Test captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2008 some democrats were perfectly willing to have integration in the north as long as they could preserve segregation in the south, going back to the time of slavery, never a dispute whether it could be prohibited in the north, we had border state problems in missouri and kansas, but the north was free to integrate as long as is the south could preserve segregation. That doesnt explain the housing issue. The other reason i think is that well i guess its not really an answer to your question why they did it, why its so hard to think about this problem, and that is we desegregated formally every area of American Life but when we desegregate busses the next day africanamericans can sit anywhere on the bus, desegregated lunch counters and the next day africanamericans could sit down at the lunch counters. We desegregated schools and the next day, but we desegregate neighborhoods what happens . How do we put our heads around what were going to do. The next day africanamericans can move to affluent suburbs so its difficult to think about this problem and i think that as a result weve avoided it and come up with a myth to protect us from thinking about it and the myth is it all happened by private action and we call it de facto and therefore if it happened by accident, it can only be done by accident, we dont have to worry about it. It allows the state and citizenry to evade responsibility. Right. One of the things i find powerful about this narrative it is this common idea where racism is basically linked to a conservative south and everything bad sort of flows out of that. What does it mean you have a situation in which not just an administration thats praised by liberals but when folks want to critique president barack obama they would compare him to roosevelt. This is, you know, seen as the liberal standard at a high point of 20th century progressivism. What does it mean that was the exact point where a lot of this policy that ultimately deprived africanamericans of wealth actually began . What does that tell us about the possibilities in terms of any sort of i guess ridding ourselves, the phantoms of White Supremacy and racism, that is so pervasive across . Well, i dont know that i would go that far. The new deal was the First Administration that was actively involved in the American Economy, so there was no opportunity to implement these policies beforehand. Its not that previous administrations were less racist, although some were and some werent. The Wilson Administration was explicitly racist. The harding and coolidge and hoover administrations a little less so. None of them were involved in the American Economy. It was the new deal that first got involved in the American Economy and involved in housing. The first civilian housing was built in the new deal. No civilian housing before that. So i dont know that this happened because the Roosevelt Administration was more racist than others. In fact, it was relatively progressive i hate to say this it was relatively progressive on race because it built some housing for africanamericans. The likelihood the previous administrations would have built only housing for white families. So i dont know, i i want to push you on that a little bit. Please. If we follow the implication of your work much of the inequality we seen between africanamerican people and whites can be traced to this progressive action. Absolutely. Thats because inequality can only be created by the government if it was involved in the economy, if it wasnt it couldnt create this inequality. It was the opportunity to be involved in the economy that gave the opportunity to segregate. What does this call us to do now . Well, you know, as you heard, i gave a lot of lectures as i was doing this research and wrote articles and people always ask me that question and i didnt want to answer it. Finally i got pestered enough i threw a chapter in the book about remedies, but i dont think that we can really creatively think about remedies until we disabuse ourselves of this myth of private causation because so long as we have this consensus, its across the political spectrum, its conservatives and liberals alike, who use this term de facto segregation, im sure most of this room thinks of it as de facto see gregation i will give you a radical answer because i think there is no political consensus that would support it. The example before of levet town, if we understood the history was state sponsored segregation, it was unconstitutional, violation of the 14th amendment, i argue in the book the 13th amendment, we might do the following Congress Might 15 of the metropolitan area of new york is africanamerican. Congress might adopt a program where the federal government buys up the next 15 of homes in levet town for 400,000 and resells them to qualified africanamericans for 100,000. That would be a constitutionally justifiable remedy in terms of light of the history that i just described. But i guess i just did say it in public. I was going to say i would never say that in public but i just did. It cant be that kind of thing cant be debated unless we understand the history. What we should be doing now is trying to do everything we can and you are a star in this area, to make people familiar with the history. I mean your article about chicago, the case for reparations did this. A writer for the New York Times magazine now, nicole hanna jones, has been writing about it, we need to talk about this and make this a part of our National Conversation so that we can begin to conceive remedies that people think of i havent thought of once we begin to have a conversation about it. We cant have the conversation about it so long as we have this myth. Let