Ongoing Virtual Event series. Were fortunate bringing authors and their writing to our community during these difficult times. Every week well be hosting events via zoom and just like always, on our website or sign up for our newsletter. This is an evenings event in time for your questions. If youd like to ask the speaker something, locate the q a button wherever you live where you can submit your questions. Well get through as many as time allows. If you go to the section, weve included a link to our website where you can purchase your copy of a more perfect reunion, youd like to contribute to the series in a different way, its included and greatly appreciate any and all support. And lastly, as you may know, if you participated in large gatherings lately, technical glitches may come up. We apologize in advance for that. If anything occurs well do our best to resolve issues as quickly as possible. Now, im so pleased to introduce the speaker. A journalist and novelist, some envelopes, a finalist for [inaudible] teaches at Columbia University graduate schools of the arts and previously taught at Middlebury College his nonfiction work is featured in publications, including New York Times magazine, and elsewhere. Katie odonnell worked [inaudible] she began publishing career at overlook press and worked on basic books before tonight, they will be discussing the latest book, a more perfect reunion, challenges one of the most insidio insidious through reading through American History spanning the First Constitutional Congress and reconstruction, civil rights to nationwide protests. The incremental progress americans have made in a just society. The result is a book thats elegantly crafted, and a Book Publishers weekly called a rich account u. S. History, politics and culture. Were so honored. We will now turn things over to calvin. The thank you so much. Calvin. How are you doing tonight . Thank you, katie for doing this for me. Im excited to have the conversation. And we started working on this in 2017. Yeah. And shes been invaluable in the process of making it. A joy. We started with some First Principles or assumptions that we think we can make in this space because were in this moment were having another conversation, another National Reckoning talking about race in america. Weve been doing that as we know for a long, long time. Why dont we start in the middle. Or lets start and make some things clear. So one of the things i wanted to say is that we dont have to talk about it or explain that we believe in the humanity of black americans, black people, all people of color in the u. S. We believe and we know about how Structural Racism works in this country. Theres probably some other things that you want to add to that list, calvin. A correction, we think that we know because it is the feel that storms us and so were aware of this idea of systemic racism and i want to begin this begin for people who are intelligent and dont need to be told the things you just said that racism is bad, but who think deeply and have some prior knowledge about race, about history, about american culture. And to avoid the repetition because its one that begins with the revolution itself in the years leading up to the continental congress, people realize they had a race problem and we realize that weve had a race problem again and again and again and were realizing it anew. The things that were saying have all been said before and i began the book, assuming that we know these things, that theyre on the record, that you can go back, that you can read de tocqueville, you can read douglas, you can read baldwin, read wright and so forth and those things are about race, but the question, how do we move forward is a more active question and i think some of the other conversations that we wanted to avoid. Right. So why integration . And why that word . So we talk a lot about diversity, talk about inclusion, talk about representation, we even talk about desegregation, but you are very clear about talking about integration, that that is our goal and you find it in a personal way and talk to me about that. So, it was an intuition as someone who long studied africanamerican literature, africanAmerican History. I intuit that integration was the real goal and because race makes no sense. Because race is a construction. So, what is it . What is it that racism is all about . Integration. And you go back through the record and you see thats where malcolm ends up. Thats where martin ends up. Thats where douglas ends up. De tocqueville writes about it in the 19th century, two ways people can go, wholly part or wholly integrate. Thats it and then you go styling further and further back, theres a lawyer from a boston lawyer from the 1600s who points out and as a lot of the revolutionary thinkers point out, we can end slavery, but how do we integrate these people . And thats where everyone was stuck. Where the abolitionists were stuck. You could be an abolitionist and still harbor racial feelings, negative racial stereotypes against africanamericans. You be be a liberal and still build a life for yourself that segregates you and to me, integration was not assimilation, all right . Because that reduces or flattens the black self. Not diversity because you can have a lot of things in diversity, you can put a we are the world, people gathering and say now we have diversity. Its integration. And by integration i mean making available tools of American Society to all its citizens and thats what the country historically shied away from when it comes to africanamericans. When we talk about things like the new deal or the g. I. Bill, its always, but not for them. And even here in the National Conversation people saying, sacrifice to make things better for black people, im willing to give up we dont think that its a giving up when we talk about anyone else. When we talk of european immigrants coming here, we say, theres enough for everyone. That is what we do. We create opportunity. But when it comes to africanamericans, its always this assumption that somehow a zero sum game that its somehow a competition and i wanted to push past that because there are always of these psychological barriers in the american mind, in the