Discussion or save them for the q a at the end of the event, so i just want everyone to know that before we get started. So as i said, this, of course, could not be a more important or more timely conversation that we are going to have today since the death of george floyd in Police Custody last night. We have seen nationwide unrests, we have seen protests not only here in america but internationally. Weve also seen a certain narrative take hold. It start with the assumption that the only way to properly view George Floyds death is through racial lens. In fact, all of encounters between police and black suspects are increasingly view this way. Its a narrative of Derek Chauvin and that george floyd is every black man in america. That blacks essentially leave the house each day worried about having a violent encounter with police. The media has run with this narrative which faces very little pushback, very little skepticism and it leaves with us with the impression that the biggest problem facing black America Today are, in fact, the police. That Law Enforcement is at the root of social inequality in america and so we find ourselves in the middle of a National Conversation about policing. There are calls to defund the police and abolish prisons. Theres legislation being discussed in congress that would make it easier to prosecute cops and fire them. We have armed radical that is have taken over entire neighborhoods of a major city like seattle that includes the Police Precinct that has been abandoned and these people have the mayors blessing in doing so. There are commentators who are not only making excuses for the rioting and the looting but, indeed, sharing it onto a large extent. Whats going on here . Thats the point of this event today, weve invited some panelists to talk about that particularly interested in what they have to say because they fall within, the Demographic Group and whose name all of this is happening. That is they are young men of color. They are supposed to be the biggest beneficiaries of whats being advocated in the wake of George Floyds death. So lets get to our panelists, i will briefly introduce them and we can get started with questions. First up we have jamil jivani, who is a lawyer and author and who has the Nonprofit Organization aimed at helping young people called road Home Resource and analysis, hes a graduate of Yale Law School and the author of the book why young men, the dangerous allure of Violent Movement and what we can do about it. And i hope we get a chance to talk about that book. Our next panelist is rafael mangual, Deputy Director of legal policy at Manhattan Institute and written widely of criminal Justice System in general and finally, we have Coleman Hughes and graduate of colombia university, coleman has testified before congress about slavery reparations and written about race including the New York Times and wall street journal. So lets get started with the questions, gentlemen, and i thought i would start with you, ralph, and it was a very basic question that i think a lot of people assume, i wanted to get your take on this do we know that the encounter with police was racially motivated, that it happened because floyd is black and we make that assumption and if not, why have so many people jumped to that conclusion . Yeah, so, i mean, it sounds like a simple question but i think the answer is pretty complicated. The answer, the short answer is no, i dont think we can make that assumption because as far as ive seen theres just no evidence that officers chauvin showed racism that motivated actions but i think the reason that so many people have assumed that this was racially motivated is because the event with preexisting rhetorical structure. The rhetorical structure is built upon the assumption that that policing is a system that was built to perpetuate and so when you have a terrible instance of misconduct like, like the case of george floyd, when the officer is white and the victim is black, the question of motivation is assumed, its considered to be a foregone conclusion and as to what some of the reasons are, i can only speculate. I think one might be the power that we have seen, you know, that these narratives can have to drive change and obscure fact that is get in the way of change that people capitalizing on these events to take effect. I will ask you the same question coleman, why do people assume it was a racial incident and do you agree with ralph that it might have something to do with fitting narrative that maybe some activists, political ties, some more progressive commentators want to push . Yeah, absolutely. I agree with ralph that the short answer is we dont know if it was racially motivated. That sounds crazy to people who havent been paying attention to the full range of people who get killed by police in this way, but its worth reminding people there was a white man tony who died in a very similar way under the knee of a Dallas Police officer for 11 minutes in 2016 and that was released on video and, you know, didnt spark as much outrage as the george floyd incident which, you know, which leads to your question which is why that people view this as something that only happens to black people and the answer lies in the massive coverage bias in the national media, you know, dozens of white people, you know, at least a dozen, sometimes several dozen unarmed white people get killed by the cops every year and those stories just die in the black hole of local news, they never escape and make it to National News so people who