me add this one thing, simple thing, one of the things i report if the book is i examined all the most commonly used High School Textbooks in America Today and every single one of them lies about this history. They lie about it. And thats a very simple thing to fix. If we dont the next generation is going to be in no better position to do something about it than ours has been. The most widely used American History textbook, 1,000 pages, kids carry it around in backpacks has one paragraph in the entire 1,000 page book devoted to segregation in the north. Within that paragraph it says one sentence devoted to hose housing and reads as follows, in the north africanamericans found themselves into segregated housing. Thats it. Passive voice, no discussion of who did the forcing, how it happened, woke up, looked out the window and said here we are in a segregated neighborhood. So long as were teaching our young people that, theres very little hope of having a serious conversation about remedies and i think youve said in your articles the first step has to be understanding this history before we can begin seriously to talk about remedying it. Agreed. I am being instructed to throw it to the audience. I believe were going to take questions from the audience. Now i dont have a mic, but thats okay. We will share. You guys can share. Raise your hand. Yes. I was wondering if you could comment on housing segregation being resolved partially due to the fact that when many gis returning from the war they got the gi bill and i think they also got money for a mortgage, that i understood while africanamericans also received that gi bill, they usually a, couldnt find a bank that would give them a loan or couldnt find a school that would take them . How does that compare to the disparity and asset accumulation versus what you just laid out . In the book i talk about, you know, i have been writing about this as ive said for a number of years, and i got an email from somebody who told me her family story, so i talked to various members of her family and told the story in the book. An africanamerican veteran of world war ii, very ambitious and talented, he bought a truck, a surplus army trucks and reconditioned them to be able to haul sheetrock and other construction materials, he got a contract with levet. He was a veteran. Got a contract with levet, but he wasnt permitted to buy a home there. He was better off financially than many of the people who purchased homes in levettown, the white people, they were working class men, returning from the war. So the g. I. Bill was available in theory to africanamericans, but if the subdivisions of the federal government was creating wouldnt sell homes to them, the availability of the g. I. Bill didnt do much good. Thank you. I love your book. Ive bought so many copies. I live locally in this neighborhood, and im increasing i grew up in washington on Dupont Circle and one side of the circle was mixed and the other side of the circle was mixed. By the time i graduated from college that had changed and all Dupont Circle had gentry fide. I couldnt afford as a College Student to live there. My current question, what is the impact of zoning . For example, i live in this neighborhood and i have a perfectly acceptable ground floor flat that i could afford to rent to a family that could go to janney school, live downstairs in a one bedroom with a big living room, dining room, kitchen, beautiful garden, but i cant do it because of zoning. I would like to do that. I would like to encourage my neighbors to do that. Instead of building this god awful, pardon my french, homeless shelter with cubicles for people to live in where they have no access to fresh food, they have no access to jobs, suppose they could go to giant, take their kids from here to across town, the amount of money they could buy and help people in this neighborhood and other neighborhoods be to redo their basements to provide Inclusive Housing and get people on the right track to independence instead of continuing slavery by putting people in boxes in the Police Parking lot. All right. Im going to talk about [ inaudible ]. Let me talk about zoning more generally. The term ill use is exclusionary zoning, zoning that prohibits i dont knows the particulars of your neighborhood and im not going to try to find out in the next two seconds, but many, many white neighborhoods, white suburbs in this country have exclusionary Zoning Ordinances that prohibit im not talking about poor people prohibit the construction of Single Family homes on normal lot sizes or prohibit the construction of townhouses or attractive apartment units. Those Zoning Ordinances, this goes to your question, im finished with your neighborhood and i will talk generally about zoning, those zoning yorordinan date back to the prenew deal era and they were specific isracial motivated. In 1917, the Supreme Court ruled that cities could not establish racial zones, they couldnt say that africanamericans could live here and whiteses could live there. The way in which these yord nances were written, the Supreme Court prohibited in 1917, indicated how integrated the neighborhoods in the urban areas were because the typical ordinances prohibited africanamericans from moving on to a block which are a majority white. Integrated block, majority white, africanamericans couldnt move on, majority black, whites couldnt move on to it and the city of baltimore was the first one to do it, had enormous difficulty enforcing it because it ran into problems there was one block, for example, where there was an africanamerican church, maybe it was the reverse, an africanamerican church and the minister moved out of his to have repairs done and couldnt move back in because the majority