Riots in the police, thank you for joining us for this important and timely conversation. My name is jason riley and im a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and i want the viewers to know that throughout the program please enter your questions on any of the platforms that youre watching us on and we will either wrapped some some into the discussion or save them for the q a at the end of the event so i just want everyone to know that before we get started. As far as i said this was of course not be a more important ormore timely conversation that were going to have today. Since the death of george floyd and in Police Custody last month, weve seen nationwide unrest. Weve seen protests not only here in america but internationally. And weve also seen a certain narrative take hold area it starts with the assumption that the only way to properly view george floyd step is through a racial lens. In fact, all encounters between police and black suspects are increasingly viewed this way. Its a narrative that assumes a behavior of derek showing as 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 as to black people all the time you that blacks essentially leave the house each day worried about having a violent encounter with police. The media has joined in this narrative which faces very little pushback, very little skepticism and leaves us with the impression that the biggest problem is in black America Today is the police, 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 the fund the police, abolished prisons. Theres legislation being discussed in congress that would make it easier to prosecute cops and fire them. We have armed radicals that have taken over entire neighborhoods. Of a major city like seattle. That includes the police precinct. That has beenabandoned. And these people have the mayors blessing in doing so. Their commentators are not only making excuses for the writing and the looting but indeed, cheering it on area to a large extent to whats going on here . And thats the point of this event today. Weve invited some panelists to talk about that. Particularly interested in what they have to say because they fall within the Demographic Group and whose name all ofthis is happening. That is, they are young men of color. Theyre supposed to be the biggest beneficiaries of whats being advocated in the wake of George Floyds death so lets get to our panel. Ill briefly introduce them 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 hes a graduate of Yale Law School and the author of the book why young men . The dangerous allure of violent movements and what we can do about it. And i hope we get a chance to talk about that book. Our next panelist is ralph, rafael mangual, director of legal policy at the Manhattan Institute and has written widely on urban crime and policing and the criminal Justice System in general. Finally we have cold and use the 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 for any number of publications including the New York Times and wallstreet journal. So lets get started with the questions woman area and i thought i would start with you, ralph. And with a very basic question. I think a lot of people are assume i wanted to get your take on this and that is do we know that the floyd encounter with police was racially motivated . That it happened to cause floyd is black . Can we make an assumption and if not why have so manypeople jump to that conclusion . So it sounds like a simple question but i think the answer is prettycomplicated. The answer, the short answer is no, i dont think you can make that assumption because as far as ive seen theres no evidence that officer show been harbored racial animus that motivated his actions which are reprehensible regardless of what his views on race are but the reason so many people have assumed that it was racially motivated is because the event fits into a preexisting rhetorical structure. Rhetorical structure is built upon the assumption that policing is a system that was built to perpetuate that. So when you have a incident of misconduct like the case of george floyd, when the officer is white andvictim is black , the question for motivation is assumed. Its considered to be a foregone conclusion and you know, as to what some of the reasons forthat are , i can only speculate i think one might be the power that weve seen that these narratives can have. To drive change and to obscure facts that get in the way of the changethat a lot of people have been capitalizing on these events to affect. Lets asking the same question . Why have so many people assume this was a racial incident and indeed, i agree with ralph it might have something to do with fitting a narrative that maybe some activists, some political types, so more progressive commentators want to push area. Absolutely. I agree with ralph that the short answer is we dont know if it was racially motivated. That sounds crazy to people who havent been paying attention to the full range of people who get killed by police in this way. But its worth reminding people there was a white man named tony timbo who died in a similar way under the knee of a Dallas Police officer for 13 minutes in 2015 that was released on video and didnt park as much outrage as the george floyd incident. Which you know, which leads to your question which is why is it that people view this as something that only happens to black people and the answer lies in the massive coverage 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 tories just die in a black hole of local news. They never escape and make it to National News so people who are following the news casually understandably get the false impression this kind of thing overwhelmingly or only happens to black people. And in many ways its not their fault because its what the National Media has fed them. And then the question becomes why is there that coverage by its in the National Media . Why have we heard about george floyd but almost no one knows the name tony timpa and it has to do with an understandable sense that americans, i can speak for myself but i think Many Americans were raised watching and rewatching the videos of white Police Officers brutally holding 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 countrys moral imagination and almost ingrained in our subconscious. So when we see a white officer doing something to a black man , it actually hits the American Mind much differently much more poignantly than if we saw a white officer doing the same thing to a white suspect or a black officer doing it to a white suspect. Jamil, do you agree with coleman that the media plays a role here . And helping people jump to these conclusions . Regardless of whether all the facts have been laid out, that white cops, black suspect must be something fishy going on here what role does the press play in sort of leading people to jump to conclusions. I do think that the media has done its parable certainly the media helps direct their attention to some cases and not others part of why the media has the control in that narrative is that its seeking to reality. And that reality is the disproportionality in our society. I think when people see george floyd for example being killed by a Police Officer, it is objectively more likely that it is going to happen to george floyd because