We can get businesses to help us develop a national streamwork for quality Work Experience and why every young person should be entitled to it. Could this happen in the campaign where completely different areas have completely different circumstances . Not every area can say the same. How could we make this into a National Campaign . Maybe thats the point. No young person should be held back because of where theyre from. That is something we champion as a youth parliament. Why couldnt we champion this message of equality through a campaign . However, even if we did manage to get Work Experience for all young people, two weeks is no ones idea of productive. If we quit Work Experience in all schools wed be condemning young people and not benefiting them. It can be the reality of the work place. Not everyone who comes out with Work Experience feels motivated and inspired the same way not everyone finishes a day of work feeling motivated and inspired. That is life. I knew that would get the support of the staff. See . Thats life. Its essential to be honest with young people. You know when i was 5 i was called stylish and i wanted to be the next james bond but there was no Work Experience opportunities related to that. [ applause] so i decided id become the next speaker of the house. [ laughter] you know, young people are the future because of the power to change their present. This is epitomizes after a campaign. Help amir, daniel, alice, and rest of our young people. We can show you the path. Only you can decide which way your vote goes. Choose wisely. When applause] [ cheering] q a has been marking a decade of compelling conversations by featuring an interview from each year of the series. Today former congressman bob ney, the Ohio Republican resigned from congress in 2006 and pleaded guilty to conspiracy charges for trading political favors. He served 17 months in prison and wrote a book about his experience. Thats q a at 7 00 eastern. At 8 00 eastern conversations with astronauts and private citizens who have flown into space. The Program Begins with walter cunningham, the lunar module pilot on apollo 7 in 1968. Next, a group of authors discusses the current and future state of Race Relations in america. Topics include ferguson, missouri and personal stories about experiences with police and the Justice System. Speakers include comedian and pivot tv host Baratunde Thurston as well as journalist and documentary filmmaker raquel cepeda. This was hosted by the Brooklyn Historical society. A programming note, this program contains language some viewers may find offensive. [ cheering] [ applause] this is beautiful. Whats up, brooklyn . Give yourselves a big old round of applause. Be careful. Can i give the black power fist . White people be very careful. Its going to be all night. You signed up for the conversation about the conversation. I just i was hearing a beautiful intro. Can we give it up for the Brooklyn Historical society . [ applause] raquel was backstage and was very glad to hear how her name was pronounced which is raquel sepeda. What do you think when they pronounce it wrong . Its very irritating. It puts me in a box like im american. Im very comfortable being american. Im very comfortable being latino. But for me that00 that hyphen bridges me to both. When you say it i feel like im in a box and not here to be received fully. I am here to be received fully. So, please, if we meet outside or buy my book, please dont call me if you call me rachel im not even going to Pay Attention to you. And, tanner, just a question to you in front of this crowd, you wrote a book called some of my best friends are black. Hows that working out . Yes. Its been great, actually. I have three four now. Youve increased the number of black friends . Its like a 400 increase from zero. Im doing much better how about latinos . Sucking wind. Well one. One. Shes right here. I went on a date with a dominican girl 10 years ago. How come you hold on to that until now . I dont know. Just came back to me. Wow. Okay. All five of you . You guys destroyed it by showing up. Amazing. Were so glad to have you here. We really are. I want to apologize to cspan for the [beep] and [beep] were probably going to say. We sent a crew out there and couldnt use any of the footage. Waste of taxpayers money. So for this evening we dont have a separate moderator. Were going to moderate each other, which has worked well in american history. [ laughter] we propose to address one topic, which is right off of the news ferguson. Some real life come to a solution like three minutes from now, and then many have noticed on your chairs there are chairs with topics you want to discuss. Weve been looking at the hash tag on twitter, hash tag about race and well just kind of dip into that virtual hat or physical hat as someone will ask you to pass those to the aisle to hear what you have to say then well share the microphone with you and whear what you have to say. Is that okay with you . And then youll see on our iphones, totally on twitter. People who are not here. Exactly. So, you guys ready . All right. Ferguson. Ferguson. About to jump off again maybe possibly. We dont know. According to the governor of missouri. State of merningy predeclared. A predeclared state of emergency. Theyre ready for whatever. And confirmed on fox. So you know its true. You know theres some shit going down did anybody see the former mayor Rudolph Guiliani on fox news recently . You guys love yourself. Fwood for you. You didnt watch that. Yeah. Or just nod admitting it. Yeah. Insofar as fox news can be said to represent a segment a segment of White American society they are all primed for the next coming of huey newton to erupt out of this in ferguson. It strikes me as when i saw it i thought immediately of new haven, i was reading about it the other day bobby thiel was on trial in 1960, 1970 in new haven. There was going to be a huge protest. All the black panther radicals were going to come to the lawn at new haven and do a big demonstration, huge, violent demonstrations all over the country. And the governor of connecticut and president of yale were all petrified it was going to turn into Something Like what we saw in ferguson in august. But the governor of connecticut knew wisely that the first way to set off the powder keg would be to send in and prime everyone. So they quietly assembled the national guard. They had everybody in assembly and just told no one. They just said go have your demonstration. And then nothing happened. Yeah. They had the demonstration. Everybody went home. Then, you know it was over. Thats not whats happening here. No. Governor nixon in missouri is doing everything he can to precipitate what he says he wants to avoid in that he is getting everyone primed for the fact that black people are going to go crazy. Could i ask you to speak for all white people . Done. I am so relishing this moment. Like is he basically just doing this for white people . Is this like hey, white people, i got you. I know youre nervous. Let me send in guns to protect us from whats be the to go down, these neer do wells, rabble rousers . He is a politician and trying to cover all his bases. Like the governor in 1969 should you have Law Enforcement standing by in case the whole thing goes sideways . Of course. Things could go sideways any time people are on edge like this. But hes setting up the whole thing, oh, we have to counsel with all the black ministers and were going to talk and everything will be fine and well do everything we can to avoid this. But all you white people go buy hand guns just in case like thats the subtle message behind it, saying somebody got ahold of the budget appropriation of the Ferguson Police department from last month and its just like 50,000 in rubber bullets 50,000 in bean bag guns, i mean, and theyre preparing for all of this and, of course, you know we saw what happened last time. How are they going to miss all the white protesters . When they unleash the military on the community . Even, for selling out . I mean, you know, theyre just going to go who knows whats going to happen . Well, you know, you sent me this link for the Sean Hannity Show on fox. He was using this, did you see it . I did. It made my day worse. It was just crazy. He was using the same terminology i heard on the news especially fox 5 action at 11 00 with the explosive situation, you know, threatening violence. Somethings going to erupt. It was all of this really just scare people, right . And then gunal went on guiliani went on and said there were situations like this before. Situations like these are not situations. Theyre the death of amadou diallo. He became the 9 11 mayor and made 2 million plus dollars on 9 11. Right. But amadou diallo was going to be the legacy that he left behind. But he was talking about the situation, situations like this. Was very dismissishive. And it brought up for me the whole idea of the phrase thats been thrown around a lot as of late, White Privilege. I know you despise that term. Yes. You have a good reason to. I want to get into that. Right. Well, you know, white people