Fellow here at the Manhattan Institute and i want to be used to know throughout the program please enter your questions on any of the platforms are watching us on and we both get them into the discussion or save them for the q a at the end of the event. I just want everyone to know thats before we get started. As i said this could not be more important or time the conversation that were going to have today, since the death of george floyd in Police Custody last month we had seen nationwide unrest. We seem protest not only here in america but internationally. Weve also seen a certain narrative take hold. It starts with the assumption that the only way to properly view George Floyd Death is through a racial lens. In fact, all encounters between police and black suspects are increasingly viewed this way. Its a narrative that assumes the behavior of derek shelburne, typical Police Behavior towards black suspects and it assumes that george floyd is a sort of black everyman in america, that what happened to him happens to black people all the time. That blacks especially 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, very little skepticism and it leaves 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, abolish prisons if theres legislation being discussed in congress that would make it easier to prosecute cops and fire them. We have armed radicals that are taken over entire neighborhoods of the major cities like seattle. That includes a Police Precinct that has been abandoned. These people have the mayors blessing in doing so. They are, do so not only making excuses for the writing and alluding but indeed cheering it on to a large extent. So whats going on, and thats the point of this event today. We have invited some panelists to talk about that, particularly interest in what they have to say because they fall within the Demographic Group in who spent 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. Lets get to what handles. I will briefly introduced in and then we can get started with questions. First up we have jamil jivani whos a lawyer and author, and who has a Nonprofit Organization aimed at helping young people called road Home Research and analysis. Hes a graduate of Yale Law School and author of the book why young man a 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 whos a Deputy Director of legal policy at the Manhattan Institute and has written widely in urban crime and policing and the criminal Justice System in general. And finally we have Coleman Hughes such as recently joined the Manhattan Institute and is a graduate of columbia university. Coleman has testified before congress about slavery reparations and hes written widely about race before any number of republicans 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. A very basic question that a think a lot of people assume that once you get your take on this and that is due we know the floyd encounter with a lease was racially motivated, that it happened because floyd is black and we make that assumption . If not why have so many people jumped to the conclusion . It sounds like a simple question but the answer is pretty complicated. The answer, shortages no, i dont think we can make that assumption because as far as ive seen theres no evidence that officer shogren harbored racial animus that motivated his actions that day which reprehensible nonetheless but i think the reason so many people have assumed that this was racially motivated is because the event it into a preexisting rhetorical structure. That rhetorical structure is built upon the assumption that policing is a system that was built to perpetuate [inaudible] when you have terrible instance of misconduct like the case of george floyd, when the opposite is white and the victim is black the question or motivation is assumed. Its considered to be a foregone conclusion. As to what some of the reasons for that are, i can only specint. I think one might be the power that weve seen that these narratives can have to try change and to obscure facts that get in a in the way of the chaa lot of people have and capitalize on these events do affect. Id like to ask you the same question, coleman. Why have so many people assumed this was a racial incident . You agree a great and mighty sg to do with fitting a narrative that maybe some activists, political types, some are 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 get killed by police in this way, but its whats reminded people that was a white man who died in very similar way under the knee of a Dallas Police officer for 13 minutes in 2016 and that was released on video and didnt spark as much outrage as the george floyd incident, which leads to your question, which is why is it that people view this is something that only happens to black people . The answer lies in a massive coverage bias in the National Media. Dozens of white people 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 to make it to national news. People are just following news casually understandably get the false impression this can think overwhelmingly or only happens to black people. In many ways its not the fault because its what the National Media has fed them. Then the question becomes why is there that coverage bias in the national league. Why have we heard about george floyd almost no one knows the name tony timpa . The answer i think has something to do with an understandable, you know, i can certainly speak for myself. I think Many Americans were raised watching and rewatching the videos of white Police Officers brutally hosing and seeking the dogs on civil rights protesters in the 60s, peaceful protesters, and that kind of mold is imprinted in many ways on the countries moral imagination and almost ingrained in our subconscious. So we see a white officer doing something to a black man, it actually hits the American Mind much differently and much more poignantly than it was all white officer in the same thing to a white suspect or a block officer doing it to a white suspect or a black suspect. Jamil, do