white nature of the block made it illegal to live in his own church. The Supreme Court ruled that unconstitutional not because the Supreme Court was an integrationist but the Supreme Court for those of you that know some American History in that time from the beginning of the 20th century through the mid 1930s, the Supreme Court thought its main role in life was to protect Property Rights. And the Zoning Ordinances interfered with the Property Rights of a homeowner to sell to whomever he wanted. That was the basis of the Supreme Court decision. City leaders who wanteded to segregate their communities were panicked by this decision. How are they going to do it without these ordinances. In 1920 when harding was elected president , his secretary of commerce was a fellow named Herbert Hoover established the committee on zoning and it was made up of prominent segregationist, planners, who in the cities they came from had designed racially tess sig nated zones but understand the Supreme Court now prohibited it came up with the idea of Economic Zones as a way of keeping out africanamericans. They published a pamphlet on zoning distributed telling them how to zone and exclude lowincome families. They sdants they wanted to exclude africanamericans, and they were also concerned about irish and italian immigrants but it was an economic zoning thing. Its similar to weve had a recent discussion in this country about President Trumps muslim ban where the court have said that the ban on its face seemed nondiscriminatory but President Trump and his campaign made so many discriminatory statements we understand what this is really about. The same is true of the zoning, the zoning pamphlets and laws adopted. In 1926 the Supreme Court upheld the right of cities in suburbs to impose this kind of zoning. It was the only time in 40 years, 35 years of the Supreme Court in the 20th century, that they upheld a policy that interfered in the Property Rights, interfered with the right of a homeowner to do what youre talking about or the right of the developer to build a Single Family home on a small lot size. The only time was when they upheld the right of citieses to zone out lowincome families. The lower court judge said its obvious this is designed to exclude colored and immigrant families and thats unconstitutional according to the 1917 decision but the Supreme Court ignored the lower courts finding of fact and it upheld zoning. Since then weve had the economic zoning across the country. Racially motivated initially, im not saying that every suburb that has adopted a Zoning Ordinance was not economically an elitist than discriminatory, but theres a big aspect of racial motivation behind these zoning laws and its contributed a great deal to maintaining the segregation that we have in this country in suburbs around the country. Hi. So my question back to your thoughts about remedies. I know philadelphia has a policy and im not sure if its still active today but where theyre tearing down those big Public Housing units and then Public Housing authority is buying delipidated property the and building duplexes or Single Family homes in the heart, in the core of the city and then i guess its like a lease to buy program where lowincome families can buy those homes that the Public Housing authority has built. Do you think thats a valid and a replicateble model for other cities . Me again . Sure. When do you get a chance . I didnt write the book. Well, these policies going on around the country and typically what happens in them some families do get to participate in these rental loan programs, rent to own programs, but the vast majority of families who are displaced dont because the density is much lower and so they wind up going somewhere else. Where do they go . Well they go to the only places that will accept them and these are new segregated communities in suburbs. So many people wonder, when we first started being aware of this as a country again, after Michael Brown was killed by a policeman in ferguson, missouri, how did a suburb like ferguson become majority black . I thought black communities were in cities not suburbs. It happened not because of that particular rent to own program because a lot of programs like that where neighborhoods get either gentry fide in the case of st. Louis they demolished a large swaths of the Africanamerican Community that had been created in the central city by the policies that i described before in order so they demolished these areas to build the gateway arch. Its like half of mcdonalds sign on the Mississippi River to introduce you to the west coast or western states, so they demolished these areas and where were the people going to go . They got vouchers instead of Public Housing they got vouchers, typically known as section 8 vouchers, and the section 8 Voucher Program is one in which the Housing Authority with federal money gives family a subsidy so that they can spend no more than 30 of their income on a market rental at the average rent in the community. Well, thats a fine system, except that theres a curious exception to the fair housing act, that is that landlords are permitted to discriminate against section 8 housing vouchers and not accept them. In st. Louis, to use this example, when all of these africanamerican neighborhoods in downtown st. Louis were demolished and sometimes for housing, middle class housing or lower middle class housing, sometimes for universities, sometimes for big highway exchanges, africanamericans had to go to the only places where their vouchers were accepted and it turned out in st. Louis, a town of ferguson, another one next to it, jennings, a couple of towns that would accept these vouchers and these became new segregated communities on the