have tons of advantages in this society. You know, there are a lot of people like bill oreilly on fox news who deny this exists and that white people have advantages, which is stupid. To me whenever youre talking about these advantages white people have you have to sort them into two different categories. One is ill gotten gains white people should not have and the other is things white people have that everyone else should be accorded also. Human privilege. Yes. So, you know start saying that instead of White Privilege. You heard it here first. White people can walk around in this Society Without the fear of getting shot in the face every day by the police. Some people would define that as White Privilege. I would define it as citizenship. Its just a baseline of how we should be treated in this society. And so i feel like you get that word attached, that word is very popular right now, you get that word attached to Something Like this and we start focusing on all the things tanner has that are bad because he has them rather than focusing on, you know, the true problem, which is what happened to Michael Brown. Well, when you talk about White Privilege, for me its really not about white people. Its just a reminder of what being born nonwhite kind of confers. Its like a substitute for nonwhite disadvantage. Exactly. Just an easier, cooler, sexier. White. White privilege yeah. Allows you to project resentment on white people rather than feeling bad about yourself. I think its a misnomer to think just because youre born white youre born with a silver spoon in your mouth. You are part of the 1 . I think we should start looking into as we lack basic rights. For example we both are parents. I remember, you know, when i first held my son, first i was like wow. I cant believe i had another kid after 15 years. That was the first thought. Second thought was oh, my god. Hes so cute. He looks chinese. Had a baby with a haitian man. The third thing was, well damn. Im going to have to worry at some point about him going to the store. That was my third thought. About your newborn child. My daughter is right there and she saw me panic. And i got so i had no post partum depression. I was really, really happy about him being born but i just started shaking and panicking and my husband and i had this conversation when everybody left like i have to think about people not respecting him or loving him the way i love all my neighbors children regardless of what color they are. I have to think about him going to the store and not coming back. I have to think about teaching him actually, you know, to question what he thinks, you know, what hes being taught in school but at the same time dont go too far with authority because you can get shot in the face. So these are all the things, or in the back. So these are all things that kind of lead to the stress and kind of lead to resentment. I think this whole idea with dont shoot and whats going on in ferguson is just like you said, its about human privilege. Its about really people, just black, white whatever, being upset at what we dont have when nonwhites are born into this world. What ive seen when there is so much there is so much beauty in ferguson in terms of the creative response. I think the playbook, the government playbook is the same. Right . Its like arma and threaten force and then apply force in disproportionate measures and kind of reinforce the status quo. But the response on the ground has been this black youth movement, this very much more gender open in terms of the roles people are playing. Its been artist driven in a way we havent always seen before. And im like, it makes me feel old. Im not i dont always feel that way but watching some of these young people in ferguson respond so creatively and so persistently, you know whether its the ferguson october weekend, whether its the pretending to be dead and lying in the street, new forms of creative protest that kind of marry the internet with art. Theyre still nonviolent. But theyre very persistent, very poignant. Thats the new twist. The state hasnt changed but the people are changing. I find that pretty interesting. I dont see a lot of people talking about that. Certainly not on fox news. Whats the difference between what happened with mike brown and Trayvon Martin and oscar brand before that . And the response . I think theres been a little bit less coopting by traditional organizations. You have new fwrupes forming out of this. You have hands up united as a creative example. You have the let me check. Hes always there. Im not here to necessarily disdiehard al sharptons because his heart is in a good place most of the time but its not his show. Its not the reverend show anymore. Theres a whole new thing we havent seen before. Its like its rappers from st. Louis who are on different mikes. Theyre starting newslers. I remember seeing i think deray mccasson cant remember his last name but there is a startup project called launch rock which Tech Companies use to launch their product. If youre interested in a cheaper way to get Luxury Car Service sign up here. Right . And this is like the 5 a lot of the tech is oriented to but the young activists were using the same platform to build their mailing list for a new movement. That is different. Thats interesting. Its not sort of media designation or knighthood being bestowed on someone like lets go to obama and see what he thinks. The president is kind of incidental to all of this and i think thats good because he is not going to be the president much longer. Right. Right. Hum. Well im sure that hannitys of the world and everybody else on the foxs and lou dobbs and even don lemons that was loo ick this inside thing. We always talk about the stupid shit don lemon says on the daily. So what do you think is going to happen with the grand jury . Well, i think he is going to be acquitted. Yeah. Yeah. We all agree. Can we poll the audience . Raise your hand if you think no charges. No indictment. Hands up for no indictment. So there are people who think he is hands up for indictment. A vast minority. Not deserves indictment. With your psychic powers. Were all americans. Weve seen this play before. Yeah. Right. Yeah. I think he is going to walk. Do you . Yeah. The problem is that, you know nothing that happened that day justified the shooting of Michael Brown but there is this brief interval inside the car that we dont know exactly what happened and any time theres that sliver of uncertainty it goes the cops way. Thats just whats going to happen. So the question is, what we do with that information once it comes out. The governor what id love to see the governor do is just show up open mike like the british Prime Minister does, and just take it. Right . Just physically have hear the people. Because he seems to have been so tone deaf and so much of what is needed is grandiose and systemic and requires funding and negotiation but so little of what is needed is just the knowledge that youre being heard. I feel like if he sat in a room like this and just took it for like five hours [ laughter] right . I just and just hear people. It would be beautiful press for him. I dont think he cares. I think he is coming off like another slightly less evil version of guiliani. I think there may be violent reaction. But on the Positive Side if you can glean something positive from the situation i do see a new Political Movement happening. I do see what you were talking about the other day which is what libertarian and liberals coming together so i think this whole democrat republican thing is nonsense. Im from harlem but my parents are from the Dominican Republic. There are dozens and dozens of people from different political parties. We may be kind of close and ill just start my own party. Thats whats happening. I think we need to is it stop looking at things in boxes as americans are just obsessed with cramming ourselves in these boxes. One person lightly agrees with you. Okay. But on the Positive Side we are seeing alliances. I mean you see a senator from kentucky, rand paul, you know, he was saying some shit that i can rock with that he actually, you know. What are the new activist organizations asking for visavis ferguson . To stop shooting black and brown men. There is that. There is also representation in terls of the disconnect that was very strong about who the police are versus who the populace is. Right. You see there is a very per verse relationship between how the government is funded and the imposition of fines, petty fines on people which encourage the cops to basically have a stopandfrisk type attitude and get paid for it. That funds the whole court system. Theres cameras on police a pretty specific request that came out of this thats gone far beyond ferguson. Right probably seven other things. I cant remember. Many of you in the audience probably know off the top of your head. I thought it came out of garner staten island, the whole thing about equipping policemen with cameras. Yeah. But similarly timed because we dont have footage. So a question of what happened. Right. The main thing i have a problem with what