Cspan. Org coronavirus. Up next on booktv, we will show some other programs from our archives the focus on the issue of race in america. A couple of the authors you will see include cornel west and even candy but we begin with the Manhattan Institute Heather Macdonald ritchie argues that identity politics is challenging diverse thinking at the collegiate level. This is from 2018. At Claremont Mckenna and southern california, the blockade that could enter prevented anyone from attending my talk, socalled students of color at nearby Pomona College and some would say its white supremacist war hawk, queer phobia classes in ignorance of interlocking systems of domination that produce the lethal conditions under which oppressed people are forced to live. [laughter] so to actually have an audience still in his seat and willing to listen is an unusual experience. It may take me a while to get accustomed to. Now weve been hearing a lot of late about the crisis of free speech on College Campuses but not much about the root cause. The narcissistic victim ologies that is rapidly spreading from academia to the rest of culture, in a word, the American University is in the grips of a mass hysteria. Students actually believe that they are victims of oppression at risks of their lives from the racism and sexism and the degree of model login is impossible to overstate. At brown, students of color occupy the president s office and complained about having to meet academic expectation while attending class when they were so focused on staying alive at brown. At el, minority students surrounded a highly respected sociologist and kirsten screamed at him for three hours because his wife sent an email suggesting that students could choose their own Halloween Costumes and among the childs of shut the f up, im censoring that, and you are disgusting that were directed at a mildmannered leftwing professor was a cry of we are dying from one of the ranchers referring to the allegedly endangered status of els minority students. But my favorite moment in this parade of narcissism came from princeton. In 2015 princetons black students chanted, we are sick and tired of being sick and tired. This phrase was first used by fannie lou hammer, a Civil Rights Activist who was beaten in the 1950s for trying to vote. Fannie lou hammer had grounds aplenty for being sick and tired of being sick and tired. But any princeton student, i dont care if he green, purple or orange who thinks of themselves of a press is in a group of a terrible delusion that will encumber him for the rest of his life. Perhaps you are thinking at least the adults on campus are trying to give students a firmer grip on reality to the contrary, the adults actively encourage the hysteria, a massive diversity bureaucracy is devoted to cultivating students evermore species of selfinvolvement and evermore preposterous forms of selfpity. Do you want to know the reason for astronomical tuition, look no further in the bureaucratic bloat. Students regularly act out psychodrama and the vice prohodes of equity and diversity and inclusion who use the occasion to expand their dominion. They create biased Response Teams, models presumably on active shooter Response Teams on the assumption that discrimination is so rampant and lethal that a Rapid Defense force is needed. Freshman orientation and dorm sessions invariably feature seminars and toxic masculinity and white privilege. Students are taught that they are either the oppressed or the oppressors. If you are not female, black, hispanic, gay or any of the 116 and still metastasizing categories of gender, the only way that you can escape being an oppressor is by becoming an ally. Allies something usually associated with war, indeed the thinking is that female students and students of color are literally in a war zone on College Campuses and made allies from the Opposing Side to survive. Am i exaggerating . I am not. Uc berkeleys division of equity and inclusion hung banners throughout campus reminding students of the universitys paramount mission, assigning guilt and innocence in the ruthlessly competitive total pool of victimhood. One banner featured a female black student and a hispanic male student allegedly pleading, allow people other than yourself to exist, a message directed to berkeleys white students and faculty. This is not hyperbole, they mean it literally. College president s are the worst of offenders and encouraging the victim ologies. After the three hour expletive field tirade against the yield sociologist, yields president peter silvey actually thanked the thugs for making him proud of his student body. Yellow confirmed a justice praise unto the most aggressive participants. The dean of the Harvard Medical School recently removed the portraits of the greatest physician trying scientist from interest talk to this school. You can guess the reason. They were all male. And thus looking on them would make harvards medical students feel uncomfortable and unsafe. We can only wish these doctors lock in the operating room. Narcissistic identity politics has destroyed the serious pursuit of knowledge throughout the humanities and most of the social scientists. Students are being given a license for ignorance. All they need to be told about a book is the content and gonads of the author. To know whether they can dismiss its content as thoroughly repugnant and not worth reading. Shakespeare milton, plato and locke have all been variously disseminated by students who have not the slightest clue about pericles in athens, the renaissance or the enlightenment. A colombian graduate browsed about the curriculum, who is this mozart, this haydn, the superior white men, they uphold the premises of White Supremacy and racism. No professor has ever defended our intellectual patrimony against such shameful outbreaks of ecstatic know nothing if his without qualification of respecting diversity. Academic identity politics are now rapidly spreading throughout the culture at large, every nonacademic institution no matter how craddick is vulnerable. Above all the stem filled. Exhibit a in our cultures dissent into identity driven mediocrity and thought control is the firing of computer engineer james do more from google in august 2017. The more he had written the carefully fact memo suggesting the career preferences of males and females may explain why there is not a 5050 gender parity at google and other tech firms. The language that google ceo used in firing mr. Tomorrow was a direct import from academic victim ologies. Googles employees were hurting because he had dared to challenge the feminist orthodoxy. What followed his firing was even scarier. A Regional Branch of the National Labor Relations Board upheld googles action on the same victim grounds. Mr. Tomorrow is memo had made googles employees felt unsafe at work. According to the nlrb associate general counsel. The memo constituted discrimination and sexual harassment. Consider for a moment what the nlrb ruling means for science. Any evolutionary biologist, psychologist or economist who studies the different risk preferences and appetite for Competition Among males and females is now at risk for his job. These branches of science can shut down completely no matter that their findings are true. The thinking that got him fired is the dominant characteristic of time. In the proportional representation of racial ethnic and sexual groups in any institution by definition a result of discrimination. There are different capacities, cultures, so bills and behaviors that explain the personal representation is not just to boot, and a get you fired. That was author Heather Macdonald from 2018, next as we continue the look about books of race in americas journalism professor pamela in her presentation