mind of all of those who have been who have been kocolinize or bee colonized when it comes to race. You have to go to the material conditions, the cultural conditions, the interlocking structures where race is that create race. And the economics and narratives that we learn and the things that we hear in private and then our interpersonal and intrapersonal relationships. How i think about you. How you think about me. How i think about myself. How you think of yourself, all of those places are raced and when we think about diversity when we talk about frames, postracial or color blind, you find that people want to move beyond it. 90 of the country supports principles of racism, but when you come down to those mechanisms that we know create greater opportunity for africanamericans, people stop. So why do they stop . I mean, this is weve been, as this book shows, pt first half of it really delves into the history of the country and the moments at which we have stopped. And as part of it, i think, its that we race so defines america, as always so defined america that we have a hard time imagining what this country is without it. So talk a little about that. Why do we keep getting stuck . So, i want to correct that slightly and in the beginning, if one goes back to one goes back to victorian england im sorry elizabethan england, you dont have the in shakespeare there are shades of skin color, ingredients of hair texture, but its not race in the way that we recognize it. Race is a thing that is constructed. Its constructed hand in glove with the slave state. You know, as Frederick Douglas says, anything made can be unmade and so when you ask the question, why do we stop . Youre talking why dont we unmake this . And there are two essential mechanisms, id argue, and one of them is a real resistance on the part of on the part of american conservatives and this begins in the revolutionary period. So, theres very little and it continues through the civil war and it snaps back and we are theres nothing being said in this current moment on the right that has not been said before or theyre not original great thinkers, they simply use the new tools and theyve had these from generation to generation. Its true on the left as well in a different way and because race becomes Something Like, i mean, i call it a belief system, Something Like a religion, it is the thing that shapes us, and in some cases, its very consciously used to create an american melting pot and or all of these, we have all of these people, these new immigrant groups that we did at the turn of the 20th century coming over from europe, how do you make one people of them . So, and david nassaus amusement book, and one of the one of the things that you see happening is, you give them a narrative of whiteness and how do you create a narrative of whiteness . You create these spaces where you have the price of admission, you can go to a ball game, you can go to a theater, but you see the ballpark is segregated. There are no black players there and the theater is showing minstrel shows literally and this extend to advertisement and so this is the culture itself is creating this, its giving you this narrative, racist. Degrading africanamericans and telling you you are not that and whiteness as a construct exists in opposition to that, it is not black, it is not brown, it is not yellow. And to and so to direct the question, thats hard to let go of. If thats the narrative that shapes you, its hard to let go of because even in ways that, you know, we say im not a racist. Someone did some heinous crime. Theyre looking for a final solution and they say, but were not racist. And on the left, im not racist, but you see, we have these narratives of race that are constantly reinforced. Theyre reinforced every time you open a newspaper, go to the cinema, theyre also told in private. And so we have a performance of race that we do in public for the benefit, right, because its socially unacceptable to be racist, however, we have another conversation, we have other conversations in private. And you say things, i use the david chase example here when he says to his credit, he admits it, but completely unaware of it, oh, i grew up in a family they werent what you called white chic racist, but its just the accepts that they want to take what you have. And theyre that, theyre this and everyone is growing up with that. So i guess the question then is, how do we get out of this rut . So we are for this way that we have defined ourselves, you know, since weve grown up with this. We cant we cant imagine a world beyond it so we keep having the same conversations over and over again. How do we have a different conversation . I think you have to focus on outcomes and one of the things that i mean, one of the things i was thinking about as i was writing the book was walking through walking through new york city and looking at all of the states that we would say are integrated, and then going a bit deeper and actually, its a performance were adjacent to one another and asking the question of every space in which we participate, how integrated is this space truly, and by, this, i mean, to what extent, a, is it representative of the peoples of this country . B, do what some of those people are free to be themselves, and to what degree do i almost i looking through racial frames . But also, and thats a thats an esoteric question, but you go into a restaurant, its like why are this only one kind of person in this restaurant . You go into an office and you look at the you look at the employee pool, you look at the distribution of those in position of power. Whats going well, you see, all of those are racial, racially segregated spaces and the way to move beyond that, back to desegregate all of these spaces and thats where people stop because it means going back. And its a it becomes an interlocking system. I am im the manager of the company. I increase my pool of africanamerican employees, but theyre not coming from the universities i recruit from, all right. So you just knew that. I am at the university versus and they dont have the test scores or theyre not coming from the high schools that we recruit from, so you pish it you push it back and you go well