the activists are coming at in the representation angle is theyre saying oh, this town its majority black but a white city council, white mayor, white police. We need more black representation so we control our own destiny. To me that is a false premise because theyre not questioning the basic premise underlying this. This was explained by the principle of my Old High School because i lived in one of the inner ring suburbs of birmingham atlanta. The reason cities work is you have a broader tax base. You have old people paying taxes but not using the schools. You have young people paying taxes but not using medicare elder services. You have businesses paying taxes but they use the roads and bridges but they dont use the schools. You have a broad and varied tax base but not everyone is taking advantage of the services. In these little towns and fifedoms and suburbs you have no industry. You might have light retail tax base but your primary tax base is property tax. Some of these fees and stuff. But meanwhile instead of this varied base where people use some City Services but not all of them everyone is there for one reason, to exploit your most expensive Public Service which is good Public Schools in the suburbs. It is a completely untenable system because the only way that works is if you have extreme wealth. The bronxvilles, mountain brooks in birmingham and these really wealthy places with exorbitant property taxes, they can afford to keep the world out and not have any retail, not have any commercial industry, and support an Excellent Public School based on nothing more than property taxes. It doesnt work for nib else. It doesnt even work for middle class white people. Doctors and lawyers, people who dont have accumulated wealth, those systems are unstable which is why those suburbs continue to expand and sprawl and acquire more land to increase the tax base. So these places like ferguson, its a completely untenable model. And yet black people are coming in saying, well, we need to run ferguson. Well, once black people are running ferguson, you think white people dont give a shit about ferguson now wait until it has a black mayor and black city council. Then white people are going to really be excited about it right . Once its an all black city with black leadership then the tax base is going to shrink even more because white people are really going to be done and City Services are going to decline even more. Yeah you got white police. No more Darren Wilsons and that is great, an advancement but essentially rich, white people have designed a game thats rigged and black people are saying, we need to win that game. It doesnt make any sense. The only reason black people need to gain political control in ferguson is to say we want to be annexed by the city of st. Louis so we have access to st. Louis taxes and services and infrastructure. These little fifedoms, the little city states we have organized, are the problem. To say black people need to take charge of ferguson is to misdiagnose the problem. It cant just be a black body. It has to be the right black body. Look at allen west, michael steele. George zimmerman, you have people that have this, you know, theyre not the right people that get pushed into these jobs. Right. Heres another you went to the system of money and borders that are that different there is another thing i havent heard talked about enough with ferguson and that is the police and the ideas in their head. There is this very protective wall around Police Officers as if they are holy figures, almost saints, and they can do no wrong. They can do very much wrong because they have guns and badges which allow them to get away with wrong. Right. A friend of mine, ron j. Williams, who is from brooklyn, he drew this map which i wish i had sketched out for you. Basically a cop that has a bad day can get away with killing you if you look like me. Maybe if he looks like you. Probably not if he looks like you. No. Probably not. If youre super drunk and no one is looking, maybe. Maybe. Yeah. Hell get slapped in the mouth. He is not going to get killed. Their perception of your threat and their mood determines your life. Thats a really flipped up equation, cspan. Thats really right. That is a really bad set of math. And part of there is a psychologist out of ucla, and i try to promote his work as much as i can on things like that because his point, he basically studies racism in the brain. He is a little bit of neuro psychology, a little social psychology. Its very tempting to think cops are racist. Right. But theyre not. Not aggressively. Not explicitly. Thats out of fashion. Its not really cool to be out with hating black people. You cant walk around just shouting those things anymore. But the implicit thing poisons all of us. The association of black people as less than human, animal threats, seeing 14yearold boys as 30yearold men or 10yearold boys as 30yearold men that is all programming. The media has done a very effective job. The thing he found in one of his studies the greatest predictor of if a cop is going to shoot a black boy or man or brown boy or man is not their racism but their implicit sense of masculinity. Basically, cops that are weak in their own manhood, they got to flex. Right . If you challenge them, in any way, they got to put you down. Because they dont know how to carry themselves as grown men. And thats why, at least in my community, where ive seen many friends victim victimized for the cops, the thing we were always taught to look out for was black and latino cops, because of the sense of being emasculated. We havent dealt with ptsd in our country. We are very young in our country. We are products of the transatlantic slave trade. We carry in our memory, part of our d. N. A. , ptsd. Part of that, with black and brown boys, is emaculation. Ive heard a lot of my kids in my neighborhood became cops. I used to hear them like i will f somebody up if they look at me wrong. A lot of times i had to be careful, more so, with, you know, people who look like me and my family members. So theres a lot of things from the bottom that were not dealing with not only in the penal system and with cops, but also just in our community that we have to deal with. And i think thats at the bottom of all of this ptsd. Then you look at i think ptsd is even kor do correlated to blackonblack crime and brownonblack crime. How are you going to stop committing acts of violence on other people when you dont like what you see in the mirror . How are you going to start liking other people if you dont like what you see in the mirror . I think a lot of that stuff is really at the bottom of this, how were not talking about race, and thank god were here, and these kind of things in our society a little more openly. Without being afraid right . The most interesting thing ive seen in recent months regarding sort of the implicit biases people have is a guy in North Carolina or the south does it matter . Whoa. Sorry if any of you guys im from the south, so i can. No. But [laughter] some of my betz best friends are from the south . Is that your next book . [laughter] this video went viral. Cop pulling the guy over, black guy. Guy hops out of his car. Totally like hey, whats up, officer friendly . Because he didnt get the talk. And hes like hey, whats up, officer . He says, i need to see your drivers license. Hes like, hands up and he shoots him in the gas station, because just because he reached into his car where he couldnt see his hand. Hes like, excuse me. You asked me for my drivers license. Im getting my drivers license. But the tape kept rolling for like the next hour. A few days later it came out. It was audio recorded, the this officer explaining to his boss what happened. If you watch the video literally the guy just pops out of the car, like hey, whats going on . And the cops description of this was like, he lunged at me. The question is, was that cop lying, a, to cover his ass or was that his actual perception of what this guy was doing popping out of the car going hey. That just speaks to what that guys perception of the experience was. It was like the same week, there was the incident with that plaqueblackactress in l. A. , detained by the police because there was a report that there was lewd behavior in her car. She goes on facebook and she posts this huge martyr statement of, you know, my rights were violated. It was so horrible. It was disgusting. And just this diatribe. All these civil right rights leaders get behind her. Its racial profiling, the way black women are treated in society, blah blah blah. Then theland the lapd releases the tape. The officer is totally civil, plays by the book. Maam, there was a call about a disturbs. Im sorry. I dont want to be doing this. At one point, he says to the boyfriend, look, if she just showed me her i. D. , id be gone right now. Shes like a spoiled brat. She actually says, a, do you know who i am . And b, my daddy wants to talk to you. She tries to put her daddy on the phone with the police officer. In that instance, her perception of it was that she was just going to be the next Trayvon