she examines whether diversity programs are working in the areas of entertainment, academia and corporate america. What im not optimistic about is White Americas ability to see past the fiction of africanamericans in linux people, the centuries old the meaning images of people and how the house is much to do with the lack of diversity and how education systems, what is on museum walls, what is in our literature, were in a toxic culture, where people are color are concerned in a lot of ways this is putting lipstick on a pig. You are trained to address something it is a bandaid upon a gunshot wound on cancer that we have not even begun to do with because i know ive been on the faculty at nyu for going on 26 years, i have not seen curricular changes the way that one would expect in the 1960s. Thats where all the college protester about, the faculty of color, the curricular that addressed the history of race in this country that presented a more realistic take of america so White America can understand its complicity in the continuing inequality in the continuing racial injustice, i am optimistic that it can be done unless the will to do it. And the other amazing part of this book that is a little bit separate from the industry is about the three fields, academia, journalism and what came across to me so strongly, so strongly that i emailed her at 11 00 oclock a few nights ago, it is like these are the fields that are representing the world. And i thought about the me too movement where what we saw in the last couple of years, the men who were being accused some of the men, a lot of them were in journalism, they were political journalists, they were telling the story of Hillary Clinton in 2016, charlotte b rosa matt lauer, Harvey Weinstein actually gave money to Hillary Clinton so it doesnt follow, these men are telling us our stories and the same is true in much worse for people of color because academia and entertainment has pushed this narrative. Much of my work, you know because you know me, is concerned with portrayals because i think portrayals, you can draw a Straight Line from these demeaning portrayals to Trayvon Martin who the Police Pulling over someone and they end up dead, just innocent people, last week someone in their home, people in their homes, people think of it as just a show, just a movie, just a book, it is like no, has reallife consequences for a whole race of people. So all of my work somehow kind of confronts the implications of media portrayals, portrayals of literature because they have reallife devastating consequences for people of col color. Right in there laughed at. We paid attention the last few years, but i think we should pay more attention to how the slave trade built major universities especially the ivy league but not just ivy league, theres starting to be more attention and that is great but when you think about it i dont mean to sound like a naive person but that is part of what is going on and you also have all these academics going back into the 19th an early 20th, not just early, charles murray, almost to the present but these people embedded in academia who were just about the peddling of White Supremacy. They will look at a book like this where the look at scholars of color who want to look at that past and connect the dots to where we are, it is like moveon. What does that have to do with anything, are you kidding me, has everything to do with it. When have we disrupted, even the narrative, when have University President s gone before their student faculty body and said we have been complicit for centuries. The way we have told the story of america, the way we have told the story of africanamericans, the way we have told the story of native americans, who is doing that. Almost no one. It has to start, Everyone Wants a simple solution to this problem, there is no quick fix, its what they say they want driveby diversity. They want something really quick, i didnt interview earlier today on bloomberg, maybe five minutes and its like quick tell us. How do we do it. Just write it down. It is not that simple. The American Experience is multilayered, complicated and people want to look at someone like me and say you made it, what is your problem. My problem is that i know that many other people who look like me do not get the opportunity, people much brighter, People Better writers, better scholars, who did not get to have the kind of opportunity that i have and so we would just post race. Two and half years ago. [laughter] cbs news, cnn, we would post race. Now its like, were not posted not anymore. But we never were. Every achievement and stick the flag in the ground and say we won. We elected barack obama its like no, we had reconstruction with the Civil Rights Movement and we have been in these cycles forever, is it to step forward one step back or one step forward two steps back. I go back and forth. On my bad days its one step. How much do you feel like electing barack obama broadus donald trump. I feel very strongly that were living in a backlash to the backlash of reconstruction, seeing the black governors and senators and congressmen, people were not having that and thats where you have an epidemic so now were living through something similar to that again and its america. You are watching book tv on cspan2 with a look of books of race in america. Now here is wall street journal columnist jason reilly from the monthly Interview Program and depth, and december 2019 with his views on the subject. I think there is a tendency to view black history at large typically in america of a history of whites have done to blacks. And there are various reasons for various groups i want to keep that narrative alive but in the end i think las black histos about more not. Yes racism still exist, i dont know any reasonable person who would argue otherwise in nor do i expect to see america vanquished of racism in my lifetime. But i do think that black history is more than that, for me, the more relevant question is what can be done in the face of whatever racism still exists. What was done in the past by blacks in the face of racism. I think that is a relevant story to tell today and that is the message to give to the young people today and my fear is that by perpetuating the notion that its all about victimization and all about racism, you are sending the wrong message to the next generation. The police are out to get you, employers or races, you send a kid out the door and thats a message and i dont think youre helping that child. Have you felt the sting of racism . Certainly. Ive experienced racism, ive been called names, have been followed around department stores, i been pulled over by police for no reason that i could understand. Tell me about that in detail in washington, d. C. , what happened where were you. I was doing internship back in the early 90s in washington, d. C. , i was interning at usaid today and stay with a relative in the area knows on the sports desk so we didnt leave work until the baseball games on the west coast were over, it was quite late at night i then. And i was driving to and from my uncles house where i was staying in the usa today headquarters and i had my car which had new york plates because i was from new york although i was driving in d. C. I was driving home one evening after work, probably early the next morning sometime after midnight and i hear the sirens blaring and the police pull me over and ordered me out of the car at gunpoint and push me to the ground, face away from the car and all the rest, i got to the description of someone they were after. What were you thinking . I was terrified. I remember getting back into the car after i left because they seem to be gone as quickly as they came after they realized i was not the right