you agree with coleman that the media plays a role here in helping people jump to these conclusions, regardless of whether all the facts have been laid out next that white, black suspect must be something fishy going on here . What role does the press play in leading people to jump to conclusions . Yeah, i mean come i do think the media does play a role. Certainly than bd helps direct our attention to some cases and not others but part of why the media has the control of that narrative is that its speaking to our reality. That reality is disproportionality and the way that disproportionately dispron our society. When people see george floyd, for example, being killed by a Police Officer it is objectively more likely that would happen to george floyd because he is black than would happen to a white person. That alone, that disproportionality is a a souri think of genuine frustration and concern. A lot of black people across america know that they are more likely to stop by the police come are likely to interact with please come more likely to have negative encounter with police that a white person. Why that is the case deserves a much more nuanced conversation than the media currently makes space for but but i do think wd to knowledge that is a reality that black people are disproportionately experiencing Law Enforcement in this sort of way. And i think the media wants to point us to certain explanation over others for why that may be the case. Lets have that more nuanced conversation. Thats part of why we wanted to have this panel. So why are black encounters with police, the rate of those encounters can why is it so much higher than with other groups . Are the Police Picking on blacks. Ill get over policing these communities . Do they have in for blacks . What explains this disproportionate number of encounters between black communities and Police Officers . Well, a big part of that is the way Violent Crime is dispersed in the city and in a given geographic area. If you live in a majority black neighborhood you are more likely to be exposed to Gang Violence comes to gun crimes come more likely to worry with your kids or make it home safe after going to school or going to visit a friends house. You are calling the cops and relying on the cops to provide some sort of stabilizing presence for community safety. And because of that black people are going to interact with the cops in a disproportionately higher rate. It is is prejudice and bias a factor . Is just like it is a factor in every other part of life. As part of how human beings think and express the world but i think the way Violent Crime is distributed in American Cities is a big part of why police are having more common interaction with black individuals than others. Okay. Ralph, jamil says racism still exists. It could be playing a role here in the way communities are policed. Congress is right now considering some reforms, including making it easier to fire cops or prosecute cops. Police are not perfect. [inaudible] central database for police that of indiscipline so they cant move to another state come join the force and hide the background and so forth. Just curious what you make of these reforms in general on principle what do 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 is talking about . Yeah, i mean, thats where the right question is. Before you entered i think we have to get our realistic picture of just how big of a problem Police Violence is. One of the problems as i see it within this broader theres been this toxic narrative particularly in the black community which is policing is an institution can be fairly characterized by unjustifiable uses of force, the majority of which are purposefully reserved for black and brown people. This is false. Please use force is extremely rare and thats true whether were talking lethal force or nonlethal force. Lethal force is used in about 0. 003 of all arrests, and thats coming from estimates from 2018 where police made 10. 3 million arrests. When it comes to nonlethal force its a generally used in less than 1 of all arrests. This is not evidence of a largescale problem and thats the first practical limit a lot of these popular reforms proposals are going to face in terms of the difference they could make which is to say because the problem of Police Violence is so overblown, theres just really isnt all that much room for improvement. Police have made incredible progress on this front over the last several decades and this is just what of the political problems is that gotten no credit for the progress. 1971 the nypd fired their weapons for the eight at times and wounded more than two or 20 people and killed almost 100. By 2016 those numbers those numbers were down to 72, twentysomething and nine respectively. None of the practice was reflected in this sort of rhetorical posture of this debate and so thats one practical limit any proposal, that any policy proposal is going to face his extent to which its going to overcome this overwhelmingly powerful narrative. The second is theres just not a lot of data behind a lot of the popular reform proposals were seeing. I do agree it is been made to difficult to fire some bad Police Officers when they misbehave in a lot of departments and that reflects some very real concerns about job security. There are ways around that that we should be talking about, and its the support for that is really just a general incapacitation argument. The same with the benefits society incapacitated criminal by imprisoning them, and benefits society to incapacitate a bad cop by taking that power away from them. But we have to do that reasonably and soberly and, unfortunately, our conversation right now just doesnt allow us to get to the point and so i am i dont have a ton of hope for the potential that these popular reform proposals have to make things better. What do you think about that, coleman . Some of these proposals are calling for collecting more data, better data, sharing more data. For instance, Different Police departments