Martin and was the greatest victim of all time. The cop was like, maam, i just need to see your i. D. And then ill leave. So people these encounters between minorities and police are so fraught and so loaded at every instance, whereas i never had an encounter with police in my life. A guy gives me a ticket and i leave. Thats it. I get tense when i drive especially out of new york. I start to shake. Im always afraid something is going to happen to my daughter or son, even though hes two years old, if any of us step out of line. Its scary. Its not an unreasonable expectation. I heard a story from my older sister. My mother, my oldest sister, belinda and me. My father wasnt really in the picture. He didnt live with us. He was killed and i was very young. I have a handful of memories of this guy. My sister was in the car with you know, actually my yeah, my sister was in the car with my father. The cops rolled up. This is washington, d. C. Circa 1976. And the cops roll up. They decide theyre just going full force. He was doing something they didnt like. And principally talking back to them. They grabbed him out of the car beat the crap out of him. Take him away and leave my sevenyearold sister in the car alone for hours. And so a random lady on the street rolls up and convinces my sister to roll the window down. Are you okay . She remembers something about her address. And shes able to get home to my mother who is livid, obviously at the time. So yeah. Your concern about your small child isnt totally misplaced. To protect and serve. Thats what they do. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know not to belabor this, but you just wrought brought up another memory. When i was in labor with my daughter i was living in the bronx. We took a cab to lennox hill. The cops stopped us out of the blue. When they opened the door, they wanted to prove i was in labor, even though my stomach was out to here. My husband said, please dont touch her. The guy said, get the f out the car. And basically i had to fall on my knees, on my stomach, and beg them to stop. Without telling them, you know who i am . Im a writer. They didnt care. They were white cops. They have their badges covered. And the license plate to their vehicle was turned over, turned down. And i was, you know, really young. So i really wasnt thinking about, okay, what next . I was thinking about now. So finally they took my bag, my overnight bag, and searched it for drugs and just threw it at my husband at the time and said, have a nice night. When i got to the hospital i almost lost her, because of the stress. That is what we live in day in and day out. And it doesnt matter what the hell you do. It the dont matter if i was in 12 years a slave. Doesnt matter. That is what i think people are getting fed up with. I think that people of all backgrounds and all races should be fed up with it, as our country and your grandchildren are becoming more and more nonwhite. By 2043, its over. Were still gonna have a lot of the money in 2043. Is that a promise or a threat . Its just a fact. Just a fact. We have like. 111 . We have a lot of money, so its going to take a while to move us out the door. With the voter i. D. Laws especially. Those were my ideas. The thing about the police is there is a phenomenal arrogance. Its a cultural problem. I have a friend who is a cop. He explained to me a lot about how it works. The nypd was notoriously corrupt, even up through the early 1990s. All the crack years. So many cops were on the payroll. And so but when bill bratton and ray deal came in, under kelly came in, under giuliani, as bad as they were for the racial profiling, in terms of corruption, they went in, arrested the top corrupt people, marched them out, took away their badges, and said, anyone else does this, youre fired. Of course, theres still some corruption in the police department. But that systemic deep corruption we remember from the 70s and 80s was largely rooted out, because the leadership said no tolerance. If the leadership of the nypd said tomorrow, anyone who commits a civil rights violation is suspended without pay for the first one and fired for the second one it would end rather quickly, because its whether its steroids in baseball or corruption in politics, when theres a cultural change at the top that says this is not tolerated, things do change, especially in a Paramilitary Organization like the nypd. Yes. And yes, and where are my improv people at . Thank you. I knew it. Front and center, of course. And if its paired with the training, because i think we also expect like we make broad statements that are not backed up by our intrinsic behavior. And were like, i dont see color but we do. Like i see it. You know, and i dont want to but i am trained by the same stimulus that has trained the rest of us. So i am also racist right . Against me, because ive been conditioned. Dont do that to yourself. I dont want to. I look in the mirror and i say, ah, you could be so much more handsome. But theres a level to the ptsd. Theres like a mass therapy. We skipped some steps. Weve got great words in america, really beautiful florid language about equality and the rights of men and women too now congratulations, ladies. From time to time, you get heard. But our nature and our socialization and our habits have been built up across generations. And the statement from the top of the police force saying this wont be tolerated needs also to be supported with some psychological retraining efforts beyond, you know, conflict resolution diversity training. Theres our heads are messed up, you know. Weve been really psychologically violated all of us, whether youre the oppressor or the oppressed. And thats going to take some doing. I thought about this. I made a chart. I like charts. That youre not going to see. And i because i got frustrated with our own impatience. I think we expect so much in so little time in the great sweep of just american history. Several hundred years of legal disenfranchisement segregation dehumanization, and socially acceptable versions of that, 300 years, 400 years. So were 50, 60 years post that and we still have a deficit. We have a deficit of good will, of equality. So weve got to project out to like maybe by the year 2300 we can talk about things like equality and equity. But it takes some real like time investment. Time is part of the currency here. It does. I remember when i was researching my book, i came across i think it was in Time Magazine perfect segue, Time Magazine. About like why there were no black executives on the boards of fortune 500 companies, why there are no blacks in the boardroom. This is 1982. Its like, because were 17 years out from the end of legal apartheid. Thats why. When i think about sort of my own life in relation to americas racial history im actually not im just poor white trash. My greatgrandparents were southern louisiana share croppers. There you go. My grandfather got to leave the farm and get a job and got some v. A. Benefits after world war ii and, you know, we built up and built up. And now im this, you know, upper middle class white guy in 2014 who kind of gets to do whatever i want. Im not rich but its kind of because i chose not to be rich because i chose to do something that doesnt pay me any money. But i could have chosen to make money. But that process start to finish, was about 80 years. So if it takes 80 years to go from share cropping to upper middle class total freedom and opportunity and privilege as some people would say, it takes 80 years if youre a white man. Yes. So, you know, were only like you say, 50 years out from the end of legal apartheid. Where should we be . And since my dad was also incredibly lucky and we worked hard and did everything right. Since 1968, plaque black people have been kind of unlucky. I think that nonwhite people in america should do what they do in the caribbean, what 14 nations do, which is getting together, having conversations and suing their former colonizers. [laughter] and even though we all know that nobody is going to win and the good that comes out of it is conversation and dialogue. When i actually read in the papers that they were talking about ptsd, i just couldnt believe it because i hadnt seen, before i said it so brilliantly, that ptsd was something that we carry in our memory as people regardless of what color we are, who are new americans. And i also think that because especially in new york city, were so die diverse i wish there was another word awesome . No. If theres any word that can take the place of diversity, please tweet it to me. But anyway, we are so colorful. Colorful and transnational and multicultural, that we should be looking at our community as larger than just north america. We should be looking at ourselves as americans. If you want to look at yourselves as americans and youre latino and you feel like public enemy number 1, for example, pat yourselves on the back because america started in the east of espanola. It was the first quote successful however you want to define that european settlement, where there was indigenous american slavery. So thats why