person. And just sitting in my car shaking, i remember i had a standard and i could not get out of gear, my hand was shaking so vigorously. But it was terrifying. Historian washington, d. C. Three black man, 16 years old at the time, 36 years ago convicted of a murder they did not commit, they were just released from jail, what does that tell you about americas criminal Justice System. It is not perfect. I think you will find and be hardpressed to find a black person of my age who has not experienced the things that ive experienced, i think the criminal Justice System is an improvement over what used to be and my father and grandfather experienced in this country but it is still not perfect. I would caution against taking these examples and saying they are typical. Versus exceptions or operations. Or saying that the reason the criminal Justice System is a racist system per se. I dont see a lot of evidence for that and i think often times we have discussions about racial makeup of prisons in jail but we dont talk about the racial makeup of people who perpetrate crimes in this country and i dont think you can have one discussion without the other. As imperfect as the criminal Justice System is, has been and continues to be, i still think there are behavioral differences among groups that lead to some been over representative in that system and others been under representative. The titles of three of your books, the first one, please stop helping us, what is the message. That was a look back at the Great Society program put in place under Lyndon Johnson expanded under nixon and others and i want to say what is the track record, these are programs that were put in place to help the black poor in particular. Welfare programs, housing programs, expansions of minimum wage laws and so forth, i wanted to look back and say what is worked, what has not worked and why, i was attempting to do that with the book. Your other book, second book, false black power . That was about i had a little bit on this but it is essentially about the track record of using political power to advance a group economically which is essentially been the strategy of the Civil Rights Movement since the time of king. The issue there if we can integrate political institutions, the economics, Everything Else will take care of itself, we just need to get her own people in place in the Civil Rights Movement had quite a bit of success in doing that, if you look back by the early 1980s, yet the nature of black cities in the u. S. In los angeles, philadelphia, your washington, d. C. s that had black mainers. In addition and yet a police chief and fire commissioner and superintendent and so forth, if you look at the track record of the poor in the cities and if you look at washington d. C. In the 1980s, the sharp change in newark new jersey, and detroit in the 1970s, under the black regimes, young the poor becoming even more impoverished on their watch. I dont think the track record there is a very good one. That is not to say that black should disengage in the political process because weve seen regression, black regression under white mayors and the white congressman in chief and so forth. It is this connection that we were told was essential between black political power and black economic progress that simply is not proven to be as strong as some people hoped it would be. Generally speaking have these programs helped or hurt africanamericans . I think by and large they have hurt in the hurt in a way the way i explain it, what the underprivileged need of any race or ethnicity is a Sub Development that has to occur is not something that lends itself to political solutions, these are cultural changes that need to take place, a economist referred to as Human Capital and attitudes and behaviors and habits that need to develop in a group in order to arise in america thats what we see happen to other groups in this country and to the extent that a Government Program interferes in that selfdevelopment, i think its doing more harm than good in one of bud Great Society programs did to interfere with that selfdevelopment in a person or groups worth ethic is not going to improve if they think that the government is going to take care of them. You cannot replace a father in a home of the government check. If you have a system in place and it says to a woman if you have an additional child will send you more money, and if you see that around your house. Send you the money. Its a perverse incentive putting in place in a program like that pray thats what we saw going on. I think we corrected some of this with bill clinton in the 1990s but not entirely, i think theres a legacy affect. That was author and columnist jason reilly. Up next in our look at authors discussing race in america is civil rights attorney ben crump, his talk from last years book festivals focuses on race in the criminal Justice System. It was ben franklin who said democracy is like tools in a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. [laughter] you dont have to be a Rocket Scientist to know how that boat is going to go. He said liberty is making sure is well armed to protest that boat. In the communities of color to be able to protest about to give them the information and diplomacy to be able to protest to prison pipeline to protest their racist jim crow laws like stand your ground to be able to protest voter suppression, be armed to protest environmental racism that would find the children in southcentral los angeles have a third of the lung capacity of children growing up in santa monica, california. Make sure these young people are well armed to protest the Industrial Complex where minorities who go to prison, often times people go to prison and theyre concerned about losing their Constitutional Rights where minorities, especially women of color and losing your reproductive rights, just as late as 2014 in the state of california and it was black women and Hispanic Women being cohearst in the sterilization and it was all done legally. And just as late as 2017, you had not a judge but judges who were handing out sentences to black man to say we will reduce your sentence by ten years on a 12 year sentence if you will agree to be sterilized on, this is an figuratively that we are talking, it is those things where you see the law itself that it is supposed to protect us being the very instant that they are using to kill us. The second thing that really inspired me too write this book, there were many of them but these are the three that stand out, and the aftermath of the killing of Michael Brown and ferguson missouri when the young people refused to remain silent, they refused to let him sweep his death under the rug because many people in the community saw with their own eyes that he put his hands up in the police still shot him anyways these people have any daily protest the National Guard being out there and his young brother who had no fear, they had their Assault Rifles pointed at him and he walked straight up to them almost with his nose touching the tip of the Assault Rifle and he told them go ahead and kill me now while all these cameras are watching, you will kill us anyway, it is important to let the world see how youre killing us, kill me now with the cameras. That was rivet into me. It stayed in my mind so much that i went to bed thinking about what the young brother was saying and it was true. It is important that the world sees how they are killing us and not just how courtrooms all over america, every day and you dont have to take bens word for it, go sit in the back of the courtroom and watch how their administer injustice. You see white kids come in and they have very similar fact patterns into black and brown kids, and you see the white kids get a slap on the rest