Popular podcast in america, Michael Knowles. Following the conversation between Mike Gonzalez and Michael Knowles we have conversations, if you think of something you would like to ask either or both of them please submit that question in the questions box. Join us with what you are tuning in for him. I want to introduce a special guest, Heritage Foundation president , mister kay coles james. Welcome to the Heritage Foundation and our virtual book launch of the plot to change america how identity politics is dividing the land of the free. I want to thank you all but especially Michael Knowles for joining us today. We are honored to have you with us. We are so proud with Mike Gonzalez and the time and research he put into this tremendous book. Mike isnt afraid to talk about what is happening to our beloved country and call out those who buy into the destructive identity politics. Mike is often at the tip of the spear at heritage when it comes to these issues. It isnt because hes a true patriot because he doesnt want to see our beloved country go any further down this treacherous road. It was only in the 1960s when we were struggling to desegregate this country, courageous whites and blacks were working to bring racists together and ensure that america lived up to its promise of liberty and justice and equal treatment for all people. We had our first black, our colors and black ground and highest ranks of American Business and government. And yet our young people are coming out of colleges and universities be leaving grievance politics, identity politics, the road to justice and equality when instead it will bring us right to a place where this nation is looking at a time in our history when we have never been more disrupted. This book couldnt be any more timely with the riots and distraction of statues and monuments and the rewriting of American History in the classroom. The American People need to wake up to the insidious notice of identity politics. They need to understand what this costs our society and they need to understand what it instills in our children and grandchildren if we stand by and allow it to continue. We cant let that happen and we wont let that happen so thank you for writing the support book and thank you for being here, Michael Knowles, to talk to us about that. An honor to be here at the Heritage Foundation. It is a pleasure to be joined, to talk about this book the plot to change america how identity politics is dividing the land of the free. I dont want to accuse you of anything. When i see roving bands of anarchists tearing down stages of the Founding Fathers of this country using the rhetoric of identity politics some of whom are selfproclaimed marxists i cannot help but wonder if you hired this group of people as a Marketing Tool to promote the thesis in this book because it seems this is playing out in realtime all around us. Thank you for being here. I am happy my book, my ideas are getting out. I did not hire these people but everything you see today you put your finger on it. Everything we see today from the anarchy in portland to the project, the blm organizations who robin dangelos socalled antiracism Training Sessions, all of this is at the heart of why i wrote my book. Little did i know when i was writing a year ago that we were going to have the summer of 2020 what im beginning to call the summer of hate is a consequence of the things weve done to ourselves. Host you trace identity politics to the 60s, the summer of love. A lot of people were skeptical of that designation at the time but your description is apt, the fruit of those ideologies led to the summer of hate. There is one moment early on in the book that was a little surprising to me but i think you are absolutely right. When people think of identity politics and all the affiliated pathologic, political correctness, intersection now any, use whatever term you like, when we think of it a lot of people consider that to be a sort of eccentricity in american politics, that we need to talk about the budget or foreignpolicy. You say is much more specific and more damning. You say identity politics has become our national hardware. What do you mean . Guest it is the software of our culture everywhere around us. We have become divided into groups based on race, ethnicity, sex, sexual orientation, gender, even disability status. Anything that composes a degree of victimhood that can be used to claim respects or attentional rewards or justice, from the moment you enter school, your daughters, principally saying the rest of you to high school when our kids are made to read howard then which does a wonderful job not of telling history because it is bad history but instilling grievances, installation of grievances is at the heart of this, needs to work that way. The University Campuses have been taken over by this but it leans over to the workforce. Hr telling people to put a sign on their desks that say i am an outright, are we in a time of war . We are basing it as i say, it is i have come to believe it is the gender issue of our times. Host not every group gets to claim identity politics grievance status. Even though is you see on the camera i have relatively swarthy skin from my sicilian heritage it seems i would not qualify. Many other people in this country do not qualify so what is it . How does one get to claim this privilege of being considered oppressed . Guest we decided in the 60s to siphon off a group of people and call them minorities. We havent done this before. We had never done this before. We could have done this in the 1920s when we had a huge number of syrians were lebanese or sicilians in your case or jewish people from eastern europe, who could be identified, could have siphoned them off as minorities but chose not to. We chose to say lets have all the immigrants coming in join the melting pot and become americans through assimilation. In the 1940s social scientists were believed to associate in the essential victimhood have collective discrimination with a minority and the term minority as we know it today is first