in the case of new york city, they didnt have admissions tests to get into the most selective schools. The problems in the middle schools and its always the problem is always somewhere else, and in fact, its all of these places. All right. I want to talk a little bit about how long youve been thinking about this book because you know, you were just saying, you walked through the city and you think that new york city, where we both live, is a melting pot, its an integrated city, but it is anything, but and that you move through spaces and that the word really sticks out to me. And i know that in your fiction, youve been working through some of these questions for a long time and trying to understand what a free consciousness really means. But why this book . And how did you start feeling like this is the book i need to write . Okay. Ill tell the story. The semi fiction and this has been a 209year long project and ive been writing about what it means to live in a multicultural Pluralistic Society world and also what it means to inhabit a black consciousness that is performing for a white gaze that isnt selfconscious. And deboise says the black conscious, asian awareness of itself. What does it mean to have a fictional world in which one does. As talking to very a brilliant friend who has a lot of books and he says to me one day, calvin, youre too far ahead of people. These are youre answering questions to problems people dont know they have and i sat with that and i said, whats the disconnect . And oh, i get it. And also, this frustration that i want to talk about a whole society, a whole self in my fiction and i wanted to talk about the relationships and connections between america and the rest of the world. I wanted to talk, all right, and the idea that its always been a multiracial space, always, and theres always been a black presence. I cant get there until i move past race. To look at the conversation and that we were having about race and just the real frustration as someone who grew up reading baldwin, grew up reading dubois, that were repeating ourselves and may not be saying it as well the second time, third time, as we did in the first instance. The conversations themselves are being captured and theyre being captured economically, so what do i mean by that . I mean, its a performance and becomes a performance. Weve talked about that this. Theyre necessary performances in some cases, they help people, theyre cathartic. Baldwin makes this critique either late 1940s or early 1950s about protests and how protests denudes the self, flattens the self. All youre doing is reacting against. And the self is so much more than that. I wanted to make a book that spoke to the host of those, as much heart as mind, as much mind as consciousness and to do that meant what does that mean . What does that mean to talk about these problems in a whole way . And then i came across that quote from freud in civilizations and its discontent. Lets pretend that rome isnt a physical entity, but a tactical one, one thats come into existence, ever ceases to exist, we are the layers of the theology or as you talk about your childhood, you talk about your dreams and like in the nation, all of these things exist, and race is inflicting all of these points. So if i was protesting dependence police shootings, im not talking about whole self. Im not talking about the whole society because everything is policed. And how do you move past not simply that harm to the body, but that harm to the spirit, that harm that happens every day in major and minor ways, where you see the only answer to that is integration. And it took a lot of digging. I intuited it, a lot of people intuit it and now i have the receipts, i dig through it and you go through the culture and you break down a lot of the silos a lot of the academic silos, a. If i know history i dont necessarily know literature, dont necessarily know socialology. Also we compartmentalize our talk about race now were going to talk about the race problem and after this were going to watch football. Right. Youre not going to talk about music, were not going to talk about pop culture. Right. Were not going to talk about Public Comments and physical break aways, the way our cities are organized and towns are organized. Were not talk to talk about it, well talk about the absent, the race problem. Weve learn about a language and hope that it makes us where we need to go and it never does. Does. Right. So, in investigating this in the book, you made some really you made some choices. You told us the story someone like ben montgomery, who i, in spite of having read some, not enough history, but did not know the story and i wonder if you could talk a little about his story and what it represents. I love the story of ben montgomery. And so its one of the first black columns in the country and comes into existence right after the civil war. And founders, ben montgomery, who was born in virginia, is sold down the river, is purchased by a lawyer named davis who is Jefferson Daviss brother. The president of this, it turns it from a back woods operation, the fifth or third most profitable plantation in the state. During the war,s running jefferson daves plantation as well. During the war he is winning both Davis Brothers money. Eventually he buys the plantation outright for, i think eight million in current cash and then after and during reconstruction, he loses a challenge from the very large davis clan and moves the town. He moves the town north to a place called mount bayou. But the idea, davis is fascinating to me because what a remarkable man to thrive under these conditions. The relationship that he has with these people is with the people being the davises is nearly equal. Hes still a slave, but hes respected and Jefferson Davis tried to have a patent issued for one of montgomerys inventions. And like, oh, this is exceptionalism. This is this is something that we know whereby, and something throughout the history of race. And i talked about that as a way of showing that you can have a completely racial statement and davis thought that he was or davis was a utopian, he considered himself a benevolent master and considered himself an enlightened mississippian. For