ah, i forget check of the headlines here on al jazeera, the u. s. secretary of state has postponed a plan visit to beijing over the presence of a chinese civilians balloon floating high over the country. china says the balloon is not being used for spying. the pentagon says a 2nd balloon has not been spotted of a latin america and mike holiday with director wong. ye, i made clear that the presence of the surveillance balloon in u. s. aerospace is a clear violation of your sovereignty and international law that it's an irresponsible act. and that the p r c's decision to take this action on the if my plan visit is detrimental to the subset of discussions that we were prepared to have. i told a director wong that the united states remains committed to diplomatic engagement with china, and that i plan to visit beijing when conditions allow. in the meantime, the united states will continue to maintain open lines of communication with china, including to address this ongoing incident. ukrainian president vladimir lensky has hosted a summit of european leaders in the capital cave, where they have disgust ukraine's membership application to the block. so landscape also urged western allies to supply is military with long range missiles, b, u, as agreed on price caps for russian oil products a $100.00 a barrel cap has been set for refined products that traded a premium like diesel. the price limits come into effect on sunday. the head of the roman catholic church was appealed to south the downs leaders to an years of bloodshed. but frances is on an historic visit to the country. the leaders of the anglican church and the church of scotland. yes, president joe biden says his economic plan is working on a surprise surgeon new jobs despite high inflation and rising interest rates, the unemployment rate down to 3.4 percent, the lowest level since 1969. another police officer has been fired for his role in the killing of an armed african american man tiring nickos. the memphis police department has named preston hemphill as a 6th officer to be relieved of his duties. nichols died after being beaten by police during a traffic stop in the city 3 weeks ago. well, those were the headlines and he's continues here on out 0 after upfront statement than to watch him by flash. every year in china, an estimated $80000.00 children are abducted by one of their perils. one or one east follows some mothers desperately trying to re unite with their children. on al jazeera conservatives in the united states are sounding the alarm about critical race theory. they claim that examining systemic racism in the history of race relations in the country, indoctrinate students and causes feelings of undue guilt. for historical wrongdoing, multiple states and school districts are attempting to restrict our anything they decide falls under the umbrella of critical race theory. can be taught in schools or even referenced by educators. but what happens when the history and experiences of black and brown people are erased from what we teach future generations. that's coming up. the 1st in may of 2020, the murder of george floyd, but police officer derek show. ben and minneapolis triggered protests across the united states and what many hoped will be a turning for the fight against police brutality and the country. and yet nearly 3 years later, here we argued january 7th, 29 year old tyree nichols was dragged out of his car, taste and beaten by police for 3 full minutes during what was supposed to be routine traffic, stop in memphis, tennessee. he died of his injuries 3 days later. so can anything be done about the way black people or police in the united states? that's our conversation this week. ah, here to discuss the killing of terry nichols at the hands of police in the overall state of policing in the united states. is alex vitale. he is the author of the end of policing and he's also coordinator of the policing and social justice project at brooklyn. college, we're also joined by corp again. he's retired deputy inspector at new york city police department and he's the author of the book wants a cop gentleman. thank you so much for joining me. the killing of terry nichols at the hands of 5 memphis police officers is just the latest example of brutality and the brutal treatment of black and brown people at the hands of law enforcement in the united states. according to a mapping violence, police violence project, police killed at least $1176.00 people in the united states last year. that was a record high number. now this is nearly 3 years at there. george floyd was murdered by derek showman in minneapolis. minnesota. oh, what does it say that we're here? again, tyree nichols 29 year old black man beaten to death by police. oh cor, i'm gonna start with you when you see something like that. when you look at this, where we are at this moment, what do you think? i think is pretty sad and her mom and, and we could george floyd an over unarmed process. so let me just say in my estimation, when ever someone is unarmed and get killed by the police, all a culpability to me is on the police. because when you have des engaged, mister only person that has like a 100000 household training, is to police, and they're supposed to be, but at the escalate is supposed to protect sir, preserve property, all of that good stuff and bring people in are using a lease force as possible, there's no way that anybody should be diane, at the hands of police and on law, unless it's really a tragic accident where we