day. And so you have to both attempt to navigate, but you also cannot be completely overwelcomed by the fear. Otherwise you wont live, right . So you have to deal with the reality, the tragedy and disaster are possible. And then fly is in some ways an indication of Tony Morrison and you know, flight in native son is the moment when the p protagonist, he has committed a murder prompted by his terror of being lynched essential ly, but i thought about flight in the sense of actually taking flight in life. So sort of an extension of the idea of not being defined by the fear, but how to take flig flight, and thats from Tony Morrisons song of solomon, and if you give up the stuff that ways you down, she says. And then fortune for me was a way of talking about the abundance that they have that is not about the material fortune, its not about inheritance and the way we tend to describe it, as riches, but actually the fortune of a tradition of an ancestry of resilience. Of incredible beauty, of creativity, even in the face of constraint and so, you know, i talk about everything from, you know, our ancestors who work the lands to felonious monk and a competition that says to me how do we navigate this, how do we have the notes, we say is a metaphor for life and navigating the term over and over again. So thats sort of the foundation of the structure. What do we know about freeman and i isa . This is hard to answer in the book in some ways, theyre fully and absolutely human in all of its complexity and i say it that way because so often, i think black children in particular arent granted that recognition. So i can talk about how they are distinctive, so issa is a brilliant athlete and incredibly sophisticated at understanding human relations and a beautiful writer and i can talk about freeman is composes extraordinary music and hes an amazingly gifted artist. And theyre both really good friends and all of these things, but i sometimes hesitate because these things are true about them, but its not i dont want it to sound as they im making them exceptional because i really do believe that all children are really special and that many children who dont have parents who can draw attention to their gifts are often made to feel as though their children are inadequate and dont have much to offer, which i think and that disproportionately falls not just on black children, but on black boys in particular. So theyre really human, as all children are. What do you think about the fact that you wrote a letter to them exposing them to the world. Thus far theyre okay with it, it might change over time. Because my sons are 13 and 16. Theyre in a pretty intense stage of development, each of them. I did give them veto power over the content in the book, so i allowed them to say, if there were stories they didnt want in the book, if there were details that i hoped maybe they let me tell later in life, but maybe not. But with respect to the idea of, you know, sort of being on book tour and like the book getting public attention, thats not particularly interesting to them and i think thats a good inning. You know, these i am not in our intimate domestic life a public figure, you know. And that that part of the daytoday of our lives really isnt on display, and thats the most important piece for them, right, is the relationsh relationship. From your book, you write that racism is in every step and breath we take. Yes. It really is. I mean, you know, when you actually start to deconstruct it in a detailed fashion and you see everything from how homes are constructed, the you know, how frequently the street cleaning operations take place, who can be where, what opportunities exist, who has bank accounts, who doesnt, you know, who has stock, who doesnt. Walking along the street, you know, whose body elicits a clutching of the purse. Who gets followed in a store. Where are there book stores, in which communities. What does the School Look Like . What is the quality of the air we breathe, it is so pervasive and its part of what makes, as uncomfortable as conversations about race are for so many people, its just we cannot function as a Decent Society without talking about it because we are in the thick of it all the time. On friday, we sent out a tweet promoting your appearance here on sunday and we, in the tweet, we put the words are white people irredeemable, asks imani perry of princeton, university. You took a little issue with that. I did. So i want to read from breathe what prompted that question. Okay. Well put it on the screen as well. Thank you. Well give you a chance to talk about it a little bit. Here is a confession, recently i have wondered if white people are irredeemable . Again, i have to issue a caveat for the sensitive, no, i did not mean individuals. Individuals are the bulwark, and a Single Person can be a persons hell or a heaven, too, a friend. But i worry that white people are irredeemable and it scares me. What would the complete dissemabling of identity look like, how would the vicera pulse under a cracked open surface . I dont know, im losing some of my ability to dream a world. Yes. So given those two paragraphs. Yes. It sounds like we were rather accurate in asking that question, no . Well, let me say why the single sentence request he is hard for me because without the larger context, so often sentences like that trigger a defensiveness that becomes impossible to engage, right . So and this is the sort of the difficulty of social media all the time, right, its not unique and ive certainly experienced it even with tweets that i wrote, right . But that second sentence that is the caveat is important because people hear when you say, i wonder if white people are irredeemable, they hear all white people and they hear white people as individuals as opposed to whiteness as an identity that is clung to. So that when i go into the second paragraph where im like, well, what if we took that identity apart . Those people would not, would not sort of have a different history or body, right . But it would be a different relationship to identity that i think would potentially have, as a consequence, a more humane relationship to each other. So, when i actually when i went into later in the first paragraph when im saying, you know, a person can individual can be a heaven, right, im not talking about individuals and individual could be heaven, certainly, both as someone who was raised by a white man or as someone who thinks of so many figures like, you know, take, for example, john brown or howard vin or bob zellner, right, who, i think are some of the most precious people in the world, its important to me to not have a formulation that removes them from my sense of the struggle that im engaged in. So thats thats what i was thinking. One more question about breathe before we move on to some of your other books. Mothering black boys in america is a special calling. Yes. Yeah, thats a sentence that my mother said to me. And i think about it in a number of different ways. I mean, one, of course, is there is a of course, theres all the risks, right, so people talk about incessantly, in some ways that are difficult, i think, and maybe not necessarily helpful about the challenges that black boys face in this world, whether its mass incarceration or schooling, graduation rates, attendance rates and unemployment. I think about it differently. I think and all of those things are true, but i think of the simultaneo simultaneousty of wanting to raise black boys that doesnt limit their sense of imagination and the possibilities. That allows them to understand the facts of racial inequality to keep them from thinking theyre superior to some people because theyre relatively privilege visavis other black people and people generally. And also, that keeps them away from seeking patriarchy or dominance in this society that values those things highly so that even though those things are even more elusive for black men to attain, we have a society that values that and so part of the task is also raising them, for me, to not value that, but to value their characters and their sensitivity and their complexity and other people around them, irrespective of what walk of life they come from. So all of that is a special calling because the lessons about what it means to be a man are across the board, oft oftentimes entail things that are not so good and then the lessons of what about blackness is with a much more loving and capacity to to be fully human. In the last 19 minutes, everything weve talked about, are these things that you teach or impart at princeton . Not in so many ways this is a departure for me. And its a spirit of what i teach, i teach of Tony Morrison and Richard Wright and i send to teach for factdriven than the emotional regulisterinregis and i think of teaching as a calling and ones humanity and love to the students even though were supposed to be i guess somewhat dispassionate. How does one get a ph. D. And a jd from harvard at the same time . Unwisely. I mean, its not you know, i when i was, i think, graduated from college, i was 21 years old and i was just completely in love with the life of the mind and ideas and i didnt want to choose and i sort of wanted to do everything and i said, well, ill apply to graduate and law school and i did two years of graduate school and took my orals and first year of law school. It was sort of a frenzied pace, but it was, i mean, it was beautiful, it was amazing for me. I loved it. You know, i learned so much and every day i you know, i was being nutured by all of these generations of people who came before me and helped me understand the world. We want to play a little bit of music, a little bit of video, this is from 1999. Lift every voice and sing that of course is Jessie Norman singing at the rosa parks congressional Gold Medal Ceremony in 1999. What is that song . That song is lift every voice