his day and place in time, he was, enlightened what it means to and able to illustrate two things, the first is what it means to be enlightened is always so subjective and so socially circumscribed that i can think im enlightened and still be part of something abysmal and abject. And thats a thats always something, right, whenever we look back at history, we think, hey, im more enlightened. I dont make those mistakes, but you see, we all make similar mistakes that we dont examine because it begins to threaten the ego and the second point was when we hold up africanamerican celebrities and politicians and you say if you do these things, you can have these outcomes, these are Extraordinary People. Why cant everyone have a decent shot at an outcome . And thats one of the things i mean by integration, because part of our theater of race is holding up the exceptional, praising the exceptional and thats, you know, thats necessary, those are special people, we should celebrate special people, but what about everyone else . Yeah. And it is what we did for the and its also, you know, you spoke earlier about the need to move past race. Very different from the Postracial America that we were all living in allegedly during obamas presidency. Talk to me about the difference between those. Postracial is kind of funny for me because written about this in an essay for harpers, but you see all of these people go and they cast a ballot and they say, well, now were postracial and it is its twin to the notion of color blindness that exists on the right and it is almost though if we do this one thing or if we or if we play make believe hard enough then this problem goes away. I mean, i can cast a ballot and suddenly, were in a postracial state and the 30 of africanamericans who live in poverty dont matter. Its, okay, well whats the narrative for those people . If were postracial . And were talking about people like barack and michelle, Extraordinary People who have extraordinary opportunities who have made much of them. And dont get that opportunity, everyone isnt that brilliant, that willful. Theyre just ordinary people. What about the, like the guys hanging out on the stoop when you go to work in the morning . Shouldnt they have an opportunity . But we have postracialism says i dont have to do the work, we dont have to do the work and one of the things. One of the places that i had written this book very much about america, but there are two things, two global phenomena i wanted to highlight and one of them is nationalism, you see nationalism, these notions of the ethnonationalism. By and large european and all over the world. And people arent moving to the degrees and extent that people in this world, and certainly this country are. And so, youre given you make a nation by telling people that theyre german and this is the german flag and you should love it and right, this is the American Flag and you should love it. And if you do these things then you belong and everyone else doesnt belong, versus a country in which reality is much more complex and nuanced, and we participate in we participate in all of these shaded or overlapping states as we have all of these over lappi lappi lapping selves. When i talk about this in many ways the public spheres of our lives. How do we participate in the opportunities with the country, its citizens, as equal citizens. What you do in private, and this is also why i shy away or have little, little patience for some of the language of race because it becomes more and more esoteric, more and more esoteric and becomes more like a therapy session which admittedly might be needed and focus on outcome and focus on the things we can see, feel, touch, because thats with are the problems are. So we should we will probably move to a question soon. So i encourage people to get their questions in via the q a. I have a question for you, katy. So why you saw this book two and a half years ago, it was you saw a proposal, it was 50 pages that werent as well developed as the book. And you said, i feel a feeling about this. Like what was that feeling . What did you see . And youve worked a lot with materials, with political and sociological materials before so what drew you to this . Im always curious. Its a good question. So i think it was that i had n not ive not heard an argument for integration before in the way that you articulated it in the proposal. That you were very clear about that being the goal and that being the only pathway to a full democracy, which we have never had in this country. And i think it was partly the link between integrated integration as the goal and democracy that really struck me and i think it was partly talking to you and i remember our first phone call, we talked about the hampton and i always think about how my greatgrandfather asy a cecilion immigrant and a revolutionary thinker and fred hampton would mean something to both of you. Fred hampton meant something to you growing up in chicago and also represented so much about integration and the potential of it so i think that was probably the thing that really, that made me that convinced me, but thats your favorite chapter . Totally is, yeah. We should take some questions. Its time for questions. Hi, great. It looks like we have two questions as of right now. More questions from the audience. Im going to start with this one from debra. Who asked what are your thoughts about represent separations as a strategy to decrease wealth disparity . I think i think reparations are one lever of a more complete solution and certainly, and the way the question is framed, i think thats right. Its the only thing that it addresses is wealth. You can write someone a check and leave them alone and theyre still not integrated into the citizenry of the country. The Civil Rights Movement, the Civil Rights Movement when people started pushing for integration understood that it was in itself a kind of reparation. So theyre not mutually exclusive. I would take both. Great. Thank you. Here is a question. Your book and your your thesis is different from supportist and rather than common goals of hum humanity. Is this [inaudibl [inaudible] theres a range of arguments currently being aired, but i would argue