are just following the news casually understandably get the false impression that this kind of thing overwhelmingly or only happens to black people and, you know, in many ways its not their fault because its what the national, national, you know, media has spread them and the question becomes why is there coverage bias in the national media, why havent we heard about george floyd, almost no one knows the name tony timb timbpa and the answer is understandable sense, you know, americans, i can certainly speak for myself, Many Americans were raised, you foe, watching and rewatching the videos of white Police Officers brutally holding and sticking the dogs on civil rights protestors in the 60s, peaceful protestors and that kind of mold is imprinted in many ways on the on the countries moral. It actually hits the American Mind much differently and much more poynantly than if we a white officer doing it to a black suspect or black officer to a white suspect. Jamil, do you agree with coleman that the media plays a role here and helping people jump to the conclusions regardless of whether all the facts have been layed out. You know, white cop, black suspect must be something fishy going on here. What role does the press play in sort of leading people to jump to conclusions . Yeah. I do think that the media does play a role. Certainly media helps direct our attention to some cases and not others and reality is disproportionately and the way it works in our society and when people see george floyd, for example, being killed by a Police Officer, it is objectively more likely that it would happen to george floyd because hes black than it would happen to a white person and that alone is that disproportionately is source of genuine frustration and concern. I think a lot of black people are more likely to have negative encounter with the police than a why person, why that is the case deserves a much more nuance conversation than the media currently fakes face for but we do need to acknowledge that black people are disproportionately experiencing Law Enforcement in that sort of way and i think the media wants to point certain explanation as to why that is that case. Lets have the more nuance conversation. Thats part of why we wanted to have this panel. So why are black encounters with police, the rate of those encounters, why is it so much higher than with other groups, are the Police Picking on blacks, are they overpolicing these communities, do they have an what explains disproportionate number of encounters in black communities and Police Officers . Well, i think part of that, i think, its the way Violent Crime is dispersed in a city and in a given geographic area. You visit majority black neighborhood youre more likely to be expose today exposed to Gang Violence or and so youre calling the cops and youre relying on cops for presence because of safety and because of that black people will interact with the corporation in a disproportionately higher rate. Is racism a factor, im sure it is. I do think that the way Violent Crime is distributed in American Cities is a big part why police are having more common interactions with black individuals than others. Okay, okay. Ralph, jamil, says that racism still exists, it could be playing a role here and in the way communities are policed. Congress is right now considering some reforms, including making it easier to Fire Corporation or prosecute cops and police arent perfect. Just curious what you make of reforms in general. For instance, whether you think they are good, but more importantly how much of a difference do you think these reforms will make when it comes to getting at the problem, jamil, was talking about . Yeah, i think thats where the kind of the right question is and before you answer it i think you have to get a realistic picture of just how big a problem Police Violence is. One of the problems as i see within this broader debate is theres been kind of toxic narrative thats caught fire particularly in the black community which says that policing as an institution can be fairly characterized by unjustifiable uses of force, the majority of which are purposely reserved for black and brown people. This is false. Police use of force is extremely rare. Lethal force or nonlethal force. Thats coming from 2018 where police made 10. 3 millionaires and fired their weapons and estimated 3,043 times. Thats the first practical limit that a lot of the popular reform proposals are going to face in terms of the difference that they could make which is to say that because the problem with Police Violence is so overblown there isnt that much room for improvement. The police have made incredible progress on this front over several decades and this is this is just one of the political problems, is that theyve gotten absolutely no credit for that progress. 