and sing the song that was known as the National Anthem and the black National Anthem after the 1970s and it is a song that i describe as black americas most precious so song. Gosh, and you know, just that clip of rosa parks of course, an alabama woman and Jessie Norman recently departed is incredibly moving. Host youve written a biography. Of the song. May we forever song. And James Johnson and John Rosamond johnson. They were composers, brothers in jacksonville, florida and back in the day they were called race men, people who saw every achievement as they had as being in service of the race. James johnson the first secretarygeneral of the naacp, first man admitted to the bar in florida, really extraordinary, but, you know, one is the signature accomplishments of both of their lives was the composition of this song. And they were first generation free men, born in the 1870s . Yes, and so well, their mothers family hadnt been been enslaved bahamian and their father enslaved in virginia and they were the first generation with hopes and aspirations so quickly dashed with the end of reconstruction. What was the reception in 1900 when the song was written . So, what was extraordinary is that the song caught on like wildfire. It was almost immediately embraced as an anthem of black america and i think one of the things i try to detail this in the book is that the United States does not have a National Anthem at the moment and even so early on, people were referring to it as an anthem was a big deal. The johnson brothers were both educators at the time of the composition and they left florida and moved up to new york to work on tin pan alley as song writers, in part because there had been a terrible fire in the city. So they actually werent there in florida as the song caught on and it caught on across School Children passed it on, black club women circulated it, they reprinted it, it began to be printed in the back of hymnals so it was sort of an anthem of a communitys making. They did not describe it as an anthem. They didnt intend it necessarily as an anthem, but black communities throughout the south said, oh, this is our anthem. If we had continued playing that video there we would have seen then president clinton. Yes. Singing. Yes, its one of his distinctions, he might have been the only president who kn to know all three verses. And forever we stand, hiphop issues fair with el to the National Anthem. Where are you going there . One. Things i talk about in my first book. Theres something that happens in the 70s and 80s which is, you know, a transformation both of some norms in black social and political life that have to do with the kind of Civic Engagement and associational life, and its also connected to the deindustrialization and theres a piece where i quote the reverend Joseph Lowery on this where i said, may he rest in peace, that black people are the moral conscious and hiphop is the refusal of that position. Its bold, its not formal, its profane and instant and not an unwilling to perform a particular kind of politics, a kind of revelling in outlaw, which is a commonplace in american culture, but its a different kind of public presence for africanamericans. So that departure, i think, was significant, but what i also talk about in the book is that the song keeps coming back, you know, so there have been various moments where it seemed like it was just going to peter out completely. It keeps coming back, even though the kind of institutions, the kind of communities in which was sung on weekly or even daily basis, dont exist in the same way in black communities. What did you learn about the song in researching this book . That surprised you . Well, i would say the Biggest Surprise because so much of what i write about it was about how it was ensconced in institutional life, right, in various kinds of organizations and it was so exciting to see, you know, the Graduation Program at like a dress Makers Academy where they sing the song or you know, every day, when Dizzy Gillespie talks about South Carolina seeing the song on the porch of his school, looking out on cotton fields, but what surprised me and was so beautiful was how many educators used it as a tool. So i read i encountered all of this kurricula that its a basis of, there are history lessons, there are plays, pantomimes in schools and it had so many functions and teachers in black segregated schools and underfunded schools and took seriously the task of preparing young people, not just in the future, but to become warriors for justice was so moving. You share your views on this in the book and i just want to read that very quickly. You write, i, like many other people find singing lift every voice and standing alongside people of conscience to be the bulwark and when i look around and see closed mouths and nervous gestures im reminded not to be about the condition in which we live randomly in their conditions and archives and yet in desperate need of rebuilding tradition or building anew. Right, one of the things that emerged for me as part of the book, and i talk a lot in early chapters about associational life, you know, taking this from those who talk americans love to join groups. Americans would create a club for anything and it was so robust. And the black Americans Association of life was political in the context of jim crow, that, people would belong to like 10 or 12 different, separate organizations and have commitments to them over a lifetime and we dont live that way anymore, across the board. Thats not just black america, thats americans in general, but that is precisely what was necessary to wage, certainly the civil rights revolution and its necessary to actually solve social problems. You have to have a sense of being a member of a fabric of a community who are working together where theres mutual dependence and trust. And so theres a way in way im very emotional and maybe sentimental at moments in lift over voice and sing, but what was most important about it was that it was a tool for creating an emotional bond in the service of community, right. So that the community itself is ultimately is what was most important. More important than whether we sing that particular song its a kind of ritual and the kind of commitments that made it so powerful. Thats what i think we need to reembrace. Author and princeton professor imani perry is our guest this month on in depth. Once in month on book tv we invite one author to talk about his or her body of work and to take your calls as well and weve reached that point in the program. Were going to put the phone lines up. 202 is the area code 748820 in the east and central time own. 201 for those of you in the pacific time zone. If you cant get through the phone lines, send a text message to this number. 2027488003 and well put that one, well leave that up through the program. 2027488003 and you can also contact us via social media, remember book tv for facebook and twitter and our email address is book tv cspan. Org. So all sorts of ways to get through and well get to those in just a few minutes. Imani perry is the author of five books, six books, sorry. Thats okay. Prophet of the hood was her first. Politics and poetics in him hop in 04, more beautiful and more terrible the trance nbence. More beautiful and more terrible. And looking for lorraine, radiant and radical life of lorraine handsbury. Three books in 2018 and breathe, weve talked about, a letter to my sons is her most recent which just came out this year. I want to go to your first book, youve mentioned it in few times. Prophets of the hood, ill get to the title, but can you draw a line from Langston Hughes to Biggie Smalls . Absolutely. In so many ways they took the beauty of vernacular language and crafted it and made decision toss tell stories that were pointed, that often had a political content and resonated deeply, pleasurable to listen to and engage with. They are different kind much political subjects. Langston hughes is overtly an activist and organizer, but their relationship to black language both in the u. S. And also throughout the diaspora and to understand that as a foundation of the production of arts, absolutely directly connected. Prophets. Yes, double entendre. What i talk about in the book, it became the most popular form of music in the country and expanded beyond the initial core audience and produced a great deal of wealth produced in hiphop, but theres something i talked about, theres something prophetic about it because there was from the very beginning, an exposition and an elucidation of what post industrial life in urban centers in the United States was like and in all of its complexity, right . Its not, as i was saying before, its not just this its not the comium to the hood, hip hot is not, its an exhibition of it, exploration of it. You use the term mc, capital m capital c, what does that mean . Its a word for a rapper more organic to hiphop. It initially comes from master of ceremonies, and others spell it emcee and make it phonetic. The idea theres a relationship between the rapper and deejay and subsequently the producer is important. Host its almost a title, isnt it . Its absolutely a title. Mcs are rappers is the kind of internal to hiphop way of describing that role. And i was interested, really, in also what made an mc good. Jot just a reflection of history and connections to certain communities, but what did it consist of. Mc became important because i was doing a literary analysis of mcing. From your book prophets of the hood, the historic crux of blackness in opposition to whiteness in which blackness is demonized has become part of the art forms consciousness. Yes, right. So this there is and i should say, and before i go into this, hiphop has changed a great deal since 2004, although i do think that there are aspects of the book that are still described the form at present in