Transcripts For CSPAN2 2014 Harlem Book Fair 20140712

This month. Three or four books that i think particularly good. I wish i could take credit. And the Brilliant Communications director came up with this. No one is going to be interested in what i am reading. Surprisingly has become quite a bit. They like it. Interestingly, the kind of like to know what your thinking about. It is kind of refreshing. It actually reads a little class action. Thank you. It was fun. What are you reading this summer . Tell us what is on your Summer Reading list. Postage your Facebook Page or send us a name of. Her. You can watch panels and multicultural Book Publishing, the black Arts Movement, and more first, founder Max Rodriguez kicks off the festival the talk of the state of africanamerican literature. There is always that conversation of home for us. And we have an answer from. The theme of this years book fair is global. As we all are. And the book fair from this point forward will reflect that. We started with an event yesterday that Columbia University, our first annual fiction possible. The book fair will look like all of us from our every male from the global and we are. I would like to introduce howard partner, khalil mahmood, director of the Schomburg Center. [applause] thank you. Putting together another harlem book fair. We certainly want to applaud you for continuing to bring them here i also want to thank cspan, book tv in particular for continuing to support this event as emir. It certainly helps to share the good news that happens here around the country. In my travels i meet many people know about the harlem book fair even though theyve never been here because they have seen it on television. We are grateful to cspan for being here and for our cspan audience for turning in. I am also grateful for those of you are new. I wanted just to acknowledge that we have lost some literary greatness in the past few weeks. Dr. Maya angelou. [applause] although she was not known so much for putting pen to paper them bringing words on paper alive, the incomparable actress ruby dee. [applause] for dr. Angelo and ruby dee they all the special place in the heart of this institution which gives me a chance to tell you a little bit about us. So this center is approaching its 90th year. It is the leading repository for the preservation, interpretation , and collection of materials related to the global black experience. It begins with a very headstrong and ambitious. [inaudible] it is early for me. He arrives here in the 1890s commend it to documenting the contributions that black people around the world that made. It was that collection beginning in the 1890s that arrived here as part of the new York Library Systems the core of the collection named. To this day we continue the legacy he laid before us by buying books from all of the world. Theyre also part of the infrastructure that makes up africanamerican studies. There are very few scholars who produce knowledge, literary analysis, even for artists who are writers and poets who did not consult the collection once famously wrote every single book. Close friends with the early curators. More first editions as well as no hearse. Spend four decades using the library and remains with us in perpetuity. For those who dont know, his remains are buried in the floor of the atrium. We were not just a place a literary engagement of but a place of engagement. And so back in the early 1940s something called the American Negro theater was born as a place that would incubate black hair. In that moment i young sydney party, Harry Belafonte made their way to the 135th Street Branch of the New York Public Library and so began history making. So our connection to her is from the very beginning. Many years later, dr. Angelo moved here to harlem in the 1950s before she went off to gonna be in that moment she was part of a Harlem Writers Guild including john kelly in, many others who depend upon this so that they could produce works of literature. For that reason our connection lasted many decades, and she became our National Chair in the early 2000s. Spoke many times, one of the most profound things she said is that libraries were like rambos, rambos that showed up in a cloud as a sign that whatever storms and troubles one was in the midst of a new that there was a way out, hope and optimism just at that simple brand of we have her papers. Please take a moment see them. So that is just the tip of the iceberg. We continue to be a pillar of the harlem community. Black america, the global black experience. So please, if this is your first, dont make it your last. Make sure that young people have a coming of age experience. This is a place of calls or renaissance and engagement, a place to engage our collective cultural heritage. We are truly there for everyone. [applause] with that said i move of the way and bring back Max Rodriguez it will be part of an introduce our next panel. Thank you for being here. [applause] so you see we are deep in history. And it that is important. Also we project what is possible given that which we have been given what is it that we are charged to do, what is our responsibility . Our conversation is books meeting culture. Yes, there are books, but what does that no more look like a conversation . What does that look on hiphop culture look like . What is the book on fashion look like on a runway outside with the other exhibitors. We not only want to talk about books, we know that we live and survive because we know who we are. We know our core, and this is the conversation that happens. Thank you for coming. The honor and privilege of introducing a different, colleague, a professional, someone who has intellect and intuition. She is a Vice President and senior editor. She is a renaissance woman. She is a dancer. She is an artist. In her current efforts she has a new magazine, home size magazine. So she knows the space of words. She will talk to us today about the state of black publishing. Not an easy conversation the half. It challenged and presented with the opportunity of digital publishing. Beneath all of that this time the right story and still bringing it to market. What is in all of that . Please. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. It is great to see everybody here the book fair is one of my Favorite Book events. One because it is in a neighborhood that i levin, so its easy for me get here. The other, as you heard from doctor muhammed and Max Rodriquez is this setting here. Dr. Muhammed talked about sean burke who laid the foundation here as a black bibliophile for this collection, this center, this depository. Its so important for us in this community and the world to be built. His, the beacon for the legacy. A recent literary giants who recently passed on. My and zillow, also Barack Beckham mccourts says. There have been too many, you know, who are passed on recently, but they left us a legacy and left us in charge and left us a body of work and the lessons and the instructions. It is just for us to Pay Attention to that now and carryon. I was flattered by maxs invitation to make this. He calls me up and just says so casually, i would like for you to talk about the state of black literature and 15 minutes. What . First of all, what are we talking about . Black literature. I am an editor. Language is important to me. Before i could even first of all, i ask for a couple of days to think about it. How was i going to talk about this thing we call black literature. This thing we call publishing, particularly at this time when it is so complicated, so many issues, so many breakthroughs. Theres so much extraordinary work. So many problems. So what exactly will i be talking about . That will be talking about black people, meaning people of african descent, here, writing and publishing primarily in america, and in that race the rest of the world. Is more like the world of storytelling because that is what it is about. I want to try to do a few things in this introductory talk. There will be more people speaking after me who can continue the conversation but i want to talk a bit about the conditions in which storytellers work. I want to raise questions and issues concerning readers and reading in general. I would like to point out some important things, how books and reading products are published and distributed and how you can learn more, and keep up with what is too often the Hidden Treasures right in our midst. The network that is available to us if we dont know anything about. Max asks me to speak from my perspective as a person who worked in the literature world and publishing decades. I will forgive him for reminding me how old i am in this business. For the last dozen years i have signed up authors and edited and manage the book products at simon and schuster, that is my wage earning job. Producing programs that bring storytellers to audiences and readers, and published independence on my corporate ties. I have done this all of my working life. I love hearing stories and telling stories not only in book form but lyrics and rhythm and melody and acted out on stage and danced and painted and told other front porch on thest, on television, this is the most profoundly and uniquely cumin thing we do, tells stories, hear stories, it is how we define ourselves, how we process and make sense of life. I make a living doing it. I had many people help me along the way, figuring out how to make a living at it, but it was my family who got that started, my family who taught me in many ways that are important and fundamental, my great grandmother told me stories to settle me down at night before bed, characters called tar baby and grand rapids. I thought she may be stories herself. I didnt hear about folklore and jolts until many years later. My great grandmother was born in the late 1800ss and passed away in the 70s. She told me reallife stories and other made up stories. She told me how her community and her family and how she lived and survived, i heard stories about places in east tennessee and earlier in the 21st century called guntown and browntown. I know more about slaughtering a hog than i need to know because my greatgrandmother, my uncle joe, my High School Homework assignment, he was an actor, made no money at it he is an adjunct teacher at Knoxville College and worked as an xray technician for his day job. It was he who introduced me to the work of James Baldwin and was James Baldwin who impressed on my mind harlem and new york, a place that decades later i would migrate to. Writing and reading were valued in my family and in my community. Books are valuable and necessary in our home, not just the bible but encyclopedias, histories and biographies and ebony magazine. My family knew the importance of us understanding the world around us, to see the world even if we never left our home in knoxville, tennessee. Books makes that possible. To truly understand black america and what is at the core of our literary tradition and culture you have to know and remember that we were denied the right to read and write for so long, that was the way enslavement was enforced, to deny us that pool. We figured that out quick and those of us, many of us rather, risk our lives, our physical lives to learn how to read because we knew it would save our lives and to be the key to freedom. Very grateful and inspired by the phenomenon we saw last year with 12 years a slave and how that book published in 1841 reappeared and came back to us in the form of a film and renewed peoples attention to a beautifully written work, 1840 one, we were publishing. We had a literary tradition before him and we had one since him so we had many reasons to celebrate. I am reminded of a famous quote of Toni Morrison that goes Something Like the genius of black people is what we do with language. I believe that. Whether we are manipulating language and telling stories for play or Serious Business we demonstrated time and time again we spin language into large, how Daniel Harrison line on front porches of homes and shops in her town of veganville. The stories you hear again in the streets of new york and in the suburbs and playgrounds and your dining room table, think of new york citys 20 and 21st century wordsmiths, telling stories out of bronx and harlem and his metaphorical 51st dream state. And the most enlightened and inspired people have read them deliberately and often. With reading now being so much at our fingertips even with advances in technology and computers and all we still dont have access to great work particularly contemporary work that we should. That is because this black world of literature expert. Still larger ecosystem. Exists in an ecosystem, an environment of mainstream education, publishing as big business. The marketplace, the retail market. We are represented there but not well served. We dont show up in the matrix as some people say the way we should. We have got to do that. We have got to do something about that. Even with expert researchers no link and concluding that we in fact do read, there was a Pure Research study in the media not too long ago that stated or concluded the most likely person in america to be reading a book at any given time is a black female. You dont necessarily get that from how publishers choose to use your promotion dollars and publicity resources. Wheat to read. I have a good job, publishing since the 80s, i am lucky, i work hard, i make a living. The side effects of that havent always been good. It can be stressful, the culture of work places often clash with a culture that defines me personally. And in Corporate America, too often the best to offer intellectually and creatively goes untapped in the places that work, who think they want to get everything out of me but sometimes they dont even know what it is that i have to bring to the table, the same thing with you as readers. To that degree we have got to push for more diversity. We have got to push for more diversity in the ranks of people working in publishing, working in media. We have got to encourage our schools to teach the skills that we need to learn how to better read, how to better thing, how to express ourselves. I learned working with independent presses and the 70s, i worked at a place called the institute of the black world in atlanta, georgia, first as a work study student and then a fulltime employee. It was there that i learned the fundamentals skills of production and editing. I even was toss to run and offset printing press. Iman edge a direct mail campaign. In 1980 i attended the inaugural class of Howard University Book Publishing. That program only last halfdozen years, that any college and university administrators, historically black colleges listening to this broadcast i encourage you and even feed to you to consider that the skills of publishing need to be solidly inc. In all of our schools. One of the best things that happened in that time that i was in school in the 70s, where the sounding of independent Radio Stations. We have a generation of people who found careers in me as a consequence and we served the community and it was a way for students in the community to interact. We need to revive that, extend that to publishing, Howard University press i understand is not active any more. We need to bring that back in every school we controlled, needs to have a press, is fundamental. We can learn to publish and develop independent business and the entrepreneurial more easily than ever. The technology does allow that these days, desktop publishing, self publishing, distribution is a problem but we need to come up with our own systems of distribution, our own systems of reaching our own people, Online Shopping is convened an efficient when you know what you want but it is no where to find out what is new out there and you cant depend on an algorithm to tell you if you should be interested. You have to inform the algorithm, create it for yourself. Our great booksellers have been leaders, cultural leaders in our communities, and Cultural Centers for us, and liberation bookstore down the road on lenox avenue, has passed on but is remembered for bringing character to this community, that was educational and spiritual, and black robe books and things, i had one of my first jobs. They need to be remembered as models for what we make happen in the 21st century. There may be a bookstore in atlanta that is still in business. He man bookstore is in business operating online and doing special events. As troy johnson, founder of africanamerican literary book club, can tell you we lost most of the bookstores we had six years ago. In this vacuum nothing has replaced that. We have to do better than that. Fantastic work is being written and published and going unnoticed. It is not only the work of self published people, were published by Big Companies like my own. Publishing people have to stop thinking that diversity, achieving diversity is Like Aerospace silence. We have gone to mars. There are ways in which we can effectively include and bring everybody, marginal communities included, to the center of the businesses that lead to they need to form alliancess with black organization, other black professionals to hear us, to respect us. Black literature live, black writers and authors as i said before and other people have said here are doing extraordinary work. I am going to name some of the names and i will be scratching the surface but i have to name some of these names just in case you are thinking of who you should buy and consider next time. Emily roberto. Tina mcelroy, martha from monica chambers, elizabeth nunez, elizabeth alexander. These are people who have won the highest literary prizes, people who have been best sellers, jeffrey alan has a new wonderful novel out. Steven burns, jasmine griffith, marcus, julian voice. Cedi smith on this stage not long ago to a packed room. And thousands of other people saw that and said online. Jessica i am excited for the role of the film has played in the last year in bringing both to our attention. I mentioned 12 years a slave but also the but theyre based on an article ran in by earl agood. Don davis, one of my colleagues, with her new in print, published that book. She is also working with other exciting titles coming fourth. I work with an array of writers, some i have already mentioned. Making her own for a bringing books and films together, the addicted feature film tied to her first novel will be released in october. He has the new novel as well. The Cultural Workers who are supporting and promoting these brilliant writers. People who are publishing literary journals, and creating book fleeces sounded by brett. Hugh ferris something you want to read, something that you think is important for Book Publishers to do, let us know. A triana books is on twitter. Facebook, instagram, these are solid and good modes of communication for particularly in the africanamerican community, black community, locally and globally to communicate. Avoid the temptation of pitching me books online but write me and let me know what you would like to read and read and read and read. Now even scientists are concluding and showing us how reading too Young Children, us reading ourselves affects our brains and a positive way. It is healing, not just recreation, not just something you do when you are in school. I read a statistic that 40 of people dont read books once they graduate from school. You got to do better for ourselves. Feed a quiet place to relax for Blood Pressure to reduce, read, read, read. One area where you wont get much argument from people across cultural lines is around the question of education and how important it is. Generally when we are talking about that we are talking marginalized, how they need education to survive and thrive but the readership need education too. Somewhat better way to come to an understanding of that other person or that other culture, than to read a book to my publishing colleagues and community leaders, read a book by a black person, by a caribbean, by an african. And build these bridge collapse, and appreciate your patience and attentiveness and have a great time at the fair and thank you. They [applause] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] coming up in a few minutes back to the harlem book fair with multicultural Book Publishing. Cspan2 providing live coverage of the u. S. Senate floor proceedings and keep Public Policy events and every weekend booktv for 15 years the only Television Network devoted to nonFiction Books and authors. Cspan2 created by the cabletv industry and brought to you as a Public Service by your local, cable or satellite provider. Watch us in hd, watch us on facebook and follow us on twitter. The moment came, the first morning when reagan and gorbachev, we receding in the bubble, a bubble is a room within a room, totally secure, and has big latches on the outside. Bubbles generally are pretty big. When we had the arms control talks we had 20 people in the bubble. In reykjavik they ordered the smallest bubble letter because Nothing Happened in ice all bel. What i did was offer the place in my chair, sit right here, mr. President and i hit the ground. I was on the floor and we had this gigantic it lacks the door once again and we were in there. It was a great moment because reagan cracked a few jokes and said gorbachev is serious about doing things. We said in what way . Deepfried to tell us the approach gorbachev was taking and we sat there for 30 minutes. I was gently leaning against the president ial niece and we knew our assessment was wrong. The intelligence was wrong, the reports were wrong, this was going to be the real thing. You and watch this and other things on line on booktv. Org. New York Public Library center for research and black culture and in a few minutes continuing live coverage of the 2014 harlem book fair. Booktv is on facebook. Like us to interact with booktv guests and viewers and get uptodate information on events. Facebook. Com booktv. When the Islamic Revolution hit, they were cut off from the west in part because of religious reasons. The koran had problems using dead bodies and because the west shortly thereafter to the sanctions. They didnt have the resources, technology or infrastructure to continue with this east organ donations so they focused on living the nation. The simpler sort of oldfashioned way of dealing with a transplant shortage and this wasnt as irrational as you may think because 80 to 90 of people who need organs need kidneys. They focused on the largest part of the population that needed help while we focus on everybody at the same time. We focused on finding technologies we could to keep organs viable Land Transport them quickly and do everything to get them from cadavers. That made sense because why put a living person at risk for kidney . Of and iran spent 30 years in prison improving its donor program, we spent 30 years focusing on her deceased organ program. There is real insight from the results. If you need a heart or a liver, better live here. If you need a kidney, the an iranian because iran if you medically qualified to get a kidney you get one. In the United States out of the 120,000 people who need organs, 100,000 of them need kidneys. 