inner ring this is happening everywhere in the country, where you get gentrification and historically we got urban renewal which in the 60s with you characterized as removal, everywhere we got these programs it displaced the minority population to new segregated communities in inner ring suburbs. Lots of people talk very well of that gentrification because it creates diverse communities. Its only transitional diversity, transitional integration, because gradually those communities become unaffordable to the people who used to live there. They cant pay property taxes there anymore and so theyre forced to move to the new segregated communities. So the program is fine, except its not part of a broad plan of integration. It helps a few people who get those rent to own homes, but its not part of a broader plan to desegregate metropolitan areas which is required if were going to deal with this problem successfully. I was really impressed with your article, but what struck me when i read it is that blackness creates whiteness. Discrimination against black be people is required for white people to have white privilege. And the fact that democrats did so much with desegregation and affirmative action has made it impossible for poor whites to have a white home and a white school at their lowincome, which means they definitely need donald trump and thats what they were voting for. Am i wrong . Is there some hope for this country other than right now im assuming in ten years hispanic will be white, because white people are not fools, so is it true that it is essential that black people be the negative out party so is that there is white consistency in this country . Well, its certainly two sides of the same coin. You cant have superiority without inferiority and vice versa. White superiority does depend on black the reality as you alluded to poor whites are much more likely to be integrated into middle class White Communities than poor plaqblacke likely to be integrated. We dont have white ghettos. Theyre mixed in with the broader population. Yes, i agree with you. And then im going to give the mic back to richard. I think its very important to disabuse people of the notion that donald trump was elected by poor white people. The Median Income i believe during the republican primary of the average trump voter was about 72,000 or so. That is way, way above any sort of income that any sort of i mean middle class black person. That would be a relatively high income for a its important we not dump this at the feet of poor white people. Donald trump swept white people regardless of demographic across the board, gender, class, education, et cetera. He just won. Three more questions. Thank you for your books that youve written and theyre amazing and powerful. Mr. Rothstein, i agree with the premise that the law has pushed us through Government Programs to segregated neighborhoods, but my question is, how does that then reinforce our de facto segregation and the choices we make, and our laws are based on our personal choices as a society, our de facto choices, we want things to be a certain way so we engage with the our senators and government to make the laws that we have and so an example of this is the Seattle Public Schools case, parents involved in 2007, in which the seattle residents, the Public School board decided they want to integrate their schools voluntarily they had a program they were going to place students based on race to achieve racial balance as an expression of how they wanted the law to be, but then the de facto preferences of a group of people who wanted segregation to remain, sued, went to the Supreme Court and the Supreme Court then issued segregation on seattle saying youre right its unconstitutional. How does this cycle racism perpetrate itself and how do we stop it . Yeah, that case that youre talking about, the Supreme Court decision was based on exactly this myth and its one of the things that set me on this book. When i read that decision and i was shocked by i wasnt surprised that chief Justice Roberts wrote the opinion saying that seattle was segregated de facto and there was nothing you could do about it. I was surprised Stephen Breyer the associate justice wrote the dissenting opinion in which he accepted this myth of de facto segregation and his argument if you have de facto segregation that was the basis of his dissent. I knew a little bit i read that decision and i was pretty upset when i read breyers dissent. Like i said i wasnt surprised by roberts opinion because, for example, i remember reading about a case in 1955 when in louisville, kentucky, one of the cities involved in this, a black family bought a home, not poor people, middleclass people, this was a black navy war veteran, not an navy war veteran bought a home in a white suburb and the state of kentucky prosecuted, convicted and jailed the white seller for sedition. That didnt seem like de facto segregation. That set me off on this. I also know, for example, in seattle, that william bogeing, william and bertha boeing, were developers of suburbs all around the city of seattle racially exclusive using these fha guarantees. That didnt seem like de facto segregation. That parents involved decision is a good example. Unless we abuse ourselves of this myth we cant make the most nominal progress that the louisville and Seattle School districts were trying to make in desegregating. Challenging this myth is the first step we feneed to take an tanehisi has done a great job doing it. Im trying to help him. Others, you need to do it as well. Every one of you lives in a School District that is using textbooks that are lying about this history and every one of you can do something about that. [ applause ] honestly, this is why its