1971, nypd fired weapons more than 800 times, wounded 220 people and killed almost 100. By 2016 the numbers were down to 72, 20 something and 9 respectively. None of that progress is reflected in the rhetorical posture of the debate and i think thats one practical limit that any proposal, that any policy proposal is going to face, the extent to overcome the overwhelmingly narrative, but the second is theres just not a lot of data behind a lot of the popular reform proposals that we are seeing. I do agree that it has been made difficult to fire some Police Officers when they misbehave and i think that reflects some very real concerns about job security and ways around that that we should be talking about and support for that is really just a general incapacitation argument and the same way it benefits society and benefits society by taking the power away from them, but we have to do that sobberly and unfortunately our conversation right now just doesnt allow us to get to that point and so im just i dont have a timeless hope for the potential that these popular reform proposals have to make things better. What do you think about that coleman, some of the proposals are calling for collecting more data, better data, sharing more data, for instance, Different Police departments collect crime in different ways or collect i should say data in different ways. Theres no central database that they feed and officers, how often they fire weapons, theres no uniform way of reporting and some of the legislation would move us in that direction. I know youre a data guy, i like data too, we all like to use it, but im wonder if thats the real problem here when it comes to the narrative being pushed and if they had better data, you know, we wouldnt see the narrative that we see pushed out. Im just id like to see more data too. Do you think it would make much of a difference in terms of changing the conversation we are having nationally . Yeah, so im pretty aligned with ralph here and so there are two things, one which reforms make sense. I think transparent data makes a lot of sense to me. Universal body cams makes a lot of sense to me, you know, perhaps changing qualified immunity although i can sort of see both sides of that one. Demilitarized weapons makes a lot of sense to me but then theres the question of how much would that address the problem of deadly shootings of unarmed americans and here i am rather pessimistic because i think we are we are misunderstanding why the shootings happened to begin with, first, theres ralph points that the numbers are low to begin with and its harder to bring them lower from allow point than to bring them low from a high point but, you know, many of the shootings happened because america is the foremost gun country on planet earth which means when a cop pulls over a suspect, for example, that cop has a legitimate fear that the suspect has a glove has a pistol hidden in the glove compartment and in say britain when someone reaches to walter smartphone, a copy is going to have a fear that cant be legislated away that the suspect is about to pull a gun on him or her and, you know, its it has to be said that roughly 300 cops die every year and that has an effect on how american cops approach an american suspect, so we can do all the reforms and i think we ought to have a very, very serious and rational conversation about how we can make Police Departments accountable because the status quo i think is unacceptable which is that short of shooting someone in the back, its very difficult to get punished as a Police Officer in this country. That seems like it has to change to me, however, at the same time, we also have to manage our expectations about what is possible. I think we probably can, i certainly hope we can get to a place where we never see Something Like george floyd or tony timpa again but i would bet all the money i have that no matter what we do, we cannot get to a situation where there are zero or even, you know, very close to zero deadly shootings of unarmed americans because of the reality of, you know, being a gun country. Okay, so so jamil, what i think im hearing here and i certainly agree with it, what im hearing is correct, is no one thinks cops are perfect. We should find ways to get rid of bad cops, root them out of police forces, thats all for the good, but at the end of the day, policing doesnt seem to be the central problem here. You said before that police are in these communities because thats where the 911 calls originate. They have legitimate reasons to be there. This gets to this question, is making policing the center piece of this National Conversation we are having right now the right way to go and if police arent the central problem or policing isnt the central problem, where would you like to see the focus of this conversation . I mean, a lot of people are paying attention right now. If you think we are overemphasizing the role of police and black homicides in this country and by every data we have we are doing that, more than 7,000 black homicides last year 2 or 3 involving police, where should the focus of this conversation be . Well, i mean, i would say if the goal is to get our societies and our cities in particular to a place where they could reasonably start reinvesting money away from Law Enforcement and into proactive things Like Mental Health and social services and child care and all these other things, its a necessity that Violent Crime is reduced and so its a vicious cycle in that respect where the problems that require us to invest more in policing then take money away from things that might address the core issues that require the police to come into the neighborhoods in the first place. Every Police Officer and police chief ive spoken to readily acknowledges that these are problems that we will not simply arrest our way out of. In the last 25 years Law Enforcement can have a heavy hand on crime but that will also have devastating effects on families and communities at the same time, so theres a role for the communities to play themselves and i think a lot of black americans that ive worked with understand that theres a attention between the need to address violence in our neighborhoods and also preconditions for the police in draft with