collect krein in different ways or collect data in different ways. Theres no central database where they feed information into in terms of the view of their officers, how often they fire their weapons and so forth. Theres a uniform of reporting this nationwide. Some of this legislation would move us in that direction. I know you are a data guy. I like a data. When all like to use it what im wondering if thats the real problem here when it comes to the narrative being pushed. If you had better data we wouldnt see the narrative that we see pushed out there. I would like to see more data. Do you think would make much of a difference in terms of changing the conversation were having national . Yeah, im pretty aligned wh ralph here, and so there are two things to say. One is which reforms make sense . Transparent data makes a lot of sense to me. Universal body cameras makes a lot of sense to me. Perhaps changing qualified immunity, although i can see both sides of that one, demilitarize weapons makes a lot of sense to me. But then theres this other question of how much would that address the problem of deadly shootings at unarmed americans . Here i am rather pessimistic because i think we are misunderstanding why these shootings happened to begin with. The numbers are very low to begin with and its harder to bring them lower from a low point than to bring them low from a high point. But many of the shootings happened because the american is the foremost Young Country on planet earth, which means when a cop pulled over a suspect, for example, that that cop has legitimate fear that the suspect has a pistol hidden in the glove compartment. And that means in american, unlike in say britain when someone reaches for the wallet or for their smart phone, i can is going to have a few that cant be legislated away that the suspect is about to pull a gun on him or her. 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. We can do all these 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 is unacceptable, which is that in short a shooting like some 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 the 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 very close to zero deadly shootings at unarmed americans because of the reality of being a gun country. Okay. Jamil, what i think im hearig 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 what the 9 11 calls originate. They have legitimate reasons to be there. Which gets me to this question. Is making policing the centerpiece of this National Conversation were having right now the right way to go . And if police are not the center, or policing isnt the central problem, where would you like to see the focus of this conversation . A lot of people are paying attention right now. If you think we are over emphasizing the role of police in black, sex in this country, and by every day to measure we have we are, in fact, doing that. More than 7000 black, sides last year, two 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 or cities in particular to a place where they could reasonably start reinvesting money away from lawenforcement and into proactive things Like Mental Health and social services and childcare and all these other things, its a necessity that Violent Crime is reduced. Its a vicious cycle in that respect where the problem that requires us to invest more in policing and take money from things that might address the issues require police to come into the neighborhood in the first place. Every Police Officer ive spoken to readily acknowledges that we will not simply arrest of an out of. The last 25 years come lawenforcement can have a heavy hand on crime but that will also devastating effects on families and communities at the same time. So theres a role for the communities themselves to play. A lot of black americans that ive worked with understand that theres a change in their between addressing the need to address violence in our neighborhoods and also create conditions for the police who interact with a young man less often. Where i dont think that tension is appreciated is among people who shake the narrative in neighbor to have that very real tension on the ground. If you dont have to worry when you see on the news that a shooting has happened and youre not thinking what intersection did that take place, maybe my mother or my cousin lives there, youre probably dont have the real value of police on your mind on a regular basis. Theres a broader class dimension i think to this where if you are privileged enough to not need the police, its easy to vilify them. But if you live in a situation where you need the police and you see the immediate value i think you necessarily have a more complicated worldview. Black lives matter as a committed group that has emerged to provide a voice on this issue reflects where theres a class different civic black lives matter is very out of step i would say on many issues. The leadership is, with the opinions of the average black vote in america. Black lives matter was an authentic voice for the majority of black people. I dont think biden wouldve win the democratic primary for example. I dont think you would see in polls and surveys that people do want to talk about things like family, their positive views on Law Enforcement among the average black voter and black lives matter leads to believe. Theres a rather conservative view on economics and need to create jobs and opportunities and education reform for black families. I think on the ground we already see it has a more complicated conversation appellees are not the center point. Its in i would call it an upperclass or lets say the author of the new class what would call a managerial class narrative that put lease at the center of the problem. Let me ask you a quick followup, jamil, because i know youve written about role models and guidance in these communities, particularly for young black men. The hiphop culture, that is influenced rap music and so forth. Are young black man in the wind being taught to you please with suspicion . Is is a cultural problem . I think absolutely that theres a glorification of criminality in a lot of pop culture. A lot of that popculture is big business. That makes money off of the art and expression of young black men. Its very incentivize how to think for a lot of black men to embrace criminality, lease on a culture perspective, not in your actual actions and behaviors. Absolutely i think it is a problem and i wish we held people who see their cultural role to address systemic racism to the same standard when it comes to addressing criminality. Its heartbreaking that people get to make billions of dollars a year selling fantasies and its young black men who pay a price for that. Ralph, i wanted to ask you if theres a danger here in the over focus on policing . In other words, is it not only to reduce the number of black death year . Is the dangers to do this . Could there be a backlash among Law Enforcement, and how might that look . How might that play out . I know you have written with cops and you have written a lot about policing in urban areas. What is the danger of scapegoating lawenforcement . I think the danger is twofold. The first part is that it feeds and unrealistic impression thats just not in the data, that these sort of things that we saw in the video with george floyd a regular occurrences as opposed to aberrations. That creating and feeding that impression come in my opinion, is indefensible, yes. The danger is that people believe. Thats a 2016 poll and found twice as many black responded were quoted worry more about becoming victims of Police Brutality that of gun violence, twice as many. Consider also the study published in the american sociological review in 2016 showed that highprofile cases of Police Violence lead to black residents think less likely to report crimes. The first danger really is that it creates this wall between black and brown communities which asked assad just by by talking about the violence numbers and the disparities in there, can be extremely dangerous when people are less likely to cooperate with police, less likely to call the into the neighborhoods to deal with these very real problems. But theres also the reality that police might pull back which is something weve seen happen in recent years. A lot of people would say thats just police being babies. That would be the right response if the reason for the pullback was this kind of angry, go ahead and take care of yourself kind of approach. But i think much of the pullback is real fear. I have spoken to a few Police Officers in the last week and departments around the country actually and they have all expressed just a real sense of insecurity. I dont know whats going to happen if i approach this guy. Maybe i should just lowered my risk profile here. Over the long run one of the dangers that this is going to have is that a lot of these reforms and a lot of this rhetorical posture that demonizes police is going to lead to that job becoming more physically risky and more legally risky. As you increase the risk profile of a a certain career, of a certain profession, one of the ways people tightly whether the risk is with is by considering if there are other alternative options. The more risky the endeavor becomes, the less attractive t becomes to people have better alternative options. We can into potentially doing is making policing attracted to group of people that dont have many options which means the recruiting pool is going to constitute people with lower iqs, less educational attainment, less psychological profiles and ultimately and perhaps a a radically that migt end up actually exacerbating the Police Violence problem that we abort so hard to get down to zero. And so yeah, these are real dangers and it also informed in my opinion radical and just dangerous reform proposals that pursue the policing at any cost and those have consequences. There was a woman killed in the sum of 2018 in chicago, Brittany Hills, 24 itchy skin of the street in front of her House Holding her oneyearold daughter. A car pulled up. This vulgar waved to this car and the guy in the passenger seat opened fire and hits brittany in the torso just below where she was carrying her daughter and she fell and collapsed and died in the street shielding her daughter from gun violence. That little girl will grow up without a mother now. The reason that plays into this discussion is because the person charged with her murder, michael washington, have nine prior felony convictions including one for seconddegree murder. God does how many dozens of arrests. He was on parole at the time. People ask themselves, how can somebody like that be on the . Is precisely because this pursuit of criminal Justice Reform at any cost, this pursuit of key incarceration put in there. It cost a young woman her life and no one deserves to die like that. It breaks my heart because, you know, decisive because of what you pointed out, he goes there are real dangers here which no one wants to consider. Coleman, jamil talked about the prominence of groups like black lives matter being able to drive the narrative here, and also the different perspectives. If you live in one of these communities to relationship with police versus if you live outside of these communities and are speaking from that perspective. He also talked about culture though. Why cant, white isnt culture, like behavior, black attitudes, lack habits towards police, towards Law Enforcement, why isnt that allowed to be part of the conversation . Why cant we talk about black homicides that dont involve police, like the ones ralph was just describing . Which of course are the overwhelming majority of them. Why is it so difficult to have an honest discussion about the role that black culture is playing here when it comes to incarceration rates, primates and so forth . Even though that seems to be the biggest elephant in the room. I think many people just get extremely uncomfortable, and you can feel the temperature of your own body almost rising as you enter utter the