15 to 20 americans die every day because they cant get a kidney and that is not happening in iran. You can watch this and other programs online ask booktv. Org. If 2014 harlem book fair panel on multicultural Book Publishing. My name is weighed hudson and i am president and ceo of just us books, independent Childrens Book co. My wife cheryl and i started in 1988. We established just us books to addressing the needs to reflect our societys diversity. I will moderate the discussion but before we starts i would like to pay a little homage to a great writer we lost last week. Walter myers, winner of many of the awards for children and young adult literature produced a body of work that included more than 100 books for children and young adults. He often wrote about younger africanamericans who battled troubles in the streets, in school and at home, giving them a voice. Also a leading advocate for diversity in childrens literature. We will all miss his outstanding and wonderful writer and human being. Those interested in recognizing walter by making a donation may do so by contributing 2 two of his favorite causes, the Children Defense Fund and a literacy for incarcerated youth. You can go to the web site at www. Justusbooks. Com for information about these two institutions. It was walters article titled where are the people of color, and Childrens Books which appeared in a march 16th, 2014, issue of the New York Times that brought renewed focus on an issue, lack of diversity in books with children that received the spotlight from time to time, then slide underneath the coverage again until another clarion call for change is voice. The article was followed by an Online Campaign calls we need the first books, took the internet by storm with more than 116 million impressions in just one week. A number of africanamerican books creators also undertaking initiatives to address the problem. The lack of diversity issue seems would not go gently into that good night. Harvesting of the wealth in multicultural publishing will examine the issue of diversity in childrens literature but we will do so recognizing complexities involved. Does this represent a crosssection of people and organizations that must and do play roles in finding solutions. Brown king is director of the Public Library in new york. He is also former editor of School Library journal, raise your hand. Ted cummings is an Award Winning author and illustrator whose career spans decades. Publisher of vision works publishing, independent book publisher made him and rolled into the educational market. This e o of the literary media publishers consultant, founders of the africanamerican Childrens Book project and she is seated next to brian. And we have the director of marketing, one of the nations leading independent publishers of books for young people and veronica creech, director of markets at first books in nonprofit organizations that connect Book Publishers and Community Organizations to find access to new books for children and Young Readers particularly those who are in need it. We start our discussion by giving each panelist a few minutes to share information about their organization, their company and their program and follows that with questions and we will start with brian. Can everyone here me . I am a lifelong librarian. Two of our core values in terms of working with kids are to engage children as readers and key element of that is to find books that reflect the diversity of the community that you represent. I began my work in the early 1980s in brooklyn, new york working for brooklyn Public Library, coming out of an optimistic period in publishing and on this lucky enough to working branches with the Virginia Hamilton, walter myers, that previous generations and previous decades did not have access to. We really thought back then that the world was going to change. Walter myers in 1986 wrote an essay that said we are going to change the industry. Since then the industry has changed but in many ways not as fast or as strongly or comprehensively as many of us would like. Good morning. I am the ceo. The world of publishing. I sort of stumbled into the world of publishing in the 90s because africanamerican Fiction Books had taken this country by storm and publishers did not understand how to market and promote these books and my company, literary Media Publishing consultants was created. We did a lot of work in that area and was so fascinating to be on the cusp of all the wonderful authors and most were no long serbian published. Terry mcmillan was at the top of the food shane making people understand reading, there was a joy in reading. Subsequently as the Publishing Industry developed, Fiction Books especially for women i started to see a void in the world of Childrens Books and 23 years ago, i found in an Organization Called the African American Childrens Book project. That cold frosty morning, the beginning of a novel, over 250 people came to a Childrens Book fair. This past february, 3500 people attended a when they book event. In two hours we sold 25,000 worth of books. People come from all across the country hungry for books that reflect their images and i continue to say this to people, if you give it to the community they will come and they will respond. All across this country you see a full lead in books in our community not because people dont want to buy them, they just cant find them. I will be talking a little bit about these africanamerican Childrens Book classics and the success as well as the things we can do as consumers to keep publishers producing great books. I am thrilled to be here, this is an excellent resource, when i started in childrens Book Publishing way back, in 1975, everybody that i had as a teacher, everybody around me was telling me it is impossible to get into Childrens Books, you cant break into the field but i was 27 years old and you dont hear those things so i saw every publisher i could see downtown and none of that worked. The council of innovation book 3 children, this is some place that i believe walter started. I had put some work into that publication and a publisher or had already been to see called me and said they had a book for me to do, not a book they would like me to consider but they wanted me to do it and i was thrilled and i didnt want to act like a didnt know anything about doing books so when the editor said do you know what youre doing i said yes. I didnt have a clue so i went home and i knew somebody who knew somebody who knew somebody, i called and said you have to help me out. Was extremely generous. One thing i found, i came in on a way of, Virginia Hamilton and walter and there was a real interest in growing the number of people of color in the Childrens Book field. The images were so low at the time of all the books that would done, people of color were underrepresented. The numbers havent really changed in all those years, this is 75. I sat on the panel with walter dean myers, Multicultural Panel but we were all black and i thought it is not exactly multi. It has changed, people have become more aware of their needs to be diverse city. One thing the walters said that i carried with me always, it is extremely generous. People help each other. Uconn always find someone to get into the business or assess your work. One thing walter said it has stuck with me is he wants is books to get in the hands of black teenagers and black kids but it is so important in the hands of white kids. There was an article in the New York Times, it is very important to see yourself in books as a child but equally important to see people who are not like you so that you get cal dont have books because it is a question of getting yourself up to speed and finding somebody to help you get into the business. Thank you. Good afternoon. I come to publishing as a wife and mother of eight. When my husband and i started to have a family i was actively seeking culturally diverse literature that i wanted my children to experience and found there was a shortage of that when i went into the typical bookstores. I was disappointed with the quantity of what i was able to find for my children and with the internet and it did allow me to find more things and i was able to water but i grew up in a family where my mother taught me to create the world you want to see sell my husband was a writer as well as myself and we decided a body of Childrens Books that were not just divers in culture but also in gender and physical abilities that told Great Stories of children navigating the diverse world we all share because one of the things i turned was sometimes not children that people fear that which they are not familiar with. I developed the Publishing House our Childrens Books come as an educator, a few years ago i got my masters degree in childhood education. I have worked with teacher development. In schools. I also created a Residency Program so children could learn to communicate more effectively and feel more comfortable in their body and their skin, and the Emotional Wellness workshop that would allow us to work more cohesive lee and that is the universe we all share. Thank you. All right. I am the director of marketing, an Award Winning Childrens Book publisher focused on diversity so we were started in 1991 and we have been publishing multicultural Childrens Books for 20 years. We are now the biggest multicultural Childrens Book publisher in the country. This is familyowned if and completely independent. That is one of the things that makes us different from other publishers out there because most publishers at this point are owned by Huge Companies and because we are so independent it allows us to take risks to publish things we believe in. And they paid in response to the response we have gone from parents, teachers, Young Readers and in terms of major book awards that we have won, we won the major awards and it is really great as a Small Publisher that we are able to compete in the Childrens Book market like this especially with diverse books that we create. So we began by publishing primarily picture books and we expanded to include middle grade books and young adult books as well. We have several in france, we have two books in print which publish middle grade and young adult Science Fiction and fantasy and some a few may knows that these are two sean wrotes that have been extremely white wash so we are trying to add more diverse books. We have our imprint which publishes books for classroom use for beginning readers in english and spanish. And the imprint publishing books that introduce Young Children to the cultures of asia and primarily bilingual english spanish picture books but also some bilingual books in other languages. We have vietnamese, japanese, we have fought whole range and over the last 20 years we have been expanding our definition of diversity to look at what there is a need for and communities and fills that need. We have expanded our definition of diversity beyond racial diversity to also include diversity in terms of abilities, other things like that. We are tuned in to what people looking for and because we are Small Publisher we are able to really answer that need as fast as possible with groundbreaking books of. One of the things that also makes us special is we have always been dedicated to debut authors and specifically working with doctors and illustrators of color. They are extremely underrepresented in publishing. It has been that way for many years and if you look at the statistics it is not getting any better. We make a special effort to work with authors and illustrators of color especially new offers to help them break into publishing and hopefully start very long successful careers or in the publishing book world. If you look at our 2014 titles we have 7 new titles so far out this year. 3 of the seminar by debut office and five of the seven are by either authors or illustrators of color or both so were sticking to that mission we had since the beginning. We have two book awards specifically for authors of the unpublished authors of color. Our new voices for picture books and new visions award for middle grade and young adult books and we give those away annually and the winner gets a contract with us as well as a cash prize and that is one of the ways we are trying to up the numbers of diverse people, having divers books is important and having divers sought this industry is telling their stories is important. We are an activist company so one of the things we are constantly trying to do is push the conversation forward. Why dont we have more diverse books . What is holding is that . How can we get past those challenges. We illustrated the lack of diversity in a number of industries. We are trying to understand the problems in childrens Book Publishing exist everywhere, in movies, tv and politics. There not isolated and we want people to see the numbers starkly and be able to think about some solutions to these problems. We have been releasing the course of the past year they have done really well. A couple of gone viral and picked up by the New York Times, and a way to continue to push the conversation and do that in other ways as well. A lot of other panelists said statistics are not changing, they are tracked by cooperative Childrens Book center every year and numbers of not gone up in 20 years. I hope five years from now we will be looking at different numbers that we are seeing in 2015 and hopefully it will be better. Good afternoon. Malaika adero 11, i am senior director at a global nonprofit social enterprise working to lower the barriers of access to highquality new titles for our kids. First book has been around 23 years. In that time we have distributed 118 million titles. We work with 130,000 teachers, educators across the country to work to make sure they have access to the books they need with their kids in the classroom and their programs and we are creating across 130 member base the opportunity to learn from educators and teachers what you need in the classroom and what your kids are drawn to and what books i kids picking up on the bookshelf and that is the laboratory which we realize the research comes to life. Kids pickup books they see themselves on the cover, in the stories. That feedback is 130 member base which is growing by leaps and bounds every month. It helps us to work more closely with our Publishing Partners and we have been around 23 years and really strengthened the ability to provide high quality books, we also have strengthened our distribution in the Market Solution to make the books accessible because what our base tells us is we not only once and need the books but Many Organizations are trying to have lower budgets, lower infrastructures and trying to work on ways to build capacity. Also the teacher, the afterSchool Programs, we understand from them not only the desire for the books but how do we work with partners who are affordable and that is working with publishers to detract down that costs, but publishing books that are looking for, aggregating the voice of those in the network that says we want the books but you put that buying power together and make a case of publishers and why it is important to have those titles. The way we distribute our books is one of two ways. Working with 8190 publishers across the u. S. We receive a high number of donated books that we read donate to communities for the first book, the National Book bank, and the unfunded enterprise that we take different communities around the country and invite the community to sign up and drive to the distribution for free. The book saying is a good resources to build home libraries and summer programs and books that dont follow a curriculum or that they dont need specifically right now for a particular topic but our base is saying there are times we want to teach about dinosaurs and science and history and we need access to highquality books, but with that curriculum in mind so six years ago our second distribution channel, the first book market place and that is where the work of publishers to have an online resource can go and buy one copy or ten copies or a classroom collection or 10,000 copies of a title that fits with the scene or the curriculum theyre working on today or this summer. And hearing more from the course of our panel today. Thank you, each of you. Now the we know a little more about our panelists we are ready to start our discussion. We want to focus on sharing answers and solutions and not just focus on discussing the problem. What i would like to throw out first to our panelists is this. Sometimes we assume issues we address our clear to everyone but often that is not the case. I am sure there are some, maybe a few who are wondering why is it important that we have more diversity among the books made available to our children. Maybe few people are wondering that so my question to you is why it is important to have more some of you touched on in a little bit. I would like to see you go into more detail. Why is it important to have more books among the offerings . When i was many years ago young girl, i attended an elementary school, we had to stop and go under our desks because the russians were coming and this went on for weeks, the russians are coming and theyre coming from moscow. I asked my teacher who are these russians and why they coming to a little small town outside a suburb of philadelphia. My teacher couldnt explain why the russians were coming so she said to me go to the library. We had a bookmobile. We didnt have a Free Standing library. I went there, we had a two book allotment and the children laughed at me because i got books on moscow, i got books on russia and they laughed and me and said you are never going to go to moscow, why would you read about something as stupid as that. My dad said never mind, keep reading. I started to read books about moscow, paris, rome, and five years ago i was in moscow and i am standing in red square as a tour guide. I started to identify every building in the square and how do you know so much about my country . I read it in a book. I am a young black girl visiting, most of the men in my community had gone to work and never went anyplace outside a five mile radius of the city. Everyplace we went that day that tour guides would pull me aside and introduce me to other people and say this is a person who knows something about the country and the response was so positive. A couple discounts and along with that, i use that example to say to you subsequently i have been to paris and rome and other Foreign Countries around the world but i say that because when you