that they tend to be reactive and theyre responding to an immediate harm. Theyre responding to a dog whistle, to a siren, to a state of oppression. Integration is active and thats the question, what must we do to complete this democracy and theres a deeper question in this book and its more global question, if we bear in mind that the u. S. Is one part of a former colonial system that encompassed the entire world or much of the world, and things function here as they do throughout much of the former british empire. As they did in india, as they did in nigeria, as they did in south africa and none of those places have yet been made whole as they did in jamaica at the question, can we heal from such a deep wound to ourselves, to our country, to our world. And are you that integration in the american case is being that fulfilling . You see the world looks to us for leadership in these questions, or it did. It looks the discourse about race in europe, in much of latin america, is patterned after the discourse here. People are happy when obama won. That would stoke a world of greater freedom. People people were protesting around the world with the black lives matter movement. This is everywhere. And the channel for us as americans in this country is to get out of the reactive stance, to stop, right, to i dont want to say ignore because you have to deal with them. But stop, sort of its excited by everything that the right does, to push buttons because they do it exact to push buttons, they do it gleefully and it keeps us in a reactive stance. It lets them control the conversation. If we that the goal the conversation is the completion of this democracy, well, you see now we have a vision. Now we have a place to go. Now we understand. All right, king said ive been to the mountaintop and thats how you get there. Related to that point and in relation to all the points. And also just kind of a lot of the questions were getting which are sorting roaming around, what does that look like when you imagine. Have a question related to protests about moving away from the language that weve been able to propagate black lives matter meant and the integration that looks like in the future . So two answers to that and again, this is a quote from king that i love and he gives this fantastic interview, one of the few color intervows youll find. A interviews that youll find, theres not a man, woman or child in this country who doesnt know what we could do to further the cause of Racial Justice in america. Thats a, frank b, we know what integration looks like, we perform under the name of diversity. In which you 87 of us have friends of another race. We know what that looks like. We work with people. We talk with people. See, a very shallow interaction and it doesnt extend to everyone, as it must in a full democracy and a fully integrated society. So, what it looks like is bringing everyone into the fold of american opportunity. After that, free people will do what free people will. And also, quite a few questions are coming in about affirmative action, which i know youve sort of talked about with diversity but i w was there were questions how do we move from affirmative action and our different communities or [inaudible] i actually think that diversity is a practical step. Affirmative action worked. Affirmative action created a large africanamerican middle class for the first time in this nations history and it was resistance to affirmative action that stopped the expansion of that middle class and began to move backwards. So, i guess the request he would be why move away from those things that work . If you go back to the Civil Rights Act 64, they addressed the areas of housing, of employment, of education and of voting. All right. All of these, like and they had solutions for all of these things. And they worked. And because they worked, they were attacked. The minute that johnson leaves office, nixon comes in ap and he says, how do i roll this back . Sort of slow walking things at the agency level. You start this resistance to busing, which worked. You create a backlash against affirmative action which works. You started to repeal the Voting Rights act, which worked. And that became that became policy under reagan, and that became if you look at things that are attacked by the right, they are those things that worked. The gutting of the Voting Rights act has been central to the roberts court, resistance to any kind of affirmative action in education has been i mean, its been a central obsession, i would argue, of the right since the beginning. And virginias like start to conveying, nontoo subtly, you cant use federal funds to bus students. And so if you look at the sight of neighborhood segregation, because we have segregated neighborhood with segregated schools and so on, so on, so forth and so much flows from there, so, i think affirmative action is fine because and i want to extend that a little, because white people got affirmative action. Because the g. I. Bill was affirmative action. News the new deal was affirmative action. And these are massive Government Programs created to create a middle class of so many immigrants. Were going to give you help going to college. Were going to make education available to everyone, a higher education. Were going to give you a loan to purchase a house and thereby build wealth. Black people were written out of all of these things. The therein lies the wealth gap. On the topic of the wealth gap, a question from jason, asks, it strikes me the only way to accomplish the goal of integration is ending of funding education via property taxes given the historical denial of the accrual of wealth relative to black people. Do you agree with that assertion, and if so, can you identify a road to getting there. Say that i dont know enough about education as a field to certainly, i mean, its intuitive that the disparate of funding play a real role, but in the attempt to equalize funding, you still have unequal outcomes. The problem is youve created special schools for black and brown people in which theyre undereducated. All right. In which they have been segregated. And so, if you integrate the schools, i would funding probably would take care of itself and everyone