meaningful ways. But that there is a very overt play with the imagery of black people as thugs, as you know, tupac embraced the idea of thug life, right . Of the criminalization of black people, that the sense of the very long history of american stereo typing of black people as to criminality and excess and gangsters and violence and hiphop has engaged that satirically, critically and played into it and sort of played with that social reality throughout. Lets hear from our viewers. Okay. As we continue to talk about your books. Charlie is in rosalyn heights, new york. Hi, charlie, youre on book tv. Caller hi, everybody. Im a progressive liberal, fighting racism my whole life and im proud of it, but ive grown and ive seen that the world is a very complex and politics is very complex situation. I dont support black nationalism, thats just as bad as White Nationalism and feeding fascism in our country and trumps space. Theres good and bad in all groups. Black people are just people. Theyre not inferior and theyre not superior. And black nationalism is just as wrong as White Nationalism. And i cant understand why miss perry is supporting black nationalism. Host imani perry. Im not a black nationalist, im far left and nationalism takes on many different faces. There are certainly conservative brands of black nationalism that politically are much are actually quite aligned in many ways, too. Political conservativism, so he if we take an organization like nation of islam is quite conservative and theres a version of black nationalism in an organization youd see in like the black Panther Party and about revolutionary socialism and third world politics, anticolonialism, that saw themselves as identified and allied with colonized people across the world, historically. I should say that the single term doesnt mean much without the larger context. I dont but i will say this, i dont think i disagree with the caller that theyre equivalent because certainly people trying to find a way of developing a sense of control and autonomy over communities that they live in after a long history of colonialism and enslavement and domination is not the same as celebrating the history of colonialism and enslavement and domination, but thats not thats not a designation that i would subscribe to. Host you say youre far left. What does that mean . I identify as both someone who believes in democracy and a socialist because i believe that im against economic exploitation. I believe everybody should have access to safe environments, clean water, good schools, a living wage, health care. You know, i believe in this extraordinarily wealthy country that we shouldnt have children who are poor. We shouldnt have People Living on the street. I dont think that the narrative, that the consequences of economic vulnerability are just the consequences and we should be okay with them. I dont think thats a decent way to organize society and i dont think that people are poor because theyre deficiende, theyre exploited or have a lack of opportunity. So thats what i believe. So the question inasmuch as i write and think about race, its never separate from the larger questions of the distribution. Its a way that society has suffering and opportunity and wealth unjustly, but i dont want by objective is not for black people to become those who dominate. I mean, thats not the idea for me is to become free of systems of domination to have a robust thorough democracy which is only possible if you have a decent quality of life. You were born in bir birmingham. I was born near the 16th street bombing to a family, and very solidly black southern working class culturally. And then i was raised by my mother, who is an intellectual, like most cerebral person ive met in my life and my grandmother who was a domestic and worked in the hospital and was the most resourceful and without question one of the most brilliant people ive known and sent 12 children to college and my father and adopted from a communist and activist and worked against mass encars ration and we moved when i was five and thats when it was bohemian and intellectual and all of those things and right after the busing crisis in boston. So the and also in chicago where my dad moved and circle with scholars and intellectuals through the world and activists, also, so i moved around a lot. You were always in a book as well in. I was always in a book a voracious reader and something i mentioned, i watched a lot of tv and i mention that because if your kid is in front of screens, its going to be terrible. I loved reading all day and watching television as a child. It also fed my imagination. Host lets hear from lloyd in st. Louis. Hi, lloyd, youre on with imani perry. Caller hello. Host were listening, sir, please, go ahead. Hello. Caller okay. Im really impressed with you, professor, let me see, dont help me. Perry. Im 85 years old, ill be 86 march the 23rd. I was born in st. Louis, missouri, i went to what you called schools and sing lift up your voice and sing and that instilled a lot of pride. And i remember, i dont know if you checked it out, once upon a time, the movie once upon a time we were colored and called colored people in those days and gone through many, many, many changes, but i think about you getting a ph. D. And a jd. Im also an educator and i had a masters degree and i didnt feel i needed a ph. D. In education i felt i was an excellent educator and pursued a jd at 49 years old. Wonderful. This is a part of being black and being black, you had to wear many, many hats, and im extremely proud of you and i have a tape im going to snd you, but i need your address at princeton, new jersey, and carry on the good work, sister and i love about the song of solomon and the good things youve said. Now i will hang up and listen to you. Thank you very, very much. Host lloyd, before you hang up, youve mentioned some of your education credentials. What have you done as a career . Have you did you teach all your life . Well, i taught middle school, i taught math and Language Arts and then i went to law school and starting at 45 years old. And did you practice law . Yes, i practiced parttime and i taught school i taught middle school in the daytime and practiced parttime and i did not love the legal profession, but i will Never Exchange that experience because of the background that it gave me and i promote, encouraging black males and females to go to law school because this is what we need, but i think about the time where you had people like Thurgood Marshall to went to all black, colored, whatever were called and the environment we were raised in years and years ago, Thurgood Marshall predates me of course, but i think about you mentioned different organizations and i and the origin of many fraternities and sororities, i wont tell you which im in unless you want to know. I do want to know, mr. Lewis. Cappa alpha psi. The red and white. And also, let me tell you this, many of those members are descendents of slaves. First generation, its amazing what they developed in those days. And again, im going to let you talk, but im going to accepted you this the package that i developed about being antiaffirmative action of where the beneficiaries of affirmative action have been some of the some people who have been antiaffirmative action, and ill go into detail with the papers we tend you the very best. Host lloyd, thank you very much. Well get a response and if he sent it to imani perry at princeton, it would get to you. Absolutely, yes. Host so any response for lloyd in st. Louis. Well, i am so appreciative for your words of encouragement. I mean, one of the things that has been so profound in my life and i think its worth mentioning in public frequently is that older black people have offered me the most, you know, generations older than me, the most consistent support and encouragement and in particular, appreciation for both my writing and early in my educational aspirations and i think they sort of get left out. I mean, often times, people which i think of as the greatest generation, black america, the civil rights generation, are often sort of discounted or diminished, particularly, by younger activists and i think its really important to give an offer of appreciation for not just what they did to transform the nation, but also what they continue to do to hold together the foundation of all of our work and to may have made the work possible. Im very thankful. Host now, were going to play one more piece of music. Okay. Host if you could identify and talk about it for us. You are young, gifted and black we must begin to tell thats just begun imani perry, who was that and who was she singing about . That was nina simone and she was singing the song that she wrote in honor of her dear friend Lorraine Hansbury who passed away and she takes a line from a speech that hansbury delivered to young black writers in which she said that it was a gift to have to be young and gifted and black and so, it was a song that, in fact at certain moments people thought, well, this might become the next lift every voice and sing because it was popular and a beautiful ode to hansbury. Had nina simone in 1969, didnt she end up in paris . And also west africa. I dont remember the exact dates, but it was four years after lorraine had passed away. Speaking of lorraine, hansbury. This is what you write about her. She was a black lesbian woman born into the established black middle class who became a Greenwich Village bohemian leftist, married to a man, a jewish communist songwriter. She cast her lot with the working classes and became a wildly famous writer. She drank too much, died early of cancer, loved some wonderful women and yet lived with an unrelenting loneliness, she was intoxicated by beauty and enraged by injustice. I could tell these stories as gossip, but i hope they will unfold in this book as something much more than