were so racially ambiguous, if you will. We have to start looking at ourselves, i think, not only as an insular community, start seeing what other people are doing and start that dialogue. I think in numbers were more powerful. Was that a little i hate sorry, cspan. For those of you who wrote things down on cards, if you could send them to the aisles, we have a short peacefully. We have military outside. Send them in. Well collect them. Bring them up here and try to dive into some of what youve been asking. Lost track of time on that one. I dont want to talk about taylor swift. Okay. Thats too easy. Too easy. So no. Thats the Brooklyn Historical society tweeting. Is steph here . Yes . So you tweeted i feel whats missing from the National Race conversation is the traumatic paranoia experienced by the offender and the offended. Thank you. We touched on that a little bit. But i appreciate you tweeting that in, because also, like the idea of chasing victimness and especially on the conservative side, its like, yeah, but not in the way you think, like offenders are also victims of the system. Did you, in your book, did you come across any of this idea . To call white people victims is, to me, ridiculous. But what is the what i think i think we are all products of the same system. Therefore, we are damaged in different ways. For people of color, theres this ptsd, this feeling of, you know inferiority and everything else. To be white and a product of that society, its kind of like growing next to a lead paint factory. Youre a little dense slow. And, you know its amazing to me, because ive now sort of gone through the looking glass. Im no expert about race, but i know what i dont know and i sort of know a few things. I was listening to this podcast and very intelligent mart political comment smart political commentator. One of them mentioned she had read an editorial by a black film maker that there was this renaissance of black t. V. With the hughes brothers and that it diesdied off and turned into the upn and friends and seinfeld. Its only now with the return of films like dear white people that black people are having a cultural voice again. And they were totally shocked by this. They were like, i cant believe that. Is that true . And then you said, data and i was like i dont fault them for that, because four years ago, i would have said the same thing. But having been in media and for doing my book, i understand it. I see it. But i was like, wow. You dont see that . Like how can you not see that . But they dont. And like with the it was a parody in the dear white people thing. White people having these blackfaced ghetto parties. And black people are on twitter theyre deliberately trying to defend us. And its like no, they really are that stupid. They really are. Actually dont know better. And i know, because theyre my people and i come from that place [laughter] can we just send you to talk to them . Youll be the ambassador of reasonableness and decency . And theres a fear of approaching this issue. Like i love my wife. Shes a lovely person. But . But be very careful it got to be funny, because i wrote a book that was inspired by the fact that obama that we had a black president but i didnt actually know any black people. I was like well, thats weird. Weve accepted a black president but i dont know any black people and my friends dont know any black people. Whats up with that . Everywhere i would go, i would say im writing a book about why i dont know any black people. That would make people very uncomfortable and it would start a conversation. My wife, whenever she would introduce me at parties, she was like my husband is tanner colby. Hes writing a book about racial integration. She would never say im writing a book about i dont know any black people. She was nervous about being that forthright and dutching dumping it out there. I single out many i wife, but all my friends do that. Theyve read my book. But whenever it comes there turn to talk about what they like, they clench up and have a difficult time with it. What they dont realize or what white people in general dont realize is the first phase of dealing with race, you either get you go one of two days. You either become bill oreilly and become very defensive, what are they asking for . They just need to shut up. You either get in that angry defensive mode or you get into the hardcore ive got my White Privilege and complain about being white how terrible it is. So its really kind of disingenuous. And so white people dont approach it, because they dont want to go there because its a very uncomfortable place to be either with the anger and denial or with the guilt. What they dont understand is if you go deep and long enough, you get through that and you get to the other side. And talking about racism is like talking about whether or not you like this beer. And you get comfortable with it. All that white guilt and anxiety, its gone. And its so is that the white promise land . I think it is. Can i get a i have been to the Promised Land, white people its going to be okay [laughter] honestly, when you ha ha ha the white Promised Land, only blacks exist, because im seeing the i saw dear white people. I loved it. I especially loved your beautiful face on there. It was amazing. You were like the hottest thing in there. But there were just and i wrote it down three mentions of latinos in passing. And so many of the experiences that i saw being played out from both sides, were things that i really identified with. I just felt like inadvisable kind of sort of but not really. Were so obsessed with each other, we forget about you. Yes. We have to have a conversation. I thought about barack obama, becoming president. I thought it was going to open a dialogue that wasnt so binary. I remember when he ruz running and people he was running people would stop me and say, we gotta get him in, right . I was like, yeah, yeah. Yeah. And my daughter was like who is that white lady talking to you . I was excited, because i thought we were going to start having these conversations. But we havent. Its like being everything is just black and white. And thats not how this world works. Were living in gray. The Promised Land is gray, gray. Well, its both. Quote of the night im calling it. In terms of the racial dynamic, youre absolutely right. There is totally a multiethic dynamic, all along the spectrum of race that needs to be dealt with. It is also true that baratunde and i have shit to settle that doesnt involve it does involve so that is why it takes such primacy. It shouldnt be a binary conversation. But black and white defines the continuum, rightly or wrongly along which the rest of the conversation takes place. But latinos, being latinos are black and white. So youre staring at the solution. But you guys are like pretending like you dont see anything. [applause] thank you for being here, raquel cepeda. Thank you for having me. Thank you, thank you, thank you. So what i we have a pile of beautiful and somewhat illegible thoughts here. Ha ha to the twitter plan. This is a question that no names on these, so pollings for the lack of polings for the lack of citations. Do you think theres an overall anxiety about the change in demographics . I ask because rules are changing so fast to allow certain powers to amass so much influence that they dont care anymore. So you mentioned the demographic 2040 2043. Somewhere. By 2060 safe to say well have some changes here. But also the gloacial the goacial Global Nature of shifting power. Whats the anxiety raquel . We should be anxious, because were so busy sending our kids to war, were falling behind what everybody else is doing. I think scandinavia is going to rule the world. Im going to call you on that one. I think so, because theyre investing in their children, putting in a lot of money. Theyre into their vikings. Ha ha its that d. N. A. Its that d. N. A. Theyre spending a lot of money on technology, schools. The crime rates are low. But maybe its because people have born i dont think its going to be scandinavia. I think theyre too small. Its a wrap. But i do think i agree with you on us wasting time. Whether its sending our kids off to war or making a binary conversation its our inability to deal with our internal demographic problems that leaves us vulnerable to the challenges without. Because other people are getting it together. We are building like we need immigration. We need it to stay young. Technically. America will be like italy. Italy is physically old. Their population. The young people cant support the young people, because they stopped having sex. The pyramid is all inverted over there. Theyve got super antiforeigner. They have no new blood, no new ideas coming in. What sustained the u. S. Through all of this drama is that by force or by lure, people kept showing up. Right. And now were threatening that, you know. I think with respect to whats happening around the world, were risking sending amazing talent and amazing ideas away, saying, your brilliance isnt welcome here, because we have this short view that we have to maintain some idea of what america