know something outside your community it opens your eyes to the possibilities and that is why diverse books are important. When little more leak malik walks into the room, albert will know something about him. Albert is not seeing on the television all the negative images thinking that is what he is all about conlan and he doesnt have a history. We talk about diverse books, it is important for us as the community, each of us to know something about ourselves and to read something about ourselves. Anyone want to comment . Very well said. To add to that that is very true. We often talk about diversity of kids books in terms of the window in the mirror. Bishop talked about that. Looking at other cultures, seeing yourself and being validated but i was reading and as a last spring about something that resonated in terms of working with kids, it isnt always about the mirror. It is also about the road map. Diversity in kids literature whether it is for kids of color, it isnt necessary finding themselves but what is possible in your life. And in terms of that metaphor of the road map, it was about personas, things you could try on and become in a book. It can really expand the way you can conceive your life beyond where you might be at that time. It was another perspective to look at. The world is getting smaller and smaller thanks to the internet cant even if you dont travel you learn respect. One thing christopher said was about snowy day and seeing the little boy in the hoody and not being afraid so you dont have to fear somebody. We lived around the world and at one point we live in okinawa, germany and when i came back was 10 years i saw an ashtray, buddha ashtray that felt defensive because i knew he was a god. You dont make an ashtrayeven at 10 i know you dont do this. Our respect for other cultures we learn respect for the people when you read about them and get familiar with them and they dont seem strange and you dont have fear for them when you run into them in a dark street. I will direct this question to you. Who is responsible for insuring more diverse books in the market place . Publishers solely responsible . What about booksellers and wholesalers and distributors . Where does market demand play . I would say everybody is responsible because everybody is part of the problem. It is such a complex problem that happens on so many levels, Publishing Houses are staffed primarily by white editors and so the books they are acquiring, you dont believe the diverse book sells so you have booksellers that dont see them and then consumers who cant find the man dont buy them and it is a self perpetuating cycle so i feel the responsibility is shared between everyone, publishers have a deep responsibility to fix this problem. And not just saying they believe in diversity but actively going out to look at diverse manuscripts and publish them and believe in them and put the Marketing Power behind them. Consumers also have a really important job here. It is easy to buy the books that are in front of you but if you want more diverse books you have to seek the mouth and that might mean u. S. Your bonds and noble where the diverse books in your collection, could you order some. Probably even higher than that. So i think those numbers alone prove that theres a market, and so its just matter of everyone who is, whos making those purchasing decisionses and those budgeting decisions to see those numbers and believe that the market is there if if we put the books out and make them accessible to people. Would you like to comment on that . Yes. When we first started in 2005, people said, well, why do you want to produce multicultural books . People of color dont buy books. And i was saying, well, im a person of color, im looking for them, i buy them, i know that theres a market out there. And so we just did it. And it turns out that the books that we were producing are consideredjyl character educatin Childrens Books. And so that allowed us and we didnt know that when we first started out with it, but in education theres a character curriculum that deals with diversity awareness and all of that. And so weve had to actually create a market that didnt necessarily, you know, exist for us. Sometimes what weve had to do is we bring it to the people, you know . When we bring it to the fairs, there are teachers who are probe active in looking for this type of materials for their classrooms and parents who are proactive in looking for these type of materials for their children. So im always excited when i hear parents go im looking for birthday presents for im looking for birthday present, or im looking for this for my curriculum, and these books are the perfect fit for that. I wanted to also include, add to the conversation that, well, many people in that cascade have responsibility for improving the situation. Publishers, diverse editors, diverse books being submitted, diverse authors. As first book, we also know that theres a case to be made for the buyers, whos buying. And not only whos buying, combined with the high statistics of the percent of our population thats minority, the high percent of our population, 45 of kids in America Today live at or below poverty. So we have low income kids, a high number of kids from diverse backgrounds who arent seeing themselves in childrens literature. Our ceo, kyle zimmer, is passionate about making sure were aggregating the voice of the folks serving these kids to say, yes, theres a market, and theres buying power across this market. So as we continue working with national organizations, School Systems, Public Health departments, social services, home visitors, we are tracking what books folks are buying, how can we buy more of them collectively . We go be back to publishers and say, yes, and heres your market. So across this panel if we all worked and continue working from the publisher to the 3yearold that wants to see him or herself in that story or share his or of another culture that we all are adding pieces to that pyramid. You know, i just wanted to add that a theres this assumption especially which she mentioned that africanamericans dont buy books for their children. And its a myth. If people arent buying books for their children, nine times out of ten its about accessibility. You cannot just walk into a Big Box Store and find affordable books. You cannot just walk down the road to, like, many Childrens Books, find a Childrens Bookstore. Most major metropolitan cities have a Childrens Bookstore. The notion that we dont buy books is completely false. How many people in this room have bought a book for a child in the past year . Everyone in this room raised their hand. And im sure if you go around this country, you will find more and more the reason why people dont buy a book is accessibility. And we have to change the dynamics of that. We have to make and as hannah says, go to your barnes noble, your indent bookstore independent bookstore and ask, say if i come back next week, will you have a list of books . And im getting the hook back there. Okay. [laughter] weve talked somewhat about the need for more diverse books, but theres another side to the issue. What about those books that are already being published and made available . How can we get more of them into the marketplace and into the hands of Young Readers, all Young Readers not just readers of color, but all children . I know that book fairs offer an extremely viable option. First book is another viable option. But what are some of the other options that are available of things that we can do to get more book into the marketplace, into the hands of those children we know want the books and will read the books if they can get them . Well, i would say one of the things that we have been working on for a very long time is working with educators, because i truly believe that educators are a great gateway between and books and the children. And if we can work with teachers and work with librarians to get them to have those books available this their classrooms in their classrooms, then those books naturally will find their way into students hands. And so i think that especially thousand with the common core being so big teachers are looking for really quality, complex texts, and i wont go too technical into it, but, you know, we can, we can get diverse books onto the lists that are being recommended and then maybe instead of using the same old classics every year, year after year, written by white authors about white people you can substitute some of those classics for more diverse books that reflect the classrooms that are in our country. And so i think that that is one way that we can really connect our books with kids through educators who are looking for those books. Id also like to add that its on writers and illustrators a lot of times to be very proactive. I know when i teach, i have students who are 20, 25, and when they get out, theyve done their first books, second and third books, and they are extremely proactive, and you have to be these days. They have web sites, they have trailers, they market themselves endlessly, and you need to be out there. You need to go out to the bookstores, theres bookstores like books of wonder that continue standpointly put constantly put on new programs showing Childrens Books. So its really not that hard to get a bookstore engaged, get a library engaged. If you tell them i will come to a program and talk to kids and to get the teachers end gain engaged. Ive gone into schools with my entire class because the schools are open to that. Its really on the creators as well as the publishers to get the stuff out there and to teachers and parents have to really go look for it. Weve also extended into Community Programs because you have schools that are looking for this. There are a lot of Community Programs that offer literacy programs during the summer or to low income communities, and we actually create workshopped and lesson plans around the books and bring them into those communities and inspire children that way as well. Okay. And also your churches. Sn most people belong to some type of civic social or church organization. If your church or your social Civic Organization does not know where to get the books, you can go to a library and ask them to prepare a list. Brians a great resource. Hell probably speak on that, about how to start to get books into your home. Well, following up on that, i would just add that, you know, i think from the library perspective, we talk about discovery a lot today, and i think that weve got a real responsibility to make sure not that we just own these books, but we own these books bountifully, that we have multiple copies, that theyre in the publics eye. Because chances are people arent going to come across these books as we said often times in a bookstore. Were not going to come across them anywhere else sometimes unless theyre coming into that community. Often times they will buy these book withs once theyve learned of their existence. But unless theyre there in their face on the shelf, its not going to happen. Are arent the arent the budgets of many libraries shrinking . I know in some urban areas theyve closed branches. So what kind of impact does lack of money have on the selection or the more inclusive approach to books . Well, i guess youre putting me on the so the here. [laughter] you know on the spot here. Since 2008 Library Budgets have been negatively impacted, for sure. I think a lot of us have 3050 less of our buying power. Were trying to build back, but its slow. You know, theres a lot of arguments in the culture about why we dont need libraries anymore, why everything is digital, etc. , etc. A lot of that is, you know, false i would say. I think that when you talk about books for kids, libraries and librarians remain uniquely committed to that. I think that, like, when i look at my own budget, things get cut, but the Childrens Book budget isnt getting cut. Okay. Because our role there is unique. And with first book again just talking through, you know, we want to work with a lot of surprised time and again of how many libraries actually are buying their books at market or retail prices, yet 100 of the kids they serve are in low income communities. First book is an option to stretch bookbuying dollars for teachers, program leaders, libraries. And if we could aggregate the voice across libraries of the books that theyre buying, we can do even more with the publishers that we have relationships with. So sometimes its just bridging knowledge. Whos out there doing what . Where are the resources . How do we put your libraries with first book, with Publishing Houses that have the books that were all talking about and really building upon those synergies. And were all busy, and were all trying to do the best we can every day. So toms like this, and max bringing us together to have this conversation, were going to keep coming back with the conversation. And i think that the resources are Getting Better every time, its a matter of us working together to figure out now how do we hold hands and bring the corporate dollars to the table, sponsorship to the table for libraries whose budgets are getting cut . But with private industry dollars whose profits continue to increase. So what are the bridges for that as well. First book has an Online Presence market place. How is that faring . Is that doing well . I know youre making more books available through the marketplace. Hows it doing . Thats right, wade, thank you so much. The first book marketplace, im ecstatic to share, each year the number of books that we sell, the number of titles increases. The quantity of books that were selling increases. We have sold about three to four million books a year through the first book marketplace. Thats serious buying power. Folks who are finding the marketplace are learning how to use it, and i have to say our stories for all project which is first books contribution to increasing diversity in childrens literature working with harpercollins in our first. Mc round, we had 600 new titles to the first book marketplace where the titles reflect the lives of all the folks that were talking about today. And we want kids with means and low income kids and kids across every racial spectrum to have access to those titles to, indeed, have the mirrors and window is the and road map experience. The marketplace continues to grow, and we look forward to releasing the stories for all project round two. If you it allows us to bring moe titles to the marketplace. But the average cost is 2. 50. We know because of an Economic Assessment we did recently that right now the average cost of a high quality board book is about 18. And when youre talking about kids that attend title i, title ieligible schools, kids that have a High Percentage of free and reduced lunch and moms and families struggling with paying rent, getting my kid through school or buying books . Were back to the point. Our families do realize, but it is the money and the priority to buy books, and thats where first book is unique, and were uniquely positioned to work with sponsors and other compassionate partners to make sure that were bringing money to our schools in the form of grants and matching funds to stretch those bookbuying dollars that we know folks have and are spending. I would just add as a publisher, those purchases make a big difference to us. We were so happy to partner with first book last year. And were a Small Publisher still, and that purchase was really meaningful and allowed us to keep doing the work of publishing diverse books. So what first book does with those big purchases is actively create a market for diverse books. It means a lot for publishers. And i know for larger publishers its still a significant purchase. I want, and i think these programs are wonderful, but im a strong believer for my 23 years of working in the Childrens Book industry and seeing the work that weve done in philadelphia that weuan as consumers have to begin to buy books and put them back in the home. I remember the can kid growing up as a kid growing up i dont care how poor you were, you had a corner, a literary corner in our home. We have to begin the responsibility relies solely in the seat of the consumer. If you dont buy books for your children, you dont see those positive books that reflect our images. Because wonderful that all these things are happening, but everyone in this room has a responsibility to go out and seek and find books that are affordable. Because the more they publish, the more affordable i believe that they will become. You dont buy a hard cover, you buy a paperback. But consumers have to begin to buy books. And ill also mention the fact that this diverse, the need for diverse books, there are a lot of diverse publishers out there. And when this rally cry went out that we need more diverse books, i thought to myself as i got the text that there was so many people were emailing me what a shame there are no black books out there. And i thought to myself, i just did a book fair where people, consumers stood in long lines to buy books. The books exist. You have got to make an extra effort. And in your hands right now. So when we walk out of here today, dont think there arent any diverse books. Theyre out there. You know, hannah, one of the publishers, justice books, you can come to my web site, the africanamerican Childrens Book project. The books are there. We need more. Im not disagreeing with that, but its you, the consumer, that has the full responsibility for continuing the legacy. Our mantra is preserve a legacy, buy a book. Vanessa, you make a very important point, but how can we get more people in the community to really understand how important it is as consumers to very much books . Are there some steps that we can take to help bring that about . If they can bring sexy back, they can bring books back, okay . [laughter] [applause] its marketing. You have to begin to understand. You cannot expect books are a commodity the same way you pie shoes, a scarf, a pair of earrings or the gu latest cd. Youve got to bring it back to that level, and you have to approach it from a marketing stand point. My book fair in philadelphia is very successful, and the reason is we create a hype. Theres radio, television, print, promotions going on not only paid advertisement, but, you know, the editorial aspect. Everybody thinks theyre going to an event. When they arrive at the book fair be, the books are laid out in a way the way you would buy a shirt or a pair of shoes. You can visually see it. Weve got to change the dynamics of the way books are sold to Diverse Communities. And until we dont approach it from that manner, were still going to be having this discussion. Weve got to take the books to the consumer. Cannot wait for them to come to us. Its not just Diverse Communities that need to to buy the books, its white commitments as well. Exactly. Because the thing is ive never done a book that is strictly about being black. All the books ive done have black children in them, but theyre about going to school for the first time or getting a pet for the first time or getting a lunchbox. And any child can pick up that book and find a story this there thats relevant to them. I want to i mean, ive had too many times at book fairs where people will buy my book and say im giving it to a friends daughter, and i know very well the friends daughter is black, but it doesnt need to be that way. My husband and i just did beauty and the beast. Apparently, aside from john [inaudible] and what is it, the falls beautiful daughter, there are not a whole lot of retold classic fairy tales with blacks or people of color as the main characters. Its not just going to be the Diverse Community can completely support us. It has to be everybody. Read it because its a good book. But i agree with you, books are disappearing in the house, and people buy them, and i actually saw an article about this. People will buy them for their color scheme. Like they want pink books in the babys room. [laughter] it doesnt matter if theyre medical textbooks, theyre pink. [laughter] but theyre buying books, i guess. And, wade, another thing comes to mind when talking about engaging consumers. And kind of two points. One, particularly low income families, theres the thought that books are expensive, period. And oneyay generation later boos are expensive. And even though at first book and other places were driving down the cost of books and were lowering the barriers to access, expensive and expensive. And until we help parents revisit, books arent maybe as expensive as we think they are, and the high outcome of that investment, investing in a new shirt, high quality shoes, the quality of it, helping parents see, wow, maybe its not as expensive as i thought it was. Its also a piece of the parent engagement around the value of books and why one would prioritize spending limited dollars on that resource. You know, burnett ford produced a series that was published by scholastic books. The average cost of those books were 3. 