hes black and it would happen to a white person and thats alone is, that disproportionality is the source i think of genuine frustration and concern. I think a lot of black people across america no that is there more likely to be stopped by the police and more likely to interact with police and have a negative encounter with the police and a white person red wine thats the case deserves a much more nuanced conversation and the media currently makes space for but i think we you need i knowledge that that is a reality, black people are disproportionately experiencing Law Enforcement in this way and the media wants to point out single certain explanations for over others. Lets have that conversation, thats part of life we wanted to have this panel so why are black encounters with police, the rate of those encounters, why is it so much higher and with other groups. Are the Police Taking on blacks, are they over policing these communities . Do they have it in for blacks, what explains this disproportionate number of encounters between black communities and Police Officers . A big part of that i think is the way Violent Crime is dispersed in our city and in a given Geographic Area and if you live in a majority black neighborhood youre much more likely to be exposed to gang violence, gun crimes and more likely to have to worry whether your kids are going to make it home safe after going to school or going to visit their friends house. So youre 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. His prejudice and bias a factor . Im sure it is like prejudice and bias is a factor in every other part of life. But i do think that the way Violent Crime is distributed in American Cities is a big part of whypolice are having more common interactions with black individuals than others. Okay. Well, jamil says that racism still exists. It could be playing the role here in the way communities are policed. Congress is right now considering some reforms. They could be making iteasier to fire cops or prosecute cops. Police arent perfect. Certainly communities. [inaudible] a special database for police that have been disciplined so they can move to anotherstate, join the force and hide their background. Just curious what you make of these reforms in general. On principle whether you think theyre good area but more importantly, how much of a difference do you think these reforms will make. When it comes to getting at the problem jamil was talking about. I think thats really the right question and before you answer it i think we have to get a realistic picture of just how big of a problem Police Violence is. One of the problems as i see it regarding this broader debate is that theres been this kind of narrative that caught fire particularly in the black community which says that policing is an institution can be fairly characterized by unjustifiable use of force and the majority of which are purposefully reserved for black and brown people. This is false. Police use of force is extremely rare and thats true whether were talking about peoples legal force or nonlethal force legal force is used in about 0. 03 percent of all arrests and thats coming from estimates in 2018 where police made 10. 3 million rs and fired their weapons and estimated 243 times and when it comes to nonlethal force is using less than one percent of all arrests. This is not evidence a largescale problem and thats one of the first practical limits that a lot of these popular reform proposals are going to face in terms of the difference inmate which is to say that because of problems of Police Violence is so overblown, theyre just really isnt all that much room for improvement. And police have made incredible progress on this front over the last several decades and this is just one of the political problems is that absolutely no credit for that progress. 1971 the nypd fired their weapons 800 times and wounded more than 220 people and killed almost 100 by 2015 those numbers were down to 72, twentysomething nine respectively. None of that progress was reflected in the rhetorical posture of this debate so i think thats one practical limits any proposal, any policy proposal will face is the extent to which is going to be able to overcome this overwhelmingly powerful narrative but the second is that theres just not a lot of data behind a lot of the popular reform proposals were seeing you i do agree that it has been made too difficult to fire some bad Police Officers when they misbehave in a lot of these departments and i think that reflects, some very real concerns about job security. And there are ways around that we should be talking about. And the support for that is really just a general incapacitation apartments, the same way it benefits societies to incapacity a criminal, it benefits society to incapacity a backup by taking power away from them area but we have to do that reserved late and soberly and unfortunately our conversation right now just doesnt allow us to get to that point i just, i dont have kind of hope for the potential that these popular reform proposals have to make things better area. What do you think about that . Some of these proposals are calling for collecting more data, better data, sharing more data. For instance Police Departments collect crime in different ways or collect data in different ways. Theres no central database where they feed the information into in terms of the behavior. Officers often fire their weapons and so forth andthere is no uniform way of reporting this nationwide. This legislation would move us in that direction and i know youre a data guy, i like data to and we all like to use it but im wondering if thats the real problem here when it comes to the narrative pushed. And if they had better data, we wouldnt see the narrative that we see pushed out there. Id like to see more data to. Do you think it would make much of a difference in termsof changing the conversation were having nationally . Im pretty aligned with ralph here. So there are two things to say. One is which reforms make sense area transparent data makes a lotof sense to me, universal body cams make a lot of sense to me. Perhaps changing while at five immunity although i can sort of see both sides of that one area may be militarized weapons makes a lot of sense to me but then theres this other question of how much of that addresses the problem of deadly shootings of unarmed americans and here i am rather pessimistic because i think we are missing misunderstanding why these shootings happen to begin with and first the numbers are very low to begin with and its harder to bring them lower from a lowpoint and to bring them low from a high point. But many of these shootings happen because america is the foremost Young Country on planet earth which means when a cop pulls over a suspectfor example , that, as a legitimate fear that the suspect as love, has a pistol in the glove compartment. That means in america unlike in say britain, when someone reaches for their wallet or for their smart phone, a cop is going to have a fear that can be legislated away that the suspect is about to pull a gun on them. For her and its has to be said that roughly 300 cops die every year and that has an effect on how american cops approach an american suspect. So you know, 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 