young men less often. Where i dont think the attention is appreciated is among people who shape the narrative and dont live in neighborhoods where we have that very real tension on the ground you dont have to worry when you see on the news that a shooting has happened and youre not thinking, well, what intersection did that take place because maybe my mother or cousin lives there, then you probably arent dont have the real value of police on your minds on a regular basis. So they have a broader class dimension to this where if you are privileged enough to not need the police, its easy to vilify them and if you see medieval, i think you its very out of step i would say on many issues, at least leadership in with the opinions of the average black voter in america. I mean, if black lives matter was authentic voice for the majority of people i dont think joe biden would have won the democratic primary, for example, i dont think youd see in polls and survey that is people do want to talk about things like family, there are more positive views on Law Enforcement among the average black voter than black lives matter leads to believe and rather conservative or views on economics and create jobs and opportunities and education reform for black lives. I think that on the ground we already see it as more complicated conversation. The police are not the center point. Its in the i would call it an upper class or lets say what michael lynn the author of the new class would call managerial that would put police in problem. Let me ask you, jamil, because youve written about role models and guidance in these communities particularly for for young black men, the hiphop culture, rap music and so forth. Are young black men in these communities being taught to view the police with suspicion . Is this a cultural problem . Well, i think absolutely that theres a glorification in pop culture and incentivize to embrace criminality on a cultural perspective in not in actions and behaviors. Absolutely, i think its a problem. I wish that we held people who see their cultural role to address systematic racism to the same standard when it comes to addressing criminality in some of these neighborhoods because its its heartbreaking that people get to make billions of dollars a year selling profanities and its young black men that pay the price for that. Okay. Ralph, i wanted to ask you if theres a danger here in the overfocus on policing . In other words, is it not only widing the mark if the goal was to reduce the number of of blacks deaths each year, is it dangerous to do this . Could there be a backlash among Law Enforcement and how might that look . How might that play out . I know that youve riden with cops, youve written about policing in urban areas, what what is the danger here of scapegoating Law Enforcement . Yeah, i mean, i think the danger is twofold. The first part is that it feeds unrealistic impression from the data that these sort of things that we saw in the video with george floyd are regular occurrences as opposed to aberrations, right, that creating and feeding the impression in my opinion is indefensible, yet the danger that is people actually believe it. Theres a 2016 morning poll and found that twice as many black respondents reported wearing more of those becoming worrying of Police Brutality than gun violence. Twice as many. The review in 2016 showed that highprofile cases of Police Violence lead to black residents less likely to report crimes. It creates this wall between black and brown communities which, you know, as we saw just by talking about the violence numbers and disparities can be dangerous when people are less likely to cooperate with the police and less likely to call them into their neighborhoods to deal with problems, but then theres the reality that police might pull back which is something that weve seen happen in recent years. A real sense of insecurity, i dont know whats going to happen if i approach this guy. Maybe i should just lower my risk profile and over the long run one of the dangers this is going to have is that a lot of these reforms and rhetorical postures that demonize this police is going to lead to that job becoming more physically risky and more legally risky. That should increase the risk profile of a certain career of a certain profession. What are the ways people capture whether a risk is worth taking by considering other alternative options. The more risky the endeavor becomes, the more, the less tragic it becomes to be below a better alternative options. Were you end up potentially doing is making policing attractive to a group of people that dont have very many options which means the recruiting pool is going to constitute people with lower iqs, less education attainment, less sexualabweve worked so ha to get down to zero. These are real dangers. They also informed, in my opinion, radical and just dangerous reform proposals that pursued incarceration in any cost, that pursue deep policing in any cost and those of consequences too. Theres a woman killed in the summer of 2018 in chicago, her name is Brittany Hill, 24 years old, she standing in the street in front of her House Holding her oneyearold daughter. A car pulled up come this little girl waved to this car and the guy in the passenger seat opens fire. Its Brittany Hill and the torso just below where she was carrying her daughter she fell and collapsed and died in the street shielding her daughter from gun violence. That little girl is gonna grow up without a mother now. The reason that plays into this