defined in websters 1961 in the definition we know of today that has an association with victimhood. We divide these people into minority groups, they have a sense of grievances of victimhood and that is what we use to say the country is systemically racist, institutionally racist so we must change the institutions and structures in the system itself. Host you mention the social scientist, the institution. In the popular imagination identity politics is something that was developed from the grassroots. People spontaneously taking to the streets and coming toward a kind of consciousness is a group of people and demanding their rights in the face of oppression. That is the official leftwing narrative by the people pushing identity politics. You say the origins are different. You say the origins are more specific, involves a small group of people, and it was highly intentional. Which is it at who is behind it . Guest it is not a grassroots effort, it was driven by elite activists, different groups of people who formed a bureaucracy to create these groups who promoted this at universities. In the 1960s the Ford Foundation gave a great deal of money to the researchers to go in, mexicanamericans, thinking back, horrible news to the activists, mexicanamericans did not feel they were minorities or victim group, they didnt know they were facing discrimination. At the individual level at this agency, this is bad news for ucla researchers which undertook a process to instill, the Ford Foundation in the late 60s, the Ford Foundation, the Mexican Health fund, they support this group creation, behind this, the thinking of the Frankfurt School to replace the metanarrative, the hegemonic narrative. The American Dream obviously we are not a perfect country by any means which can be perfectible to be improved. What we see them play over again on people who create ethnic groups who create identities. Host you mentioned antonio gramsci, the most significant philosopher, including karl marx himself. We had a marxist at the beginning. Into critical theory and modern university. Today you have people claiming identity politics describing themselves as trained marxists, leaders of the blm organization. The Common Thread seems to be karl marx, people who are avowedly common list communist. But that is a crazy Conspiracy Theory, you are seeing communists everywhere. The red scare. Is this a Conspiracy Theory . Guest Antonio Graham ski is the one who comes up with the idea, the fascists send you to prison to stop his brain working, bad idea. A lot of thinking in prison, he begins to think in the late 20s and 30s why havent revolutions happened . On leave they have succeeded, backwater of europe in 1719 but all the revolutions have failed since 1848, there is no italian soviet, in italy, and and and the are all the institutions. We need to destroy the hegemonic narrative. What we are seeing, the creator of the 1619 project, this is about repressing the narrative of americans. The refinement comes from the Frankfurt School, writes a book in 1937, critical theory is an unremitting attack north to west. Martin j who really good book on Frankfurt School notes almost ignored, completely ignored the soviet union, even at the height of the famine and all the massacres but an unremitting attack on western norms and american norms and you have critical theory, has infiltrated every faculty. You have to study critical legal theory, all of the study started in the 60s. About replacing the narrative. Angela davis, the black panther member of the communist party, at brandeis, she says ethnic studies are the intellectual arm of the revolution. She knows what you are saying. We should take it seriously when we see what is happening, echoing the same phrases these neomarxists and cultural marxists in the 50s and 60s. Host you outlined greater detail in the book you can trace this intellectual evolution that overflows into crazy politics, you did not dedicate a chapter to black identity because of the unique role of black people in the United States, legal slavery, tim crow and everything, what you point out is identity politics attempts to conflate other minority groups as they continue to be created day by day with the black experience in america. As a matter of chronology how do these minority groups develop . We could begin with hispanic or latino or the new term, latin x, they dont and how to pronounce that, i wont even try. Your last name is gonzalez. What is the hispanic identity . People did not buy into it when it came out, why does it stop . Guest this analogizing of the black experience, they did it on purpose. The National Organization for women and other feminists in terms of jane crow at the time, making a clear association, thurgood marshall, in this decision, our experience is unique, i say in my book the plot to change america how identity politics is dividing the land of the free am i going to have a chapter on African Americans because of the unique experience. I dont think it is healthy to fill their hearts and minds with that but i do think slavery happened, jim crow happened, segregation happens, i fight so hard because i dont going back to the era of plessy versus ferguson, separate but equal, not even slowly but rapidly going back with identity politics. The hispanic model is a clear one, in the late 40s with Los Angeles City council, organized mexicanamericans, fred ross, did not think they were organized enough into a voting block, the kind of movement that comes in, the leaves this is considered race, mexican as a nationality, there are many mexicans of european origin, mixes thereof, so they have the association and begin to realize we want to expand this coast to coast, bring cubans, Puerto Ricans in the northeast and that is when they come up with the idea of hispanics which the activists begin almost to intimidate the bureaucracy into creating the bureaucracy throws in the towel in 1877, the office of management and budget comes up with policy directive, the hispanic identity introduced into the census of 1980, the first census that has