know this was definitely intentional and inquiry when you, when you see that this happens, despite the fact that he was unarmed in despite the fact that this was entirely preventable based on what we see on the video, what does that make you think about the bigger state of policing in the united states? this is not, this is not one off. this isn't in extraordinary circumstances. some ways. well listen, i've then san antonio blue on his face marks you've seen it is to police culture. that's quite obvious because we was under dismiss norma, are you know, black america, dad, like his all, his gracious way carp says don't these things were now. he was just, i've african american police officers that killed the african american mouth. so we, we can't scream the so race thing. so there is dis mentality in police and around america, and black or brown came in as to police and, and non minority amused a project to serve. and we saw this on display by them illegally. not even. it wasn't even illegals. a legal staff that's come from the police, she and that make an arab, you're not making matter. so they were out there hunting for over. they was hunting for and ended up killing this young man for absolutely no reason. alex, what corey just said is interesting to me. he said in certain neighborhoods they patrol or the police and other neighborhoods, they hide, that's not an issue of individual character. that's an issue of individual training . he's talking about a systemic issue here. how do you make sense of that kind of analysis? yeah, i think there's a lot to that. i mean, you know, police reform didn't just start with, with the situation in minneapolis. you know, it really begins after the ferguson uprising and the police in memphis and the police in minneapolis who killed george floyd, had had all the new training, all the new use of force policies, new oversight, new rules around by, you know, intervening. and it just didn't make any difference because i think the problem is deeper than just the culture of policing. it really goes to the mission of policing . and the fact is that these police officers were doing pretty much what they've been told to do by political officials and memphis. i mean, when you create a unit called scorpion and then you tell them to do whatever it takes to get the bad guys. that's going to look like hunting, and it's going to look like the use of extreme violence is the idea of the bad guy in their mind, simply vulnerable people, poor people. of course black people with it, how racialize is there an idea of what a bad person is or what policing looks like. well, this was almost certainly what we would call a pre textual stop, right? there was never any traffic safety issue. they, they were on a fishing expedition, hoping that they had got one of the bad guys. and as soon as there was any kind of hint of lack of cooperation or resistance, then they went into full on violent suppression mode. and this is, you know, when we tell police that they are the only tool for keeping us safe and that they have a license to do whatever is needed to accomplish that. they are going to be horrible abuses like this. cory, the 5 memphis police officers are charged with 2nd degree murder. in this case, they're all black. i talk to me about how race plays in, not just to what happened, which we've sort of talked about, but also to the response. i'm looking on social media. i'm hearing people say, this isn't racial cops. black, i'm hearing other people say they were only immediately fired because they're black . most white cops, many kill people get put on administrative leave. there's a way that race is being shot through this entire sort of conversation all way up to the police chief who's also black. oh yeah, there's definitely long disparity. you know, i was part of d o l o a latino sources association lawsuit and they won an n y p d. and the late ninety's 20 may not a lawsuit o for racial discrimination for cops that was inside of the police department. so, so a track record around the country of offices are treated but so when we talk about these 5 black police officers just as far back, i mean, you have a black police chief black loves and don't really matter. in the police world. i mean, you go to priscilla say like an east york, messiah to the summer, for our present arm. and the commander orders. sergeant lieutenant st. when you go are he is what you do to these people. they had these people in that human beings. they don't look at the black and brow community as normal people. and so that's how you develop that hunter mentality because you know, you being a pacifier all the time, but the big picture for development, they are training as well. corey, like when you're in the actual training academy in your taught i or if, when you're a rookie had, to what extent are you told to deal with this community in one way in that community in a different way? ironically, the training is good. i can't say that to training is bad, then i give you that. but when you get added a training, it is something that they also have to address. you have a rookie that comes in, is like the devilish arm to show them to george floyd case. you see, you have a 20 year hair bag with rookies we wanted to. yes, they came out. one had a few months on the job. he learned everything by the booked by the numbers. he went to the golf a, b, c, d. you get a 20 year guy teach you have those go right to z kill, and that's something else that police or has to fix. do you put