i think is unacceptable which is that short of shooting someone in the back, its very difficult to getpunished as a Police Officer in this country. That seems like it has to change to me however at the same time, we also have to manage our expectations about what is possible. I think we probably can. I certainly hope we can get to a place where we never see Something Like george floyd or tony again but i would bet all themoney i have that no matter what we do , we cannot see where there are even very close to zero deadly shootings of unarmed americans because of the reality of being a gun country. So what i think im hearing here and i certainly agree with it, what im hearing is no one thing stops are perfect. We should find ways to get rid of bad cops, ribbon out of police forces. Thats all for the good. But at the end of the day, policing the essential problem you said before that police are in this community because thats where the 911 call originate rid have a legitimate reason to be there area 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 lease art essential problem or policing is an essentialproblem , where would you like to see the focus of this conversation. I mean, a lot of people are paying attention right now. If you think youre overemphasizing the role of police in black homicides in this country , and by every data measure wehave we are in fact doing that , more than 7000 black homicides last year,two or three percent involving police. Where should the focus of this conversation be . I mean, obviously if the goal is to our societies and our city in particular to a place where they could reasonably start reinvesting money away from Law Enforcement and into proactive things Like Mental Health and social services and childcare and all these other things, its a necessity that violentcrime is reduced. So its a kind of vicious cycle in that respect where the problems that require us to invest more in policing then take money away from things that might address the core issues that require police to come to the neighborhood in the first place. Every Police Officer and police chief ive spoken to readily acknowledges these are problems were not going to simply arrest our way out of area the lesson i think of the last 25 years is that Law Enforcement can have a heavy hand on prime but that will also have devastating effects on families and communities at the same time. Theres a role for the communities and themselves to play and i think a lot of black americans in fact that ive worked with understand that theres attention there between addressing the need to address violence in our neighborhoods and also conditions for the police to interact with our young men less often. Where i think tension is appreciated is among people who take the narrative and dont live in neighborhoods where we have that very real tension on the ground. If you dont have to worry when you see on the news that a shooting happened and youre not thinking what intersections did that take place because maybe my mother or cousin is there and you probably still have the real value of police on your mind on a regular basis. So theres a dimension to this where i think 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 there any value i think you necessarily have more complicated worldviews and black lives matter as a Community Group that has emerged and provide a voice on this issue i think reflects where there is a class differencehere. Black lives matter is very out of step i would say on many issues. At least its leadership is with these opinions of the average blackvoter in america. If black lives matter was an authentic voice i dont think joe biden would have won the democratic primary and i think youd see in polls and surveys that people do want to talk about things like family , there are more positive views on Law Enforcement among the average black voters than black lives matter leads you to believe. Theres a lot of rather conservative or centerright views on economics and the need to create jobs and opportunities in education reform for black families so i think this on the ground we already see it as a more obligated conversation rid police arenot the center point , its i would say i would call it an upperclass or lets say what michael lynn the author of the new class war would call a managerial class narrative that sees police as the center of the problem. Class let me ask you a quick followup. Because i know youve written about guidance in these communities, particularly for youngblack men. The hiphop culture, that influence black music and so forth. Our young black men in these communities being taught to view the police with suspicion . Is this a cultural problem mark. I think absolutely that theres a glorification of criminality and a lot of pot. A lot of pop culture is big business that makes money art andexpression of young black men. It is heartbreaking that people can make billions of dollars of year selling gangster fantasies and it is a young men who pay a price for that. Okay. I wanted to ask you if there is a danger here in the overfocus on policing . In other words, is it not only wide at the market the goal is to reduce the number of blacks deaths each year but is it dangerous to do this . Could there be a backlash among Law Enforcement and how might that look . How might that play out . I know you have ridden with cops and you have written a lot about policing in urban areas so what is the danger here of scapegoating Law Enforcement . I think the danger is twofold. The first part is that it feeds and unrealistic impressions that are unwarranted from the data but these sorts of things we saw in the video with george floyd are regular occurrences as opposed to aberrations. Right . Creating and feeding that impression, in my opinion, is indefensible but yes, the danger is people believe it. 2016 morning counseled pulled the phone twice as many black respondents reported hearing more about becoming the victims of Police Brutality then gun violence. Twice as many. Consider also the study published in the sociological review in 2016 showed highprofile cases of Police Violence lead to black residents less likely to report crimes of the first danger really is that it creates this wall between black and brown communities which, as we saw just by talking about the violence numbers and the disparities there, can be extremely dangerous when people are less likely to cooperate with police, less likely to call them into their neighborhoods to deal with the very real problems but then as you intimated there is also the reality that police might pull back which is something weve seen happen in recent years. A lot of people will say thats just policing but that would be the right response if the reason for the pullback was the time of angry, well, go ahead and take care of it yourself approach but i think much of the pullback is just real fear. Spoken to a few Police Officers in the last week and departments around the country and they have all expressed a real sense that insecurity and i dont know what is going to happen if i approach this guy and maybe i should just lower my risk profile here. Over the long run one of the dangers this will have is that a lot of these reforms and the rhetorical postures 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 