hispanic identity and Asian Americans which is another huge benefit, americans of different origins, and and and and people listening to this will be surprised, concocted by the bureaucracy, Christina Moore wrote, wrote about this. And expect this identity of having existed always, to create another Identity Group and a group of americans, the development of nina which im pleased to say we have collective amnesia about nina because it was a new Identity Group the left tried to foist on us during the Obama Administration that never took off. A win for the good guys, that there is not one more grievance group. As you point out in the book for the vast majority of our history arabs were considered white. You name a number of wellknown arabs including mitch daniels, former governor of indiana or people of middle eastern origins, steve jobs, not particularly oppressed on the basis of his race. That raises this question of White Privilege which we hear about today. Bestselling books are written about, you cant take a job or go to a School Without attending a Training Session where you are castigated for White Privilege but raises the question, if one receives a special privilege by virtue of being white, why are activists clamoring to remove their designation as white and create the new identity politics . There seems to be a problem. Gives lie to this idea of White Privilege. Jd vance wrote a very good book four or five years ago, describing scotch irish, when he got to yale he was unaware what was expected culturally and what he tends to use or anything like that. I quote the activists at the Census Bureau including a radical palestinian activist, the idea of the Census Bureau brought them to the office in 2015 to advise on the creation of mina, everything you want to know about this, an agency captured by the left. They were very clear about when they were discussing what to do, to model it on hispanics. Not asking for the mina category but a professor of ethnic studies said once they understand there will be benefits in terms of racial preference or hiring practices, should right away how this is, using these racial purposes as a gateway drug to identity politics. It shows also you could derive benefit from proving you are not white. Host you might call it oppression privilege. It has become inverted. Linda began to wherever he job which she now wears in public appearances because without it she was just another white woman and that was not advantageous politically. The woman question comes up as well. In addition to racial categories there are sexual categories for identity politics. What struck me as strange, women make up the majority of the population, women make up in America Today the majority of College Students. How is it the majority could become an aggrieved minority . Guest as i said in the 60s with the second wave feminism they identified women, analogize the situation of black americans is unique for black women it used the jane crow analogy, a new iteration of this, they are being moved to the oppressor class, theres this new term karen that comes in, people are marking women as karens which is really bizarre phenomenon to be happening and i havent read her book, robin dangelos book, chapter called white womens fears. So i think there was women are classified now, i believe that this could be happening, being moved into the category of white women that is. Host i have not mastered sufficient masochism to read the white fragility book which is popular as is this term karen. The term karen though it is in common use is a racial slur referring specifically to white women, it is a socially acceptable racial term. You see this evolution, this change in what racial categories are protected, what sexual categories are protected. There is a disagreement between the new feminists and the old feminists. The second wave very much believed in biological sex, in i woman hear me roar, now the category of sex has been completely obliterated with major news agency the referrer the other day to individuals with a service, you might say i women hear me or has individual with a cervix, hear me roar which would seem to create a contradiction, problem within that particular identity category. I am searching for any hope that we can recover from this identity politics nightmare. Is there a chance because of this contradiction, identity politics will collapse in on itself or will it require a greater effort to rid ourselves of that problem . Guest i am hopeful. The reason i wrote my book the plot to change america how identity politics is dividing the land of the free is to shed light on what has happened. Americans need to be aware what happened, how they did it, why they did it before we can think of ways of reversing what has happened. At the end of the day, these are at heart marxist ideas, the conflict is a purely marxist concept of life being conflict between groups and power dynamics, but at the end of the day marxists set out to do the impossible. It is an attempt to change human nature. Human nature is unchangeable. If you read the odyssey and the iliad, ulysses and achilles and agamemnon, just like us, they lived thousands of years ago but had the same places and virtues we have. Human nature is unchangeable. When they failed to change human nature marxists had to pull back from coercion if not violence. That is a feature, not a bug, of marxism. Every marxist system that ever existed has had to rely on coercion and the American People are too attached to freedom, too attached to their liberty to put up with coercion that much longer. You see the pushback against cancel culture, hate speech, these are coercive leaks being used to silence dissent. My book is to explain as plainly as i can how these groups came about and start to change how we talk about this, change the conversation and think of it differently in a more informed way and that will be the beginning of the process of solution. I am optimistic that this can be resolved. Host you hit on a central consolation here, thus all consolation conservatives have in Popular