and there escorted out of the courtroom to live the rest of their lives and the fears and the destinies that god has for them and achieve the American Dream but yet these little black and brown children often times are taken to the corner of the courtroom, they are fingerprinted and handcuffed and theyre convicted of a felony conviction. And once you have that felony conviction it is lifechanging. Especially if your poor person in america. And like a cross on your back for the rest of your entire life and Everybody Knows about where you cant vote, you cant serve on a jury or on the military. But those are just the tip of the iceberg we have a felony conviction. Everything that you can try to do to make a legitimate living, now that you have that convicted felon taken away from you, if youre trying to go to college, they will not let you get the pell grant of federal laws with this convicted felon and if youre trying to get a legitimate job, if you have a felony conviction, you cannot get a certification, you cannot get a certification to be a teacher, you cannot get a certification to be a nurse, you cannot get a certification to be a nation in many states who want to be beauticians, if they have the felony conviction, they cannot get a certification to do that. If your Real Estate Agent you cannot get certification and goes on and on and in fact i found on the city of atlanta, god forbid anybody would feel like they have to do this but even women who are performing in strip clubs, if youre a felon you cannot get a certification to do that. Its almost if theyre pushing you back into the life of crime because you have to pay the probation finds, the mandatory drug test and its a vicious cycle and you people who take the felony conviction, young people color saying if i go to court im looking at the jury and my peers are telling me i can get 5 15 years so they say you take this felony conviction and get two years of probation. You say i dodge the bullet but they have no idea what they have just done when they have played into the felony conviction. In fact, in many states i have learned, if youre convicted felon and you spend any time in prison, you cannot even get life insurance. Its like youre the walking dead, they have not given you the death certificate yet. What we try to do, is really get this discriminatory criminal Justice System and say even though theyre trying to define you as having a redo metal quality to society, we still believe in you. We still think you are the best that we can offer for our community, we still know god has a plan for your life because understand, it states like florida and tennessee, one out of every five black man r convicted felon and this is across many states in the country and experts suggest that this trend continues in the next 25 years itll be one out of every three black man in america who are convicted felons and the last thing i will say is this because i know we have a lot of questions to get to. To oversee a legalized genocide of color people in many ways is an extension of what the great power robison did in 1951 and he was the most famous africanamerican in the world along with w deed to voice and the first africanamerican to graduate from harvard with a phd in one of the founders of the naacp and other black leaders, they went to the United Nations convention in paris, france and this is in the aftermath of world war ii when all the countries are filing petitions of the atrocities and abuse that they are suffering under the Genocide Convention and definition. Where these black leaders recharged genocide against the government for the killing of negro people in america and they base this on the daily killers legend of raping black people in the 1940s. They had case after case and they said we are using your definition United Nations that are asked within the intent to destroy in whole or in part a group based on National Ethnic racial or religious identity, that is what theyre doing to us in america and then in conclusion they said, the United States government is either complicit with or responsible for creating a genocidal situation to negro people and so when you think about the fact that black man only makeup at most 7 of the population in america and we makeup 50 of the population and death row, it is created a genocide situation. When you think about and Nursery Schools, and kindergarten, you see that black children are being suspended and expelled almost 7 1. What can a child dude to be expelled from kindergarten but it is so ironic that those percentages are of what they do to the Nursery School and kindergarten are very consistent with the statistics of black and brown people in the pennell system in america. So we hope to hold a mirror to americas face with this book and say america, we can do better, america we have to follow the lessons of Martin Luther King Husseins hypocritical for you to be in the world and see injustice and evil and look the other way and then neutral in the face of injustice and of itself is injustice and i conclude that often the part that hypocrisy is everywhere. When you think about the number black and brown people languished and imprisoned for selling marijuana, i just finished a case and the criminal phase with my geiger, the white policewoman was convicted of killing this unarmed walkman eating ice cream in his couch and she only got ten years in prison and i think about all those people who did not kill anybody and he was just selling weed so they can make their bills. And now the United States government has in many instances legalize marijuana, they are now selling weed, making money to pay their bills and when we did that, we are in prison. We made the case then america, you are not allowed to make profit off of selling marijuana and tell you that all the black and brown people and other people sitting in prison for selling marijuana out of prison, that is what we mean when we talk about equal justice under the law because we all are american citizens and we all are entitled to expect america not just to recite the declaration of independence but to act like they believe it. All the programs he been watching can be viewed in their entirety on their website, booktv. Org. Next as we continue our look at author programs of race in america, Vernon Robinson discusses blacks in the american Republican Party. He appeared on cspan washington journalist last march. The gop occupied the ground for 71 years and then incredib incredibly, Herbert Hoover threw that away, he decided he wanted a White Republican Party in the south, you stop meeting with black individuals and resegregated the white house and John Franklin cites him as a pivotal guy who started the Republican Party for black americans. However, he had some help and at the same time, my parents and 6 million other individuals left the south and they were now voters in the north, midwest and west and the ftr folks said we cannot sell the Democratic Party, these individuals from the south know the Democratic Party in the south is a party of slavery, jim crow law, the clan, et cetera. They watched a relations campaign, fdr and his wife were doing the same things republicans used to do, meeting with black leaders and making sure was in the prominent black papers of the time, eleanor was hosting the wives of prominent black man or prominent black women in their own right, he got to 30 something, we are not sure exactly, and 32. But gallup started pulling out 35 and he got 76 of the black vote and 36, however, black individuals had not self identified as a majority of democrat until truman. Essentially all the short version of the book, republicans dropped the ball in the conservative movement dropped the ball and did not insult the Civil Rights Act of the 15th of