certain career and of a certain profession that one of the ways people calculate whether a risk is worth taking is by considering other alternative options in the more risky the endeavor becomes the less attractive it becomes to people who have better alternative options so we will end up potentially doing and making policing a attractive to group of people that dont have very many options, which means the recruiting pool is going to constitute people with lower iqs, less education, less able psychological profiles and ultimately perhaps ironically that might end up exacerbating the Police Violence problem that we have worked so hard to get down to zero. You know, yeah, these are real dangers and there are also reform in my opinion radical and just dangerous reform proposals that pursued the policing and decrease ration at any costs and those have consequences too. There was a woman killed in the summer of 2018 in chicago, Brittany Hill, 24 years old. Standing on the street in front of her house with her one yearold daughter. A car pulled up and this little girl waved to the car and you know, the guy in the passenger opens fire and hits Brittany Hill in the torso just below where she was carrying her daughter and fell and collapsed and died in the street shielding her daughter from gun violence. That little girl will grow up without a mother now and the reason that plays into the discussion is because the person charged with her murder, michael washington, has nine prior felony convictions, including one for Second Degree murder. Countless arrests, on parole at the time in people ask themselves how could someone be like that on the street and that is concisely because this pursuit of criminal Justice Reform at any cost in this pursuit of decrease ration at any cost puts him there and it cost a young woman her life and no one deserves to die like that. It breaks my heart because precisely because what you pointed out which is that there are real dangers here that no one wants to consider. 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 on one of these committees in your relationship with the police rests with you and lives outside the communities and im speaking from that perspective but he also talked about culture though. Why cant we, why isnt culture, black behavior, black attitude, black habit towards police, towards Law Enforcement, why isnt that allowed to be part of the conversation . Why can we talk about black homicides that dont involve police like the ones ralph was describing which was the overwhelming majority of them so why is it so difficult to have an honest discussion about the role of the black culture is plain here when it comes to incarceration rates, crime rates and so forth. That is the biggest elephant in the room. Yeah, so, many people are extremely uncomfortable and you can feel the temperature of your own body almost driving as you utter the phrase black culture. But, if you lower the temperature and think about it and what is important to discu discuss, every group has a particular history of particular culture that has shaped by that history and if cultures were all the same, you know, we wont havent a word for multicultural. And so you know the difference between how Many Americans seem to view black people and white people is that white people are in this group of people that they can behave good or behave bad it and if they behave bad they deserve to be called out and shamed and implored upon to change their behavior and they are agents in the sense they can make decisions and be held responsible for those decisions and thats why we condemn white cops for bad or you know why we condemn amy cooper in central park for, you know, calling the police on a man she should not have called police on and using race in that way but when a white person does something bad the instinct, which is not wrong and its the correct instinct but to hold them responsible as a human capable of making decisions. When a black person does something bad there is a very different attitude people take and they think they are being enlightened and they think its a sign of their moral superiority that they dont blame the black person for doing something bad. It is actually the opposite. The only people you dont blame for doing something bad our 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 it is actually the essence of the home humanizing. Let me follow up there with a cultural question because i think on, you know, when we talk about black cultural attitudes with respect to crime and so forth but what we are really talking about is a subculture, certain segments of the black community, particularly lower income blacks who live in poor communities, ghettos in slums and so forth in the culture that comes out of that, that environment but what gets me to my followup in the george floyd presented as the everyday black man is typical black person. Why do these sort of worst performers among blacks get to represent all black people . Most black people are not criminals but let alone career criminals. Most black people are not drug addicts but most black people are not poor in this country yet, it is this sort of blackout law, the criminal, the drug dealer and so forth they gets to represent blackness in america and i find that very troubling but i dont see it ending anytime soon and it seems to be something in you spoke about some people feeling good about themselves like this is a way of carrying about the black community when, in fact, the individuals dont represent the black community. Yeah, well i think because of the history of whites primacy going back to slavery one of the features of black American Culture is a deep sense of identity via victimhood and you know, ultimately that can be blamed largely on how entrenched racism has been throughout American History and when you beat people down for hundreds of years it is natural for them to have a sense of identity rooted in victimhood to some extent but it is a deeply unhealthy reaction because, you know, then your entire sense of meaning becomes bound up in your being a victim of the system. It almost gives you a mental incentive to do worse in life because success is somehow assigned, a sign that you lost your identity so i think that is what is behind the tendency it is not that so much that george floyd was being said to represent black america because he is from a particular subculture that would lead someone to counter build but it said he represents black culture because he was 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 these other encounters with police what comes to mind and what do you think systemic racism means . Or White Supremacy means . Should that be part of the conversation or a central part of the conversation the way some progressives want to make it a very prominent writer, Michelle Alexanders and black lives matter type. This all is part of their narrative and that black people live a fundamentally racist and fundamentally Oppressive Society and that is the reason we are seeing these outcomes and that is the reason we see these encounters with police and that is the reason we see these outcomes and until we address that we will keep seeing. We are, before get to the systemic racism i think he is absolutely right to outline some of the pitfalls of associating