3. 99. They were amazing books. They dealt with, they had africanamerican images, but they dealt with traditional things about getting up on time, you know, do you eat your vegetables . 3. 99. Everyday issues we all deal with. Everyday issues. Yeah. Africanamericans, even if theyre struggling to pay their bills and i say this over and over again because i have the experience will buy books for their children. But how youve got to present io them in a format that they feel comfortable with. A bookstore can be an intimidating environment for many people. You walk in the store, and if i dont have on my good makeup, theyre following me around the store, okay . [laughter] we have to address the way books are sold. Bringing books back into the home is really, really important. But even beside the point its not just about the price. If the kids go to a library, you start to grow leaders. Walter dean meyers was said he was red to as a child, and it was just realize to as a child. I was in iowa city, they stop that city for 15 minutes every wednesday morning, and the whole city reads. It was a bizarre thing. Everybody in the high schools, at work, in the gas stations, everybody stops, 10 00 on wednesday morning, and they read for 15 minutes. And i thought, good grief. [laughter] uhhuh. Its a phenomenal thing. But if you bring kids to the library and qv get Free Library Cards and they get books and they learn to read and to love reading and you have librarians still, hopefully, on the job who actually will put books in their hands, ive heard that so many times. Gary paulson said he was coming home on a cold day, and he ducked into the library to get warm, and the librarian put a book into his hands, and that led to him being a writer. You have no idea the Ripple Effect of just putting a book into a childs hands. If they have grown up learning, they will buy books and seek out books. You can buy books pretty inexpensively. You can buy a book on the street at a used bookstore. It might not be the 18 book that you wanted to get, but if you love, love, love that book, you will go get that 18 book. Uhhuh. What role can, i guess, what more of a role that schools can play in advancing the cause of diverse books being made available . I know youre principally an institutional publisher, right . And mattea, your company focuses on targets, the school market. Are schools stepping up to the plate to really make a difference . And i know, necessary saw, youve vanessa, youve cone some work with schools as well. Share with us your relationships and what do you see as the relationship between schools and diverse literature. I would say that schools are on the whole stepping up to the plate. I think that, you know, we have a very big country, and some schools, i think, you know, were all in agreement here that every school needs diverse books regardless of the dem graphics of your demographics of your student population. Some schools are more open to that than others, but i do think that a lot of Educators Want to put great books in their students hands, and they want their students to learn about the world and to see themselves in books and to learn about other people. I think the thing thats hardest right now is that teachers are under an incredible amount of strain because, you know, in a lot of states theyre implementing these new common core standards, teachers are underfunded, a lot of positions have beeniuo cut, so we see teachers with these huge classrooms and just one teacher. So i think were at a point where from a publishing perspective they want the books, but we need to make it easy for them to see how to use them. You know what i was talking about before, taking a look at classics and maybe substituting some more modern, diverse classics for some of the old classics that are used is a helpful way to make it easy for teachers to use diverse books in the classroom. But i think especially with the growth of Charter Schools were seeing, were seeing budgets that are specifically set aside for purchasing books and for diversifying collections. And so its just a matter of making the books as easy as possible for teachers to use so that they dont need to do all the legwork to figure out, well, is this diverse book youre coming to me with, first of all, is it culturally accurate, second of all, is it in my curriculum . If we do the work for them and put the right back into their hands, i think theyre very receptive. We get that feedback all the time at first book. Our base right now is saying we are so busy, were so full. We had the reading lists from last year and we could keep moving forward with it and it would be the same reading list the last ten years, its easier just to keep moving. But teachers are saying i do want diverse books, but some people dont feel qualified to replace. Theres this nervousness how to replace this title with this title, and whats the title that you would recommend. And then were learning, taking it a step further to your point be, teachers are then saying whats the new language i need to use to talk about this title . How do i talk about this title in a culturallyrelevant way that im not going to fend, that i am to offend be, that i am saying the words appropriately. Ask it and it stirs such a level of nervousness, people stick with what they know. Other folks have come to the same conclusion that working with superintendent, and principals to gain their endorsement of updating the reading lists, maybe one of those powerful places that we all can work to support teachers u our kids ask is on that reading list. n the first we created tip sheets. And tip sheets weve created in consultation of experts who have outlined ways to take this title and link it to these questions for this age group to engage kid to help teachers feel more confident about using the title. We really would love as we continue growing our stories for our project and the titles, creating tip sheets to be that bridge. In new york ive noticed a change in, a change in the way of in terms of distribution. The Distribution Channels for independent books, to me, has closed up tremendously. In new york city. And so what i mean by that is as at one point there were hundreds of independent publishers that carried more multicultural childrens titles, and they were selling thousands of them. And so at some point the city has closed out the independent districters, and now theyre all coming through a mainstream, you know, lets say a mainstream ingram or three distributers or bookstores, exactly. And so those distributers i know are not necessarily carrying our books. Uhhuh. And so weve had to find a new way of reaching schools. Im very happy to say that although teachers, i see teachers who have multicultural classrooms are looking for books for their students. They care about their development, they want to boost their selfesteem. I see them ordering and buying. I think that schools could do more to include independent Book Publishers and voices and illustrators and authors of diversity. Okay. We have a book. Its just been published. What do we do to make the folks who are going to buy this book aware that this book exists . Im just throwing it out to thats marketing is one. [inaudible conversations] book reviews are important also. I think book reviews are important to a certain consumer they dont read the library journal, they dont read publishers weekly. They listen on the radio, on the hottest Radio Station in the city. They see interviews on television. They read the newspaper. And if you want to get to consumers, the top Radio Station in that market during morning drive, get on a steve harvey or a tom joyner morning show, have them endorse your book with. I guarantee you, that book will be an overnight success. Thats how you reach consumers. Thats how Corporate America is selling their products. You have to use the same model that Corporate America uses to sell a book. We can no longer think of some intellectual property and something dainty, and we cant pursue those type of options. Its time to be proactive. Go to the people. Uhhuh, okay. So the good thing about the internet is that, for today is that theres so many different eaves to reach individuals avenues to reach individuals. Its the Radio Station, maybe somebody endorsings your produt might be one. You have facebook, you have linkedin, you have all these Different Networks where youre able to get exposure for what it is that youre doing. Even different marketplaces. I mean, everything doesnt necessarily have to go through barnes noble. You have, you know, the amazon marketplace. But its all about publicity or your own online store. Your own online store and, once again, wringing it to the people at the book fairs. I know that people are buying the books, its just about getting the exposure and letting people know where to find you. Brian, what role yeah, yeah. I mean, just to follow up on that, yeah, i think youre right, you know, there is this divide between the consumer and the institutional markets, and i think that if you really want to sell to the institutional market, you need those reviews whether its a School Library with journal, a book list or whatever it is. Its a vetting process. They need to see that this book is well reviewed in a way before hay put it in their they put it in their collections. If that book ends up being challenged in some way in the future, theyve got something to fall back on thats solid. Reviews, i think, is often times a challenge. Especially a challenge for Small Publishers, Small Publishers, emerging publishers, self selfpublished authors and all of that. I think its tougher for them to get you know, if you dont have that marketing staff to sit down and present your list to a book review editor, then its tougher, i think, to get those reviews. I think, hannah, some acquisition librarians actually require reviews, right . Uhhuh. Before they even look at you. Yeah. I would say, you know, in terms of the books of ours and were lucky that weve been around long enough that we do get those reviews, and the books of ours that do at least initially are well reviewed by multiple. We have the School Library journal, publishersxd weekly, kirkus, those are the big ones. And i think this terms of diverse books, its harder for independentlypublished people who arent getting those reviews to get into collections. A lot of newspapers where maybe direct consumers were getting their reviews, the book review is sections have closed or been taken out or have been shrunk. And so theyre not really there anymore, and thats where as some of the other panelists were saying, the internet comes in, but really in terms of getting into collections you need those print reviews. I think we are i mean, we are looking at blogs as authoritative sites now. I mean, the whole thing is changing. Bloggers are writing for School Library journal now and vice versa. What counts as a professional book reviewer, i think the lines are blurring a little bit. And blogging, which used to be kind of like this thing that people did this their pajamas from home, is now becoming a really respected source of book reviews. But i think when youre trying to reach diverse audiences, a lot of times people get so many emails that they no longer open that email about a book or some item or some commodity to listening, to hearing. You can reach also Diverse Communities. I keep saying this over and over again, social, civic and Church Organizations are the heart of many communities. Youve got to go out to them. Do something novel. Call up the astor at a church say the pastor at a church and say, hey, ive got this new book, id like to do a book signing. Id like to send you a form to introduce you to my imprint. Scholastic has done it for years. Lets start doing those kinds of things to get people back to buying books and getting them into the home. Will well, there are a number of Community Organizations that are really stepping up and instituting literacy programs. There are National Programs like the Childrens Defense Funds Freedom School. And i think they have 125 more Freedom Schools around the country. Getting books, im going back to what vanessa said, getting books actually to the people, i think, is the key. Vanessa, why do you think and you probably touched on this a little bit why do you think your book fair so successful . What are you doing to make it successful . Id like to say because people love books. It could with the free stuff we give away also. [laughter] but the realities is i am realities are i am a marketing and publicity specialist. So when i approach be it, i look at it as a commodity. And when the consumers walk in that door, theres a feelgood feeling. The drums are playing, so so theres a heightened sense of theres something special. Ive gotten all the authors and illustrators to do interviews all over the region, so when people come, they automatically look for mattea or wade hudson because they heard something about that authors book. They didnt in necessarily go to a library they didnt necessarily go to a library to see it or a bookstore, but they heard about it. They heard those voices. Also another thing thats important for what we do, we engage Corporate America. So if corporate sponsors say id like to be a part of this event and ive got x, y, z amount of dollars, how can i be a part of it, we buy the books of the guest authors and illustrators or that are going to be there. Because im trying to get people to read and to get books into their home. So when a child walks in, they get a brand new book, and tf only books we give away are of the authors and illustrators present. So that child for the first time may own a book, get it personalized and meet the person. Those three things change the dynamics of what happens with them when it comes to books. They begin to look at books from a totally different perspective. Its not some foreign object that sits in the classroom shelves or in the library. Its something that they own thats in their home. They open the pages. They meet the person who wrote and illustrate ised the book. Their name is in the book. And ive had parents come to me, i have a woman whos been coming to my book fair for ten years, and she has 20. We manage to find four books every year for her children because i look for books that are affordable. So again and again, and i though im sounding like a broken 45 [laughter] you know what that is. [laughter] but we have got to engage the consumer. And we give away posters and bookmarkers, catalogs. Im begging publishers to send he the catalogs because i get Charter Schools who, unfortunately, brian mentioned to this to me earlier, School Libraries have closed. So you dont have that librarian that you could go to in the school and say, look, whats new, whats hot . Id like to buy a book and have it in my home. So we have catalogs from all the major publishers. And that enables not only parents, but also educators to take those books, those catalogs home and look through them to find out whats out there in the marketplace. So all of these things lead back to the importance of what were trying to do. Were trying to get people to read. Were trying to get people to find out about themselves. And and i want everybody to know how fabulous, im an africanamerican, how fabulous we are. But its so important for us to take responsibility for that. One of the wonderful things about vanessa [inaudible] is that its been a resource for educators to come through, and i cant tell you the amount of Charter Schools that have ordered our books because weve been a part of, been a part of that childrens multicultural childrens festival in pennsylvania. And its ongoing. Its not just the time that you participate, but the word grows, and, you know, the andx y the Movement Grows for families and teachers and educators. Okay. I think were going to now open it up for questions from the audience. Im going to invite erica ayala from the Children Defense Funds Freedom School program, and shes going to give us a Little Information about the Freedom School. You have about a hundred and, what, Freedom Schools around the country . Were up to 200 sites around the country. Whoa. And its curriculumbased. Yes. Thank you. My name is erica ayala, and Childrens Defense Fund has been running the Freedom Schools next summer it will be 20 years of the cdf Freedom Schools which comes from the history of the mississippi freedom summer and the Freedom Schools of 50 years ago. But we have five main components to the Freedom Schools. That is parent and family involvement, Civic Engagement and social action, intergenerational leadership development, nutrition, health and Mental Health and then the fifth and final which leads to a lot of the things that the panelists have been talking about is high quality academic enrichment. And we do this through our integrated reading curriculum. And be so when we started the panel, we were talking about answers and solutions, and we think that the Freedom Schools are the answers and the solutions that our communities are looking for. We also talked about windows, mirrors and road maps, and we have a few books that id like to share with everyone that i feel really helped to frame the conversation in that way. The first is a lee and low book. It is how we are smart and [inaudible] [laughter] i see this as a road map. These are stories of people like patsy mink and Thurgood Marshall and tito pen today and how puente and how they are smart and used their talents to become professionals. We also have books that are a part of the curriculum that are resources. I talked about the 50th anniversary of the freedom summer, so we have Resource Books that we use like freedoms children where young people can read about the stories of civil rights veterans, but from the time when they were 10, 11, 12, 16 years old, retelling their stories for young people today so young people have, again, a road map and a window into history so 10, 11, 12 and 16 they can make a difference which is our overall theme at the Freedom Schools. And then finally i wanted to end with a book by the late author walter dean meyers. He is one of our favorite authors at the Childrens Defense Fund Freedom Schools, and i had the privilege of being able to model this book, again, at the freedom summer anniversary. And i was with students in sixth, seventh and eighth grade, most of them were around 11 years old. And in two days and just a few chapters of reading this book, we were having conversationses about political philosophy. We were having conversations about the social contract which is John Jacques Russo because of what walter dean meyers and a lot of our authors and even our illustrators put in their books. And we in turn after six weeks put these books, brand new books, in the hands of our young people. So our kindergarten through fifth grade students, they read upwards of 36 titles in six weeks, and our older students read a book a week, six titles. And they get to take these home. The only name that is in these books other than the author is ask illustrator is their own name. So when were talking about access to books, when were talking about access to authors and illustrators and even characters that not only look like our children, but that also are a window into other cultures, we really think that the Freedom Schools program is a great example of everything that the panel has been talking about. So if youd like more information, we are at w work w dot children www. Childrensdefense. Org. Im also going to be here for the remainder of the day if be you have specific questions. You also have the apple School Programs in addition to the after School Programs in addition to summer school. Yes. Thank you, yes. We have been able to run the Program Throughout the year. So while six weeks is what most of our sites again, these are Community Organizations, these are churches, these are colleges and universities, stony brook here, were in the sunni system we also have sites that are able to run this throughout the year. And so were assisting with homework, but also, again, introducing these titles, these authors, these illustrators, these stories, these narratives to our young people. Thank you very much, erica. [applause] supportive of the Childrens School and the tree come defense Freedom Defense fund. In fact, my wife sheryl and i serve odd on the board at the childrens Defense Library in tennessee. If you have questions, please feel free to come to the microphone here and direct your question to the panel. Are there any questions . How do we stand with time . I see wrap it up. Wed like to see [laughter] wed like to thank you for coming. We hope we provided you with some good information. And we know that it is not necessarily an easy chore to really change the dynamics, but i think