mimic. In supporting the Civil Rights Act. In other words bill buckley was more concerned of the Shipyard Workers voting and free elections in the wheezy and in the 40s, 50s and 60s. In the book you read the following quote, if donald trump wins 20 or 30 of the black vo vote, we will take a major step towards reestablishing the Unbreakable Alliance black americans have with the Republican Party for more than 70 years after the assassination of abraham lincoln, however, to do so you must in the division that is existing between republicans of black americans since 1964. My question, how do you get there. First of all, republicans need to admit that having once having the high ground, they lost it as a precursor to talking about regaining the moral high ground on a range of issues including wife, School Choice, jobs, recreation, wages going up, the performance on the economy, securing the border, defending the Second Amendment and criminal justice reform. In the second thing that has to happen, they will do their job, theres three of them that will broadcast it to contemporary radio, the Term Campaign is committed to doing so i believe, i will talk to them, and finally the big question, what will the Republican Party do, they have not asked for the business in 70 years and it is created a vacuum work democrats can say anything about republicans, vote democratic because Robert Hunter republicans want to kill your mom and dog. That isolation has destroyed the brand because is why we say the president can turn fdr strategy on its head and not the gop. In order to get the 20 . In a meeting with anchors last month, the president that talked about the 2016 campaign in which he told africanamerican voters what do you have to lose, he was criticized by his campaign but he thought it was the right thing to do. The president told the reporters that he thought it was a significant moment in the 2016 campaign. Do you agree . I think it was a significant moment in American History or at least this part but they have not asked black voters for their support, the president was actively campaigning for black support in that statement in the digital labs and certainly spending 10 million during the super bowl touting his record with the criminal justice reform. I believe there is one of the women that he pardoned that is running for congress in john lewis seat. This is from the Washington Post in january, the headline black americans deeply pessimistic under trump. Let me share to what the post is reporting. President trump made a stark appeal to black americans during the 2016 election when he asked what does he have to lose, three years later black americans rendered their verdict on his presidency with a deeply pessimistic assessment of their place under leaders they by an overwhelming majority recess. The finding come from a Washington Post of africanamericans nationwide which reveals fears about whether their children will have a fair shot to succeed and a belief that White Americans do not fully appreciate the discrimination the black people experience personally optimistic about their own lives, black americans today offer a bleaker view about their community as a whole, they also expressed determination to try to limit the president to a single term in office. There are so many things, i am surprised the Washington Post hasnt run the headline minorities of women most affected. There are number of polls that show that the president is in striking range of the 20 necessary to win in the new states. I was in School Choice where your but i was always questioning whether School Choice is an Educational Opportunity in whatever translate in support of the polls because essentially republicans were expanding political pack capital in the beneficiary were democrat and they were told et cetera et cetera. And that was entered in florida were 18 of africanamerican women, 100,000, three times the victory voted not by race for the black candidate or not by party for the democratic candidate but voted for disantos and elected him on the School Choice issue to the governorship in florida. They would say the full six weeks ago and said black voters overwhelmingly support the democrat, trump with only 15 , with 15 you when the entire south, maybe even virginia. That is a question number, but the death number in the pool in most polls do not have a big enough sample size in other words the marginal of black voters is larger than the entire population. And they said that 31 of black males would support the president against the democrat and the number of other polls talk about job approval or something other than voter intention and they has to voter intention question. There are a number of other polls that have 49 of africanamericans approving the president s economic job performance. There are polls that have a majority of africanamericans saying that they believe they will be better off at the end of the Trump Administration than they were at the end of the obama administration. And acrosstheboard on any metric you want to talk about, for instance, at this point in the obama administration, black on employment was three times higher than it is today. I believe 20 of black votes will not buy into the ridiculous narrative where folks say trump is racist. But for 69 years of his life he was vetted by the entire civil rights establishment. Jackson, giving him awards, one case the same award for courage on whites as rosa parks and muhammad ali on the same day. So you can either believe that he magically became a racist when he was 70, he just appointed a black fourstar to be the chief of staff, the Top Air Force officer in the United States air force for the first time or you can believe he mustve run against Hillary Clinton for president and beat her. Thats what everybody is saying hes racist or at least the democrats are. You are watching book tv on cspan2, television for serious readers. We are looking at programs that deal with the issue of race in america. Next is American University professor and harriet washington. They appear at the texas books festival in october 2019. I have historically tried to avoid the term racism and raci racist, that is because people in this country interpreted very differently, studies show that many white people view it in one white and blacks define it differently, i had to reverse that my latest book because i came to understand that the term was a key to understand what is inspiring and important language has been used to shroud the reality of racism and when it comes to an toxic city, we read in newspapers and reports elsewhere about factors in the property factors and lack of education and they make people more vulnerable and it is not true, it is race, poverty is a risk factor. But race is a much stronger risk factor and the best thing i can think of that studies have shown that africanamericans with income with 50000 a year helping middleclass are more exposed to toxins then only 10000 a year. A clear indication of talking about race. We have to be frank and open in discussing these things because otherwise we will continue to smolder under the surface and be a shield for the biopower we have talked about and they will impede communication keep us from the dilutions. I think a large part of my book was interrogating the common terms that we use to describe the way race and racism operate in this country so im thinking, where do i begin, probably to terms, i think many Racial Justice reformers and activist have used in the last 50 years have been distinguishing between what people call covert and overt racism. Has anybody heard that, the more i thought about that constructive covert racism and people have made the case that over the last 50 years racism has become more covert, anybody heard that . What i thought to make the change in my book is that is basically not true. What is actually happening is we have been using 1960s glasses to understand racism in the 21st century. Then we wonder why we cant see it or imagine its covert. We also imagine that a policy is racist, if the policymaker intends to exclude a particular racial group as defining a policy as racist based on its outcome. So we would fundamentally define a policy as racist based on an outcome then we could easily see racist policies, if we were to recognize that when were seen racial inequity and injustice, were seen racism and clearly racism would be extremely overt, we dont use those terms overt and covert because to me racism is over if you know how to see it. Just as a followup, im just wondering is there one term that you hear people use a lot that you wish every time you hear it, if you could banish one term or one frame from peoples vocabulary, what would it be. Not racist. [laughter] should. Im about to hear the most racist thing ever, me. One thing that is interesting about this book and something all of you enjoy reading is the ways in which both of these authors have a really great analysis of language in terms and racist policies and corporate racism, it is a personal experience of it. It matters how each individual is experiencing this discrimination and it shows a generational effects of this discrimination. I am wondering if both of you can speak about using the typical genre and talking about racism, harriet you talk about or offer antidote from communities that experience environmental racism, its a memoir of your selfdiscovery and thinking about these different ideas. Why is it important to include the individual stories when talking about a structural issue . Talking about race is difficult in part because of the reaction for white people, many people feel shame at anything that might imply, not only on their part but who they can identify with. That is a hurdle to come over when you want to communicate with people. It helps sometimes to help people by having them share an experience that ive had that understood my understanding of racism, i hope that bringing everyone along with that on my journey. Black people will find invalidating i hope and understand when talking about and i hope whites will see it for what it is in a way more clearly that i pointed my finger inside your racism heres why. When i explain in a group army bases abroad and in new york, me and my friend played outside and we had different experiences where my cousins were all living in a building and almost everybody i knew had asthma, why do they have asthma, i annoyed you but when i got older i realized the building across the street was from a bus depot pre1970s was belching everything. It was causing asthma. Then i point out nine out of the ten best depots were located in harlem. People can see clearly, here we have a racist distribution, more effective then and infuse a tory tone. That is my hope. I will actually say i did not want to use personal narratives, im very excited, my family is very excited, some of them are here i feel like im protective, ive so many family members in texas and also its very difficult to write about yourself at least it is to me but i realized very early on in conceiving of this book that it was distinguished at the most fundamental way that the races from someone who is striving to be antiracist is essentially the construct of the confession that the heartbeat of racism has always been denial in the heartbeat antiracism has been confession. In other words when someone who is racist is charged with saying or doing something that is racist, their response is im the least racist person you ever interviewed, im the least racist person you ever encountered and im actually the least racist person anywhere in the world. That is right after i just said that black baltimore said no human being would want to live in. [laughter] so that denial is essential and just as you have people who denied their policies are racist, young people who denied their ideas of racist and people deny that they are racist. And what is fundamental being antiracist is knowing that we were born in raised in the society and trained and nurtured to be racist. In recognizing that and admitting and confessing the times in which we have actually said there is something wrong with racial moves, in which we were not part of the struggle against racist policies and power. To me i felt like i had to model that, and to write a confession, i had to admit both times in which i said there was something wrong with black people in order for other people to open up to be willing to say the same things. We have two more author programs remaining and about books about america, princeton University Professor Robert George and harvard University Professor cornell west appeared on our Interview Program in depth in december 2017. You right we live in one of the darkest moments in American History oblique time of spiritual blackout and imperial meltdown. I name the relative eclipse of integrity, honesty and indecency. We have normalized mendacity which is the same way we made lies the normal way of life and we naturalize criminality to say we made crimes look as if they are natural, to be drone strikes, wall street elites and gains in predatory lending and market manipulation, none of them go to jail, so many different ways in which humanity violate. I call for prophetic site back because in a moment of spiritual blackout it is not just a political issue, its a moral and a spiritual issue as well, it is only by example, we as young people need to say look, the conservative brother, the progressive brother still have love and respect in willing to fight and disagree, not an abstract but by example, they dont just want to hear them, why because right now the diamond of soul craft, the american empire is a liberal soul craft, smartness, smartness, smartness. How many times a year do you need to hear on television, obviously, obviously this, obviously that, that is a word for the in crowd to show that they are part of the smartcard but we dont believe in smartness and isolation, we believe in wisdom at the deepest level. Smartness is tied to richness, there is no accident to donald trump to believe hes the smartest in the room and the richest in the room, that is a spiritual emptiness and he is assigned in the symptom of society that is idolized smartness and richness and we want to talk about barack obama dropping 26726 bombs in his last year, he got the Nobel Peace Prize bush got 45 and he got a 506 but he won the Nobel Peace Prize. What happens, the spectacle can hide and conceal what substances when it comes to morality and spirituality, this is what breaks the ideology, not just right ring leftwing, it is more in spiritual substance that is deeper than any political ideology. What im trying to say in this introduction, we are in a catastrophic time, logical catastrophe, moral catastrophe of just fo survival of the slict and smartest and then theres economic catastrophe, protest wealth inequality the three individuals in america have gone to the bottom 160 million, three brothers have the equivalent to 50 of our fellow citizens, this is protest, this looks like the lou the 14th of times and so forth. Now we have tax dealing, welltodo, tightening the benefits for the poor, you ask what did you do to the least you do on to us, the orphan, the widow, the poor the, immigrant, the muslim, the jew, the black, the indigenous, gay, lesbian, so forth and so one, that is spiritual orientation, the book is about where are we 25 years after and i wrote the book at 93 in the times are bleaker, spiritually annoying. Cornell and i disagree with markets, weather, inequality in