that. Yeah. Sounds like an American Life in some ways. Oh, why he, absolutely. And hansbury, although politically she was an internationalist, she used to say before she passed away, you know, people always talking about going to europe. I want to travel the americas, she was captivated by the story of the americas, and so, you know, it is the thoroughly hers is a thoroughly american story between chicago and the village and between the small, but prominent black bourgeoisee and her community and lesbian circles in new york, she crossed a lot of boundaries. Host broadway 1959, what happened . So a raisin in the sun opens, its the first play authored by a black woman on broadway and it is an astonishing success so hansbury, this, you know, woman who has been, you know, she she was 30. Yeah, she was so young and had, you know, shed been writing, but she in many ways shed wait tables, she would work at camps, you know, she had been a journalist and it was surprising and also surprising that she wrote this extraordinary play. I mean, a raisin in the sun is the most wildly produced play by a black playwrite in the United States. Constant revivals and three film versions, and she had hadnt yet turned 30 when the play went up. She was 29. And it was also hard, it was hard for her. Where do you research that book . Does she have relatives living . She does have her cousin, gail she was various relatives living, but Gail Hansbury who lives in washington d. C. Who i met and we shared tears and her best friend in new york. And i talked to her after i finished the book. Her papers are at the Schaumburg Center for black culture, in harlem. And the archivists tease me, because i moved in. Id take my children to school, i lived in philadelphia and then stay in the stacks of papers and drive my children to school and back the next day, it was an extraordinary collection, and i could use the letters that had written her there. And i see james baldwins letters to her back and forth there. Host who was frenzied of hers . A close shes at the crossroads of all of these people. James baldwin, nina simone, paul rhodes was a mentor. Host and people forget he died in the 60s, dubois. And she wrote for him, not just as a scholar, but as an important social and political force, as shes dying, you know, he dies in 63, she dies in 65 at the very beginning of the year. So, you know, Something Like heartbreakingly poetic about that relationship. Host robert, new york city, hi, robert. Youre on with professor imani perry. Hi imani, how are you . Im fine, thank you. Good, good. I wanted to ask you a little or if you could elaborate a little more on your conscience of black formalism, and if indeed that still resonates at all with our current Cultural Landscape as an africanamerican community, as a person thats worked with mit mitchell and harlem and he sa said formalism. Yes. I want to hear your thoughts on that and especially from philadelphia, which is where you reside now, and all of this stuff were a very large part of the community there at that time as well, [inaudible] thats it. Thank you, thanks, robert. Host anything to respond to him . Yeah, black formalism is a term that i actually use in may we forever stand and i use it to distinguish between a concept thats gotten a lot of currency and is really important to talk about, which is the politics of respectability, which is basically the idea of a tradition of black people performing certain forms of sort of respectability in order to make the argument for full membership this this society. If were respectable therefore we might be embraced. Black formalism is distinct because its not actually to make an argument to the larger society, it was a form of selfregard and ritual so black formalism would be, you know, rules about how you dress and comport yourself in civic associations or church, right, or various types of events and that was particularly potent when, you know, vast majority of black people were agricultural laborers, but continued. So the question about whether its sustained, not nearly as much as it once was. Because again, theres less of that civic culture, but we do still have in certain pockets, particularly in the south, theres a lot of rules about how to act right in certain times and places, that arent about looking externally, but what are the rituals that happen inside a community. Host you use another term and im going to lose it in the books in front of me, raced people. Yeah. Host did i get the right term . Yes. I use that term in raced body, what does that mean . Well, what it means is when what it means to be registered as other because of race, right, because of the designation. Because i operate as, i think, many scholars do with the deep knowledge that race is not real in any biological sense. It doesnt theres no race gene, theres no that these categories are socially constructed that we create them. And so when i i wanted to use the term to talk about kind of the way race is ascribed to people as opposed to this idea that it just is, right. Even though the fact it it is ascribed is incredibly powerful and it shapes so much of our lives, its something that is placed upon us by us, as opposed to something that just is. And i think sometimes thats confusing, well, people look differently, but we dont have to make a meaning of that necessarily. Race has been making of meaning, not just of the way, different ways people look, but their genealogy and personal hifrts. Host i skipped over this a little bit. How did you have three books could come out in 2018 . Yeah, that was not planned. I never work on a single project at a time because i have a hard time choosing and my mind is moving all over the place. And i worked on all of them for the seven years between 2008 between 2011 and 2018 and i anticipated that they would come out in sequence and at a certain point i realized because of the production schedules, at a certainly point the book is out of your hands. And oh, theyre going to come out in the same year which was pretty overwhelming, but it was nice to see the fruition of the labor, but it wasnt like i sometimes think, it kind of looks like it was kind after parlor trick of some sort and magic trick and i would work on this and work on that and work on them for a month at a time and sort of emerged the same time. Host whats the different between an academic and a mainstream book and the construct in what you do with them . So thats such a good question. And its not hard and fast distinction. Certainly, academic books tend to focus on a conversation within a field and part of what distinguishes them is that in that conversation within an academic field, the conversation becomes somewhat interior, right . So the people who are reading you assume have a certain set of body is knowledge, a certain set of books theyve read, but as a scholar, ive always want today write in ways that dont require people to have read the same 100 books beforehand so i try to write in a way even in the most scholarly of works that invites people in and then points in the footnotes in certain sections for the foundation of this go here, here. E book or general market book by and large tends towards serving the pleasure of the reader much more directly. I think its important for all books. I think you want to engage the i think we should want to engage the reader emotionally as well as intellectually. We want to teach them something so that its about knowing something but also feeling something and so for me the development has been have this foundation as a scholar and then i consistently and building my craft as a writer. So books take on slightly different salience is but i wouldnt say i give up the priorities of either genre when it moved between them. Host this is a text. Professor peri, eat you had a daughter, what letter would you write to your daughter in 2019. Second question, like in america get the on the images 6163 of your hometown of birmingham. This is from a professor at golden may 2 to college. Professor golden at basic Unity College breathe a letter to my sons im so grateful for that question. So i ask that question in the book and ive had people say why did you write it to your sons . Because i have sons. But it dont think it would be, the book would be much different had been a letter to my daughters. B probably the most significant difference would be that i would write about much more extensively about the way girls and women in particular black girls and women are often expected to sacrifice themselves in service of others. I probably wouldve had a different angle on the question self regard in that respect. But large it would be the same. That 6163 things so powerful. I wrote actually an essay in harpers last year, and one of the formulations is about how its almost like an ossified city in the way people regard me and images, usually in january, sometimes j september but its a city that is grown and changed and was even much more complex than it is given credit for in terms of the various politics. There were people who believed in armed selfdefense. There were people who had rebellions or rights in the streets in birmingham. There were people who turn into becoming black nationalists, revolutionary socialist, all these sorts of things in the city. We had a major transformation with the election of mayor arrington and he was the mayor of birmingham for 30 years. He a still alive, extraordinary, who saved the city from the ravages of the industrialization. First black mayor of the city, by bringing in the hospital industry. We lost the steel mill and the coal mines any built and so theres all this history that is intervened, and theres in general and erasure of the urban south in the society. But also a sense in which these places similar to angela davis. We see the picture of her with the afro in the 1970s, and shes a living, breathing person who