Culture and politics, reality reasserts itself in the end. Might take a long time, 70 years of the soviet union, but because you cant change human nature, that reality will reassert itself. As you note artfully, people come to realize the identity categories by specific individual people that you name in the book. They dont describe them, the reality, one issue of the gender ideology. A man is not a woman, men and women are different. No matter how many times a professor at a liberal college insist otherwise they know that is not the case for various Identity Groups particularly hispanics was no matter how many times they are told you must go by hispanic, must go by latino, latin x, i dont think that describes me. I would like to close before we move on to the and a to the point you made in the beginning and a point you make in the first chapter of the book which is a constant mantra, diverse city is our strength, stopping ourselves into smaller Identity Groups will make america stronger, more grievance will make america stronger, to look at the statute toppling and discover that probably is not the case. We have a motor identity in america, we come together and that unity in the United States is our strength. Have people woken up to that specific issue . The argument donald trump is made the we are all patriots, theres common good in america. Even if we remain hopeful we have a ways to go. Before reality reasserts itself. Guest it is not just that people are being herded into groups but congresswoman late last year if you come to the table as a member of a group you have to speak for that group. If you are not going to represent that group, dont come to the table, i have 2 think and speak by the hispanic category. What makes this country possible, you have sicilian ancestry come together, there is an american creed and American Culture we can adhere to and have loyalty to, process your thing and smoke cigars which i do but this is something america is exceptional and unique. I lived in 7 other countries at least a year and other countries many months. This country is exceptional in that it takes people from all over the world and says you are an american, here is what we do. At the end of the day we have solved all our problems, slavery, we solved segregation, we solved jim crow by going back to the ideals of the revolution, all men are created equal. The foundational ideal, all men are created equal. When lincoln fought against slavery and said jefferson did not need to put in those words. He put in for somebody like me to come along. Martin luther king listened to the mall and says we are here to cash a promissory note, the promise that all men are created equal. We have to go back to live by those ideals. When we have aspired to that, we have solved our problems and by aspiring to this ideal we will solve identity problems. Host building off of the equality principle we should acknowledge that you quality of our viewers and take some questions and there are lots of questions from the audience so we will get into that. Guest you are right. There are a bunch of questions which we probably wont have time to get to them all but we will get to as many as possible. The first one that i will read is from jim scott in centennial, colorado. He asks with the media, woke corporations, professional sports leagues, university is and every other powerful institution, how does the average person fight against this . Guest i dont want anyone to lose their jobs but we need to draw inspiration from people who live behind the iron curtain in the soviet union who did speak the truth and face the consequences. They are remaining standing when they play the National Anthem. They are the ones who have courage. They left the court when they played the National Anthem. That is not courageous. To be that one man, the picture of people saluting hitler and one man with his arms folded, that is the courageous one. When your Company Comes along and tells you it will be another struggle session, use prudence but pushback and say what is happening . We have to summon up some courage or lose your jobs. We need to create some space for liberty, im reminded of this irony that the left tells us there is institutional racism, institutional oppression. The left controls every Major Institution in the United States. They control mainstream media, hollywood, big tech, they control administrative government higher education, lower education, the list goes on and on, institutional racism or oppression whose fault would that be . The people who run the institution. You bring up the point about the brave basketball player who stood up for the National Anthem when everyone else was taking a knee. That persons name was jonathan isaac. Im not a big nba fan but a lot of people never heard his name before and there is a consolation and a worthy lesson even though this is a relatively unknown player, lebron james, what some people call a silent majority, not conservative or republican but the silent majority of people, feel censored, who feel intimidated by a highly ideology iced institutional environment pushing back and reward people who fight against it, kids will ask me should i speak up in class or should keep my mouth shut and get a good grade and later tell people my views and it seems to me integrity is a habit. Honesty is a habit. Dont want anyone to lose their jobs, we want people to be wise and innocent but these habits have to be practiced and it wont get easier tomorrow, when you are out of college and have a job and a family to support, wont be easier ten years from now or 20 years from now, courage is a virtue, a prerequisite for all the other virtues but if you show a little courage there are a lot of people, more than most people think who will reward speaking the truth in an oppressive environment. Guest talking to College Students and interact with your audience every day, talking to average people who are trying to navigate this, how does the average person talk about what is going on in laymans terms and explain to their neighbor why it is so