that a lot has been done. A lot of people are doing some wonderful things, and we encourage you if you just buy at least one book, you will help to address the problem. Thank you for coming, and well see you later. [applause] [inaudible conversations] and that wraps up the panel on multicultural Book Publishing, and well have more from the harlem book fair in about ten minutes. Wed like to hear from you. Tweet us your feedback, twitter. Com booktv. One of the first things i did when i was researching this book in 2012 was to go to the big hacker convention. Yes, hackers have conventions. In las vegas, of all places, its called defcon. And this was defcon 20. And i met some really strange people. [laughter] super smart, but, you know, they have something a stroll when you walk in, they call it the wall of sheep, which is scrolling in realtime all of the have been cracked in that, you know, in that moment by their software from peoples computers. Its like, pow. And you just, you realize how vulnerable you are. For our intelligence agencies, its no secret did you see your name go across . Yeah. I had been told before i went by someone who was very helpful to me in this book who i thank in the acknowledgments, dont bring any computers, dont bring your cell phones, dont bring anything. [laughter] as soon as you come in, you know, a false Wifi Networks going to come up and try to capture you. So, you know, these have been recruiting grounds, famously, for our intelligence agencies for a long time. And if you were to go out to fort meade, go out to nsa tomorrow or sick months ago or six months ago or a year ago as i did researching the book, you would see something pretty interesting. Fort meades a military base, so is youd see a lot of military officers in uniform, men and women. But youd see a lot of people with super long hair and black tshirts, you know, youd see people like you see at defcon. And thats because theyve been recruited. And i think the hacker ethos, basically, you asked is it patriotism, serving my country . No. Its like, if you can hack it, hack it. Its like why, you know, why climb everest, you know . Hillarys famous answer, because its there. Thats sort of the spirit of hackers. And thats part of what got out of control at nsa. Just in every direction these kids, super smart kids said, oh, wow, we can take that down, i think. And so i think thats why, you know, very, very good, mature managers are need inside that world more than anyone else. You can watch this and other programs online at booktv. Org. This week booktv takes a look at the Weekly Standards online book shelf to see what that publication is recommending. On the shelf is turings cathedral by george dyson as well as the great war by peter hart and james halls cultural history of the selfportrait. Paynes the special civil war which is an analysis of the spanish republic and its complex political history. Former first lady lee wiess saw katherine adams, as is the metamorphosis of fat in which the evolution of western ideas of obese people lay a role in health come pains. An idea whose time has come, an account of the political battle to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964. And finally, the Weekly Standard online book shelf has the woig my on edward vii and Charles Murrays the curmudgeons guide to getting ahead. Weeklystandard. Com bookshelf. [inaudible conversations] starting shortly, more from the 2014 harlem book fair live from the Schomburg Center in new york city. [inaudible conversations] booktv is on facebook. Like us to interact with booktv guests and viewers, watch videos and get uptodate information on events. Facebook. Com booktv. Booktv asked, what are you reading this summer . Well, first i have to say im a book fan. If im home, i love to spend a little pit of time in the lie a little bit of time in the library. And actually, recently, ive found a couple of books id recommend. I just finished belzoni, and this is the story about an italian around 1810 who ends up getting an education as a hydrologist, cant get a job. But he does end up with one in egypt, and he brings out all of the art factions, many artifacts, many of which are historic artifacts from egypt and its great, rich history and acquires them and brings them back with his skills for the british museum. Then another one i think folks monument men, absolutely if youve seen the movie, see saving italy. And this is by robert edsel. This is an incredible story of saving the art treasures in italy. The Monuments Men movie focuses on northern europe, but what took place in italy is absolutely incredible, saving some of our great art treasures throughout italy. And in the final chapter of this, it was interesting to find that they cover what had happened with mr. Heller who was, dean heller who was one of the principals in saving the italian art. And mr. Heller ended up, he was a painter, and he was also a professor before he got into the service to save art. But i could have been knocked over with a feather when i found that one of his most famous works is in the Reception Room at the u. S. Senate. He painted one of the portraits. Theres five portraits there. So Robert Heller did taft. I just finished you can tell i have a slant from visiting italy. Great book about the construction of one of the incredible monuments. And a couple others id recommend, conquering gotham. If youre into transportation infrastructure, the story of building penn station in new york and getting the tunnel from new jersey into manhattan. An incredible feat. We think we have problems with Infrastructure Projects now, this is an awesome by jill johns. And then i loved the last train to paradise. Its about bringing a train into florida. Its by a florida artist,less stanford. Hes a professor. Hes also done burning washington, and in my office i have, actually, one of the, one of the engravings from 1819 of the capital that he used in the book. Sonnn les stanford, last train o paradise. Finally, this summer ive been going through the library of Congress Series on president s. The last one was on wilson. Scott berg gave the lecture, and i look forward this summer to finish this volume. Im pretty excited about that. What are you reading this summer . Tell us whats on your Summer Reading list. Tweet us booktv, post it to our Facebook Page or send us an email, booktv cspan. Org. Heres a look at some books being published this week look for these titles in booksts this coming week and watch for the authors in the near future on booktv and on booktv. Org. Cspan2, providing live coverage of the u. S. Senate floor proceedings and key Public Policy events. And every weekend, booktv. Now for 15 years the only Television Network devoted to nonFiction Books and authors. Cspan2, created by the cable tv industry and brought to you as a Public Service by your local cable or satellite provider. Watch us in hd, like us on facebook and follow us on twitter. I grew up in sumter on a paveed street. I was three blocks from the my elementary school. I was six blocks from my middle school, and as bill said, i graduated from Mather Academy where we called it in those days a boarding school. I was, mylg÷ dormitory was 20 ss from my academic hall. And so i never knew what it was to walk to school for miles. And walk back home. And so when i expressed some disenchantment with the Court Decision in the [inaudible] v. Member eleven berg which was a case that ordered the integration of schools of charlotte, north carolina, and i said so publicly, well, emily sat me down that evening. And explained to me in vernacular what it was not to be able to ride a school bus and explain that i should not ever be be against busing. [laughter] so ill say this, when youre running for office, it seem to me it seems to me you would do well to understand that people you the people you are asking to vote for you. Watch this and other programs online at booktv. Org. Starting next, a discussion with Tracey Syphax about her memoir from the block to the boardroom. This is live from the 2014 harlem book fair. [inaudible conversations] good afternoon, everyone, and welcome once more to another panel by the harlem book fair. I want to thank Max Rodriguez once again for putting on this event year after year. The Television Audience cannot see outside of this auditorium, but if they could, they would see the street is filled with people, books, theres enthusiasm. Its just a wonderful day, and thank good the sun is out. Thank god the sun is out. I am5cn elizabeth nunez, but bee i introduce myself, id like to introduce my copanelist, Tracey Syphax. Just want to do a quick introduction. My name is Tracey Syphax. Im a 20year entrepreneur. I wrote a book titled from the block to the boardroom that basically has chronicled my life story, and im just here to share with you all this morning. I am also just a recent, just as recent as two weeks ago, one of the white house champions of change for this year by president obama wow. [applause] and i spend a lot of my time, thank you, i spend a lot of my time speaking on mass incarceration and using proper reentry tools, and ill tell you a little bit about why i do that later on. While we may seem strange partners on this stage here [laughter] the thing that binds us is that we have both written memoirs. And for me, its my first memoir. Ive written eight novels. Some of you may know some of my titles, in between boundary boundaryies, etc. I really am an academic. I have been teaching in the City University for many, many years and am currently at hunter college. And this is my first memoir, not for everyday use. So the first question i want to ask tracey is a question that a lot of people ask me, actually, is how do you get the courage to put in print some really true and hard things about yourself . Because when youre writing, when im writing a novel, i can hide behind the fiction. When youre writing a memoir, youve got to put it all out there. Yes. And be thats a good question, elizabeth. A question that i get quite often. In my book i take people to my lowest point in life, and as a 20yearold 20year Business Owner, a lot of people have asked thatni question, why would you do that . And you own a business, i own a construction and real estate could i just ask you, what, why did you do that . Yes. Theres a reason why. Its because as i said even though im a 20year Business Owner and, as i said, i was honored by4 the white house a couple years ago, i also made history aspirinston chambers entrepreneur of the year. Princeton is princeton, trenton is trenton. First africanamerican in the 51year history to ever win that award. So the reason, and to answer your question, the reason why i wrote the book is because i wanted to encourage anybody else thats trapped out in that lifestyle to let them know they can not only come out of that, but they can prosper. I wanted to take people to my lowest point in life and then to bring them to where i am at today as a respectable Business Owner in the community, a community activist, to show them that theres a way up and a way out. Could you talk a little bit about that lowest point in your life . How old were you, and what were the pressures on you to go into that life . Yeah. You know, and i say this all the time, a lot of our kids, we grow up, we dont have an opportunity to choose our parents. We dont have an opportunity to choose the environment we grow up in. It is what it is. I grew up in a single parent household, mother on drugs. I was first introduced to drugs by my mother and her thenboyfriend. Wow. A lot of my family members would go to jail one year, come home. So i grew up thinking that going to jail and coming home was normal. Thats what we did. Only to find out later on in life that thats not what we do. So being able to take people to those lowest points, i started using drugs at the age of 13 wow. Very young. Started selling drugs at the age of 14. And i just grew up in that lifestyle until i was 31 years old. And i finally said enough is enough, and i made a vow in 1993 when i came home from prison, i made a vow to myself and my god that i was going to change my life around, and i was not going back to prison, and i was not going back to that lifestyle. My last conviction was from 1988, and ive been free ever since. Wow, wonderful. He said listen, i have seen you twice since i have been under binge, 1980, 1988 and doing the same thing and he told me three time is the john. Next time you are eligible for 18 years and i can double that sentence and make it 36 years. This guy is trying to take my life and i realize i could not come back before him again and expect to get out of prison. Sometimes i really should be talking about my memoir too. I think people have children and dont realize my sister used to say to me, she said you know what . When youre going to deliver, have a good time because that is the least amount of pain you are going to have. It is a lifetime thing, people have children and dont realize the pressure is in their hands, they could shape it one way or another. You are seeing the other way. I tried to do Something Different with my kids. As a father, me and my wife celebrate 30 years of marriage this august. We have been together for 30 years so we met in the eighth grade. I am telling you my story, everything i have gone through, my family has gone through, a whole chapter in my book where she talks about the experience see had to go through being with the person that has a drug problem, been in jail, trying to get something together says she has a whole chapter in my book, the name of the chapters from that perspective and talk about that. Why didnt she it did affect her quite often. We used to call it our seasonal breaking up where she said enough is enough. Why didnt she go into that life too . She has never been involved with drugs. I did a lot of things from her. Is ironic now that here we are celebrating our 30th anniversary, my wife is a corrections officer. My daughter is a corrections officer, my son is in prison. Talking about how we as parents have a responsibility to our children. My son and my daughter grew up in the same household, my son is in prison and as a man is my responsibility to raise my son right. My wife does all she can, but i say this all the time, a woman cannot raise a man, cannot raise a boy. Take a father to do that. My daughter, corrections officer at the age of 23, she is a 7 year correction officer and as a whole career in front of her and my son, starting to realize the rap he took was the wrong one and he is getting himself together and i had high hopes that he was going to do the right thing. Two she huge questions and you have questions too but one of them, i forgot the name of the woman but she had done the deal and said most of the women were in jail are there because they because of their connection to a boyfriend who pulled them into their life so my question is your wife was important. She pulled away. What was it that had her pulling away and not pulling into the life . You said you got pulled into the life because of your mother and her boyfriend and the Community Around you but there she was. What made her so strong . My wife believed in her children more. Loved me that loved her children, more than she loved me and she told me that. When we broke up the last time she set i have to leave. You are not doing right. I have a son and daughter and my responsibility is to raise my son and my daughter in an environment away from what you are doing and i understood that. Living the life i was living i understood that some my wife is i have been with her 38 years. She is a very grounded woman and very strong woman and i thank god being able to have someone like that in my life, to have that to fall back on because the same relationship i had with my wife for 30 years is the same relationship i had with her mother who is another strong africanamerican woman who is like my mother so these two strong africanamerican women that have been part of my life for 30 years basically set the standard how to conduct my life and brought me from a dark time in my life to who i am today. Why is it your son is in the households with a mother who is a strong woman stands up against this. Why is it the daughter goes one way, what happens to the sun . Before i get there i want to say there was something you said it struck me which was that your wife loved her children more than she loved you. That is pre courageous for a man to say, for a husband to say. That was the passage in beloved that got me, when she says that her husband, you know, he fell apart when he saw what was happening to her and she said i went on and the reason i went on is i had two children and the baby needing my milk and i couldnt just in other words, she was raising my children over my husband and i say that because would you believe i am going to mention my memoir . That is one of the hardest things for me in my memoirs. My mother loved her husband more than she loved her children. I felt always that my mother, my mothers choice she had to make one was always with her husband and i recall a scene in my memoir that my mother had six children ranging from ages 9 to 2 and my father got a scholarship in london and i remember i was 5 years old and i remember seeing my mother crying crying crying every single day. She was useless, she couldnt take care of us, she couldnt do anything. U. S. Couldnt hold it together waiting for letters from my father eventually my mother took that ship from trinidad to england. I am talking long ago. And stayed with him for quite a few months. It just was something that stayed with me for the rest of my life. My friends who didnt have that situation and even in my family, there were 11 of us but i could tell you something at as i got older, all my siblings left the home and my parents died in their 90s, they had a very long life and healthy long life. They were not sickly or anything like that. I began to appreciate that they loved each other more my father loved us too. If they had to make the choice it would have been each other. I resented it growing up which i talk about in my novel but in the end i got to feel they didnt need us. They have a good time. So let me get back to your son, what happened . My son made bad choices. I am talking about the influence, what influences someone to go one way or the other and we are saying parents have a great thought because you were saying that is what happened with you that your mother had a great part in your going that direction. As i said, my wife was very grounded in her beliefs and strong in her convictions and that is why i said it is hard for a woman to raise a boy into a man. It takes a real man to do that and for the better part of growing up i wasnt there. I was in prison. My wife raise my daughter and my son and my absence and my daughter like i said is has a career in corrections and my son is in corrections. I take ownership of that. That is my fault. I also know that my son the last time it was just bad choice. My son my son just went to jail five years ago so he went to jail when i was at the height he was working for my company. Things he did he didnt have to do. He made the choice, people telling him being influenced by that crowd and ending up getting shot and spending time in prison. I want to ask about those choices when it comes to blackmail and it just seems to me, what is it that makes them make those wrong choices . Is it a kind of hopelessness, a kind of like i dont see a future, seeing the future with you. That is a question. One of the things i talk about in the book i grew up in the 70s and 80s in trenton, new jersey. Dont know if anyone hears familiar with trenton, new jersey. There was a street in trenton, new jersey two miles long which in the 70s and 80s was 1112 African Americanowned businesses and i grew up in that area so i grew up at a time where i got to see on a daily basis what an africanamerican entrepreneur looked like. I looked i worked for two of them for a couple of years so i grew up knowing what that looked like. A lot of our kids to they grow up and dont see that. They dont see themselves as entrepreneurs and i have been involved with a program for 17 years, Johns Hopkins university, the Business Program and what we do in that program is going to Public Schools and teach six fort seven how to run a business. Africanamerican and Business Owners were part of the program so once again our kids are not getting the opportunity to see themselves. I have been involved for 17 years. I have to be the example of what they can be and i wanted to say this real quick. In trenton, new jersey, i am the only second private citizen in the history of that town to have built a private residence in that town. And i did that for a reason. Number one, once again, kids growing up need to see that image. My office is located on Martin Luther king boulevard like any other Martin Luther