was had a long history of extraordinary scholarly accomplishments. I dont know why necessarily, but i do take it as part of my task, to kind of unfreeze that place. Host yet at the same time in breathe to talk about taking your sons to alabama and mississippi and you talk about the fact that in your view those two places are quite unique trait you they are unique and they are hallowed ground. I think we can cherish and a brace history and also acknowledge that life continues to happen in and around it. One of the stories i count is about, we went to a reunion of sncc Freedom Summit in mississippi. Theres all these veterans of the movement or current organized beautiful generational event and it was also on the campus we gathered at tupelo and it was this reminder that we had this extraordinary history and yet the struggle continues because the prison labor looks at all the organizers, right, in the group and many of the organizers overworking about working on Voting Rights and Economic Justice or working on mass incarceration or educational inequality, theres a continuum. I guess what it means is its important to cherish history but not to treat it as something frozen. Host if you cant get to on the phone lines you can send a text message to imani perry and here is the number to use. We will get to as many of those as possible as well but right now its aim in tallahassee and youve been very patient. Thanks for holding. You are on the air. Caller good morning. I enjoy your work. Im a 50 something to go closer to 60, but im a native floridian and florida,n we get a lot of kick. But have to tell my florida history little bit. You started out with the origins of different voices being the same. You gave a nice little summary at the backdrop to that song, or to the point is much deeper. I dont know how far i didnt read your booksks i dont know f are you got into this host are you talking about the fact about florida schools and why they chose jacksonville . Caller yes. About the poem was originally written for the students and johnson was the principal there at the time. So he wasnt gone and then guest he wasnt gone but he moved after that. Caller okay. And then the booker t. Washington, orange park issue, integrated schools in william scheetz, and florida was the best funded among africanamerican schools at the time in the south. Guest yes, and all that is in the book. I think you would appreciate it. Host it sounds like she either read the book or no, sir history. John in california. John, you have to turn down the volume of your tv otherwise you get that delay. Can you do that very quickly and Start Talking or do we need to move on . John, i apologize. If you get on the air, turn down the volume, otherwise youll get a delight and youll hear everything for your phone. I promise, amber in lake charles, louisiana, itss your turn. Caller good morning, dr. Perry. Thinking about your research [inaudible] host another thing, if youre using a cell phone is talk into a a clearly and dont use your speaker because that sometimes gets garbled. Did you understand your question . Guest i think so. I think the question is how the 21st century changes and technology are going to affect research in the creation of archives. I think thats a greatch questi. Its not one that has sort of we havent completely explored it, those of us who think about it, but theres a couple of different potentially challenging forces, and one is both the quantity and the fungibility of materials. And by that i mean, so we take him for example, exponentially more photos than we did in previous generations. We have constant communication. A lot of it isnt printed. When we lose a device we may lose all of that come so its not as though when young letters that you keep in a folder, letters that you keep. So the archives are both too big and too small, at least two vulnerable so this is a real question. What it suggests is that people ought to be, we have to be increasingly deliberate about wwhat we preserve, and probably should be preserving a great deal more in physical form and not just in digital form. Because at platforms change its unclear how many translations are going too be possible. Host historians 30, 40, 50 years from now are going to have a lot more trouble with archives breathe a letter to my sons yes, and weeding through themm and collecting them in making decisions about what goes into an archive, what counts. And also i i will say this. Sometimes things that look like they include everything are deceptive. So, for example, if you ever google something that you know happen and can find on google, you reminded even with incredible abundance that there. Ing is thats also a question forec historians because if you think you have a full archive, you in fact, may not. Host next call from new york city. Caller good afternoon. Great, great program. I guess i have a twoparter. Dr. Perry, i want you to speak of what seems to be, some of us were stunned by it but a present moment where the y has become normalized and incitement of division and even violence has also become normalized. I would like you to speak to the patriarchal aspectssp of it. And also you mentioned about the identity of whiteness. Your projection, since its not based on biology. Its a social construct, how we might go beyond and what the future might hold in terms of the very identity of whiteness here i will listen over the air, can i, peter . Breathe a letter to my sons yes. Do you have a followup you want to t make . Olmec thats it. Host i promise you if you hang up your phone and turn on your tv you will hear the entirety of her answer. But if you feel accountable sing on the line, we will we will ln the line. She is gone. She hung up. She believed me. Guest thats wonderful, and consummate for the question. Or series of questions which are really thoughtprovoking. Let me say this. I certainly as an individual could not answer the question of how we get past the way, the idea of what whiteness means, hinges upon exclusion and notions of superiority. And notions of greater depth of humanity. But i do think that theres a huge body of work that we need to perus and pursue and grapple with. One of the challenges, this is similar to the question of patriarchy. One of the challenges is we spent our entire lives being taught to value certain things and to think in particular ways. As americans one piece of that is we invest deeply in the nation we invest deeply netgear we are as individuals that combination is really difficult if were trying to address inequality. Because Immediate Response to the fact of inequality becomes defensiveness because yesterday virtuous, as opposed to what s truth is is grappling with issues, is what makes you virtuous. Challenging ones self is a source of virtue. The mythology of what it means, of the history makes it very hard to confront the ugliness of the past, and even the mythologies of our personal histories. And so i think certainly a piece of it is those of us who take this work as our lice work has to tell the story with greater truth, with more robustness, with sensitive and with grace but one that doesnt lean towards leans towards the notion that history serve us. The reason we draw certain aspects out of history because we want to build the good society. So to do that we have to think about how to tell history in a way that, that is honest about the failings and is also honest about a the heroes that have led us toward values that are more inclusive andt more decent and more beautiful. I dont have all the answers auditor think thats without question a part of it. T. Host and in her book, more beautiful and moreor terrible, imani perry writes that racial inequality is a National Cultural practice tricky yes. It was really important in that book for me to say that the way racial inequality one is were not just living with the impact of the past, but we certainly are. When you look at the wealth cap, you seeee that the impact of 20th century policies that greater wealth gaps across lines of race. The reality is, and for the book i researched so many fields, neuroscience, media studies, literature, social psychology, economics. What i saw over and over again is that people disadvantaged others based upon their membership in racial groups, most dramatically black people were disadvantaged right is not exclusively white people but even includes a significant number of black people who didnt into disadvantaging a black person. So its not really about this question at the individual attitude. These are learned behaviors. We exist in a culture that teaches us that as my colleague says, the white People Matter more, right . I wish that book it been written before about this book because it wouldve been useful. If you understand that it is a culture, then it becomes very clear why its so hard to address it, why policies insufficient because you need aa cultural shift. We have to tell different kinds of stories. We have to actually be intentional about the process. One of the, places in our society is that people often think its impolite or its not utce for its uncomfortable to talk about race, but one thing we know from research is a talking race actually helps people behave in a lessor discriminatory fashion. Its evidenced, right . So thats a cultural shift that needs to happen. I also think it was really, for me it was really important that it wasnt one that we understand that we can all participate in the transformation but this is not a matter of kind of individual attitude or behavior. Host how many selfidentified conservatives take your courses at princeton . Guest thats a hard question to answer. Certainly there are particular courses i teach that are more likely to attract students identify as conservatives. I i teach a course on the histoy of race and american law. That tends the conversations tend much more likely to go across the