would start to argue for resources for their children. Those with access to those with means, those with access to education, opportunity, or advocate for their children. Thank you. Theres a question from what are your thoughts or feelings about the process of truth and reconciliation in order to achieve integration as we dig deeper as a nation to develop collective consciousness . I think thats a beautiful goal. I think thats a subtle goal. I think if you look at people where truth and reconciliation happened, its cathartic. But the real work, the harder work is i told the truth, im reconciled to my feelings, ive forgiven you, youve forgiven me, now can we integrate the schools, now can we restore the Voting Rights act. Now can we make the Employment Opportunity more widely available for people . And right, theres a resistance, of the theater of resistance is there are 30 of people who say, like, the confederacy was right and things along that spectrum but i want to talk to the people who accept those things are wrong, who feel a certain truth, are intellectually reconciled is to something, but captured by the systems of segregation and these systems of race. How do we stop talking because, as a writer, i understand how rhetoric can be used to clarify, how rhetoric can be used to obscure, how rhetoric can be a substitute for action. It happened at the work level, at the school level, happen in how you spend your leisure time. All around us, its all around us. We have gotten a couple of questions that identifies just that, a macro versus the micro. So policy versus private integration and someone was just lets talk about how do you introduce integration politically into different kind of policies but also on the topic of private integration come something that comes down to conversation. Its a couple of things and one is i want this i did to become of the political conversation and become part of the cultural conversation as well. First we have to say this is our goal, we do is to integrate, we wish to complete this democracy by bringing everyone in this country into this democracy. Lets begin with that. And then to go down the line how to do it in the space come how do i do it in this space . Theirs are things that are easily achievable. There are things that will take a couple of generations to achieve, but it has to be the goal. Other generations have moved that forward. How did the Civil Rights Movement to this . They focus not on one thing. They focus on the whole thing. Voting rights, education, employment. Employment what did i forget . Housing. And housing, right, residential segregation one of the things we talk about in the book is the ways that suburban part of the republican strategy just isnt like the southern strategy but its also suburban strategy. People will vote with republicans that dont want they wanted to be soft power. You grow up in the suburbs as a great Many Americans have come and you are just inculcated in those things without knowing it and then went to talk about gentrification, we are recreating segregation in reverse. So its gone from populations come from a segregated suburb and against do we segregate a city, an urban area. Theres a language of it, uses language of colonization when he first issued the call for people to quote move east and quote, revitalized new york. It was a revitalization for those who were segregated. All these things get move forward. It is the language of integration which we focus on the whole system. If we start compartmentalizing answer its the whole thing, we will change the whole thing. Whats our plan for education can whats a plan for housing, whats our plan for employment. Its the central plank in the policy and the stated goals of the left in this country. One more question. Im going to ask this one. You have experience teaching a german. Did you see any lessons have germany work with this past . I should be careful with this because this is crosscultural arguments with my german friends about the differences, sort of comparing football and baseball. One of the things was people are taught what the country did in world war ii was bad in a way that if you grow up in American South you are not. If you have a textbook from texas or a textbook from south carolina, you are reading about whole different American History. As long as this country is engaged in in personal truths, selective truths, which are all denial, right, its a form of denial, a form of lying. That makes it harder but you see 30 of people are going to continue to engage in that. The rest of us have to say these are the facts. This is the truth. We will not hide from it. We will not deny. It is our history. It is the edifice upon which we stand. We want to change that because we are people of free will. And magnificent agency. We can change that. I think that is a Perfect Place to end this evenings event. I want to thank you both so much for joining us and for having this amazing conversation. And again i just want to take a moment to thank both you and all of you in the audience or spend the evening with us and chewing up for authors, publishers and are credible data. Harvard bookstore. We appreciate your support now and always. Please make sure to check out the a more perfect reunion. Thank you for your time and support for spending drinking with us. Thank you edwin. Have a great meeting. Thank you. Weeknights this month were teaching booktv programs as a of whats available of the weekend on cspan2. Enjoy booktv on cspan2. You are watching booktv on cspan2, every weekend with the latest nonfiction books and authors. Cspan2, created by americas cabletelevision companies as a Public Service and brought to you today by your television provider. Host welcome to booktv and in depth. This is a Monthly Program with one author talking about his or her book, and we are pleased month to be joined by wes moore who is the author of three books, plus Childrens Book and a novel. His first book came out in 2010. Its called the other wes moore and then his book the work came out in 2015 and his most recent book is about baltimore during the arrest and death of freddie gray. It just came out five days, is what that is called. But in your book, the work,