important to support richards work and why his work is really so significant. You have to consider the Supreme Court justices are products of some of the finest educational systems in the world and yet they literally do not understand in this case, do not understand the significant episode significant portion of American History. If thats true at the Supreme Court level, god knows whats true when you start going down the ladder, the people who have not had access to those institutions. The myth is deep. When john roberts, i cant whether this case or another case the way to stop discriminating on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race. America is not discriminated on the basis of race, but racism and racism has never required any sort of accurate representation after race any more than a hate crime committed in the wake of 9 11 as an actual muslim. People perpetrate those against sikhs or whoever. We dont understand that this was a created thing. Thats the idea thats implicit in the notion of de facto its sort of people wandering around and doing stuff and therefore government cant address it, but government created it. We have a responsibility. Until you get to that myth, almost being asked for solutions and actions are way behind that. So we still live in a world where we do have a Government Agency and i was going to ask if you were ben carson what you would do, but i wont do that to you, but if today i was the president and put you in charge of hud, what would you do . Well, you know, i hate to sound like a broken record, but if i was in charge of hud i would appoint a secretary who would go around the country making speeches about the history of residential segregation. Thats what i would do. Nothing else will fly. Nothing else would fly. In 1968 Richard Nixon was elected president , ive written about this, he appointed secretary of housing and urban development a fellow by the name of George Romney, the father of somebody that you may be familiar with, and as i said, this history was once well known. Nothing that ive talked about today was a secret and we have forgotten about it because as i said before its too hard to deal with it. George romney knew it. He was appointed secretary of housing and urban development and said, George Romney, the republican housing secretary, said that the federal government has created a white noose around urban centers where africanamericans live and its the federal governments obligation to untie that noose. Thats what George Romney said. He began a program which he called open communities in which the federal government withheld federal funds from suburbs, the things that all jurisdictions get like green space and sidewalks and sewers and water projects, all the things that the federal government gives out money for, withheld money from suburbs if they didnt desegregate, appeal their ordinances, if they didnt accept a fair share of the metropolitan areas moderate income housing, and he actually withheld funds from three suburbs, one of them was Baltimore County and he was supported in this action by sparrow agnew, county executive in Baltimore County and fought segregationists in an attempt to solve some of the problems of baltimore because he said the problems of baltimore, sparrow agnew said this, are not created in baltimore but in the suburbs. So he was supported by sparrow agnew, withheld funds from baltimore, warren michigan, he had a background himself in fighting the local officials and he withheld funds from an area in ohio, and there was a political reaction, we call it a backlash, and the president nixon reigned him in, made him cancel the open project and weve had nothing as decent since. But thats because George Romney was able to say things weve all forgotten. Its a forgotten history. And im not saying that if a new republican secretary of housing and urban development would say the things that George Romney said he would get away with it because theres much less understanding today of these problems and how they arose than there was then. When ben carson was well before he was appointed secretary, the Obama Administration had adopted a rule which was a bare shadow of what George Romney tried to do, but it was a shadow, and ben carson said, he wrote an article in which he said this is social engineering trying to integrate the suburbs and social engineering always has a negative consequence, unintended consequences, but the reality is that integration is an attempt to undue social engineering. The social engineering was the creation of the seg gre gatsds landscape across the country and if we really dont like social engineering we should undo it. [ applause ] winstonsalem, North Carolina. I am naomi. Im from houston, texas. We go to the school for ethics and Global Leadership here in washington, d. C. , which is a semester program, and so i know firsthand even as a 17yearold the reality of racial segregation in neighborhoods in my city of winstonsalem and i know that my state, North Carolina, has a long history of Racial Discrimination through neighborhoods and especially through voter laws and so i was wondering what you think the role of state governments, especially North Carolina, in restricting Voting Rights for africanamericans has had in perpetuating the problems with neighborhood segregation and naomi has an addition to that. I also wanted to know, how would you describe the Current Issues of white flight in suburbia in your city communities and what role does white families play in the continuation of segregated suburbia . You know, i thought we were going to do this together . I jump in when i feel like it. Oh. The privilege i have of not writing the book. But you have. Well, white flight. This is a typical excuse for