political spectrum. I do think africanamerican studies tends to be a selfselected group, towards more liberal to left. One of the things people are not aware of is that across the selfidentified political spectrum, people hold very conservative ideas about race. Its not as though the process of kind ofin educating and doest happen even if i have a classroom that is full of selfdescribed liberals. There are people by virtue of their sense of like sympathy or kind of nice this might identify as liberal and gentle very conservative ideas about race or very stereotypical ideas that people based upon racial groups. N educator is not so often those of us on the left are accused of that is not political indoctrination. My objective as an educator is to teach People History and range of ideas based in fact an episode and events and some tools for interpretation, so many years ago this doesnt happen now because of social media where its very clear what my politics are, but when i taught law school many years go host at rikers . Guest at rutgers. They would say we dont know your politics are which is hard to imagine because now they are all out there. Rigor is important to me so strong ideological commitments, but rigor is more important. Never can a writer say anything that isnt backed up with a substantial body of evidence and im also not going to function in such a way that my evidence cant be contested. Host next call for imani perry comes from daniel in minnesota. , daniel. Caller hello. Host go ahead. Caller mia on tv now . Host you are. Caller really delightful to have this moment. I sort of i really believe in what you are doing. I know for a fact because im sort of like the opposite part. I am a man, i am white, but im racist because of my color on my end but my life in history what happened and whats happening as far as of the structure and i have the means in the manner and what sparks how i can inspire my life, but im not a good writer. Im not welleducated. And not a good in school because i have adhd, but im an artist, inventor and i feel like black and white sweated together and made the contractor of my races but not only that because of my father and what he did as a green beret and what he had done, intelligence and host daniel, before we go too far want to come back to comment that you made that you consider yourself a racist in some ways because of who you are . Caller no, at the moment in time im not black and white, but i feel like if i was black i would be the racist part but im white racist because of the archives of my history. Host because of the archives of your hair streaked. Lets hear what professor perry has to say about that. Guest this is challenging to parse, but i think its really important. I dont think why people dont are not necessarily racist because of the history of this country are the world. I think that is not true or particularly a helpful formulation. I think it is very difficult to transcend the messages that are racists because of the way our history is told, because of the way our society is organized and because of whats obscure and i also think its extremely important to not talk about race in such a way that it becomes the only or gender the only mechanism of thinking about any quality any quality. Educational access, disability, poverty, regional distinctions, all of these things are extremely important in the distribution of opportunity and so sometimes i do worry that people read the conversations that others have about race as implication that if you are right and mail therefore you have everything. Obviously thats not true. I was born in alabama. I have been to appalachia. Thats not true. The thing that is so [inaudible] it creates a barrier, so often between why people who are suffering the same kinds of any quality that black people are where race actually functions to disassociate so that where white people think who are poor and foldable think of themselves as aligned with those exploiting them more than the black people on the other side of town who are also suffering being exploited the doctor have adequate healthcare , so i just went to parse it out because there will never be a case and i have had these discussions and debates and certainly not everyone in my field agrees with me and i think many if not most do, but race is not everything. I dont think that it was concerned with injustice can ever be your only only analytic. Host los angeles, good afternoon. Caller how are you doing, sir cracks thank you for having me. Hello . Host please go ahead. We are listening. Caller heres my question to professor perry, are we ever going to be living in a free society . Before she answers, i was born in guatemala for 10 miles from british honduras, all races, all sorts of people and to me it was a color free society. Are we ever going to it seems to me like africanamericans are obsessed with race. I understand, i truly understand the situation by the then the United States for 45 years. Ive lived in kentucky, tennessee and the army, are we ever going to leave though wars of doctored king [inaudible] whos going to take the first step. My final question is, are africanamericans obsessed with race, is it because of the product of so many hundreds of years of oppression . I do appreciate your work. I dont know how she was able to do a jd and phd. Amazing. Host before you leave, where you come down politically . Caller i am a far left, a yellow dog democrat. Host thank you, sir. Guest i will say a couple of things in response. I appreciate the question. I do think it would be our that africanamericans obsessed with race and a thank goodness because were we not it would require us to be deeply self hating people. When something profoundly shakes every aspect of your life and your history and denies you opportunity, if you are not obsessed with the question its hard to understand how that would make you someone who can have any self regard. So, yes, i am unapologetically obsessed with race. I think thats whats necessary to get to a more just society. I would take exception to the characterization of Central America latin america as race free society there they are not. There are places where one doesnt talk about race in the same way, but if you look at Central America, black communities that are deeply marginalized or the Indigenous Community has opposed to other communities or if you look at the way in which call it functions as a stratification in brazil and colombia, puerto rico, in the dominican republic, so not talking about race actually does not impact how materially racial inequality functions. Latin america is a mother wonderful example because of the evidence of how deeply stratified things are along the lines of complexion even though the words are different, a sign of not talking about a dozen make it better. Host february 6, 2016. What happens happened . Guest im drawing a blank. Im sorry. Host you were arrested. Guest thats probably why. I was arrested. I was pulled over for speeding and then i was told i had a unpaid parking ticket and later subsequently told my license had been suspended for nonpaid parking ticket in philadelphia and it became National News because i talked about it. I will say save some details are really the part that was most significant for me. One of the details was that the person there was a male and female officer, but the person that searched my body for weapons was a man, which i was not pleased about. Host why were you searched . Guest i dont know. Then i was handcuffed. I said can i pay the fine and asked if i could call the president of the university announced told no one i was handcuffed to a table and taken to the Police Station and it was very clear to me that they were skeptical of my claim to be associated with the university, which is fine. Whatever what i learned and i made this very clear is that people are arrested for tickets in princeton, something i think is a bad policy. I dont think that the use of the police power is appropriate for that. I think finds are appropriate and i said that. Also, it is the case that black drivers are disproportionately stopped in princeton, so both are true. Plenty of white people have been arrested for tickets in princeton. Black people are disproportionately arrested and certainly the officers discretion, i thought, was an appropriate in things like handcuffing me too a table and also details i didnt talk about, that i could not pay within atm and had to pay with cash. They would not take me too an atm and had to i dont live in princetons all those details. At the thing that was really harrowing and this did not make it in the news is that after i talked about this incident, i received consistent email messages on social media , calls on my cell phone and calls on work that were filled with the most disgusting slurs you could imagine. I am not the only person in my building at work who experiences that kind of harassment on a regular basis. We have increased security in africanamerican studies building on campus because we experience the most threats and they are very ugly and given the current climate they feel real. So when people on the one hand say, would he mean Racial Discrimination . There is no Racial Discrimination and then respond with that thing, thats an indication of the world we live in. That was what became monster back about it. At the moment of the rest i was terrified because abhad just happened and she had been killed and it was just a traffic infraction. So when people respond like that strips proportionate, i had seen the footage of her and i was terrified. But the worst part was actually the venomous response to be speaking about the incident. Corrected the University Stand by you . Absolutely. The university stood by me Committee Group of black women academics from all across the nation and abroad spoke out among the half, my students stood by me. It was