king boulevard across the country. One of the most challenging areas in trenton. A nice office, we renovate it. Once again, it is because i can have an office anywhere. Once again, our kids in our Community Need to seek fissions. Not just drug dealers, not fancy cars, clothes, they need to see visions of central entrepreneurs look like them so they know they can aspire to exactly what i believed for many years because i have been a professor in the university and i believe when i stepped in front of that classroom i dont only teach a subject but when the students see me it i give them an idea of what they can be because at this point i had written nine novels and i can tell you that i spoke my first novel at 42, why did i wait so long to write my first novel at 42 . That was because i never saw anyone like me writing a novel. I never saw a black woman and i have to say john oliver kilns, the great africanamerican novelist, a hero, came to my college as a writer in residence and eyes that look at these papers and he said you are a writer, elizabeth. Without that role model, without one who looked like me saying it was possible, i wouldnt have had this career. People talk about diversity as if making different colors in a room but it is not about that. It is about giving young people, older people, if you dont see some things that is possible it is hard to do it so right now i actually i give workshops in my room to residents there. I do it free of charge. It takes a lot of work. I am paying back early. It leads me to the other question about leadership, black leadership. Could you talk a little bit about that and before you do that tell us about the business you run . I believe black leadership myself, i speak for myself, i have an obligation. I have an obligation as a present that grew up in a city neighborhood that has been able to accomplish something in life and be successful. I have an obligation, my obligation to reach back and do more. I wrote this book not and trust me 16, not like getting rich selling these books. I wrote these books to be able to be that with the lot of young folks need. On the daily basis are losing hope. How are they going to get the book . I am speaking as an academic. One of the big problems is they are not reading. I understood that when i wrote the book. I did it if you get a chance bill on youtube and go to the board rob the boardroom and the video will show up. Of very positive message describes this book and the reason i did that is because once again just like you are saying a lot of our kids are visual and audio. I need them to see themselves in this book so i did the video young man out of trenton, new jersey, up and coming rap star and i knew this guy had talent because i gave him my book and said i need a theme song for this book. He did that theme song in one take. If you listen to it it has 10,000 hits on youtube. It is phenomenal that this young mind could create with rap music that song in one take and i didnt have to say take this out and put this in and the video itself when you go to youtube he directed the video, we shot the video in 12 hours in one day, we start in the morning and end at 9 00 or 10 00 that night. The talent that our kids have is there, just needs to be cultivated and brought out. I am going to tell you and you may tell me i am totally wrong, you are unique in this sense, it seems to be that most people when they get theirs, take pairs out of dodge. That is why i am asking about leadership. I just feel i dont understand when someone helps you get somewhere that you finally get there and you dont feel you have a real responsibility to get directly to that person, the community as you are doing. That is not what we see all the time and that is part of the problem we have. I agree and you can talk about that to athletes and entertainers. Millions. I tell you that i am really offended. I turn off the tv when they show programs of People Living in houses where they cannot possibly for a whole month, what do you tell me . The values you are asking me to have. I just feel come john, what are you giving back . It is important. I am very grounded in my faith and my religion and what i believe in and i got that way. It didnt just happen through my addiction to drugs and i say this in the book. I got shot in 1988 and i have but 102yearold grandmother and chief is sharp now. She told me 20 some years ago, i cant tell you to get out of the streets but i will tell you something. God is going to find you in your darkest hour. Only then will you realize what you truly are glitch that happens to me in 1991. I was in raleigh state prison, spent 20 hours in latka for something i didnt do. For years separate. Explain that to us. 23 our law. You dont the come of the cell for 23 hours. In half an hour, like in a yard like this where the walls are so high all you see is the sky. I did that over some things that i didnt do. I had a cousin who was locked up, the correction officer, tried to break it up and he went to the hold and got charged with assault. I got charged with assault. He got shipped to state prison. I got shipp to raleigh state prison. They gave him a street charge. They gave me a street charge. They dropped might street charge, the administrative charge is the prison system charge so i spent a year in a cell that is no bigger than the average sized bath room. That is good. God has a way of doing some Amazing Things to wake you up and smacked you around and he did it then because i remember sitting in that cell, i read the bible from start to finish and found out who i really was and i knew then that i wasnt the guy that landed me there. When i came out of raleigh in 19 around the end of 1990 i was shipped to camden, new jersey, to riverfront state prison and i was a changed man. I was a changed man. I was not the same person that went in. Stuff like that, i really believe, i get this question of a time. If you go back over your life would you change anything you went through . I got a bullet lodged in my spine. I tell people all the time i would not change one thing i have been through because what i have been through is because god wanted me to go through that. He wanted to put me where i am today and do the things i do today and to be an example of what you can do. You made the choice. God put you in the situation but you made the choice. It was a hard choice. You couldve gone either way but you made the choice and that is admirable. Tell us about low award you got from president obama. Lets june 30th, now i can remember this date for the rest of my life. In 2011 when i became a entrepreneur of the year as prison chamber of commerce as the first africanamerican in the 51 year history and the first acts offended but they didnt know it. I thought that was the top. Once i am gone, i was going to be there but a month and a half ago i got an email from the white house. As i said, i developed programs which i talk a little bit about, i also speak in prison and drug rehab stories and Halfway Houses around the country on ending as incarceration for nonviolent offenders and on capitol reentry to entrepreneurship for folks coming home from prison because ive learned this from 1985, october of 1985, i attended the million man march and if you dont have a charge you dont have a job your charge was to go back to your community and create one and i started my business three months after that. Fast forward to june 30th when i got the email from the white house, actually missed it became on tuesday on election day in trenton and i was working on getting a friend of mine of elected mayor and ironic when i was trying to get elected mayor the former police chief, best friends of the day, i talk about him in my book also but he didnt win, and checked on thursday and the white house had hidden email, and was nominated as a champion of change 2014 and i had to respond and i didnt so i responded that thursday and i was done. So she said listen, give as information by the end of the day and you are still in there. This was unprecedented. Thousand nominees from across the country. I was one of 16. [applause] went to the white house and was on some panels with attorney general eric holder and i believe we are in a good position, attorneygeneral older doing things are revamping the Justice System and criminal laws and all these laws that are continuously incarcerating africanamericans at alarming rates, incarcerating more people in america than any country and it is as immoral that as free as we say we are, it is mainly africanamericans and as free as we say we are we have laws right now, as was written so eloquently in the new jimcrow, we have laws, dont care if youre a convicted for one year in jail or ten years in jail you are convicted to a lifetime when you get home because you will never be eligible for housing, for a job, youre voting rights. All those things you need to reintegrate yourself back into society or strip for the rest of your life. I put my old state number 226926 as a reminder in my book. If i was ever to go back into the job market next week guess what . I will still have to check on the application i have been convicted of a crime. We worked in the state of new jersey and this is why i wanted a chance just recently i announced because it happened two weeks ago, the state legislature of trenton pass a law i worked on tirelessly for three is with the new Jersey Institute social justice called ben the box, which stops employers from discriminating against people with criminal records. It is not the you are going to be asked about that criminal record, just that we want you to release the second or third interview. We thought you could at least a we offered him a job, now we need to hear back before we give you this job and that is giving them the opportunity to get their foot in the door because if you check the box on the application your application only goes in this pile over here and that piles is to not hire a you could be listing your best employes, over 20 years in business during the height of mike company, 18 employees might best jobs are ex offenders because of a comment, 18 employees, some of the best employees i ever had. Looking for an opportunity. I got guys to come to my office on a daily basis a guy cant go back to jail. I just need and opportunity. I will sweep up, i will do anything. I cannot go back to jail. I have a son. When somebody tells you that and you have been through that and you know where theyre coming from is not something you can walk away from. Not something you can just ignore. Winning the award of being a champion of change in the area of reentry into mass incarceration is not something i take lightly, something im going to work on until the day i die because it is such a very important issue. My father used to say there for the grace of god go i. Limited too hard on ourselves, there for the grace of god go i. If you were in gods situation what would you do . I am sure you have a number of questions to ask so we are going to maybe exchange one more question here and if you would line up the microphone so we could go right into your questions while we are doing that. How is your son now . My son is in north new jersey at Anne Hathaway house so he is on his way home. This is my sons second bid. In the first one we sent to north carolina. We fly and my wife takes another airplane and listen. You were young. He came back to new jersey, got locked up again. As a parent you say that but do you really mean it. I am doing it again but like the judge told me, third time is the charm, i am telling him i am not doing it any more. For me as the person being locked up to go into the prison system i dont mind going back. I do at all the time. I will be speaking to the inmates at trinity state prison on september 12th which is my birthday i told him was my birthday. I will be spending my birthday in state prison talking to the inmates for the naacp to have a branch inside the prison because i believe it is such an important issue. This is it, i am not doing it anymore. I think he understands you will be there every single time. I used to say just dont let your children here several hits against the grounds. And under them, this is the last time it takes that sliding for you if you do it again. Tell us your name and your question. Lets go to questions rather than comments because we have a wonderful opportunity. My name is Chris Johnson from albany, new york. The question for Tracey Syphax is what role did the memoir play in your healing process from when you finally came out of hell to where you are today . I talk about it in the book. I was abused as a young kid, 8 years old. My mom moved to texas and when we got to texas she got locked up and i was in a foster home and abused by a young lady that was there. Something i never talked about. I talked about it with my wife. My mom didnt even know. When i wrote the book i talk about it and a lot of my family members found out about its only then. So writing this book, i had a ghost writer that wrote the book so you are talking a lot of full conversations, taperecorded conversations to atlanta. It was almost like on long caps being able to remove my whole life. I start to where i am today. I have a great opportunity to cleanse myself of a lot of things i held in. A lot of things other people did know about and did very well. It was good for me, good therapy for me to do the book. Cspan i will take your question too because the memoir has a kind of cathartic release and you find yourself facing some things you would not ordinarily face and one of them i have to tell you, when i was having my son in hospital in brooklyn which i will not name, the night before i was to take him home the night before, i am getting myself ready because in the morning i am taking my son home. In comes this doctor. He was a young doctor. Along with social Service Person with a clipboard in his hand saying they reported me and i said reported me for what . You know what. Giving your son macedonia to calm him down. I was a professor. I had a ph. D. I had written of book. But i was okay. I dont know what they are talking about. I cant connect. I didnt know what that was. He told me i was the heroin addict. And i said how . Immediately in front of everybody, i didnt care. I said find it. Find where i injected myself. It is in my memoir. It is a hard story for my son to read because it happened on a friday and they have already reported me and therefore the bureau was locked up. I couldnt get my son out until monday and of course at this point the hospital is afraid i am going to sue them so when i come on monday to get my son they have all kinds of excuses. Cheese spitting up, he is this, he is that, you cant take him, i can close my eyes and see myself ripping through that hospital and taking my son and i said i dont care what form you want me to sign he is going out here with me. It is a hard thing and people dont realize, they talk about racism but dont realize the extent to which it affects us. Almost in tears, you kind of hide that from your son because it is like once people believe it is absolutely not true but people believe it. I dont even know what it is about. You hide it and i wrote it in the memoir and is a hard thing for my son to read because the next thing in my head when he gets to go to college and looking for a job they have a hard thing, is an unbelievable thing that happened and that was 1976 missing a long time ago for some of you but that was yesterday for me. Lets take another question. Good afternoon. I am from new jersey, the brunswick area. I have a question regarding your daughter. You mentioned your daughter is doing well in her career and had a Strong Foundation with her mom. Strong africanamerican woman. How is your daughter able to establish a healthy relationship with african black men since there was such a conflict in her life with her father not there and her brother being incarcerated. That is a good question. My daughter has done very well in her relationship with other men. As far as i know my daughter is 30 years old now. I can only remember three boyfriends in her life. Her daughters father who she is not with now and the person she is with now who they are looking to get married in 2015 so i think she has done very well and i think once again i attribute that to her mother. To you too. She talks a little bit in the book also. My daughter will tell you that i am not the father that i used to be and she remembers but also remembers even in my addiction i had my daughter. You know what i mean . I played with my daughter, have a lot of pictures in my addiction, meet with my daughter, laying in the bed with her, so we had that father daughter relationship. She remembered that but she has done very well now. As i said i am an epidemic condition and academic and one thing i always told my female students, sex with a boyfriend, two children, you can be met with your boyfriend all you want but that is the childrens father so no matter what happens you keep this relationship, let them have a father. Was a lesson i applied to myself too. My son has a great relationship with his father. He hasnt got a clue. He hasnt got a clue with what happened in my life. I think when i told him i was getting divorced, everything seems fine, what is going on. It is two different things. I learned it from my parents the same way. Your child is entitled to a father or mother. No matter what your little problem is or your big problem is. Before we get to the question, with my father also, i didnt have a relationship with my father, i lived in trenton, new jersey, which is a 50 minute ride. My relationship with my father, when i did that in school, i took a buzz from trenton to asbury, got beach and went back to trenton. Even today, a relationship i had with my dad is beautiful. My dad supports me in everything i do. I have a great relationship, my dad had challenges growing debt but he got clean the law earlier in the newseums to work for the federal government. He did well for himself but he had some challenges growing up also that he had to overcome. That was my relationship. We have the beating aside, totally against that. 1,000 this is in the early 70s. Selling that out, just the fact that she is not doing that, and that was love. I am from and eddie and eddie amityville and i have a question about my relationship with my sister. She is an entrepreneur, and she entwines all these things and gets caught up with unsavory elements in our environment so she has been incarcerated most of my adult life back and forth. Since i was 15 years old. In the frost this of differing times she has impersonated me. I am counselor and the work and different boards and that live in the town of babylon to assist in opening a silver home and i have been awarded certain things. As a veterans they allow me to start my own business and i think that mean i have one major challenge and that is how do i at this age find healing and forgiveness for my sister and be able to help her because literally she is asking for my help. Let me have tracy answer the question. I have to be fair, i have to give her a chance but where and how do i start . It has to be a way that i havent been manipulated in the past. That is of very important question. I have a lot of family members in prison. Just recently, my cousin that i got in trouble with that i was locked up with, that same cousin is locked away for murder, and i still write him, send him money, support him even though he is still in prison now and may be in prison for a long time. I think it is a way you can support from a far. It is hard these are my brothers and sisters, these are my cousins, my cousins are like my brothers. We are always that close. I try to support him and support them. Another cousin, his brother actually who came home from doing 17 years, has a job and lost the job so i am trying to help him get another job to keep him from going to survive, family is family. You dont let them bring you down and stop you from doing what you need to do. Family can do that also. You have to support your sister, that is never going to change. You have to support her but you dont want her to hamper you from doing what you wouldnt do for yourself or your family. I appreciate your time. I dont know how much time we have. I need a timekeeper. We have eight or so minutes. Ten minutes. Lets have your question. Right on time. I always find it a privilege to be in places like this. How is it that you havent found your darkest period . That is what your grandmother said, you will be found in your darkest moment. You were able to recover to a point that you flew to the heights that you did and open a business and have people who come to you to be employed with the same background you have. And your people are pursuing and the people before me. Where did you find that you can pass on to the next person to do the same thing . It is