discussion is because the person charged with her murder, michael washington, head nine prior felony convictions including one for Second Degree murder. God knows how many dozens of arrest he was on parole at the time. People asked themselves, how can Something Like that be on the street . Its precisely because this pursuit of criminal Justice Reform at any cost the pursuit of discursive ration at any cost put him there. It cost the young woman her life. No one deserves to die like that. It breaks my heart because precisely because of what you pointed out which is that there is real dangers nobody wants to consider coleman, jamil talked about the prominent groups of black lives matter being able to drive the narrative here and also the different perspectives, if you live in one of these communities and your relationship with the police versus if you live outside of these communities and are speaking from that perspective, he also talked about culture, why cant, why is it culture, black behavior, black attitudes, black habits board police, toward Law Enforcement, why is it that allowed to be part of the conversation . Why cant we talk about black homicide that dont involve police like the ones ralph was just describing. Which is the overwhelming majority. Why is it so difficult to have an honest discussion about the role of black culture is playing here when it comes to incarceration rates, crime rates and so forth. Even though that seems to be the biggest elephant in the room . I think many people get extremely uncomfortable and you can see the temperature of your own body rising as you enter the phrase black culture. If you lower the temperature and think about what is important to discuss, every group has a particularly history at a particular culture that is shaped the history. If cultures were all the same we wouldnt have any need for a word like multicultural. The difference between how Many Americans seem to view black people and white people is that white people are this group of people that they can behave good or behave bad them if they behave bad they deserve to be called out and ashamed and implored upon to change their behavior. They are agents in the sense that they can make decisions and be held responsible for those decisions. Thats why we condemn white cops for being bad or why we condemn amy cooper in central park for calling police on a man she ought not have called the police on and using race in that way. When a white person does something bad, the instinct, which is not wrong, its the correct instinct, is to hold them responsible as a human capable of making decisions. When a black person does something bad, theres a very different attitude people take and they think theyre being enlightened, they thinks thats a sign of their moral superiority and that they dont blame you black person for doing something bad. But its actually the opposite. The only people you dont blame for doing something bad our children, babies, and dogs. Because you understand if you do something bad they cant be appealed to to change the behavior. By excusing any kind of misbehavior by black people, people think they are doing the morally enlightened thing but its actually the essence of the dehumanizing. Let me follow up with the cultural question because i think, coleman, when we talk about black cultural attitudes with respect to crime and so forth, what we are really talking about is a subculture, certain segments of the black community, particularly lower income blacks who live in poor communities, ghettos and slums and so forth. The culture that comes out of that environment but which gets me to my followup in that the george floyd presented as the everyday black man, typical black person. Why do the sort of worst performers among blacks get to represent all black people . Most black people are not criminals let alone career criminals, most black people are not drug addicts, most black people are not poor in this country. Yet its disorder outlaw the black outlaw, the criminal, the drug dealer and so forth, that gets to represent blackness in america i find that very troubling but i dont see it ending anytime soon. It seems to be something you spoke about some people feeling good about themselves like this is a way of caring about the black community when in fact these individuals dont really represent aboutthe black commun. I think because of the history of White Supremacy going back to slavery one of the features of black American Culture is a deep sense of identity via victimhood. Ultimately that can be blamed largely on how entrenched racism has been throughout American History that when you beat people down for hundreds of years its fairly natural for them to have a sense of identity rooted in victimhood to some extent. Its a deeply unhealthy reaction because then your entire sense of meaning becomes bound up in your being a victim of the system. It gives you a mental incentive to do worse in life because success is somehow a sign that youve lost your identity. I think that is whats behind the tendency to become a its not so much that george floyd is being set to represent black america because hes from a particular subculture that would lead someone to may be counterfeit bills. Its more that hes set to represent black culture because it was a victim of horrible Police Brutality. That victim image is very deepseated in the black american consciousness. Jamil, when you hear words like systemic racism and White Supremacy brought up in this discussion of george floyd or these other encounters