segregation. This is a private action. But white flight was possible only because there were all white places to flee to. If we hadnt imposed residential segregation there wouldnt have been white flight because every neighborhood would have had a diverse population. So as lot of these things that we think of as being purely private, rest on government policy. You know, let me take a minute to go into one other, if i may, one other example of this. Its a big explanation of de facto and private Real Estate Agents who were steering families to same race neighborhoods. It wasnt the government. Well, Real Estate Agents are all licensed by the state. Now im not suggesting i would never suggest just because somebody is licensed by a state they become a state actor. If that were the case everybody in the country would be a state actor because we all have some government involvement and that would completely blur the distinction between public and private. They are a different kind of state involvement. Since 1924, the National Association of real estate boards had a code of ethics which stated explicitly that a Real Estate Agent could not sell a home you would be expelled and denied the multiple Listing Services and no longer able to follow thats a violation of the 14th amendment. In gross point, michigan, the real estate board had a creative system, a point system, so if they were going to sell a home to somebody, they had to rate them on a number of points before they committed to sell it. Africanamericans got no points, jews a couple, italians not many more, irish not many more, and white get the most points to buy homes in gross point, michigan. This became known in 1960 and the michigan Real Estate Commission said they have to end that system because it was discriminatory and a violation of the constitution. The state Legislature Passed a law overruling the Real Estate Commissions policy. The governor of michigan vetoed the state legislatures overruling of the Real Estate Commission and then the Supreme Court got the state Supreme Court in michigan got into the act and said the Real Estate Commission had no authority over Racial Discrimination. The Real Estate Commission they can lift the license of a Real Estate Agent if hes late in paying alimony to his exwife, unethical behavior, but the Supreme Court of michigan said that Racial Discrimination was not unethical and the commission had no jurisdiction over it. Thats not de facto desegregation. Thats not private activity. This is an industry structured by government, by state government, and all it would have taken, by the way, is lifting licenses of a couple Real Estate Agents for discriminatory behavior and the Real Estate Industry would have had to change. Not just a couple in one state, but, you know, if states around the country lifted licenses occasionally, that would have been enough to prevent this from happening. The notion we have de facto segregation private Real Estate Agents acting outside of government to steer people to different neighborhoods is, can i say, it was nonsense. [ inaudible ]. Here. Here. You know, what strikes me about this, one of the things that has probably come out of literature and the dialog around the Civil Rights Movement is voting is a kind of symbolic act, a pretty thing you do, you vote to honor your ancestors who died, and i think what is disguised by that is voting is how you have a say in how your tax dollars are actually spent. Actually an expression of power. There is a long history since the civil war and i guess before the civil war in the north, of depriving black people of the right to vote, which is to say, the right to have some sort of say in how the country is run, tax dollars are actually spent, and so obviously if you cant vote or if you cant exercise that at the same level, that other groups can, you cant hope to have any influence over policy, actual housing policy. The two things are tied together. Richard, i think his point i wouldnt say exonerating the south but pointing out it was not just the south when we Start Talking about housing policy and really i would expand that out into new deal policy, period, as you talked about social security, unemployment, nevertheless, it remains true that the inability of africanamericans to vote during that period made it very, very easy to exclude africanamericans in the south, to exclude africanamericans from broad swaths of new deal programs. This is true in North Carolina where theres a large demographic change happening right now. People coming from the north moving in. A growth in la tinos in North Carolina and toex are attempting to hold on to the old order. Its not a mistake youre seeing these draconian voting laws to allow people to do the same sorts of things they would have been able to do 20, 30, 40, 50 years ago. The fight is really, really important. Its an inextricably tied. I think youre on the right path. Gerrymandering [ inaudible ]. True. Thank you all. I think its interesting, first, history is not particularly mysterious to black people. There are most black people are aware of this history because our grandparents who are still alive endured it, but i would like to just ask a question, the policies were nefarious and intentional in segregating housing because as you point out in your book, housing is sort of the the gateway to all the other disenfranchisement. I guess the question that i have is about what that you said that one of the ways we resolve this is by fixing the textbooks and having people sort of acknowledge what the history is so that we can have that as a starting point for fixing it. I think the question i have is, how do you get to that acknowledgement when the effort was intentional because it upholds so much, so