less god for me. They dont like to talk about religion but they help me, that is what helped me. My faith and my belief in god. And that would be the cornerstone. When you start reading the bible and the talks about the first will be less than the last will be first and i look at myself and was rejected. And what you really believe in is nothing that i believe even with all the stuff you have, all the convictions, prior addictions, everything i have my still believe and my faith allows me to believe this. There is nothing that i cant do. People say you should run for mayor or senate. In my mind, and if i wanted to, not something im interested in right now but when people say that to me, it is not farfetched for me because my faith allows me to believe that anything i want to do in this lifetime is impossible for me to do and do is cut and dried with me. I grew up in trinidad in the tropics where we have a lot of bats at night and my father would say to us you are not a bad. When you fall you dont fall on your head and get knocked out because you are not a bad. You dont fall on your head and get knocked out. You fall on your feet and jump up. The piece that a lot of people need to tell lot of young people again, here i am as the teacher, it is about hard work and persistence. They missed the idea of hard work. People say to me he elizabeth, how come every time i look around you have written another book . This morning at 5 30 in the morning i was on my computer. I knew i had to get here. From 5 30 to 9 30, how many hours is that . I got four hours of riding the morning i just started. It is persistence and doing the work. When students come to me and tell me, when i start, if you coming at 10 30 when you better go to somebody elses class. Because i have to model it. I have to be fair on the dust at 10 30. When you and your papers, the next class i have to have your paper corrected. I want you to give me back. So you models that. There are no exceptions and it always interests me that students come to my class the next semester, you know what you are into. Sometimes when you say you wish it, i want it, i wish it, i want it, that is fine but young people have to understand people who reach where you are, wishing it and dreaming and imagining it, it is by working, putting hard work, i say to my son all the time, and that is important. And it started early and end very late. And i believe in hard work. I believe like you said from being on time, doing what you say you are going to do. If you cant be on time, the early. That is something we have to live by. I also believe no excuses. I dont believe in making excuses for anything. I believe in results. My dad always told me for every problem there are Ten Solutions and as you walk away at you get harder and harder but you have to figure it out. I really believe that. People have to understand. What i tell you i stopped at 9 30 my granddaughter who is 7 years old had not finished her chapter in the book yesterday and i told her parents at 930 she comes over to my house at 9 30 and says can i look at tv . I simply 10 minutes. You have to finish the chapter. I am saying to you you put that with generations, you let somebody i let her know if you are going to finish this and you didnt finish it today you finish it tomorrow even if it is you finish it. And i think we need many more years that i want to tell you but i know really my students who have done well who have achieved and some of them i just, you know, i was walking down lewis avenue and this man comes to me and practically bows in the streets and everyone is walking him and he says do you know who i am . He is a doctor ought some prestigious hospital and he says to me i was in your class where i teach thousands of students, cant even remember, when i heard you call yourself a doctor elizabeth nunez, what is that . Talking bout modeling and i am not american but it is that and the sense of knowing is not just a few can dream it you can achieve it. That is not it. You dream it that is the first the. If you work hard you can achieve it. You have a question. My name is david. I wanted a quick question. How can we address the mentality young black males in our communities, get them, find some way to get them out from that mentality and getting themselves in trouble realizing that is not really a thing . I got to get them to read my book. That is the reason i titled it some students i teach in my Business Program didnt know anything about it. I dont want you to experience that. I want you to go straight to the board room. And how to get there and allow our kids in the inner city and the young man who did the introduction to the book said it so eloquently, it is a walking beautifully with god, hard work and opportunity and those three things, i dont believe in good luck, i never wish anybody good luck. I believe we all have the ability to create our own version of lock through hard work and opportunity. I try to spread that message wherever i can. I dont believe if you dream it you can achieve it. When you dream you got to wake up. Do something to make that happen. I am tired of hearing that, you have no idea. This is the first time i met you but i am inspired by you, i am inspired to get more involved and work harder. Thank you, appreciate it. Read his book, by the book, pass it on. I didnt say much about my book. Thank you for being here. Thank you very much. [inaudible conversations] in about ten minutes we will be back with more live coverage of the harlem book fair in new york city. Cspan2 providing live coverage of the u. S. Senate floor proceedings and keep Public Policy events and every weekend booktv, for 15 years the only Television Network devoted to nonFiction Books and authors. Cspan2 created by the cabletv industry and brought to you as a Public Service by your local, cable or satellite provider. Watch us in hd, follow us on twitter. By virtue of marion this unbelievable woman in doing better for my family and started this business of of my couch and throughout the whole process of transitioning from being a coach for a living and the teacher to a businessman i have still in volunteers situations coached in and out of football throughout my life and that took football. We had 17 kids on our Varsity Football Team and previously tenures record of seven wins and 92 losses. Six years later what we left was 75 kids and the record of 18 wins and two losses. In an area where an 18yearold mail was three times more likely to be incarcerated than he is to be in college by his 20th birth to be graduated 36 seniors and 35 went to college. I am here to tell you the same thing that built that Football Team and the same thing that built my family that i am extremely proud about and the same thing that bill smallbusiness are what is outlined in my book against the grain. It is about character. It is about commitment. It is about integrity. It is about the cliche of getting out of your comfort zone. It is about understanding the dignity of hard work. Is about understanding what the paramount, the strength of the commitment. It is about understanding forgiveness. Is about understanding and legacy. What is amazing about those fundamental tendencies is it doesnt matter if it is your family, doesnt matter if it is business, doesnt matter if it is society, doesnt matter if it is politics. Whatever walk of life you are involved in, they work. For all walks of life. You can watch this and other programs online at booktv. Org. Here is a look at some book fairs and festivals happening around the country. This weekend concludes the annual freedom fest in los angeles. Libertarian conference holds author discussions and debates on a wide variety of political topics. Booktv covered several events at this years festival and you will see those in coming weeks. In the harlem book fair to place this weekend which booktv covered live. On august 30th we are live at the library of congresss National Book festival at the Washington Convention center. From september 26th through the 28 the annual baltimore book festival takes place at the citys in harbor. Let us know about book fairs and festivals in your area and we will add them to our list. Email us at booktv cspan. Org. The tv is in new york city for research in black culture. Our coverage continues shortly. We would like to hear from you. Tweet us your feedback twitter. Com booktv. Booktv asks what i you reading this summer . What is on your Summer Reading list . So much on the air. I have to read books all the time for the work that i do. There are always things on my list i want to get to that i have to get through summer to get to. This nigeria story, again, i thk has just wrenched all of our hearts. And i want to get at that book, number one. Be and then angelica houston, who i love as an actress, has a book out called watch me. Its the second part of her memoir. Shes written it in two parts, and now were getting into the good stuff, the Jack Nicholson years. I had her on my tv show for the first week, so im excited to read her book because she comes from such a rich legacy. One of the first families in hollywood where there are three generations of Academy Award winners, her grandfather, her father, the great director john houston, and her, of course, for prizzis honor. And i just love generations of families that find a way to serve the rest of us with their artistic and creative gifts. Right thousand im trying to right now im trying to get the audio book done of my own book, death of a king. I enjoyed so much writing this book, and this is now my 17th book, but this, believe it or not, peter, is the first one ive done an audio book for. Its taxing, but the idea of being able to get into a booth, Recording Studio and to actually voice the book that youve written, im having some fun with it, and im just trying to get that done right now. Before i get to malala or angelica, ive got to finish this audio book. But when i get that done, thats on my list. What are you reading this summer . Tell us whats on your Summer Reading list. Tweet us booktv, post it to our Facebook Page or send us an email, booktv cspan. Org. Next from harlem, a panel on James Baldwin and american morality. [inaudible conversations] good afternoon. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. Thank you for joining us. My name is rich blint, im the associate director of the office of Community Outreach and education at the school of the arts at Columbia University. Its my pleasure to be here and introduce this mid afternoon panel, James Baldwin and american morality. This is presented as part of the year of James Baldwin in celebration or partnership of harlem stage, Columbia University school of the arts and new york live arts in celebration of the author, essayist and activists 90th year. Today were joined by some esteemed, distinguished panelists, and im just going to introduce them very briefly before i introduce our moderator. Jonathan holloway is a professor and dean of yale college, hes the author of a number of volumes, most importantly, most recently jim crow wisdom memory and identity in black america since 1940. Were also joined by marcus hunter. Marcus hunter holds [inaudible] in africanamerican studies at yale but also is professor in sociology. Hell be joining the d. At ucl the d. At ucla this fall, right, marcus . The author of a phenomenal be book and i say that because ive read it black city makers. From Oxford University press. Walter mosley is here, the phenomenal novelist [applause] i was just about to say whose books are too numerous to mention, he doesnt need introduction. [laughter] well move right along to the wonderful, brilliant and delightly imani perry, the author of two major books. And numerous articles and book reviews. Finally and not least at all is claudia roth pierpont, staff writer for the new new yorker ws the author of most recently roth unbound. A writer and his books. And a staffer, like i mentioned, at the new yorker. Our moderator this evening is my generous and brilliant colleague, kendall thomas, sitting right here to my right. Kendall is the cofounder and director of the center for law and culture at Columbia University school of law. Hes also the nash professor of law at columbia. Please welcome kendall thomas. [applause] thank you, rich, and thank you so much for your vision this organizing this year of the harlem book fair on the great James Baldwin. [applause] James Baldwin, as you all know, was a son of harlem, and it is so fitting that James Baldwin provides the inspiration for our discussion this afternoon of James Baldwin and american morality. We have with us a stellar collection, i would call them a dream team. I could not have come up with a better staff of panelists to discuss the question of baldwin and american morality than the one you see before you. And i hope that youre as excited as i am at the conversation were about to have. My job is a very easy one. I get to ask the questions. Theirs is a hard one with because they have to one because they have to offer if not answers, responses to questions that are suggested by this extraordinarily powerful topic and by the life, work and example of the great James Baldwin himself. So well start with an obvious question, and that is this is there an american morality, and if there is an american morality , what is the nature of american horlty . Morality . Perhaps i should start with you, claudia. Well, is this okay . I certainly think theres an american desire for morality, an american sense of itself as having a moralitiment morality, which always seems to be a little bit ahead of us in getting achieved. Its been tragic, the lack of achievement considering what we were on paper over a very long period of time, but i wouldnt say theres not been an american horlty. I think baldwin thought there was or could be an american morality. I think the title given to this very panel, achieving our country, was very important to him. He thought that could with done. Unfortunately, it wasnt done in his lifetime, died in 1987 at 63, and he was very bitter about having put in more than 60 years with promises unfulfilled. Yet in a way he never gave up, and i think achieving our country, as everyone knows from the tire next time which for all the fire next time which for all its warnings and dire predictions what could happen, he did say that if we come together, i think to paraphrase, that its the more conscious whites and the more conscious blacks and together we can help create consciousness in these others. And if we can do that, and he actually uses the term like lovers, if we can do that like lovers, we will get somewhere. We will end the racial nightmare, and we will achieve our country. And he says achieve something that has never quite existed before. Its something that takes more, unfortunately, more than a lifetime or two lifetimes. But i think little by little with a lot of you shouldback you see more rights being accorded pushback, you see more rights being accorded, you see selfinterests challenged in beating back against morality. But with its present and its hard and its bitter, and its a fight and a constant struggle. But if you dont believe that it can happen, i think baldwin thought you were lost. You had to believe it could happen if you just not in his lifetime, maybe in his nephews. Not to say there isnt rage about what hadnt happened and what did happen to you, but you have to keep pushing, you have to believe its possible, or you fall into despair, and for him that was the worst thing that could happen to you. Walter mosley, is there an american morality . I hope not. Sounds awful. [laughter] you know, really. I mean, just the question sounds awful. Because, you know, like, if you had one morality, you know, lots of people would be in trouble. You know . Because we dont all fit in the same caste. You have someone like baldwin, baldwin was one of the few writers of his time who is like equivalent to a jazz musician, meaning to say that hes head and shoulders above the rest of the culture of america. And so his, the way he thought, the way he saw the world, his, you know, rather than being biracial, he was bicultural, being black and gay, he understood a world, a possibility of freedom that we could have in which we might think and feel different kinds of things. But, you know, the idea of having a solitary morality sounds kind of fascist, you know . And, you know, and you know, like, your morality depends on where youre coming from, you know . If youre coming from a, if youre a child whos been through a prisonlike School System and then ends up going to a prison, you know, your morality is like, you know, i dont snitch, and, you know, i hit back whoever hits me because thats, thats it, you know . You might be, you know, raised in, you know, some kind of middle Class Community in new jersey where, you know, that kind of notion, you know, is just, you know, counterproductive, you know . And just sexuality alone, you know . Like because a lot of times morality is applied to sexuality. And so, like, you know, then you have people like, you know, Langston Hughes and James Baldwin and many others who, you know, who have that part of their life has to be, you know i just, i remember when i was 7 at Victory Baptist Day School in los angeles. Los angeles, not in the neighborhood youre living in. [laughter] we had a church, and we all had to go to the church, and i, you know, didnt want to go. And on every seat there was, you know, the fire next time. And when bald wic came to address us, it was so wonderful because there was a sense of tran seven dense, you know . The words and the arguments were all good and well, but there was a sense of transcendence that we all had to gesture toward, but we were going to get different places. Thats how it felt. And thats how i think about it, you know . Yeah. Imani perry. Is there an american morality . So i think there is, um, in the United States an ongoing and deep and pervasive practice of both immorality and amorality. Ranging from genocide to enslavement, right . To neocolonial arrangements to jim crow to what we have now, kind of absolute mass incarceration. All of these kinds of forms of devastation. I think that what it occasions, the kind of encounter with the depth of both immorality and amorality and occasions a kind of interior interrogation if one allows that to take praise, and i think that place, and i think thats part of baldwins genius in being to talk about these dynamics and bring it to the level of interior examination and then see the prospect of transformation there. My second book, it comes from a talk that the title comes from a talk that baldwin gave to teachers. And part of what he says in 1963 and hes saying to teachers we have to stop with this mythology, because by the time a black child is 7 years old, hes already had so many doors slammed in his face, we need to be able to tell the truth about that social reality in order for that child to create something anew. And i guess for me thats a particular i think thats a particular challenge of this moment given that we are mired in all kinds of injustice around the globe as a nation and also have a kind of ongoing, deep practices of injustice. And i think of the book that resonates most for me in this moment is no name in the street. And thats when in 1972 and baldwin is despairing, and the book sort of reads almost tremendous netically. Theres been all this death, the death of his friends, and hes thinking not just about the United States, hes thinking about the global color line. And i think that kind of despair is instructive because thats what it takes to even begin to imagine that we might have have a more moral set of social arrangements or ethical, right, or just. Marcus hunter, how do you come out on this question; is there an american morality . Yeah. I would, i would add w. E. Duboises name to baldwin in part because they both sort of in their life outside of the u. S. , i think for many reasons, and both of them, i think, would argue and i thought a lot about nobody knows my name, in part because i think that baldwin would offer that. There is an american horlty, and art of how you find it is when you Start Talking about what black people are doing. Thats when you find out there are moral shortcomings apparently. The way that black people organize their lives is always outside of whatever american morality that exists. And in part i think what hes trying to get at is what i would call either strategic or slippery morality, right . Its moral until youre a witch in salem. Thousand youre outside of it. He even headaches mention of that in nobody knows my name, the idea that there are people that fall outside of morality at very strategic points, and those people then become the new oppressed, right . And the people who used to be the part of the outside horlty crowd are now inside, and theyre the ones giving out scarlet