with police, what comes to mind . What do you think systemic racism means . What supremacy means . Should that be part of this conversation . Or an essential part of this conversation the way some progressives want to make a very prominent writers Michelle Alexanders and black lives matter type, this all is part of their narrative that black people live in a fundamentally racist a fundamentally Oppressive Society and that is the reason we are seeing these outcomes. Thats the reason we see these encounters with police and thats the reason we see these outcomes. Until we address that, we will keep seeing it. Before i get to the systemic racism, to respond to something coleman said, i think hes absolutely right to outline some of the pitfalls of associating black identity with people who are struggling or may be dealing with some of the Biggest Challenges in our society. However, i think there is something very beautiful about that its a christian ethic. Its the idea that what christ taught, what you did for me is what you did for the least among us. The idea that their successful black people who do well in our society and see someone like george floyd and say, that could be me. Thats a level of empathy i think america at large would benefit a great deal from. The question is what we do with that empathy but that empathy is important. I wish there were the expectation on wealthy white people to see white persons struggling from opioid and say that could be my son or my nephew or my daughter. That empathy can be very beautiful and i believe its important. To the question of systemic racism. I think systemic racism is often a fake word that takes places little responsibility onto anyone. If you say there systemic racism there is no actual racist we get to point a finger at and say this person is being racist, this person must change or be removed from his or her position or whatever the case. It allows us to have a baseless racism that makes it harder to solve problems. What i think is available way of thinking about systemic racism is when we can identify actual policies that actively disadvantaged people because of where they come from or what they look like. Thankfully we live in a society where theres far fewer examples of active there used to be but one example i can think of that i know the Manhattan Institute has taken a very serious look at is education policy. When you dont give parents a choice and where they can send their kids to go to school and you know that if you force people to send the children to their local school, that was shaped by the history of segregation and inequality, then you are making that child destined to be in an unequal system, that sounds like systemic racism to me. The way that you fight it is give people more choice and more freedom and not restrict that. I think thats the outlook on how we deal with systemic racism i would encourage people to adopt. Couple questions coming in about the popularity of defunding the police or moving resources away from Police Closing prisons and so forth, bail reform. How popular are these reforms in these low income communities. Or is this something that progressives assume will go over well in these communities but activists have pushed in the name of blacks without rankandfile blacks really being on board . I think there are certainly more popular than they were even a month ago largely because of whats going on in the sort of peer pressure that puts on people to get on board the train that has ultimate momentum at this moment in time which is the form train but i do think you are right to suggest that there is at least a divide within black and brown communities around the country where it is assumed there is this kind of equal subscription to the id of these reform proposals are good. And to the people who buy into that i would just offer a warning which is that we actually have a lot of evidence of what things will look if we define the police if we divert them from the mission of crime control. We have evidence of how things will look we start to drastically lower incarceration for its own sake, and put you to the Brittany Hill case and the fact that in the city of chicago people who were suspected of shootings or homicides have an average number of 12 prior arrests. Thats a lot of criminal justice involvement under our current policy to make our criminal Justice System even less punitive is going to have the effect of putting more michael washingtons on the street. Theres just no way around that. When it comes to policing i would ask people do you think its a coincidence that the city of chicago saw its most violent weekend of the year on the weekend of may 31 while police were busy with riots another person the city . You think its a coincidence that may 31 was the single most violent day in chicagos history since 1961 when it started keeping track . That is a very clear snapshot of what we can expect if we divert police away from the communities that need the most. The idea that theres empowerment in these things ignores the very real Downside Risks the policies carry. Those Downside Risks are not to be equally borne by people across the united states. When jamil says hes frustrated about the fact that a lot of these activists dont even live in these communities on whose behalf the purported to speak, i sympathize with that because homicide is extremely concentrated in the united states, just two percent of connies account for more than 50 of all murders. Even if you take a study like chicago, the southwest