dangerous. Laymans terms are the key. So much of what is in my caps book and what is in the plot to change america how identity politics is dividing the land of the free is based on the technical jargon a big had leftist academics going back 100 years to the point if one is to engage in a conversation in a Critical Race Theory class we have no idea what we are talking about. If we speak in plain terms that is going to be a much easier way to communicate to people and the nice thing is because you have this highly ideology iced of just culture. The idea of political correctness, a complicated polysyllabic euphemism, basic obvious things. I would engage on this level, and read the capital. I could never get through that. It is true of a lot of people. Many people in this country see that something is off, something isnt right when the statues are toppling, that is simple enough. One thing i encourage is going back to older things, the lefts trick is to pretend all their political philosophy is science so it will be the science of history or the social sciences. They use the term science so it is impossible to disagree with them wherein authentic politics and political philosophy there is debate between eternal questions we have debated since the don of civilization and that, topics are open for debate. You dont need to have 15 letters at the end of your last name and credentials from all the top schools in order to engage, we the people still have a voice at least for now. One thing i want to ask, my son going to college said when you talk about critical theory, make the case, youre not talking about Critical Thinking, the opposite, critical theory is the opposite of Critical Thinking because they tell you what to do, making theories about making a puppet of you. The other thing i want to add is if anybody wants to keep up with this, Michael Knowless show, great podcast, give thanks for that. A question from daniel thompson. Did you include a section on African Americans unique history, why is it you think black leaders have not fought back against all of the invented groups hijacking their movement . Very good question that i have asked myself. To create these groups, the Civil Rights Movement needed to have a wider constituency, africanamericans, 12 of the population. Leaders think their constituency, on behalf of all people. The needs of leaders, rank and File Americans pretty different, when you have, somebody speak on behalf of people of color or minorities but this is not doing any good to africanamericans. Any thoughts on that. The point mike makes, the key here, the black identity, you cannot as mike analogize other groups experiences for one simple reason which is a huge number of black people in America Today trace their ancestry back to slave ships against their will. That is a categorically different thing from people whose ancestors chose to come here and that choice. The idea your greatgrandfather decided to come to this country in search of a better life, a free act of will shows how preposterous this is to generations later can try this grievance at the country that your ancestors sought out, the country that gave ones ancestors a place to build a better life. Several questions regarding what we do about the insertion of identity politics at all levels of education. I know you dealt with this in montgomery county, harvard and many different places so what advice would you give k through phd for kids in school . Go to the meetings of the board of education and make a pest of yourself. Ask tough questions. My wife doesnt like to come with me to meetings, you have to ask why are you spending money on such things as cultural response teaching which the proof that it works and yet you are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars that could be spent on books or computers and so forth. On the policy recommendations i give in my book, ways to get the government out of a category creation business, government bureaucrats announced not anthropologists or biologists, creating categories and the second one which is a corollary, to get out of benefits for people to adhere to this category. Once we stop this, affirmative action which is racial preference is unconstitutional and is running out of time. Senator oconnor said we would approve this for 25 years. That is coming up soon in eight years but next time, chinese and indian americans, next time it comes before the court this is clearly a violation of the equality under the law. Parents should be involved in their childrens schools and go to School Board Meetings and look at the curriculum. One thing that is important is dont underestimate how damaging identity politics can be for Young Children when you find identity politics in the schools. There is nothing worse you can tell a young child than you cannot succeed because of your skin color or Sexual Identity or whichever identity category you prefer. In the 1990s, selfesteem went too extreme, we told kids they could do whatever they want, they are always wonderful, they got participation trophies and a plus on every assignment and now it is in the opposite direction, we tell half the population you will not succeed, more than half the population you will not succeed, you will not be able to do anything, give up, dont even try, the worst message, the opposite of what they should be doing. To teach us to grow, grow wisdom and tame our passions and make of us responsible people who can achieve. Identity politics creep in, and identity categories, it can be profoundly damaged for your childs life. Any parent comes across any idea that punctuality or hard work or use of reason are a function of white, go back to the teacher and say do not teach this poison to my son but this is racist stuff. You really have to stand up and say this is poison. What separates us is use of the reason so do not say it is a white thing. I cant believe we are saying this in 2020. Fight against that really hard. There was an argument on twitter whether to close to actually equals 4 and people were serious about it. David from canada