phrase black culture. But if you lower the temperature and think about it, think about what is important to discuss. Every group has a particular history and a particular culture that is shaped by that 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 be a good or be a bad pick if they behave bad, they deserve to be called out and shame 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 the police on him and 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. But when a a black person does something bad is a very different attitude people take, and he thinks they are being enlightened. They think this is a sign of their moral superiority that they dont blame a black person for doing something bad. But its actually the opposite. The only people you dont blame for doing something bad are, like children, babies and dogs. Because you understand that if they do something bad they cant be appealed to to change their behavior. So by excusing any kind of misbehavior by black people, people think they are doing the morally enlightened thing, but its actually the essence of dehumanizing. Let me follow up there with a cultural question. Because i think, coleman, when we talk about black cultural attitudes with respect to crime and so forth, what were really talking about is a subculture, certain segments of the black community, particularly low income blacks who live in poor communities, ghettos and slums and so forth, and the culture that comes out of that environment. But which gets me to my followup and thats the george floyd presented as the everyday black man, typical black person. Why do this sort of worst performers among blacks each represent all black people . Most black people are not criminals, let alone career criminals. Most black people are not drug addict. Those black people are not poor in this country. Yet its the sort of outlaw, 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 in think anytime soon. It seems to be something, and you spoke about some people feeling sort of good about themselves, that this is a way of caring about the black unity when, in fact, these individuals dont really represent the black community. Yeah, well, 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 is the route American History. That when you beat people that for hundreds of years its fairly natural for them to have a sense of identity rooted in victimhood to some extent, but 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 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 he is set to represent black culture because he was a victim of horrible Police Brutality, and 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 the other encounters police, what comes to mind . What do you think systemic racism means . White supremacy means . And should there be part of this conversation or a central part of this conversation the way some progress progressives wane it works very prominent writers, Michelle Alexander and time he see coat and black lives matter, this is all part of their narrative that black people live in in a fundamentally racist, a fundamentally Oppressive Society and thats 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 are going to keep seeing it. Yeah. 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 associated black identity with people who are struggling or may be dealing with some of the Biggest Challenges in our society. However, there is something i think very beautiful about that, which is its a christian ethic, the idea that what christ taught. What you do to me is what you do for the least among us. The idea that are successful black people who do well in her society and see some like george floyd and said that could be me. Thats a level of empathy i think america largely benefits a great deal for the question is what we do with that empathy of the empathy is important. I wish there were expectations on wealthy white people to see a white person in appellation struggling from opioids and captain thinking that could be my daughter for my nephew or my daughter. I think its important. To the question of systemic racism though, to me i think systemic racism is often a fake word that takes, places the responsibility anyone. If you say the systemic racism is no actual racists and we get to point think i can say this person has been racism this person must change or be removed from his or her position. It allows us to have a faceless kind of racism and that makes it harder to solve problems. What i think is a valuable way of thinking that systemic racism is one you can identify actual policies that actively disadvantaged people because of where they come from or what they look like. Thankfully, we live in a in a y where it is far fewer examples of that than the use of one example i can think of i know the Manhattan Institute has taken a serious look at is education policy. When you dont give parents a choice in where they can send their kids to go to school and you know that if you force people to send their children to the local school that was shaped by history of segregation and inequality and then you are making that child destined to be in an unequal setsuko that sounds like systemic racism to me. The way you fight it is you give people more choice the market and not restrictive. That is an outlook on how we deal with systemic racism that i would encourage people to adopt. Well, there are a couple questions coming in about the popularity of the defining the police are moving resources away from police, closing prisons and so forth. Jail reform. How popular are these reforms . In diesel income black communities. Or is this something that progressives assume will go over well in these communities, or that after this have activists have pushed in the name of blacks without rankandfile blacks would be on board . Theres more they are more popular know and even there were a month ago, largely because of whats on in the sort of peer pressure that puts on people to get on board the train that is all the momentum at this moment in time which