is, even if its just black and white and doesnt include you in that. My read on where were going to be in 20042 is 2042 is i dont think its going to go the way people think its going to go. Think about it. In 2042, white people will only be half. Thats a still a lot of white people. But we can contain them. Right. Well build more suburbs. No, because white people will still have a whole lot of money. All the valuable downtown real estate, white people own all of it. And you also have so white people are only going to be 50 . But what percentage of mixed race and minority people are going to be assimilated in the middle class and more identifying with the powerholding majority than minority populations today . I think the whiteness is going to split in two. Two kinds of white people. One, the kind of Old School White people who really hang everything on being white and are scared and nervous and retreating further and further into iowa and west virginia. And they cant the mountains. Yes. Theyre going to go to the mountains and be hill people. Then you have other white people, like myself, who are like whatever. Whatever, you know. I dont see integration as any kind of threat. If my son marries anyone of a different race, i dont really care because im already in the upper middle class. This is true. Working class white people are upper middle class are more tolerating, because you cant really threaten us. Were going to be okay. I know my kids are going to have access to the social and cultural and Financial Capital to remain in power regardless of how many other people they associate with. But youre assuming that this imbalance can persist for another 30 years. And i think at some point, the system itself breaks, and it is going to break. Thats what im saying. Youre going to have a break which is you have one portion of white people who are going to break off and go off to idaho and be lonely and said. And youre going to have one group thats going to partner with the mar assimilated and consider the more simulated and educated, to be a beige majority. And then youre going to have a faction of every immigrant group who doesnt want to assimilate and theyre going to be in the corner being angry that they dont have access. Beige is going to be the new white, is what im saying. Ah, i dont know. You dont know . We should move on. Should we keep it going . Its up to you. I dont necessarily agree with that, even though if race is a social construct, maybe even before, lets say latinos would say i guess the next white man is the black man. Youre talking about assimilation. Out of all the groups that are immigrants, were probably whats happening is that immigrant groups are selectively acultureating. Theyre taking what they like about the old country and what they like about being american and fusing that together. So theres no such thing really as assimilating. To what . We have to redefine all of that. Its the Gold Standard of assimilation. Its not going to be that anymore. But there are still a lot of white people with a lot of money and a lot of job openings. To the extent that you want access to those industries and you have to conform a little bit that way, even if you dont go as far back as 50 years ago where they angloizeed their names well move forward. We got this on twitter. Is jazz toilet in the house . [laughter] riffing on the toilet. How do i have a meaningful conversation about race with a white liberal friend with a black friend who has do you want to clarify that . A white liberal. Like, oh i have a black best friend. So they think that gives them license to be ignorant, like a racism insurance card . Its like, i cant have any kind of meaningful conversation with them. Because they lean back on that friend as an excuse . Or just like, oh, i already know about it. They think they know everything, because they have one person in their lives. Is that it . Just tell him a, never to say that. And b, that its just not true. I mean, i dont know your particular friend i dont mean my particular friend. Just is it you . [laughter] ha ha thats an amazing costume i just think, you know, like white liberals who are like, oh, i already know about all this. You know, i took ethnic studies. I read all the articles. We dont need to talk about this, because i already know. So the thing so theres no conversation. The things that pop into my head, and its based on no study. Fake science coming at you, real strong. Shift the category. Would this person say that about North Carolina versus South Carolina . Would they say this about scandinavia versus norway . Would they say this about baseball versus hockey . You can know one thing and somehow make it present to them that that doesnt mean they know everything. Like i had a hot dog and i know how hot dogs taste. Ive eaten chile, so i know how mexican food tastes. That doesnt follow. Youre like this is true times a thousand of that, because theyre talking about human beings, and theres no box that categorizes all human beings. Like if they know one homosexual person do they think i know all gay people . If they know one woman, do they think they know all woman . Remind them theres uniqueness and diversity. Theres a spectrum everything. You cant know one thing and think you know everything. Thats my fake science gut. So peter peter holden. I love your tweet. Instead of diverse, how about. Proposal i like it amalgamagical. Ha ha that is awesome amalgamagical . Its a mouthful. But it has i see sparkles. I see a rainbow with sparkles. It sounds like its like the Promised Land. Amalgamagical. Thank you so much for that. Yeah. Okay. Good. Is there a question there . No. Were just giving some love. We will use for the balance of the evening, we will use amalgamagical in lieu of diversity. We cant speak beyond that. So this is a question of us about yall. Is the race, gender and age diversity or lack thereof in this audience what you would expect, concerning, or in the way of Real Progress . So what do we think of you people . Hmm. And when i say you people im really impressed by those people, because i was expecting it to be um, a little bit more like okay. Like girls on hbo. Ha ha she was just in brooklyn. No, no, no. She has expectations of brooklyn. I would say my conversation with raquel a couple weeksing ago, and we were talking about brooklyn. She used to live in brooklyn. Shes like, yeah, i just got tired of brooklyn. I had to leave. It was getting too white. I said, when did you leave . She said 1997. It was actually 1996. But im in brooklyn heights. But i was expecting honestly, like older white, not cool, not hip. Im seeing older white faces but with a lot of hip outfits. So please stay and a little less um, amalgamagical than what im saying because of where brooklyn has gone. If you are if you identify as male, raise your hand. All right. Hands down. If you identify as female, raise your hand. Ladies night apparently. You got a discount, right . It was tuesday night at Brooklyn Historical society. Wednesday night at Brooklyn Historical society. If you identify as neither male nor female and you want to raise your hand. All right. So much more i dont know. Its like 3 5 female by my fake math. And then i didnt have expectations to directly answer this. I remember looking around the corner from the green room over there, the closet, and we [laughter] i just thought, wow like theres a range of hair styles. Really i will just say this. It is better than giving a talk about race in vermont which ive done. Theres a distinct phenom phenomenon. This is much better than being a white guy standing at a podium, explaining how racism works. But when i have done this, i have a good mixed awed audience. But if its a majority white audience and theres like three black people there and the black people just arent feeling it, then none of the white people will have permission to enjoy themselves at all. Everyone will just sit there like this. And its horrible. Its like ive never died as a standup comedian, but i imagine thats what it feels like. I dont know why youre looking at me when you say that. Ive read about this, not doing well as a comic. I dont know what thats like. Ive seen it on wikipedia the first time. That was a painful, tragic experience. I give this audience a thumbs up. Yeah. I give you two. Um, i feel like were not talking about intersectional oppression. Hmm. All right. I feel like somebody busted out some fans. Well preach so a its its a twopart question. Intersectional oppression. Why have we failed . To overlay these issues. You want to define intersectional . Its the idea that there is no single fake science coming at you not the wikipedia definition but the intuitive definition, that race, gender, sexual orientation, these things are inseparable and they play out in different ways depending on where you are in those spaces. So you cant have a solo conversation about race if you dont take gender into account, for example. So how does the intersection of these things play out . I think we did talk about black male, brown male bodies. And ive only been doing this for like an hour. And we talked