a saturday on my way to campus for a student conference on black women and one of my students who i saw yesterday she is a graduate student elsewhere now but was organized had organized the conference. I received a great deal of support that was essential from an institution and my community so i wouldnt want to wet will give the impression i was not surrounded by love because i absolutely was but i was also afraid and afraid because as much as there is this conversation about the importance of free speech when you say certain things, you are under enormous threat. Did you ever hear from the Princeton Police and because of your association with university issued an apology . Any type of a you know where im going . Yes. Right. Like the skiff games incident. I will say this, the judge in my case because i had to go to court was very gracious but it was remarkable because we walked to princeton you dont see very many people of color but in the Traffic Court you see lots of people of color. Lots of black folks. Lots of asian folks. Middle eastern asian. So on the one hand, i was treated well and i do think that was in part because of not just my association with the university but the attention to the issues it created. But on the other hand in the midst of being treated well is able to see evidence of inequality. Even if they had issued a personal apology i dont know that it would have been appropriate for me to embrace that given what i see in the town. There are plenty, i should say, i dont know abi have friends who live in preston who experience it, people of color who experience a place they were in embraced, respected, and cared for. I dont abits a set of observations. We have about 25 minutes left with author imani perry, bill is in asheville North Carolina you are on we are listening. Go ahead. Thank you very much for accepting my call. On behalf of all americans to professor perry i would like to apologize for such an incident thats heartbreaking. For that to happen to you. To my point, are you familiar with the book the southern passed by William Brundage . Yes. Can you give some discussions or some at least bring the audience and the rest of the viewing listening audience uptodate on some of those some of his writings and talking about how the monuments and the Confederate Monuments came about in the south . Bill, why is that a book of interest to you . Because it parallels the story of after the civil war and how a lot of these monuments in the self compared with monuments came about but it also parallels the from the dominant culture and it parallels to the african culture, their stories and how they also were living during that time after the civil war and how their societies also came about and grew as she referenced earlier a lot of the fraternal organizations and so forth for the africanamerican community. Before we get an answer, give us a snapshot of yourself. Retired from stanford university, im also currently living in asheville joined the southern jazz club. How wonderful. Thank you so much. From stanford to asheville. That sounds like a delightful journey. [laughter] i think that what hes referencing is that its really important to note in the midst of all these debates around the Confederate Monument that the monuments were placed by in large as retaliation against reconstruction as opposed to coming up after the civil war to honor confederate soldiers. Actually as part of the reassertion of White Supremacy during jim crow. So they had this public, they were a Public Statement that we, as white people, run the south again after the reconstruction governments came out. I was talking about this with one of my friends the other day, the United States sort of conceives of itself as a nation that had not been defeated but we have a region in which people think of themselves as having been defeated by the nation. In that region there is also the largest proportions of africanamericans who are the peoples whose liberation of the civil war wouldve fought over. So its a complicated dynamic and what has often happened is that there is almost, i talk about in the dissertation of former reunion like a concession drawn like we will let you keep the south as a kind of white supremacist state and is stay in exchange of getting back for the nation with cost being felt by black people in the jim crow era but we have the repetition of this through many of the conflicts over the Confederate Monument. I am often saying that on the one hand while im opposed to the monuments because obviously they were placed to celebrate the enslavement of my ancestors but i also am very cautious about the fact that we placed disproportionate attention to those types of monuments as they exist in the south as opposed to the nation at large. There was a moment when the president said, i think a couple years ago, what are they going to do next . Attack George Washington . George washington was a slaveholder. Dc where we are if we are going to raise the questions about monuments or what we celebrate, lets raise it broadly. Must not just talk about the one region. Lets talk about as a nation how do we want is a wonderful friend of mine is doing this project in philadelphia where he thinks about what kind of monuments do we want to have two celebrate our city or our communities. I think those are good questions to ask lets bring it a little closer to home at Princeton University. The Woodrow Wilson school of International Affairs exist as the Wilson School of International Affairs . I will say this, i dont like the name of the school. Wilson wasnt unapologetic racist. I think the students who organized against the name of the school and the money metallization of wilson did an enormous service not just to the school but to the nation. He took the nations backwards on issues of race. I think as an institution we did collectively address ai wouldnt put it at the top but im grateful for the conversation and if certainly would prefer another name. So far social media pages was lift every voice and saying ever considered in the running for being the National Anthem for the u. S. , i recall hearing that a number of years ago and this is devonian and margaretabin mount vernon new york. I think what shes probably referencing is James Earl Johnson and others suggested as a defense of the charge. The criticism of the song is how can black people have a National Anthem . Youre trying to be a part of this nation at large. Thats part of why the naacp which has a song as its official song does not refer to it as the black National Anthem or the negro National Anthem because they have a history of strong integration agenda. Johnson abeven though it tells the story of black life in these epic terms. It was never in the running in the nationals. There have been discussions that the values that are asserted in the song and the beauty of the composition are without question universal. He could tell a particular story about the struggles of africanamericans in this land and it has messages that are meaningful for everyone. Next call for author imani perry is dave in oakland. Thank you cspan. You are on the air. I live in a mixed neighborhood and i have five grandsons to go to school, the school is probably 65 percent to 80 black. I would like to know what i can do to teach my grandsons to be better americans so we can get past this. Because i make no connotations or denotations to color with the kids in our neighborhood. I say, the boy across the street, or i say that girl across the street. Because this really breaks me up to watch our nation go through this. Its breaking me up now. Are you white . Yes im white. It just breaks me up to wonder what my grandkids might go through. I feel the pain of what little black kids probably went through. Lets get a response. I dont want to make assumptions about daves story but i was very moved by what he said. I think that there is a complicated and rare and precious circumstance for white families living in predominantly black communities. On the one hand its very powerful because white flight was and is a real thing. Whatever is a Critical Mass of black people move in communities by and large the majority white people depart and so the prospect of integration its also the case, i gleaned that from what he was saying is that its always hard to be one of the few edits particularly hard to be one of the few in areas where people are economically vulnerable, which is a vast majority of predominantly black communities. I imagine his reference to his grandson, its probably tough to be white kids in those schools. I think we can acknowledge that instilling knowledge that in a society and large its not tough to be white. So for how those kids to navigate on the one hand the reality of racial inequality but also that they may feel slighted or cast aside or marginalized in their school environment, i think its important and i think it requires sensitivity and they always requires sensitivity with children. In the best way, certainly i think, im the person whos light, policy, structural changes, legal changes, at the neighborhood level as to what i talk about is right relation its slow work but i think its essential thats the best you can do as an individual. He cant shape the fortunes of all the kids in the neighborhood. But having at the relationships with them sharing knowledge, sharing information. Am sure you saw a couple days ago Michelle Obama was talking about white flight out of herself chicago Lorraine Hansberry South Chicago neighborhood. The wall street journal had an order tutorial tying it in with the strike in the Chicago School they were fleeing black families they were fleeing poor schools and high taxes. Some of the other issues. Theyre not just making it about race. As part of what i read about in more beautiful and more terrible as those are not contradictory statements. Federal policy dictated