is the reform train. I do think youre right to suggest that there is at least a divide within black and brown can reduce around the country where it is assumed lack and brown communities these proposals as radical as they make are good and to the people who buy into that, i would just offer a warning, which is we actually have a lot of evidence as to how things will look if we defined police. If we divert them away from the mission of crime control. We have evidence of how things look if we start to drastically lower incarceration across the state. I point you to the Brittany Hill case and the fact that in the city of chicago, the people were suspected of shooting for homicides have an average number of 12 prior arrests thats a lot of criminal injustice involved in our current policy to make our criminal Justice System even less punitive is going to have the effect of putting more like washingtons on the street and theres 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 corralling rights and other parts of the city . Do you think its a coincidence that may 31 is the single most bile that they can chicago city since 1961 when it started keeping track . Thats a clear snapshot of what we can expect if we divert police away from the communities that need the most, and the idea that there is empowerment in these things ignores the very real Downside Risk that these policies kerry. Those Downside Risk are not many be equally borne by people across the united states. When jamil says that is trusted by the fact that a lot of these activists dont even live in these communities on his behalf they are purporting to speak and i sympathize with that because homicide is extremely concentrated in the united states. Just 2 of counties account for more than 50 of all murders. If you take a city like chicago, the south and west side has a drastically different Public Safety picture than the north side of that city does. And to say that we ought to just, from the top down, place these risks on the most vulnerable populations within a country i think its just irresponsible. Coleman, well first i was wondering if you had any thoughts on use of these phrases like systemic racism and White Supremacy that just get thrown around in these conversations on the left . And i wonder if they mean Different Things to different people or if they have no real meaning at all. So if you have any thoughts on that i would like to read them. Then i would like you to talk about how floyds death is being used to push issues well beyond Police Reform in this country. I mean, we are now talking about movies that should be banned, works that should be banned. Aunt jemima and uncle ben have been dragged into this discussion. Where do you think this is headed . So to your first question, systemic racism, the term comes from a book written in 1967 by Stokely Carmichael and Charles Hamilton called black power which was the manifest of the movement. It was then called institutional racism. If you read that book what they really meant by the term was a Real Estate Agent steering a black prospective homeowner into a black neighborhood than a much more upscale neighborhood. A racially biased banker that didnt give out a loan to a black business owner. What they meant was a subtle kind of racism that is less violent than the kkk burning a cross on your lawn. In the original framing of institutional racism i i completely agree that that exists and still exists till today, much less than it was then but, unfortunately, what institutional racism has come to mean that people use today is really basically any departure from perfectly equal outcomes. If black people are 14 of the population but onethird of people in state and federal prison, thats sufficient proof for many people that we live in a systemically racist society. I probably shouldnt have two say this to the people here but thats an extremely superficial analysis of the problem. You have looked at the crime rates. You are operating on the assumption that 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 the race which ought to be the focus, in my opinion. And to your second question, im always curious if youre trying to get the aunt jemima logo changed or trying to get your local statue torn down, listen, 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 is. What this is doing is giving us a kind of a sense of having accomplished something while all of the very real questions, all of the very real problems that people on the left and right want to address, albeit in different ways, remains. Jamil, if you could pick up on that a little bit. Were talking about taking down statues, banning books and movies and so forth. You know i know a fair number of progressives, theyre smart people, they know that, you know, taking down a statue of Jefferson Davis isnt going to close the learning gap in schools, you know, or boost Home Ownership or black incomes or 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. So why the focus . Why expend so much energy on these relatively marginal things in the grander scheme of things . Yeah, it reminds me of when i was a student at yale and you know, new haven, connecticut where yale is, has one of the wealth disparities of any part of america and you know, my classmates in yale would get excited about wanting to change things like the name of one of the colleges and the universities because its associated with someone who was a bad person in history, but they wouldnt get nearly as excited about maybe making schools better in new haven so the black kids in new haven have a chance to go to yale one day. That difference in perspective puzzled me. Part of it is people wanting to feel like theyre powerful and feels more achievable to change things like the name of a college or the local pancake syrup or whether a statue is up or down. I think being reminded of your power as an activist is sometimes an appealing thing. Maybe its the achievability of some of those goals thats part of the appeal. And i also think part of the appeal