black identity with people who are struggling or may be dealing with the Biggest Challenges in our society. However, there is something beautiful about that to which is its a christian ethic and the idea that what you do for me is what you do for the least among us. The idea that there are successful black people who do well in our society and then teach someone like george floyd and that could be me and that is a level of empathy america at large would benefit a great deal from but the question is what we do with that empathy i think but that empathy is important and i wish there were expectation on what we would like people to see a white person struggling from opioids and thinking that could be my son or nephew or daughter and i believe that is important. To the question of systemic racism though, to me i think systemic racism is often vague word that puts response ability on to anyone so if you say there systemic racism and there is no actual racist that we can point a finger out and say this person must change or be removed from his or her position or whatever the case but allows us to have a faceless racism that makes it hard to solve problems but what i think a valuable way about thinking of systemic racism is when we can identify actual policies that actively disadvantaged people because of where they come from or what they look like. Thankfully, we live in a society where there are far fewer examples of that than there used to be but one example i can think of that the Manhattan Institute has taken a very serious look at is education policies. We dont give parents a choice in where they can send their kids to go to school and you know poor people will send their kids to the local school that was shaped by a history of segregation inequality and then youre making the child destined to be in an unequal system and that sounds like systemic racism to me. The weight you find it is you get people more choice and freedom and not restrict them. That is an outlook on the way to do it systemic racism i would encourage people to think about. Well, there are a couple questions coming in about the popularity of defunding the police or moving resources away from police and closing prisons and so forth so how popular are these reforms and in these low income black communities . Or is this something that progressives assume will go over well in these communities or that activists have pushed in the name of blacks without rank and file being on board . I will say there are certainly more popular now than they were even one month ago and because of what is going on in this peer pressure that puts on people to get on board the train that has momentum at this moment in time which is one train but i do think youre right to suggest there is at least a divide within black and brown communities around the country where it is assumed that there is equal subscription to the idea that these four proposals as radical as they may be our good and to the people who buy into that i would just offer a warning which is that we actually have a lot of evidence as to how things will look if we defund police. If we divert them away from the mission of crime control we have evidence of how things will look and if we start to drastically lower incarcerations then again i point you to the britney hill case and the fact that in the city of chicago people who are suspected of shooting homicides have an average number of 12 arrests and that is a lot of criminal justice involvement under our current policy to make our criminal Justice System even less punitive in going to have the effect of putting more michael washingtons on the street and there is no way around that but when it comes to policing i would ask people do think its a coincidence that the city of chicago saw its most violent weekend of the year on the weekend of may 31 when police were busy quelling riots in other parts of the city . Is a coincidence that the most violent day in chicagos history was 1961 when it started keeping track. That is a very clear snapshot of what we can expect if we divert these away from the communities that need them the most and the idea that there is empowerment in these things ignores the very real downsides that these policies carry and those downsides will not be equally borne by people across the United States and so what jamil says hes frustrated by the fact that a lot of these activists dont live in these communities, i sympathize with that because homicide is extremely concentrated in the United States and 2 of counties count for more than 50 of all murders and if you take a city like chicago the southwest side has a drastically different Public Safety picture than the north side of that city. To say that we ought to just from the top down place these on the most vulnerable populations within our country i think is irresponsible. Coleman, i wonder if you had any thoughts on the phrases like systemic racism and rights of privacy that just get grown around in this 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 thoughts on that and would like to hear them and then if we could talk a little bit about how floyds death is being used to push issues well beyond Police Reform and i mean we are now talking about movies that should be banned, books that should be banned, and jemima and uncle ben have been dragged into this discussion. Where do we see this headed . To your first question systemic racism, the term comes from a book written in 1967 by Stokely Carmichael and Charles Hamilton called black power which was a manifesto of the movement and was called institutional racism and 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 rather than a more upscale neighborhood and a racially biased banker that did not get out alone to a black Business Owner and what they meant was a subtle kind of racism that was less violent than the kkk burning across your lawn so in the original framing of institutional racism i completely agree that exists still exists today much less than it was then but unfortunately what is institutional racism has come to mean and has come to me today is really basically any departure from perfectly equal outcomes in black people are for 2 of the population but one third of people in state and federal prisons that is sufficient proof for many people that we live in a systemically racist society and you know, i probably should not have to say this obviously to the people here but that is an extremely superficial analysis of the problem and he not looked at the disparate crime rates and youre operating on the assumption that a fitting should be equal when that hasnt happened anywhere on earth for any group of people, rather than simply trying to make things better for the people at the bottom of society regardless of their race which ought to be focus in my opinion. To your second question, you know, i am always curious what does, you know, if you are trying to get the and jemima logo changed or trying to get your local statute torn down listen, you know, i dont particularly care about any of these things and im not going to waste too much energy trying to preserve them if people want to change them and that is just the way of the world but you should stop and ask yourself what are you doing . How is this helping the issue of Police Brutality or how is this helping to