itself is a bad thing, i think your problem is now the market economy, i believe in the market economy i think its lifted millions of people out of poverty, my critique is what we have traded in a true market economy for phony capitalism were big and powerful firms can use government to regulate competitors off of the field, big firms can afford the price of regulation and sometimes welcome it because they know the small upstart competitors cannot welcome it. When it comes to economic equality, i do not mind it, i think in injustice and liberal will be inequality, i dont have a goal of economic inequality, i have equality and big unity of the declaration of independence on the community and were all of equal work but i chose a career as an academic, i know that is not a hot thing and i went to law school and i couldve gone to Business School and made a lot more money than that because why always work for people make more money. You have to go to school. I dont have any problem as long as its fair, i dont have a problem with people having a lot more money than other people, my money is not free quality of economic equality, my worry is opportunity, we are losing and have considerably lost the prospects of upward wearability for fellow citizens. I grew up in West Virginia in central appalachia, i remain close to people my entire family and my parents were there, my brothers are there, all of my family, my high school friends, somebody with my friends and relatives are there this is donald trump now why because they are feeling the effects of being neglected of being left behind, economically, culturally, they feel bigotry or prejudiced and certainly on the basis of their own experiences if there is a cultural elite, wealthy powerful cultural elite that only has its own interest in mind of not the central appalachia and to have nothing but contempt for the value into appalachia, those were trump voters. Im not one of these guys that condemns trombone or, im not a fan of donald trump, i was on the beginning also criticize him for some bad things that hes done but i think it is a mistake to imagine that those supporters of donald trump are racists and bigots and horrible people. They have legitimate grievances which no one in either party, the establishment of either party responded to and donald trump reached out to them, whether they were lies and we can debate that come ive debated that with my relatives in West Virginia. But he noticed that those people were forgotten, were left behind, were held in contempt and what was waged on their economy and he benefited. Cornell west, do you agree with what he saying about the current voters . Trump voters are a diverse lot. He has a slice of them and xenophobia and racist and sexist and misogynist and homophobic but that does not exhaust the whole group. They are racist slice of trump voters. These arrows that you see. There is also a slice of trump voters who voted for bernie and obama, you have to keep track of the diversity and you never want to downplay the role of the vissers legacy of White Supremacy in the country, there is no doubt about that but because its so vicious you cannot allow it to be the only thing that you see in you get out of other cultures and the younger black intellectuals these days were all you can see is White Supremacy, it is always linked to something else, linked to predatory capitalism and link to slavery and jim crow in patriarchy and homophobia entrance phobia in link to empire, you cannot black and white soldiers come together and go to the philippines and treat the philippines like the cockroaches in america because you have an empire net. You have to be very honest and telling the truth but brother robbie and i said look at the trump voters, lets tell the truth of who they are, their heterogeneous block, many of them are suffering under the policies under barack obama, the top 1 got 95 of the income growth, i find that to be morally protest, i dont agree with the whole economic equality but i want to focus on poverty and focused on poor. Were green with that, heres a conservative. He was deeply concerned that poverty is attacked, hes been trying to do that with the conservatives and ive been trying to do it for barack obama and the others, the Democratic Party has had no concern about poor people thats tied to wall street entire downward mobility for the professional middle classes when it comes to working people who are poor and poor people not working, hes had very little to say that other movement on healthcare, thats a marketdriven Healthcare Program coming out of the Heritage Foundation established by mitt romney, the mormon brothers saluting but hes not known for being on the cutting edge but he somebody who in the Republican Party did decent things and got the healthcare. Thats where the Healthcare Program comes from, we want to be honest about that, lets try to tell the truth about both of our parties, deeply narrow when it comes to these issues of poverty, jack kim and the others putting pressure on Republican Party, the legacy of martin king on the Democratic Party. We conclude our look up race in america with color lines coeditors who discussed how to combat White Supremacy during their talk and april 2019. The 45th president of White Supremacy out of the shadows and that means there and boded in a lot of ways and also made people step up to find their ways to fight, this helps people figure out to identify the ways they are fighting and that does look like getting up, the day after the election, that is how we saw. But the hope is the way that identified in early fighting and also to see what else they can do. Just to add on, i think one thing we want to come out of this book, we want to in the taboo was saying White Supremacy, a lot of people say racial, racist. Racially charged and also thats White Supremacy, for us we worked at Racial Justice and we see these words all the time, we hear activist using those words all the time and we had a working definition but many people who dont do this kind of work tends to be shocking. But its a reason why we chose White Supremacy is because we want to talk about the systemic undergirding system and talk about it as a particular system that can be languished. If it is just racist, a lot of times racism is to be interpersonal. If people say listen to his heart he wasnt racist. Okay thanks. White supremacy is a particular system and you can break it down and you can work in it not be the whole thing. One of the things in the book you mentioned laws and laughter and use it is the most important tool of war and another one the said loving yourself is of revolutionary act, can you talk about that, a lot of times you dont think about laughter and love. First of all thats funny. Laughter is really important because number one to be human you do need joy and laughter, even in the worst possible situation you need to actually enjoy something, i dont believe we wouldve survived as people if we did not have a sense of humor. There is a particular part in the book that we talk about in the humor chapter called lets keep them from crying, its written after the civil war and in that letter he talks about how his old master invited him back to the plantation to come in worked there instead he broke back and said dear master, thank you for the invitation i appreciate it. You shot me twice, that is okay, we will consider coming back if you consider living what weve earned already and giving us the interest that has accrued so then he talks about reparations and pain and silver and then he goes back to the polite dangers and humors and he says my wife mandy is concerned about something and so its a most passiveaggressive brilliant and hilarious pieces of history that i have seen so i love