a rookie with somebody with 10 years that's been involved in 2 or 3 shootings? decide you want him to train the caps or the same? what were the female? shut the guy in minneapolis. same thing. female training office as she pushed a rookie out the way, who's gone and to grab the granite car, the young man a, she, she shoots him. so they have to figure out how you gonna, trainees work is were what i really think they need to do. we took by d far. we allocate our money and police, and i think we need to give this money to community based organizations. as like, watchdogs, i think was need to have civilian patrol out there every night. just to be the, as it is, i have the same radio when an a call comes over, have the civilian patrol shot to the scene to ensure that the capture dawn, everything right. alex or some people believe many black people certainly back and say, are that white officers have a different experience. they get a different training they, they get different messages even in their, their black colleagues. i talked me a little bit about how white officers are socialized into policing, black neighborhood, and other taught to make sense of everything. well, all of this really calls into question this idea that, you know, we're going to fix this with some more mandated train, right? what happens on the street is not what they are trained to do. what happens in the street is driven by the mission and the way that that mission is interpreted by senior officers who instruct people. this is how policing is really done. you know, the cliche is you know, the 1st day out of the academy, the instructing officer on the streets as forget everything you learn in the academy. this is how we really do things. and so we don't know always what's happening in the station houses in the squad cars. the conversations between a senior officer and a junior officer is this at times racialized. does this reproduce disparate treatment? i'm sure there are lots of important ways in which it does, and i think the strategy that we need to look at is, is really, how do we solve community problems without involving the police as much as we possibly can. so, so some people have said, particularly after the ferguson uprisings in 2014, that the way to respond to this violence and the way to respond to police. impropriety is not to get rid of the police, but to hold them more accountable to have more access to what they're doing. let's have body cameras. a lot of people sit. we look at a case like terry nichols though, and when i'm watching the body camera, what i see is very different than what i hear from what i hear. it's like show me your hands, give me your hands. bear narrating the video as if there's somebody, violet, and somebody who's trying to grab a gun, somebody who's trying to hurt the police. but what i'm watching is someone who's defenseless getting beaten to death. we didn't see the death camera, but we can see the beating. so i guess what i'm wondering is to what extent is the body camera less effective than we imagined? and to what extent are police being trained formally or informally to fight the body camera. but with these, with the sort of secret methods of pretending something else is happening. cor, i'm a start with you. like on the street in new york, a lot of times i see this anywhere he kept say, stop resisting when nobody's resisting me to what it said. a police fighting back against the body cameras. what pretending a whole different story is happening. i can't guarantee desk probably a union line. i'm day, we're heavily against a body cameras. and so now like you said that china now right. you look at all the videos around america, catch phrases put your hands behind your back. stop resists and then you looking at the video like you said, walk the videos that i mean, look at tyree is on the ground. his hands on his back in across the screen with how to put your hands on a back stop resistant. he was a resistant, but it becomes a company like in this, embedded in the police officer keeps saying this because someone told me you keep saying this. when we go to court, we could break this video dale and that would make sure that you're not guilty. so this is the land that they're being fed, alec metalli corp. again. thank you for joining an up front. thank you, beth. ah, critical race therion. schools has become a lightning rod for controversy in the united states. but what exactly is critical race theory or c r t? it's a theory originating in the 19 seventy's that says, racism is not simply a personal prejudice. but rather, it's embedded in the formation of the united states and continues to exist in institutions from the criminal justice system to the housing market to the health care system. but now opponents have skewed its meaning, claiming critical race theory teaches children to unfairly blame white people for historical ills. however, many argue that opponents have their own agenda to make anti racism unspeakable. joining us to discuss this, our doctor, gloria lats and billing. she's the president of the national academy of education and professor america at the university of wisconsin. madison latest book is titled culturally relevant pedagogy, asking a different question. and sam, holy brill is a ph. d candidate at the city university of new york graduate center and a research and writing fellow at the african american policy formal and thank you both for joining me. glory. i'm going to start with you. according to education week 44 states