side has a drastically different Public Safety picture then the north side of that city. To say that we ought to just from the top down place these risks on the most vulnerable populations within our country i think is irresponsible. Coleman, r do you have thoughts on the use of these phrases like systemic racism and White Supremacy that just get thrown around in these conversations on the left . I wonder if they mean Different Things to different people or if they have no real meaning at all . If you have thoughts on that i would like to hear them. Then i would like you to talk a little bit about how floyds death is being used to push issues well beyond Police Reform in this country. We are now talking about movies that should be banned, books that should be banned, aunt jemima and uncle ben had been dragged into this discussion. Where do you think this is headed . To your first question, systemic racism, the term comes from a book written in 1967 by Stokely Carmichael and Charles Hamilton called black power the manifesto of the movement. It was then called institutional racism if you read that book, what they were the met by the term was a Real Estate Agent steering a black perspective homeowner into a black neighborhood rather than a more upscale neighborhood. A racially biased banker that did it give auto loan to a black business owner. What they meant was a subtle kind of racism thats less violent than the kkk burning a cross on your lawn. In the original framing of institutional racism i completely agree that exists and still exists today much less than it was then but unfortunately what institutional racism has come to mean to people who use it today is really basically any departure from perfectly equal outcomes. Black people are 14 percent of the population but one third of people in state and federal prison, that sufficient proof for many people that we live in a systemically racist society. I probably shouldnt have to say this obviously to the people here but thats an extremely superficial analysis of the problem. You havent looked at crime rates, you are operating on assumption everything should be equal when that hasnt happened anywhere on earth for any group of people rather than simply trying to make things better for the people at the bottom of society regardless of their race, which ought to be the focus in my opinion. To your second question, im always curious if you are trying to get that aunt jemima lobo changed or trying to get your local statue torn down, i dont particularly care about any of these things. Im not going to waste too much energy trying to preserve them. If people want to change them thats just the way the world. But you should stop and ask yourself what are you doing . How is this helping the issue of Police Brutality or how is this helping to reduce racism . Actually asked those questions as if for the first time and in general the answer is absolutely nothing. What this is doing is giving us a kind of sense of having accomplished something while all of the very real questions all the very real problems that people on the left and the right want to address albeit in different ways, remain. Jamil, if you could pick up on that a little bit. We are talking about taking down statues, banning books and movies and so forth. I know a fair number of progressives, they are smart people, they know that taking down a statue of Jefferson Davis isnt going to close the learning gap in schools. Or boost homeownership and black incomes will reduce black crime rates. It may be a worthy cause but youre not getting much bang for your buck if the goal is reducing social inequality why the focus . Why expend so much energy on these relatively marginal things in the grander scheme of things. It reminds me of when i was a student at yale and new haven connecticut where yale is has one of the greatest wealth disparities in any part of america and my colleagues would get very excited about wanting to change things like the name of one of the colleges in the university because its associated with someone who was a bad person in history but they wouldnt get nearly as excited about maybe making the schools better and new haven so that the black kids to grow up and new haven have a chance to go to yale one day. That difference in perspective always puzzled me i think part of it is people wanting to feel like they are powerful and it feels to them more achievable to change things like the name of the college or the logo of the pancake syrup or whether a statue is up or down i think be reminded of your power as an activist is sometimes very appealing things so maybe the achievability of some of those goals thats part of the appeal. I also think part of the appeal goes back to the whole class thing i brought up earlier which i think is a really important issue and i believe a lot of people on the right of american politics are starting to wake up to the realities of class american society. Which is that someone at el doesnt have the same interests as someone growing up in new haven going to a not so great school. Even if they look the same. I know its hard for people to think race is such a controlling variable for what our political agenda should look like but the truth is, its just not the case. Its unfortunate that some people dont want to recognize that but i think in the example youre giving about these symbolic gestures toward inequality where in a finite time and energy we should be focused on bigger fish to fry. I think thats a sign of class being a bigger variable and what