reduce racism . Actually ask those questions as if for the first time and in general the answer is absolutely nothing but it is giving us a kind of sense of having accomplished something all of these very real questions in the real problems the people on the left and right want to address albeit in different ways remain. Jamil, if you could pick up on that a little bit. Were talking about taking down statues and banning books and movies and so forth in i know a fair number of progressives and they are smart people and they know that taking down a statue of justin davis isnt going to close the learning that you have in school or boost homeownership or black incomes or reduce black crime rates and it may be a worthy cause but you are not getting much bang for your buck if the goal is reducing social inequality so wide the focus . Why expend so much energy on these relatively marginal things in the grander scheme of things . And reminds me of what i would assume is ideal and they have one of the greatest wealth disparities of any part of america and my classmates get excited about wanting to change things like the name of one of the colleges in the university because it is associated with someone who was a bad person history but they would not get near making schools better in new haven so the kids could have a chance to go to yell one day and that is different in perspective and i think part of it is people want to feel like they are powerful and it feels like, to them, more easy to change things like the name of a college or the local pancake syrup or the statue is up or down but i think be reminded of your power is an activist sometimes a very appealing thing so maybe it is the achievability of some of those that is part of and part of me feels and goes back to the whole class thing i brought up earlier which was really important issue and i believe a lot of people on the rights of american politics are starting to wake up to the reality of class in American Society which is that, someone at yale has not the same interest as someone growing up in new haven going to a not so great school, even if they [inaudible] and its hard for people to think that raises such a controlling variable but what about political agendas should look like the truth is that is not the case. It is unfortunate that if some people dont want to recognize that but the example about these symbolic gestures toward inequality where in a finite amount of time and energy you should be focused on bigger fish to fry and that is a sign of class being a bigger variable in what People Choose to spend their time on. Okay. We dont have a lot of time left and i wanted to pose the question and get an answer from each of you if possible. 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 and might not be indulged but i wonder how long White Americans particularly the white majority of this country will put up with it and how long are they going to last, nicole haner jones we write American History by telling us it sounded on slavery and how long will they last when people tell them which movies they can watch and which books they can read in which words they can use and is there going to be, is there a backlash that will calm at some point from White American in particular and i would like to get each of your thoughts on that and maybe you could start. Yeah, i think if i were answering that question based on recent history specifically post 1968 i think there was a lot of evidence with the riots there it gave rise to Richard Nixon and the law and order politics and animated our approach to crime, policing and incarceration i would say the answer to question is yes and you can expect a backlash however, i think the dynamics on the ground are different today and i think that exponentially more pressure being brought to bear on White America in particular that im not so sure there will be a willingness to fight back at least very loudly. Im not convinced there will be a backlash this time around but what i do think will happen is that people will start to quality retract from interactions that are more flawed and retract away from cities and that can be devastating and that is the disinvestment that will follow that can hurt black and brown communities in particular and i think can make for future conversations in our country that require us to be on the same page more difficult to have and ultimately i think it just kind of really tears of the fabric of our nation which is built on integration and intermingling at a really necessary highlevel and i worry about what that brings . What about you jamil . Will be seen backlash or will be see of Thomas Jefferson coming down . Tucker carlson said ratings have been going through the roof during all this because people want to hear from somebody whos going to Say Something different. That is where the backlash will come from is people saying i dont want to hear this groupthink anymore. Who has Something Different to offer me . Lets hope the people offering alternatives offer a positive what. Thats interesting. You mentioned Tucker Carlson whos been in the news lately. His ratings are up but hes having trouble keeping advertisers which tells you Corporate America might be a little skittish even if theres a large majority of other americans who want a straight shooter. Absolutely. Its not just Tucker Carlson. Its literally anyone who is saying a word that is anywhere from mildly skeptical of the black lives matter narrative to totally dismissive of it, is having an ups well in attention being paid to them. Its all happening relatively silently. This is the kind of thing, the canada dynamic that led the left to be, be included to be absolutely blindside in 2016 by trumps election. It shows lots of people silently on their own time thinking the george floyd really died because he was black . I wonder. Theres that little kernel of skepticism and curiosity that can never be extinguished and in a free country it will find some way of expressing itself. The backlash has always happen but its a silent backlash. Well, im going to wrap things up. I want to thank you all for your time. Its been a very, very constructive conversation. I think we covered a lot of ground and heard a lot of different perspectives that it dont think youre a lot of other places when it comes to discussing whats been going on in the country in recent weeks. Some think you can pick what you think thank our viewers to join in. I also want people to please consider subscribing to Manhattan Institute newsletter, for making contribution to our mission. We have posted both links for doing in the comments window on your screen, and thank you again for your time, everyone. Be safe. President trump travel to kenosha, wisconsin, to put regir in a discussion about Community Safety following the civil unrest after another Police Shooting of a black man. We will have the discussion by the 2 30 p. M. Eastern on cspan2. To live. Weeknights this month were featuring booktv programs as the previous of whats available at the weekend on cspan2. Enjoy booktv on cspan2. Weeknights this month were featuring booktv programs as a preview of whats available every weekend on cspan2. Suffer programs with the late author and columnist william f. Buckley, jr. Joining us on your screen is the host of cnns reliable