have introduced bills or they've taken other steps that would restrict teaching critical race theory in schools or would otherwise regulate how teachers can discuss racism, sexism and issues of systemic inequality inside of schools are given that we're living in a moment when black people are being murdered by police, our state bows, the leading cause of death for young black men in the united states. all the stuff is happening to you talk to me a little bit about the significance of the movement to rewrite or even erase the history of race and the experiences of black americans and other minorities in the country. yeah, i think not only the timing fascinating than the larger historical context here is that the u. s. has been a place that has always participated in the censorship of certain ideas. and we know in the 18th fifty's, for example, there were multiple states that outlaw any material that spoke of anti slavery, that we had a man, a black minister, by the name of sam green. folks spent 10 years in prison. we're just, we're vesting uncle tom's cabin. so now we know as of march 31st of last year there was something like 1586 books, ban buses, me book bands in 86 school districts across on 26 states. so the idea of restricting this knowledge, our dish restricting this information, is not new to the u. s. and it's always about power and control. it's a fascinating point saying that there's a long history of book bands, a long history of, of trying to prohibit information and ideas that highlight the contradictions of american empire this week to racism, to speak to all this stuff that we're trying to get at here. and yet, it's happening again at a particular historical moment. why now, why is it that in the last few years we're starting to see the legislation come through? we're starting to see all the states they know critical race theory in my, in my city, not in my back yard. why is that happening now? well, it's interesting because we know as a matter of fact, because the people who are leading this crusade against critical race theory against what they call woken this, they tell us why they're doing it. they have said explicitly, christopher roof o is a senior fellow at the manhattan institute. he's also worked at the heritage foundation . he worked at the clermont institute, was a conservative american think tim, he's worked at all of them. all of the major, conservative american think tanks that are funded by hundreds of millions of dollars to pump out this propaganda to manipulate public opinion to tell people that they need to fear certain things to create moral panics. and what christopher rufus has said explicitly about the language of critical race theory is that it has been the single most effective linguistic tool in the fight against black lives matter, specifically black lives. mm. because when they, you frame it around critical race theory, it fits this particular framing bits become very popular in conservative media and among right wing politicians is that there's this liberal elite and they hate america. they hate american ordinary americans. and they want to push their values on you warrior, to what extent is this a response to the, not just the murder of your sleep, but the kind of movements that emerge after the killing of george foot. sam talks about his being a response to black lives. matter, there was a racial reckoning in the united states, allegedly after that while we were talking about race and white supremacy. and then all of a sudden, i'm seeing bands i'm seeing, i'm seeing people upset about what's happening in 1st grade classrooms. are the 2 connected? yeah, i think they are connected and i think what it's, what actually happened is that there was kind of almost like scale smalley from people's eyes when you saw what happened with george floyd and brianna taylor and i are very people were beginning to say, oh well, no, wait, maybe these aren't just isolated incidents. america loves the narrative of the individual. you can't actually sell a book or a movie or a tv show, unless you have a rote individual. and so look back that it's starting not to be just about individuals. that it's about, it's about systems and organizations. also, i think beginning to see the systemic way in which racism operates in the nation. is what is causing a big part of, you know, in some ways the uprising of people. and then this push back on the, on the right, on the very conservative. oh, very races. quite frankly. a response to the sam in the 20212022 school year inglorious spoke to this a moment ago. there were more than 1600 books that were banned from school districts. now. these books include books like the bluest i and beloved by toni morrison the color purple by alice walker. now, some of these books are 30 years also more than 50 years old. why did mad at them now? well, the reasons behind the parents challenging the books in many cases i think are because they have a certain attachment to their conception of themselves and their parents and their grandparents and all of perhaps going back generations in the united states. and they don't want their child to perhaps learn that maybe they themselves or their grandma, or grandpa, had certain views about things that were going on in perhaps the civil rights movement. a school desegregation, in perhaps their view of the civil war. and they don't want their child to be taught versions of history, that conflict with the sort of mythological, patriotic america is a shining city