about privilege and being born white. Im presuming if youre born youre either a woman, a male or somewhere in between. I think we did, but maybe were guilty of not going indepth. I dont know. I also feel like this is, you, you know its very difficult to have these conversations because you can never please this is such a broad topic. There are so many different opinions. And there are so many intersections of this subgroup or that, that you can never please everyone. And part of it i think part of the reason people shy away from these conversations is people you know, i wrote a 2,000 word article about a subject. And i got barraged about tweets you didnt talk about this, or that. It was 2,000 words. I picked one thing i to talk about, and i didnt talk about the other things so. All right. Were going to talk about white people. This is a twopage comment. Someone actually wrote page 1. [laughter] they put a page count. You got that on a card rather than a monologue. Then they scratched out of page 2. Soams to me that white people, unless theyre surrounded by people of color, do not realize how much whiteness is not talked about when theyre not around. I wonder how important it is to make the significance of whiteness more public. Ie, lets not be afraid to talk about whiteness in mixed company. Hope that makes sense. Thanks. It just jumped off the page. Hope you dont mind my interpretiveness. So yeah. I mean, you spoke out, raquel very clearly about feeling inadvisable in this blackwhite conversation but theres also another line thats drawn between the people of color conversation and whatever white people do. And like, what is that . And i guess, instead of asking questions, ill throw out my own thoughts. I think we need to talk about whiteness. Maybe we dont call it privilege. Maybe you have a problem with that word. But it allows us an escape hatch to walk through the world as if color doesnt matter. And on my show recently the person did the whiteness project, this documentary film project in buffalo, new york. They sat a bunch of white people down in front of cameras and just let them think out loud. And there were some thoughts there. There were some definite thoughts. A lot of resentment, why are we doing all these things for the black people. The resentment comes out very clearly, intersecting with class heavily, especially in a city like buffalo. So i would love to in some ways, not pass the baton but share the baton a little bit more on what a race conversation is. Thats part of why youre here is because you did some of this work solo for yourself. What i found is the power of white i think White Supremacists understand whiteness the least, because and they understand grammar the least and and history and math and but like White Supremacists are these people who bought into the promise of whiteness, that theres this pure white race thats been endowed with all the superiority of the other races which is all nonsense. But they Bank Everything on the purity of the white race and keeping the white race speur pure from all contamination. I dont think thats actually where the power of whiteness comes from. The power comes from the fact that it can mean anything. And i think i saw a brag once if you look at the definition of whiteness, versus what this definition is today, its completely changed. That is sort of why i think what i do about the year 2042, beige being the new white, whiteness will be whatever it needs to be to stay right where it is. And that is the enduring underlying power of that idea. Its a horrible idea, a bad idea. Communism is dying. White freedom supremacy just marches on year after year. Its so infinitely flexible that it can be anything. In the french revolution, you had 40 families who had all the money. You said, thats the aristocracy. Then we killed them all and we have a new regime. Well, white people are the ruling class this america. Who is white people . Its whoever we say it is. Okay. How are you going to behead that aristocracy . It just mutates one year to the next. Now it includes catholics. Now it includes jews. If we need to kick out some white trash whiteness will do that i apologize to the people. Go ahead. Im going to come at it from a transnational space. I visited the Dominican Republic often, where whiteness and blackness, if you look at the whole island, is defined really differently than what we even think its defined as. If you listen to gates, hes leading you down the wrong path. He looks at racism in the Dominican Republic through a white supremacist lens. So, for example, i ran into a doctor dentist, who typically looks like a shorter version of michael jordan. One of my mentors said, you know that guy right there . I was like, yeah, hes considered white here. Its almost like in brazil, if you look at pele, the soccer player. He bought his way in. He became white. And some people stopped referring to him as being black. In the Dominican Republic, its that way. Theres areas in also in haiti, where the ruling class there is considered white. And that ruling class is very close to the ruling class in the Dominican Republic. So they look at basically power race. What you look like has nothing to do with it. Its like how much power and money you have. I look at the caribbean and i look at where america started when i want to gauge where were going here in north america. Maybe its another way of saying what you were saying whiteness blackness is fluid. And i dont know if i wonder or i just simply hope for it instead, the perseverance of whiteness. I still feel like thats temporary. I want it to be temporary, for sure. Im also looking at people who are so bored with the program they have to leave. Have a great night im just kidding. I know you gotta go. You talk about transnational and someone mentioned india and china. Like china in particular, like there are things that are going to change in such dramatic ways that i think are happening audz of even the outside of even the bubble of this conversation. The power of culture as weve seen, american culture, been riding on black culture for so long yet still within a white power structure, all these things like hiphop are being sold as american all around the world. But what happens when the internet is mostly in mandarin . What happens culturally when the world power keeps shifting away from traditional china is huge. And its going to challenge us in huge economic ways. A friend of mine is a linguist. The interesting thing about english, whiteness and english rose up in the world contemporaneously. The interesting thing about english, english sort of took over the world at a veried a very advantageous moment. English came along with the typewriter with the internet, with the computer and all these forms of technology. English has the advantage of being infinitely flexible. The frerchl french are very rigid with their language. We put omg in the dictionary. English is a language that can expand infinitely to be, you know, whatever it needs to be, whereas mandarin and chinese are very inaccessible, very difficult. Theyre trying to change that. Theyre trying to make mandarin easier so it can be more of an international language. And to that extent, is whiteness going to be like english, where it will just continue to mutate and expand and adapt . Like a virus. I dont know. But and thats not to advocate for whiteness. Im just trying to predict what whiteness is going to do. When youre talking about language, youre talking about american english or well, thats my point exactly, is that theres british english, american english international, you know, spanglish forms of english. It can mutate. You can spell honor in like three different ways. Theres more in the pile. We dont have a plan exactly. But we want to save room for lets do the mic thing. Lets hear some of your voices too. Thank you so much. Why dont you start where you are. This brother with the hat and scarf are you cold . Very zipped up. Very tight. Let it go. Let it go. Hi. Hi. This is great. Yeah. So i just want to maybe expand on why you wouldnt think that intersectionality i asked that question and the second question, about privilege, which i wont go into. But if we could maybe talk about why you wouldnt think its important to maybe have this be a really like intersectional conversation . Only because, going back to what you had mentioned about how like race is a social construct, why not like include all other social constructs that equally effect our perception and our projection of what is race . So if you could just expand on that. Ill give you a quick answer. Ferguson was in the news. Yeah. Thats just we picked that. Yeah. It wasnt it wasnt intentional. It was not a conscious effort. I think, in some ways, probably for most of us, this concept of intersectionality is baked in. Its not like were going to have an intersectional conversation about race. We just kind of open sourced it up. To give you a quick background, to why this is even happening oh words were said and printed in books. And so i wrote this book, how to be black. I met tanner because of that book. He wrote some of my