sources and author of the brandnew book top of a hoax donald trump fox news and the dangers distortion of truth. Thanks for being on washington journal. Its an honor. Thank you so much. Ousted into Trump Presidency did youou realize you want to write about his connection to fox news . I was fasted by this from the very first weekas of his presidency when you started tweeting the banners on the bottom of the screen of fox and friends. And when he started chatting with a host of ways that were so otherore casual than president s have. I didnt decide to write this book until laterbo on when the impact of box for policy and fox influence became more clear and last year in my research talking to sources at fox and in the white house itt was clear that t became even if biggest with the many people realized. I try to put all in this book and, of course, the word hoax is related to the pandemic because President Trump used the word once decrying the democrats raising alarms about the virus criticizing him. Use the word hoax once in february. Sean hannity used the word once in march suggesting this was attempted takedown the president when, in fact, at the time the virus was silently spread all across the country, very much a real event come terribly bit not a hoax. The book bench with the pandemic andde inns with the pandemic but tells a story of fox and trump and brenda with. You go into the background on some of the meaning of the word hoax as opposed to just fake news or false information to tell us about that. You think about rhetoric and what these words mean. Wasnt until january 2017 the President Trump when is president elect started usingua the term take news. I feel a tiny bit responsible because and october, november the 2016 for and after election that i was on cnn talked about actually fake news, made up stories that were polluting peoples facebook and twitter feeds. The take away for Trump Supporters and detractors its the message anything could be a hoax, that nothing is officially real that you dont know what to believe anymore and that is dangerous consequences for our democracy. You write also about the background of donald trump and fox news that didnt just talk with the 2016 election. How early the donald trump become connected and a real involved part in fox news operations . Guest i go back to 2011 2011 because thats when the president started to call in every week to fox and friends, the morning show as much as people like to credit or blame the apprentice with racing trumps profile, i think fox and friends was critical because the calling of the week and listening to the questions and you determine what their priorities were, what about the gop base aspiring. That gave them a Real Advantage in the 2016 campaign. Host part of your criticism of fox news reads like this to give right fox is an addictive substance for its biggest fans fox is an identity almost a way of life, hardcore viewers really change the channel or seek out a balanced media died. They compare the network to a church come to a Senior Center or city hall. They flock to it for reinforcement, for inspiration and for comfort food. The president is very, very aware of that relationship between fox and its viewers, right . Guest he definitely is added some ways he has become the fox news president. He has filled a the leadership vacuum of the network because stars primetime stars morning stars want to put on a show for the president and his supporters. This is not automatically a bad thing by the way. Theres a long history in america, partisan media. There are liberal newspaper editorial boards, conservative magazines. We benefit in american women have a lot of diversity of opinion at a lot of different media outlets. That all covering politics and coming society. The problem i identify with fox in the truck ages so much of the information is misinformation it so much of the storytelling is misleading to the public including the President Trump. There are so many times with the president has received that information even things like how many people died in a helicopter went kobe bryant died. But, of course, big events like north korea, foreign policy. There are so many times the the president has led astray by information on fox and this is not coming for me. Its coming from staffers inside the network dozens and dozens and dozens of them spoke with the condition of anonymity. Some of them did also speak on the record. They are worried about how addicted the president is to the networks content. Host are against you know them from seeing cnns reliabls with us until nine eastern. We welcome your calls and comments. Whats going on with the president recently it seems more critical of fox news and seemingly plug it on his tweets anyway organizations like sinclair and oan . Guest i think trump is a summer thunderstorm. I love sunder thunderstorms. One minute its sunny, the next minute storm a calm healing and then a few minutes later it passes and the sun is shining again. That can be way to think about the president s of mood when it comes to media and fox. He gives an interview to fox Moderator Chris Wallace and then he trashes Chris Wallace and soon enough you will be talking positively about Chris Wallace again. The through line of the president s comments about fox is that he cares deeply about the programming. He is watching many hours of tv a day even though he says he doesnt watch much tv. He wants less news and more propaganda. More protrump opinion. He criticizes the news anchors and promotes the primetime stars like Laura Ingraham with whom he gave an hourlong interview yesterday, this is about the connection between depression and fox news but broadly how much influence does fox news have in shaping policy . Guest i think its about policy, hiring and firing, whose shaping and making a policy. The revolving door has existed washington for decades. Some reporters joined the Obama Administration and some joints the Bush Administration but between fox and trump its a much more intense version of this. Hope page went to the white house and then went to Fox Corporation and ashes back in the white house. There are just more and more intense examples of this in the trunk years in the were in past president morsi. Host several books written about fox news even before President Trump came to office. Where do you define the difference in your book . Guest fox has changed a lot in the trunk years. Ever since roger ailes was forced out in 2016 after his abuse of power and his Sexual Harassment of women was exposed, he died in 2017 and theres been a real leadership vacuum. Mimi staffers from production assistants although it up to anchors and executives told me it feels like theres not a clear Leadership Structure for the editorial, for the content of the network. Its an incredibly profitable business. When it comes to the content, the editorial, there are concerns internally about whos in charge and what is being broadcast. Theres a sense white identity politics infuses the networks programming. Thats why thought had to write the book. Its become clear this year amid the pandemic that what is erring unlike has lifeanddeath consequences. Thats true for seeing it as well, other channels but its especially true for fox because it is by far the most popular. Host lets go to calls. Free