People Choose to spend their time on. Okay. We dont have a lot of time left. I wanted to pose a question and get an answer from each of you if possible, it has to do with how tolerant you think the country at large will be at this agenda being pushed i would say relatively small minority of american progressives, leftists activists and so forth. But i wonder how long White America in particular, which is still obviously very large majority of the country how long are they going to let Nicole Hannah jones rewrite American History by telling us its founded on slavery how long they tell they let people tell them what movies they can watch, what books they can read, is there to be is a backlash thats gonna come at some point . From White America in particular. I would like to get each of your thoughts on that. Maybe you could start, rafael. I think of our answering that question just based on recent history specifically post1968 where i think there was lot of remnants of the riots there just gave rise to Richard Nixon and a lot of the law and order politics the animated our approach to crime policing and incarceration from the 70s to the 90s. I would say the answer to your question is i think we can expect a backlash, however, i think the dynamics on the ground are just very different today. One thing there is exponentially more pressure being brought to bear on White American in particular are not so sure theres gonna be a willingness to fight back at least very loudly. Im not convinced there will be a backlash this time around. But i do think will happen is that people will start to very quietly kind of retract from interactions that are more flawed, retract from cities and that can be really devastating. That could be the kind of disinvestment that will follow that i think could really hurt black and brown communities in particular. I think it can make for future conversations in our country that require us to be on the same page more difficult to have and ultimately i think it really tears of the fabric of our nation which is built on integration and intermingling at a really necessarily high level and i worry about what that looks like. How about you, jamil, coming backlash or will we just see statues of commerce jefferson coming down abstatues of Thomas Jefferson commandant . [laughter] i dont think we will have a violent backlash but i think when you see more aoccurring on these issues and an increasing rate especially at the institutional and managerial level of our society, i do believe there is going to be a demand for alternative ways of thinking about these things and we are starting to see that happen. Tucker carlsons ratings have been going to the roof during all this because people want to hear from somebody whos going to Say Something different. I think that is where the backlash will come from his people saying, i dont want to hear this aanymore lets just hope the people are offering alternative offer a positive one. He mentions tucker carlson, hes having trouble keeping advertisers. Which tells you, Corporate America might be a little skittish here even if there is a large majority of other americans who want a straight shooter. Is not just tucker carlson, its literally anyone who saying a word that is anywhere from mildly skeptical of the black lives matter narrative to totally dismissive of it. He is having ups well and attention being paid to them. Its all happening relatively silently. This is the kind of thing, this is the kind of dynamic that led the left to be absolutely blindsided in 2016 by trump selection lots of people silently on the road towards thinking, did george floyd really die because hes black . I wonder. There is that little kernel of skepticism and curiosity that could never be extinguished and in a free country will find some way of expressing itself. I think the backlash has already happened but its a silent backlash. Im going to wrap things up here. I want to thank you all for your time. Its been a very very constructive conversation. I think we covered a lot of ground and heard a lot of different perspectives that i dont think you hear a lot of other places when it comes to discussing whats been going on in the country in recent weeks. Thank you, i want to thank our viewers for tuning income i also want people to please consider subscribing to Manhattan Institute newsletters for making a contribution to our mission. We have posted both links for doing so in the comments window on your screen. Thank you again for your time everyone, be safe. Next on booktv, democratic Representative Ilhan Omar of minnesota reflecting on her life. Lyrical consultant harlan hill and Ryan Gutowski offer their thoughts on the rise of nationalist populist movements in the u. S. And abroad. Thats followed by Uc Berkeley Center for rightwing studies chair Lawrence Rosenthal who chronicles the history of the altar right and its role in politics today. For more Schedule Information check your Program Guide or visit booktv. Org. Representative ilhan omar, democrat of minnesota, has a new book out, heres what it looks like, its called this is what america looks like. Congresswoman, thank you for joining us on booktv. There are two characters in your book, baba and abe, who are they . My grandfather and father. Abe is the word we use for dad in somali and baba is the traditional word used in the middle east for father. Since i was born in his house, thats what his children called him and we continue to call him that as well. They were both father figures to me so i continue to call