on a hill narrative that so many people of put her on a what would they do? gloria which i find interesting is they don't say was sam just saying i could almost except then they'd be wrong. i disagree with them. but if they said, look, we were white, we like me, white working out great for us, and we don't want anything to unsettle what whiteness means to us. i can at least except the honesty, but what they often do is reframe the books right? um, martin luther king and the march to washington. it's a book for kids and they say, we can't have it in school because of photographs of political violence. ruby bridges goes to school, which is a story about integration of school getting this little girl into school because of white domestic terrorism in the united states in the 1950s. and 60, they say we can have the book because it has racist remarks. i mean that is rich to me, right? we can show you the book about martin the king, cuz he's didn't beat and they getting beat went down to one beat them out. it's mind boggling me. this was a backwards where this was like, something from like, or, well, i would agree mark, but i also wanna put in context where your viewers that we are talking about, an incredibly mo, oh, our whole minority, the latest m p r. it's so po indicate that 72 percent up here. once dear, he had to learn more about racism. so we're lowering the, you know, that the tail away the dog on this thing. and you know, you take a state taxes that has something like 713 book bank sam. glory said it's a small but vocal minority and cheese. right. but there's also a small vocal and well funded. well organized minority groups like moms for liberty, are the ones going around the country, pushing this stuff. they have 200 chapters, either parent activism users. quick scare quotes that sometimes i've gone to some of the cities. i was a south carolina 2 weeks ago and i'm watching these groups go to parent teacher night. i'm watching him go to school board meetings complaining that their kid is getting his crazy curriculum in south carolina and his parents clearly from south carolina. they have to know south carolina from south africa, but they are organized enough to make it seem as if they're outraged parents when in fact, advancing a political agenda in my estimation. talk to me about these groups and how powerful they are and how they came to be. so yet these groups are very powerful indeed. and so much of their power comes from portraying themselves as grassroots activists concerned parents. right? so much of the, our dad school board is focused on ways that the material that they have challenges to allegedly corrupts their children in certain ways. and it makes you think about ah, what white innocence, what value that has. because the, the conversation is never about how banding these books would impact the sort of psyche of a black child in the classroom. it's never about them, you know, in the last 3 years, despite all the tragedy, there has been a national conversation on race. young people are having more nuance and complicated conversations around identity around power, around difference. books like 1619 project authors like abram candy, are attempting to unpack american history and, and put a spotlight on some things that we ignored before or under stated at least some parts of the, the population. given all of that, are you all seeing a shift in the way that young people are talking in thinking about race and identity? one of the things to be hopeful about mark is the fact that there are coalitions building. so while it is a very anti black attack, is also anti gay attack, it's an anti trans attack. it is so these, you know, identities go across racial lines. and so you are seeing a kind of coalition of people saying we have to pull together to stop this and our young people, they just don't think of race and gender and sexuality in the same category as previous generations. they are much more lower in their thinking and anybody who knows anything about adolescent development knows that the one way to get young people to do something is to tell them they can't. so i'm excited about what i can. i want to thank you so much for joining me on a friday. the great talking to you. thank you both so much. all right, everybody bet is our show up front. we'll be back next week. ah february or that just either rhinos in tigers, in the pool, hopes to the brink of extinction, one or one, he discovers how their 4 teams have been turned around. a year alden from rushes, evasion of ukraine. al jazeera looks at the impact and asks where events might need from here. rigorous debate, unflinching question. up front muslim on tail, cut through the headline to challenge conventional wisdom. nigerians vote in what's likely to be the most closely contested election in the country's history. from those that wielded to those who confronted people. in paula investigate the youth and abusive power around the world. february on a jesse eat up. the corona virus has been indiscriminate in selecting its victims. it's devastating effects of plague, every corner of the globe, transcending class creed and color. but in britain, a disproportionately high percentage of the fallen have been black or brown skins. the big picture traces the economic disparities and institutional racism that is seen united kingdom fail it citizens britain's true colors. part one on al jazeera . ah, [000:00:00;00] ah, al jazeera oh, a the u. s. secretary of state postponed his trip to beijing as