that is on that line, bitten illinois. Good morning. [inaudible] hey, this guy is a joke. To begin with, they are not even talking about the middle east bills that trump has done. Hes a joke. They dont cover anything good that trump does. This is ridiculous even having this man on ask to talk to anything because he is the reason, jim, cbs, nbc, fox news, all of them, the arcata getting ready to fight. From the minute he walked down the elevator they started in on Trump Supporters being racist. Well, let me tell you, i am not a racist. Thats all they pushed. David, the kkk, came out last week and endorsed biden but have you heard it on his chama . Not a word about it. Host Brian Stelter company would far fox news view in illinois . Guest its important none of us paint with a broad brush. Instead we paint with really narrow brushes. Im careful for example, never to say that all Trump Supporters of races. How when the world did anybody possibly that claim . Instead what we should do is look at the research, look at the studies that if shown a connection between racial resentment and support for truck. That does that mean all supporters are racists. It means very far from that. Im grateful for the call and ask what sucks out to be on. I feel at what other things things thats missing in cable news one of the things thats lacking in National News coverage is a connection to voters. We need more stories about what voters are feeling and believing and fewer stories about talking heads, fewer segments with talking heads. I am grateful to hear the feedback. Host lets hear from ten in wisconsin. Caller good morning, cspan. Good good morning. I do believe fox is a and hate promoting station but ive heard in wisconsin and im really concerned about today the president going to kenosha. Lets look at the facts. The police there, thousands of guns. The protesters there, some guns. Right now trump followers are heading there with their ar15s. One spark, one firecracker, it could be a massive massacre. Trump is that spark. He should not go. Our governor tony devers and the mayor of kenosha have asked him not to come. The danger, if one firecracker goes off, think what that would do. I would like your response. Thank you. Guest i show you concerned anything many people share your concerns about what happens when theres an event in one city in one community that becomes interNational News all of a sudden in this case kenosha becomes a stage for the interNational Media for national politicians, and i always feel for the residents of these communities whether it was charlottesville in 2017 or kenosha and portland now. What i wish for is a strong local news media so that people can have a better sense of what its like on the ground. Ill give an example. From portland. The president yesterday said the entire city of portland has been a place for years. Everyone knows thats not true. Windows the city of portland is prospering and thriving and there has been some problems downtown in a concentrated area but if you go read a local News Coverage you get a great differences of whats going on in a community than you do from some allocations or national sources. Thats true for kenosha is will and i been relying on the local paper, the kenosha news for coverage of whats happening there. Host you write in your book you were a news junkie since you were a kid early on and obviously with your news site very early on that you are successful with. Did you imagine yourself being part of a News Organization . Guest i launched my blog in 2004. I was obsessed with Television News goes lucky enough to get cspan once when is in college when i had a lot more here. I never imagine being on tv not just because of lack of hair but i never imagined having a fulltime teacher. I thought i was on the outside looking in. What a lovely not be seen in a significant both sides sides oe fence. I get to be half on the inside but also in the outside covering how the media works and doesnt work. Theres a lot of situations with the media fails americans where we are not focusing up on the unemployment crisis, the jobs crisis in this country. There are other examples like that with the press needs to make sure we are listening to the public and not just to the politicians and coping with the priorities of the public are. Im grateful i have an ability to put a spotlight on the News Coverage of this country. Host lets hear from bob in Mineral Bluff georgia. Caller yes my opinion, talk about power, media has the power and started back with seen in with a 24 hour news cycle. And then you had social media and thats like pandoras box. But they have the power, nbd has the power. I learned that probably about ten years ago. Id bring a story that had to do with Law Enforcement. The Code Enforcement in some cities are just out of control and nobody wanted to hear about it, and they pick and they choose. Because of the covid it seems like every scab is being picked and we cant get out of the news cycle. As far as you talk about portland you would think i like to say about that is kind of people who live in oregon and i live in Mineral Bluff which is not too far away from atlanta, and i wouldnt go to atlanta and less i had to get on an airplane. Or have to go to 75. Theres many people in rural areas will not dare to go to those duties. So the citys are not peaceful and calm, and they havent been for a long time. If President Trump cant choose his words when he says on fire he doesnt mean its burning down. He just means that theres a people and things that matter. Host bob, we appreciate your call tragic i respect what you are saying and i think what saying is usurped by many people we see these images on television and have the impression of cities that i dont think reflects reality. As someone who lived in midtown manhattan in new york city, on the worst night of the unrest in new york city i was out driving and i with seeing whats happening i was like one scene described widespread looting. I came home to my building and one of the windows were shattered. Across the street windows and graffiti across buildings. It was so upsetting to see on that evening but the next day the glass was cleaned up. My daughter was back in the playground. My family was back outside owing to the story. Life return to normal so quickly midtown manhattan. We still have problems, the buildings are mostly empty because the offices are closed because of covid but i wish you could come to see new york city and chemist yolanda were seen in his basement friends and colleagues who love the city of american vibrant city of atlanta. The picture of cities its happening by President Trump and by fox news is just not reflective of reality it doesnt mean im not concerned about crime and violence throughout new york city. I am very concerned. But i know that a city of 8 Million People is going at its share of trouble and also incredible successes. I want to make sure people who are not living in new york or abandon or portland know about the full picture and not just a picture that sometimes is shown on fox. Host speaking of a banner that is where sean hannity rose to fame on radio and atlanta. He writes extensively about sean hannity. Writing this in particular saying hannity and trump worked handinhand to tar practically the entire American Media news is