goes back to the whole class thing that i brought up earlier, which i think is a really, 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 in american society, which is that, you know, someone at yale just 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 who think that race is such a controlling variable what our political agenda should look like. The truth is thats just not the case. Its unfortunate if some people dont want to recognize that. I think the example youre giving of symbolic gestures of equality, i think there are bigger fish to fry. Its a sign of the class being a bigger variable of what People Choose to spend their time on. Okay, we dont have a lot of time left and i wanted to pose a question and get an answer from each of you if possible. And it has to do with how tolerant do you think the country at large will be at this agenda being pushed by, i would say a relatively small minority of americans, progressives, leftists, activists and so forth . And right now, being indulged, i think, largely. But i wonder how long White America in particular, which is still obviously a very large majority of the country, is going to put up with it . How long are they going to nicole jones rewrite American History by telling us it sounded on slavery, how long are they going to let people tell them, which movies they can watch, which books they can read, which words they can use . You know, is there going to be a coming is there a backlash thats going to come at some point from White America in particular . Id just like to get each of your thoughts on that. Maybe you could start, well i think if i were answering that question just based on recent history, you know, typically like post1968 where i think there was a lot with the riots there, sort of gave rise to Richard Nixon in lot of the kind of law and order politics that animated our approach from the 70s to the 90s, i would say the answer to the question is yes, i think we can expect a backlash. I think on the ground its din today. Exponentially more pressure being brought to bear on White America in particular that im not so sure theres going to be a willingness to fight back very at least very loudly. So im not im not convinced that there will be a backlash this time around. What i do think will happen is that people will start to very quietly kind of retract from interactions that are more fraught, retract away from cities and you know, that and that can be really devastating. The kind of disinvestment that will follow that could really hurt black and brown communities in particular. And i think can make for future conversations in our country that require us to kind of be on the same page, more difficult to have and ultimate i will, i think it just kind of really tears at the fabric of our nation that is built on integration and intermingling at a high level and i worry about what that portends. How about you, jamil, coming backlash or statues of Thomas Jefferson coming down . Well, i dont know i dont think well have a violent backlash or anything like that, but i do think that when you see more and more group think which is occurring on this issues especially at institutional and managerial level of our society i believe there will be demands of alternative ways of thinking about these. Tucker carlsons ratings have been going through the roof because people want to hear someone that says Something Different. And i think thats where the backlash will come from saying i dont want to hear the group think, who has Something Different to offer me and lets hope that the people who are offering an alternative offer a positive one. Well, thats interesting, you mention Tucker Carlson in the news lately. His ratings are up, but having trouble keeping advertisers, which tells you corporate america. [laughter] might be a little skittish here even if theres a large majority of other americans who want a straight shooter. Yeah, and its just not Tucker Carlson, its anyone who is saying a word mildly skeptical to the black lives matter narrative to totally dismissive of it is having an upswell in attention being paid to them. And its all happening, you know, relatively silently. You know, this is the kind of thing this is the kind of dynamic that led the left to be, me included, to be absolute blindsided in 2016 by trumps election. Its just, you know, lots of people silently on their own time thinking, did george hood really die because he was black . I wonder, because theres skepticism and curiosity that can never be extinguished and can find some way and i think the backlash already happened and, but its a silent backlash. Im going to wrap up here. I think its a constructive conversation and weve covered a lot of ground, different perspectives i dont think you hear in a lot of places when it comes to discussing whats going on in recent weeks. Thank you again, i want to thank our viewers for tuning in and people please consider describing the manhattan newsletter, making a contribution to our mission. We have posted both links for doing so right in the window, comments window. Thank you for your time and be safe. Book tv, a preview of whats available every weekend on cspan2, wednesday beginning at 8 00 eastern, several programs with the late author and columnist william f buckley, jr. Hillary clintons book it takes a village, thursday, a line of books written by former first ladies. And finishing out friday, books authored by american president s, including jimmy carter. Today treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin testifies before the Coronavirus Crisis subcommittee on the state of the u. S. Economy in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. Watch live at 1 p. M. Eastern on cspan. Online at cspan. Org, or listen live with the free cspan radio app. Hello, everyone, thank you so much for joining us tonight. My name is benjamin, on behalf of the bookstore im so excited for this event, discussing the latest book more perfect reunion the future of america and conversations. Tonights event part of