the brother jordan anderson. Speaking of one of our chapters, our contributors is here and it gives people away. [applause] [laughter] we have an exciting chapter of our love and one of the whole point of this book is people think about resistance and they think about organizing and being on the ticket lines but theres so much that goes into it and i dont know about you all but when i was younger and finding look with myself is finding love. Every woman and as a black person i am ugly, unlovable, i will never find a partner, all these things that we need to find, i was just talking to an editor the said her editor started doing stories about why black women do not get married, but why we can thrive and why we need to thrive for white gaze. They tell me im not enough all the time and so we have essays that talk about finding how that looks like loving yourself, we talk about the love for our children that motivate us and how it makes us intentional that we know that they are lovable and we get to them before the system gets to them and tells them they are not. We hear a lot about invoked news. Can you talk about that as well and what it looks like with younger people in terms of activism. I think the phenomenon is interesting and i think its fantastic. I feel like because a lot of the work that has been done from the 1960s, there is a lot of social justice and discussion for young people this generation and it seems like people this generation are a lot more active. There was a down. And that was when i was a teenager, im 44, to turn around and see younger people calling out the issues that we were trying to talk about some time ago and often has the tools to widely disseminate the messages and widely recruit those, i think that is really important and i think again there was maybe two people who talk about Police Violence all the time, you had 1000 people who talk about Police Violence and i think thats really important. In the chapter that is about children and people who advocate for them, we profile them who found ways to be activists, they struck up their willingness to jump to solution, we have one of the Board Members that read a statistic that said the boys of his age often stop reading books. And he was like i dont like that, i will do something about it so he started a book club for young boys and not only was it about bringing them together to bring books where they sell them self reflective. One thing he said in his profile, most of the stuff that we see is fiction and its cool to read about him okay but i just want to read a book about an 8yearold who likes to play football with his friends in the backyard and is trying not [laughter] he wanted to be able to see himself and i love that he saw that. That was his way of being an activist, it did not take the form that we always think of, its a very real form. Thats what i thought was the strength of the book, yet so many different examples and while they were seriousness, there was different every day ways that they can get involved in anything cabela baker and how she encouraged everyday people to do something in the league from where you are in importance of how small acts can make a difference and not waiting for charismatic leader to show the way. Is one interesting part when youre talking about double dutch and you use that as a metaphor for dealing with White Supremacy. The double dose metaphor was in the final chapter and the idea of it is that it can be liberatory if you think about the elements of it. For instance you have to work with other people to do double dutch, number two people have to worry about your safety because the ones turning should not stop you in the face. Number three, there used to be a saint entering a baby doll and if you did not have too much pride like i did you would be able to get a path on your part jumping because you were the baby doll and another thing about double dutch if you mess up three other people turn and when you come right back around its a clean slate. Its an idea but im a black girl from philadelphia and i cant jump double dutch. There has been a little bit of shame in this. [laughter] i cannot do double dutch. Is something a 12 step program. It is. Double dutch is a central part of culture when i was growing up in the last part is, double dutch is about the tally. Ive walked on the street in brooklyn and have seen women with no shoes on jumping double dutch with girls and theres something there that is a reassurance and its also an a art, thats why i put that in as the freedom dream metaphor. One more question before we open it up because its a wonderful opportunity and for everyone to weigh in on this topic but one of the questions i wanted to ask you is what white people can do about White Supremacy and what all of us can do about White Supremacy. The first thing i have i think you have to do israelite, youre not helping us, youre helping us all, it does not make you an ally to fight White Supremacy, the system we all labor under and we all perpetuate and somehow privilege in. But you have to remember that, the second thing, dont ask black or other people of color to do emotional or other labor for you. There are lots of books with the tradition that approach this topic in different ways in different angles and google is the homey. You have awesome stuff, rather than asking a black woman to do that for you, another thing is to be courageous. Very often we hear people say or type on twitter that they did not want to have that conversation and they did not want to ruin thanksgiving dinner. I need to tell you that ruining thanksgiving dinner is only thing you have to worry about then you have so much privilege because were walking out getting shot. Be courageous, not just in talking to people but talking to yourself in the way that you have the system and what you take from them. The last thing is theres an Organization Called search and is showing us Racial Justice in its white people gathering white people, it is for the government, all about what goes into Racial Justice together. That is where you should go. My last thing, stop teaching children colorblindness. People think it is antiracist in your friday white supremacist system by saying were all the same inside or i dont see color, also another variety, it doesnt matter if youre black, white, green or purple, im saying its an idea of trying to flatten and also to avoid the conversation but convinced children thats the best way that they can function and not be racist. Ultimately, you say you dont see color, you dont see anybody that doesnt look like you, that is not a good thing, that does not make us feel good and that is not White Supremacy. I went to an all white Girls Prep School from third eighth and i remember my classmates did not ever want to say the word black so they said three black girls in our class of 28 or so and if they wanted to describe they would say the girl with the hair this way, and were like to that, we were in uniforms, the girl with the uniform, okay you mean the black girl, im like thats what colorblindness does to you, it creates a taboo and makes it wrong to describe somebody thats perfectly beautiful which is black. You can watch all the programs youve seen here and many other author discussions about race in America Online at booktv. Org, access the archives by using the search box at the top of the page in search race and books. Tonight on book tv political leaders beginning at 8 00 p. M. Eastern Time Magazine National Political correspondent molly discusses the career of House Speaker nancy pelosi followed by a discussion on what donald trump and Winston Churchill have in common. Then a talk about the character and motivation of north korea kim jongun, watch book tv tonight and over the weekend on cspan2