many other myths. If black people arent poor because theyre just not working hard enough, then maybe they are working as hard as everybody else and you, the other, youre not rich because youre so much smarter than everybody else, youre wealthy because of these policies . Q. How do you start i mean you have to undo a whole bunch of myths that take down a whole bunch of structures in the minds of even good and liberal and honest white people in this country that folks arent really i dont know that folks are ready to do that. Im curious, about how we start having this conversation. Its not about blame at all. Its about acknowledgement so that we can grow to be the country we intended to be, not just pretending to be that country. [ applause ]. Thats such a beautiful question. I think it gets right at the heart of things because i think like theres a kind of weak, soft, moist hope, not all hope, that says if we cant, why cant we just educate everybody and everything will be okay. That begs why was it forgotten in the first place, why do we have to keep forgetting, why some 150 years plus removed from the civil war having to deal with that myth, a tariff, a confederate flag, you get into these things and what you begin to realize these lies, these myths, are not side courses, not branches. Theyre central to the american idea and to acknowledge them, assaults in some really, really pro found way the narrative that i think a lot of americans how can you have these theories of american exceptionalism when you understand that just to speak broadly here, all of that exceptionalism is actually built on the torture and the plunder and destruction, you know, of human beings. How do you maintain that . I dont know that you do. Heres what i know about africanamerican progress in this country. It is never come through sheer moral appeal. It just hasnt. It just hasnt. Its not like suddenly in 1860, 1861, 62, folks realized that enslavement was wrong. At that point africanamericans had been making the case since they got here, folks having made the case for over 200 years at that point. Its not as though all praise to Martin Luther king and the activists of that period, its not as though they were that much more dynamic than the activists that came before them. I mean to honor all the folks that came before them. What you have is some sort of exterior interest, and so in the case of enslavement the country was threatened with destruction. The country allows the south to, you know, to loseave, who knows who can leave next. It came true that in order to maintain union you had to destroy enslavement. Civil Rights Movement the same thing. You have the exterior threat of the cold war and american racism becomes an International Embarrassment to this country. I dont know that you could have had the Civil Rights Movement without the cold war. Im not sure it would have happened. The responsibility of those who know, those who, you know, push, you know, those who want this country to move away from to actual history, not to sit at home and be lazy and say it will never happen, but you have to be there, push it. When that exteriror event happes so that you can push through the window. If nobody is pushing, once the window opens there will be no chance to go through. Thats a bit disconcerting because it means its not totally all up to us. But thats really the state of being a minority in a country like this. Thats the situation were in. I think what that thats the situation were in. So i think what that allows for is action, actually doing something. But taemt a kiat the same time realistic action. When people get into this sort of place we cope. So donald trump gets elected and people say, ah, i give up, im moving to canada or go wherever. Which is donald trump is nothing compared to the long history of things africanamericans in this country have had to endure and keep on enduring. I think if you have a longterm vision that says its your responsibility to struggle perhaps even more so when it looks like theres no solution on the horizon then you can move on. Youre not going to answer, richard . Were all in this together. You have no idea the number of audiences ive spoken to where africanamericans didnt understand this history and was shocked by it. Africanamericans certainly know that they are second class citizens of this country. They dont understand the history ive been describing anymore than whites do. It takes external sources and a movement thats ready to take advantage of those forces. The civil rights victories might not have happened without the cold war but the cold war itself wouldnt have happened without a Civil Rights Movement. And the other thing is we have made some progress. I would say we cant forget that. Weve made racial progress in many areas, so i hold out hope that its possible for more progress. Being something of an attempted scholar i happen to believe that knowledge is power and so i think understanding this history does give us an additional weapon that we can use. But i agree its not the only weapon simply if we understand this history things arent going to just fall into place. Thank you all for coming. [ applause ] this morning the five commissioners of the federal trade commission will testify about Technology Companies and antitrust law before the Senate Commerce committee. The hearing follows testimony in the house from tech ceos for apple, amazon, facebook and google. Watch live starting at 10 00 a. M. Eastern on cspan 3, online at c spon. Ospan. Org or live with the free cspan radio app. Weeknights this month were featuring American History tv programs as a preview whats available every weekend on cspan 3. Tonight at 9 00 eastern look at the manhattan project. History professor martin