best friends are black. I was asked to blush it. I said, why would i do that . What would a dude named tanner know about race . Turns out there were a few things worth sharing. So we wrote these books. We kind of blurbed. Did a live event. We thought about going on tour together. We couldnt do that, because it takes a lot of work. But we did do one live event almost exactly a year ago, in manhattan. Youre a much better minority. And we called it our National Conversation about the conversation about race. Me and tanner and soledad obrien. We were experimenting with this format. Can we talk to each other and to a group . Raquel and i had met on cnn many years ago, with one of her favorite people, don lemmon, to talk about obama and race stuff. And we wanted to continue this conversation and expand it. So that it actually isnt just black and white. So we reached out to raquel. We said, are you down . We had a lot of lunches and were honing in on this event. So this came out of an attempt to expand the conversation we were each having or expand out of the pigeonholing that we have been put into to like represent your people. Talk about what latinos think about. Immigration. And then not want to hear when you want to talk about something else, as an example. This was like the second iteration of that live event. There is no conscious effort to like avoid intersectionality. But i think were accepting that it is necessarily a part of the context of the discussion. But we all have like race in the titles of our work and have been called upon to explore race as like a primary variable, you know, in identity. Is that do you want to add something . We wanted to talk about the podcast and oh, yeah. Were trying to do a podcast. We were like oh, this can be like a testing. Do we fight all the time and no one wants to hear that . Were going to actually bark at each other the entire time. Shirt man with the hat. Hello . I wrote the first question about the anxiety. The reason why i put that question together in a sense is im just thinking that it seems like, you know, we talked about obama and the election. What brought me to that was we came together. We elected. But its the process that we took to elect president obama as far as little donations. It seemed like the whole community got together. And as soon as he came into the white house, citizens united, the Supreme Court just took that power away from the regular american. You know, to make the smaller richricher, foreign donor, all that type of stuff, come into politics and really just really rewrite the direction where america is going. So i just want you to because were talking about race. But i think theres a lot going on that is really taking away our entire definition of what being american actually is. Here here. I dont think i think it got ratcheted up after president obamas election. I think that rewrite has been ongoing from the deploreeous statements glorious statements in the founding documents which were never intended for many in this room to benefit from. American democracy has been like a really good sham. It lured a lot of people here, a lot of resource ex tractors, like yo i can get mine and keep it . That sounds good. Lets talk about equality a little bit. The promise has never been matched by the reality. Weve tried to get closer. I think the hyperreaction to the president , i underestimate it. Ill admit that right here. I got all caught up. I was knocking on doors in texas, in virginia, in pennsylvania. I was like, yes opensource democracy were writing this campaign. Were going to right the rules and just got slammed in the face with the reality, that the sport doesnt get played down here. The donors were always there. The lobbyists were always there. The fear of people who have had power and the very concerted and collaborative decision to make sure that whatever this president said was never going to happen, like it was just never gonna happen. So much so that we heard them say that out loud right . Were gonna stymie everything were for. Were not for, if you put the word obama in front of it. Thats what the whole Political Party did, about a Heritage Foundation or health care. Mitt romney said, Start Nuclear proliferation treaties. Everything. Theyre like, no, we dont believe in that shit anymore. Then the way the electoral system the dissituation of voting, the impatience, lack of persistence that a lot of us have for the midterms. The follow through is not there. We showed up for the big game but not the scrimmages in between, which determines how your team really does. And i dont know that we really came together to elect obama. The beauty of obamas campaign, as far as getting himself elected, it was all hope and change, and yes, we can. So obama ran and and also, not bush. And also not bush. Not bush. Please not again. Didnt vote for the iraq war. Yeah. And not palin. But barack obama presented himself as hope and change. Every Single Person could fill that vessel with whatever they aspired to. That was part of my inspiration writing the book. I was like, there are a lot of white people supporting obama, a lot of plaque people, a lot of black people, a lot of hispanic people. But were all doing it in different zip codes. Hes a galvanizing figure and we all saw what we wanted to through him. And i think that was very deliberate. His campaign was marketing branding brilliance, from day one. Thats not to say hes not a man of substance because i think he is, but that campaign was genius, from start to finish, as a phenomenon. And so hes almost an anomaly in the system. Theres a study that came out that america is no longer a functional democracy. We are an olgarki. The interests of the top 5 are followed all of the time. When your interests coincide with the top 5 , youre like democracy is being responsive, when actually its not. You just happen to free with agree with the top 5 on that issue. But we are no longer in that sense a functioning democracy until you get the money out of politics and everything else. Hurray and i was cautiously optimistic about it from the beginning. He was making a lot of lofty promises about immigration that i just knew he was not going to follow through on. The loftier they got, i was not kind of believing. Even though i voted him i could not live in a country where palin and mccain were running it. So i voted for him. But i think i kind of i dont know. I wish i think Hillary Clinton could have been a great president as well. One thing that she had, that she has, that shes shown us he has that he hasnt to my lament, is balls. Or as palin would say conejos. Bush everybody else, they want against what bush went against what the democrats wanted. He was like, whatever. Ill just take the hit. I dont care what happens. Im going to stand for mine. Whatever. Obama hasnt done that. Hes been kind of like so, what . Has he done as much as he can . Well, you shouldnt be making like lofty freakin promises, then be like i cant do anything without congress. You knew you were going to be fighting an uphill battle the whole time. I think he was shocked. I think because, look, this is purple merck, america right . This is 2004. No red america, no blue america. Were all purple, like the guy on pbs. And he believed it. He came into this office. The first thing he did was say, how can i work with you . They were like go fuck yourself. He leuz was like, whoa, whoa, whoa im the president they yelled at him, calling him a liar. There was a level of anger disrespect totally unprecedented. Even bill clinton, accused of murdering his friend, didnt deal with some of the things that president obama has. I think he just got the extra dirt, because hes the first. And theyre like gonna test him and remind him that theres only so far you can go without us. Right. Where is the mic . Oh good. So thank you for this panel. So as a millennial, i feel like, for me whats really important about the conversation about race is justice because race is one of the biggest markers for how justice is delivered, whether its in the criminal Justice System or education or health, across the board. I like that you touched upon the 1 and how 96. 1 of the 1 is white. And among the 5 , 88 of that is white. And, you know, the inadvisable like a fifth of us are not even advisablevisible in this conversation. But you include huge numbers of different types of asianamericans that are running Many Companies that decide futures of black and brown people and native people. And the role of White Supremacy on their comeunts as well as communities as well as now how do we complexity by this conversation to really shift . Thinking about solutions and moving forward because that is what my generation really cares about. We are tired of being beaten down and being told we cant do anything at bout it about it. There is something wrong with us. The interesting thing thank you. [applause] there are two that things going on here. There is an incredibly complex racial diversity reality. When social programs were put in place to address the ills of slavery and jim crow for a long time, that was seen as programs or