asked why did corporations and Foundations Fund this movement . What do they get out of it . People support it. Great question for our neighbors to the north, americas hat. Republican party in a practical partisan realm and the conservative Movement Made a big mistake for several decades which is in the deal to go after the ever expanding size and scope of government. We give Corporate America of pass and they developed this reputation as promoters of Corporate America. Corporate america is the problem, more than any other group with the exception of education is leading this leftward lurch in america embracing identity politics and hurling us off the cliff with nonsense and oblivion. Why are they doing it . Corporations had one goal, to follow the almighty dollar and is much easier when you have concerted, contrived activist groups which are wellfunded and highly organized as mike describes in the plot to change america. When youve got those highly motivated groups petition, threatening boycotts, making a couple dozen phone calls that would push corporate policy because they dont want to deal with it. They will save a little money in the long run. Why not capitulate and we need to hold those corporations to account. Theres been a debate since the rise of donald trump and over the last four years over globalism. Corporations dont have much loyalty to the United States, they have transnational loyalty or in the case of the nda, more loyal to china than the United States and that is a big problem. I dont blame corporations for following the almighty dollar but we have to do more to hold them to account because even if we managed to rein in the administrative government and by some miracle we were able to rain in the educational system you would still have this major power for shaping public opinion, Corporate America and if we dont get them on the right track we will not be able to escape this scourge of identity politics. We have time for one more question and that will come from John Bergdahl for Mike Gonzalez. Talking about identity politics, we have a shared american identity. How do we restore that . We need to go back to teaching civics. Civics as it used to be known, who were the founders, what were their strengths . They often argued against each other. What is natural right or natural law, what makes america exceptional is we are the only country to derive our legitimacy from natural law and natural right. What do these things mean. We have free government in that only high risk can take away so how does that system of government work, how do you become cynically engaged . Civics now is taught as participation, go on the street, you could get extra points that civics class, if you march in washington think of us. Demonstrate in front of the supreme court, to the old traditional understanding of how the civic american sees his or her government but the hard job of identity politics, the position of our country. We are a country made of different people, we to drive pleasure from knowing our background, we enjoy grandmas cooking and Family History and other thing which is americans which is a wonderful thing to be and we are lucky that america extends this right whether somebody like me not born here. It is the way out. It is not going to be easy but you got to do it or we lose our freedom. I believe it strongly. Final thoughts . People should read the book. Not just a plug for mike. If you are absolutely right, we will lose our freedom as we come to understand our freedom and cherished it all these centuries we will do that. We lose the sense of natural law, allow it to multiply. One of the most important take aways in the plot to change america how identity politics is dividing the land of the free is this didnt happen by accident. This wasnt some spur of the moment grassroots campaign. There were specific individuals we could name going back hundred years who plotted this and who affected this campaign to dismantle america, the fruit of that is all around us, the statue of Thomas Jefferson and George Washington are falling all around the country. That was not an accident. That was intentional and if we want to save our country, save our cherished institutions and freedom, the nation itself, that isnt going to be by accident, that will be an intentional act, have to muster the courage to do it or you wont be able to do that unless you know how it happened in the first place which is why i encourage people to read the plot to change america how identity politics is dividing the land of the free. And go to the Michael Knowles show. This has been, i cant think of a better way to have spent the last hour. And your mind and work, and and i want to reiterate two things before we go. First we purchased the copy of the plot to change america how identity politics is dividing the land of the free. If you have already purchased one consider buying another one is a guest, go to heritage. Org theplot. Subscribe to both of Michael Knowless podcast, the Michael Knowles show and the verdict with ted cruz. There are some really good episodes coming out right now. With that, everybody, thank you for joining us. Have a wonderful tuesday. We will sign off, thank you so much. Thank you, michael. Booktv on cspan2 has top nonfiction books and authors every weekend. Tonight at 8 00 eastern been watch programs with the late author Christopher Hitchens whose books include no one left to lie to, the missionary position at the trial of Henry Kissinger and on sunday at 9 00 pm eastern on after words, Yale University professor edward ball on his book life of a klansman which looks at White Supremacy through the lens of his greatgreatgrandfather, a member of the ku klux klan in post civil war louisiana interviewed by cheryl cashin, author and georgetown University Professor of law, civil rights and social justice. Welcome to todays Virtual Program at the commonwealth club. Founder and president of she the people a National Network dedicating to elevating the political power and voice of women of color. Im so proud to be the nominator of this