explicitly in the early 20th century that neighborhoods were less creditworthy and homes were valued less simply by virtue of the proportion of black people in them. Including racially mixed neighborhoods. Therefore it was harder to get credit in those neighborhoods. Federal government policy made it so that it was a bad economic decision for white people to live in integrated neighborhoods. Thats the function of racial inequality and it becomes, the question is, now it accumulates. We dont have those fha guidelines anymore. We dont have the rules that make it such that you cant formally get credit if you cant buy a house in a black neighborhood. But we have now generations of the notions that neighborhoods where black people are are worth less and we know that the price of house depends on what people will pay for them. We have a system where the assumption is if the neighborhood had a lot of black people its worth less and would not pay that much to live there. There is a perpetuation of what some socially only just called this accumulation. So that the value doesnt accrue in the same way. And black neighborhoods even all other things equal. Its also true that black neighborhoods get less Services Even affluent black neighborhoods. Its harder to get a grocery store. The consequence of all that is because schools are funded by virtue of local taxes. Is that yes the schools are poor because if the schools dont have nearly as much money and nearly as much investment and nearly as many adults who can supplement the School Funding because of white flight then the question you are posing at the individual level is that i dont want to live there because these things are better. At individual level, sure. Its important to understand that the whole structure is a consequence of how race is functioned and if we want to change it its going to require that people live in neighborhoods that they think are undesirable and contribute to them. One of the things we like to do with every author that appears on in depth is asked what he or she is reading and some of their favorite books. Imani perry listed two Toni Morrison books mercy and song of solomon along with Herman Melville moby dick, molson hamid exit west and Pablo Neruda Canto general. Part of the reason it connects to a lot of what weve been talking about i read him in english and spanish. He has had this capacity and feels like hes alive in my mind. To capture extraordinary beauty and love of the natural landscape of south america intimate passions and always sustain political content. Critique of the united company. Critique of the exploitation of the land. Critique of various forms of indigenous people. That there wasnt a sense that you had to make a choice and that you could tell a story that resonated deeply with all your readers and also hold fast to a set of commitments to justice so he is a role model in many ways. Is there a difference in the translation . Is it more beautiful in his native spanish . Yes obviously i might be completely wrong on this. Neruda as well as gabriela marcus, they both translate really well. There are other writers i read in spanish and the languages at work. They both work extraordinarily well in english and that to me is also a mastery of the craft at the level of the idea along with the language so that you can communicate the booty with the ideas put together even if the words dont have the same melody. Why moby dick . I spent a lot of my youth obsessed with whales and wailing, which was a little strange. This epic tale of life aboard a whaling ship with all these people, which is the whaling industry was like. I grew up in massachusetts and spent a lot of year in massachusetts. You can still see the remnants can be go to new bedford bears abthey are, black people, portuguese people, you can see the remnants of that history so on this ship the crosssection of the world is on this ship. Facing incredible danger. And kind of ablater. Life and death of the most grueling but poetic of some consensus. Paul, brooklyn, good afternoon your own with author imani perry. Hello, its an honor to be on booktv and a huge honor to be talking to doctor perry. I certainly admire your work. My question is, Martin Luther king has been quoted in saying the vast majority of white americans are racist either consciously or unconsciously. He said variations of that one or two other times. I wanted to get doctor perrys view on that. I know its just the quote out of context but i would like to know what she feels about that 50 years after his passing . Sure. Thank you. Thank you peter. [laughter] that means im getting old. I think the quote is one example among many that i think people are drawing attention to that the standard narrative of doctor king that we get is narrow and sanitized. To remove the things that were most challenging that he said. My sense of why doctor king said that in the reason that i say probably the things that i say that are most provocative its an extraordinary moment of grace as much as it might not feel like that. Because its a challenge. Its issuing a challenge to reject the dominant order of things the dominant way of thinking. And to do so by shaking people up. Its always complicated and i will say, in my own journey i moved back and forth on how to do this. One day wrote more beautiful and more terrible i decided i didnt want to use the word racism. I wanted a word that didnt actually trigger certain things. Even though i think racism is pervasive and i use it much more in my writing now because we are sort of in a all gloves off moment in american sometimes those ways of making the point are more provocative than others, but the point always is to try to figure out how to enact a a change, how t transform the world we are in. Host with one last call, another call from brooklyn, and this is jay. [inaudible] howre you doing . Hello, ms. Perry. Guest howre you doing . [inaudible] doing well. Its obvious, in a quite people a very long history of violence towards black people. Black people been trying to get along with white people in this country ever since you were forced to come. Slavery, jim crow, like people have been trying to get along the white people. But apparently, it is obvious that white people dont want that. White people want america to be bears. You didnt discover america. You stole this america but you project to the world that you are these people for innovative come so much. And actually youre not. You dont even have a culture. So in insane that, i feel like white american, white people really trying to get a race war started because, number one, e federal government is wanting to fight with you. Fake police. Everybody is going to be on the side of the white people. You know what it means . To the demise of black people. Black people are really, really, really tired. Every day i wake up and i thank you god for social muted today, youre seeing a white cop killing a black person whether its a woman, or youre just sitting ordinary citizen, white citizen running around here using the nword. You are trying to start a race war and black people are tired. They are really, really tired of asking america for the freedoms are just trying to live normal and raise your children. Women have to tell your child before you leave home what to do to try to avoid the police and not getting but it. Host we have to leave it there. Were almost out of time. Professor peri. Guest yeah. So i think, you know, white he gave voice to, express the feeling tired is true, the sense. This is always the convocation and this goes back to where we started. This is ahe formulation that he said white americans are trying to start aer race war. I wouldnt say that by any means. I think actually the people, there are people ine this couny who, malicious or White Nationalist who are not trying to start a war, dont think that the majority. Its important not to identify that as the center because that actually is not where the battle lies. I think the battle lies in the transformation that is no less potent but appears less settled and much more, and certainly much more nuanced. But the sense of being tired, the sense of worrying about your children when you leave their home, absolutely. And i think its fair to say about rage and devastation about the last three years in this country is warranted. Because if you think theyre up in all these generations that a fought for every step and we are being sort of barrel back into the ugliness of outspoken overt racism in the public arena and it doesnt seem to be any countervailing force to pull it back, thatbe is strong, thats harrowing and that winds up i think making many black americans when we think about all our debt, all our debt, all our departed, all our denigrated we are back where they were. Thats hard. Host double have to be the last word in our to our conversation with author and professor imani perry. Thank you for your time. Guest thank you so much, peter. Members of congress are in their districts due to the pandemic we have a special edition of booktv airing during the week. Programs about pandemics from others john barry, sonja shaw, all economy jeremy brown. Then books on the economy with peter wollaston, henry paulson, then birdie, aaron glanz, and others. Later authors ronald kessler, bob woodward, Victor Davis Hanson and Stephen Moore discuss their books about donald trump. Enjoy booktv now and over the weekend on cspan2. This weekend on booktv, sunday at 9 00 pm eastern on after words former fbi director Andrew Mccabe with his book the threat. I was really concerned by what i felt were the corrosive impact these false narratives about the fbi, the corrosive impact they are having on people of the fbi and their ability to do their work. I felt people understood who we are, how we work, what kind of people are drawn to the fbi and most importantly how we make the decisions we