letters, calling people things. You know, how the irish became white is because they accepted a certain type of white morality and brought into the idea that black people were less than they were. So part of what i think hes getting at is there is, in fact, one, and unlike previous countries that have a longer history like he estimates with france and england, what you have in america is a place that is always changing, and part of that is, you know, tremendous possibility for what can happen. Often people say america is the last chance at freedom, right . So theres these great freedom possibilities, but at the same time because it is always coming into itself and making adjustments and changing, just when you thought black people were free, you have mass incarceration, you know . Just when you thought that people value black families, all of a sudden theres a welfare queen. So i think art of what baldwin really reminds us of is that much of what he says still rings true today. Why . Because the cycles of segregation, poverty, imprisonment continue. So when you read his words, its as if hes talking about american morality right now. So for me its both a question and a problem i see in that question you asked. Uhhuh. So finally, jonathan, is there an american morality . When its fascinating to go after four people in answering your question. [laughter] so thanks for that. [laughter] when i think of morality, i think of issues like original sin, and i think of to issues like progress as we began the conversation. When i think of this country and original sin, the logic of the country that we now live in is built in the moment of racial and the logic of racial slavery and understanding of what liberty and freedom means. Its something not that. If you Start Building a country with that as a founding logic or morality, as it was built into the system, and you build institutions and structures that reaffirm that, sure, theres an american horlty. Morality. But is it moral . Thats what i think baldwin kept coming back to. No matter which baldwin youre talking about, the baldwin who was trying to make peace with his childhood and his break with his father or going through the waldwomen of deshare later on. And i dont want to focus only on despair, but im rivetted by ive always been rivetted by this quote which i can, im sorry, ill only be able to paraphrase, but its a very angry, disappointed baldwin towards the end of his life. Hed been waiting for progress, and he knows all these things, the machinations of an american morality that says blacks arent really quite human, they dont really have human potential, they dont deserve certain things. And he says to an interviewer who suggests to baldwin, well, these things take time. And he spits back, and this is a paraphrase, its taken my uncles time, my aunts time, my grandfathers time, my grandmothers time, my mothers, brothers, sisters, my nephews and nieces time, and this is the killer, how much time do you want for your progress . Baldwin is waiting for a White American logic that created this system in the first place in colonial america to catch up to its own promise. Id like to say that in baldwins wake weve come to that place, but we just know we havent. So theres a system of belief system, a logic that i think suggests to Many Americans that we are an exceptional country, and we are, therefore, quite moral. But i know that there is a structure built into this undergirding it all that says something quite different. Uhhuh, uhhuh. So weve gotten five fascinating and overlapping but very different responses to the single question. Claudia, you say that there is american, an american morality a dream of an american morality. That theres a dream of an american morality which has not yet within achieved. Absolutely. W59er, you contest walter, you cop test the idea that an american morality is something we ought even to want, because as i hear you, youre committed to an idea of pluralism, right . There are many different american moralities. Perhaps as many different american moralities as there are americans. Imani, you want to remind us of the ways in which in order to even talk about the possibility of an american morality, we have to be mindful of the ways in which that morality has as its close cousins immorality and amorality, right . And that were talking about a moving target in one sense the we look at the actual history and the current realities of life in america. The idea of morality in that sense is internally contested, right . So its not just something that there are many different forms of, as walter says, but its internally contested. And, march cuts, you offer the very valuable insight that if you want to know whether theres an american morality and what it is, you would do well to look at the experience of African Peoples in america in a very important book called the miners canary. Two legal scholars say if you want to take the pulse of Racial Justice in america, you would do well to look at the conditions under which black people in this country live. Right . So if you want to know whether theres an american morality and its state of health, march cuts is suggesting marcus is suggesting, you should look at the situation of africanamericans and this border region that we occupy even in this age when the white house has been turned black, right . Of being inside and outside at the same, at the same time. And jonathan reminds us that the very idea of america is an idea that was baptized in the original sin of slavery, right . And a moral institution and a horl Economic Institution which is one of the founding pillars of American National identity and the history of america as a nation. So the story i hear is a story informed by baldwins vision, its a story of contradiction can, right . Is there an american morality . The answer, i think, would have to be yes and no, right . Now, looking at the situation of africanamericans, right, in 2014, i think its worth asking if, like baldwin, we are committed to progressive change, right . In the lives of people of african descent in america and, thus, in the lives of the nation as a whole, right . Is morality, the practice of morality, talking about morality, engaging in collective action that is informed ask aspires to achieve and aspires to achieve or live out a certain moral vision the way to go . Is that the way to go, right . To the extent that we have not yet achieved our country whether were talking about political democracy, economic democracy, social democracy or cultural democracy, right . What are the uses and limits of morality of horl moral language in undertaking the project that baldwin described, im sorry, as such . He once wrote any real change imlies the breakup implies the breakup of the world as one has always known us, the loss of all that gave one an identity, the end of safety. Right . So is this project of breaking up the world as we know it, right . In letting go of and perhaps refashioning identities leaving the refuge or the harbor of safety, is that in some fundamental way a project that is moral or can only take place through the use of moral language, moral ideas and moral practices . Ill let you jump in. I wont call on you one time. Really i will. Because, you know, i mean, i mean, baldwin is a Success Story because of his realization of the world through language. And even when hes despiring, each when hes unhappy, even when he sees most people cant keep up with him, it doesnt matter because hes less like, you know, a legacy. But, you know, whenever i hear that quote, i think of the, of what ive been thinking lately, you know . The thing i realized outside of the notion of the impact of capitalism which has something to do with race, but it has things to do with other things too is the fact that theres really no such thing as white people. And for me, thats the place that needs to be broken. You know, you realize that white people were invented by colonization. Colonization, you know, especially in the United States where there was a red enemy that had to be destroyed in order to take his or her land, and then there was a black slave who was going to work that land. And in the middle were these europeans who had no race in europe. I mean, they had cultural identities, national identities, regional identities, but they didnt have language identities, but they didnt have a color identity like white people, you know . Same like black people, you know . Its like there are all kinds of different people, but in america they became white, and the lace to break the place to break, i mean, rather than asking things about black people or of black people or for black people is just to say to white people once you realize you dont exist as white people, then well be fine. [laughter] well be fine. Once you can no longer use that as recourse to say, oh, well, this is what white people think. Theres no such thing as white people. Theres no such thing as white people. If you had a piece of white aper and you saw a guy paper who saw a guy like that, you would run. Zombies really exist, you know . Laugh and the idea that, you know, that colors define cultures or people or dna or anything, its crazy, you know . But, you know, black people know that, and, you know, hispanic people know that, and, you know, all kinds of people know that, just white people dont know it [laughter] because, you know, they get interest off that. They have advancement that they can have in the world that things that, you know, they did, you know . Like people say, well, you know, we invented electricity. Man, you didnt invent electricity, you know . Tesla invented electricity. Edison lied about it, but tesla invented the use of it. Its like theres different, were all different. And if we recognize and embrace the difference, then we can, you know, that would really break up the whole notion of what america is, and that would allow us to move forward in a way that makes more sense. So youre talking about this radical loss. I mean, as i hear you say it [inaudible] recognition of and a rejection of the idea of a white racial identity. Well, no such thing. Yeah, its a rejection of it, but its more than a rejection. A rejection is like its real, but im going to get rid of it. Its not real. It doesnt exist. Theres no such thing as white people. They dont exist. Its a madeup notion, you know . That came from colonization. And once if people would accept that of course; they wont accept it. No, no, im white, they say. Im white. But youre pink, youre tan, youre olive, you know . You have this kind of nose or these kinds of eyes or that kind of hair, you know . Youre all different, dont you understand that, you know . If they did, then that would be but, see, i think thats true. I think beyond morality its true. Its true that they dont exist. And, but theyve made it up and hold it against everybody else. And, in a way, against themselves. Uhhuh. This, i want to just jump in and take it a little bit different, and you can come back to this. It reminds me about how much you learn by leaving what you know. Baldwin learned how american he was when he goes off to europe. Years ago, 14 years ago now i was teaching a oneweek semithat are in china just for an american studies program, it was an exchange program, and my oneweek seminar was on american civil rights. And these Chinese Students from all across china, about 15 of them, were getting a oneweek introduction to these themes, all speaking english. They were studying the u. S. , had a similar familiarity with it. And the week was going along fine with the predictable stumbles and such, and on the next to last day one of the students made an observation that floored me, and your comment just made me think of this. And we were talking about race and civil rights and citizenship, and she simply said and it was statement without race, america has no meaning. It just disappears. And she stopped me in my tracks with that observation. And that gets back to my earlier comment about originalism and sort of the logic of this country. So from a thought experiment, i think thats brilliant. But we cant ignore the realities that have grown out of that, of these decisions people made. So that, you know, this racial codification we live with is a construction, but, boy be, its had material life and death consequences, and it stays with us today. So it would be a terrifying notion to many people, maybe everybody in some way, to break that. We lose our meaning as a nation. We lose our meaning as a people, whatever thats a fullyloaded statement, of course. But its a fascinating thought experiment. I think baldwins right. I dont know how you headache that step how you make that step and what happens if you do make that step. Its a terrifying prospect. Im wondering, though, if baldwin were here, do you think he would be urging us to give up race and give up racial identity . Were he here having lived through our recent past, right . Would he say we should give up race . Im just saying that white people should give can up race. [laughter] i dont think he would argue about that. You mean there wouldnt be any more white people . Okay. [laughter] you know . That would be be fine, you know . [laughter] i dont think he would mind that. You know . Because theres no it doesnt get us one way or the other for black people or hispanic people or asian people to give up their identity, you know . For women to give up the notion of gender or men to, you know . Yeah, i dont think maybe he would, i dont know. I dont know the guy. I met him once, but with i was a little kid. He was nice. Laugh but, you know, i mean, you know, it would be a wonderful game to play. I think, i think hed let it lay out a little bit. I dont think he would try to stop it. I think hed let it play out. Hed work with the idea a little bit. Yeah. Well, it depends on when you catch him in his life. One thing imani said later on there was a lot more, after the death of king, a lot more bitterness. Even in the 90s it 80 it sounds not so strong when i say it when i paraphrase him, but baldwin was an artist above all things, and he needed this kind of empathy to write, as he said. He grew up with a lot of hatred in him, and he tells you this very clearly early on. I couldnt function if i hated the way my father, my stepfather hated. It destroyed him, and hatred destroys you. And because he was so dedicated a writer, with hatred i would not be able to write. You have to be able to imagine even your worst enemies in the round, so to speak. If i present the awful white sheriff as a stereotype, im not an artist anymore. And one of the things i found fascinating about baldwin that the compassion for all people that he felt was necessary for him to be a writer, an artist, is also what he brings to the political scene. And even after all this despair and hatred and witterness and there are bitterness and there are scenes where his biographers talk of him in 84 reading an essay about harlem hes written in the 40s and is just raging and saying nothings changed, and yet in these last essays theres ans say about manhood towards the end, and he says i still believe we are all black and white, we are all male and female, that these categories are false in a way, and if we could ever the we could ever, and this is something he says from 1951 on, if we could ever take advantage of what we have, of our horrible racial history instead of aspiring to be a european, raciallyhomogeneous white country where black people are a disturbance, if we could realize what the africanamerican contribution is and what it does for the white people, and its the white people hes talking about with that quote you read about how hard it is to remake your world, to break yourself open, to give up safety, that is actually baldwin trying to extend himself to say this is why its so hard for them. They dont know, theyre too afraid to take the next step. Theyre just scared. This is their safety, and you dont have to think about race, you can think about the images we saw last week in mariana, texas, people showing up at the border terrified, a bunch of guatemalan children being brought in. People are terrified of taking a step out of their safety, and thats the point he was making. But i think he did look forward. He says someday if this country could only take advantage of this racial past because, yeah, i mean, the flipside of that comment about that your student made that america is about nothing if its not about race was baldwin himself saying the contact and the history of a white and plaque in this country, however horrible it has been, is also the most significant and potentially powerfully good thing about this country if we can ever get rid of these old, stupid ideas about being a homogeneous culture and take advantage of what weve got. So i dont so in a way what im hearing is to the extent that we can speculate about what baldwin would say today based on the legacy that he left us of his life in writing, he would invite us to do something that particularly at this moment of yearning in some quarters for the postracial has been dismissed and devalued. Namely, he would invite us to think of it as a productive resource, right . And not to get anxious in the face of the fact, the truth that without race america has no meaning, right . And to engage, right . To engage this history, to engage this vast, complicated, internallyriven, contradictory idea and history of race in a way that puts it in the service of freedom, right . That makes it a resource on which all of us can draw to move toward that place of achieving our country that requires what we what a late french philosopher and poet called the politics of discomfort, right . And here, i suppose, we might want to shift a little bit. Weve been talking about morality, and it will stay with us. But i want to talk for a bit about democracy and to focus a bit on some intimations in baldwins writing that the very possibility of achieving democracy in america is connected in some important way to love, right . He writes again and again about the importance of love. What do you make of that insistence on baldwins part that love is a crucial resource given our history for the achievement of racial democracy in america . Imani, do you want to so i just, i want to go back for a second but come back to this question of love, because i do think that part of the reason so many of a question like that is vexed, i think, is because of a particular political and economic moment. So if we talk about in the context, right, of kind of contemporary, neoliberal capitalism where every arena of life is markettized, where our policy, our jurisprudence is organized around maximizing opportunities for competition and how that pushes people who are on the margins, the least of these, even further into positions of marginalization because theres not, theres a reduced sense of the common good can, right . That we are all supposed to be entrepreneurs in the world in every african school, even prisons, every arena. So for me, the call for the centrality of love is, in part, about a conception of who we are as human beings in the context of a nation or in the context of a world that is more, its kind of a comprehensive humanity. So if we think about law, for example, being based upon conventional cop senses of reason conceptions of reason, right . And when you have that combined with an order that makes everything about whether you are successful on the market and not about the common good and not about the Public Welfare and the like, then theres a kind of, theres a kind of cruelty that grows up. And also an incentive for people to to take advantage of longstanding bigotries, right . Was if youre trying to max because if youre trying to maximize your competition, of course you want to take advantage of whatever advantage you have. So in some sense this sense of responsibility to your fellow resident or citizen or the people around you or your neighbor toss the south, right . It falls by the wayside. And so i think a kind of, a sense of the ethics around love is, in part, a sense of a responsibility to engage with other beingings, right, as full beings, right . Not as numbers, not as commodities, not as opportunities to maximize capital and the like. And so for me in this moment it is, you know, we read it now, its a call to go back to, you know, it was always deeply flawed, but at least in previous eras there was a sense of the common good, right . And i think that thats, i think thats a central part of this. I would add that my reading of baldwin relevant the notion of love and politics is in part out of his biography, right . So part of what you get is his sort of coming to terms with his love of america, coming to terms with his love of black people and black culture, coming to terms with the love of his sexual orientation. And part of what i think is important about love particularly around politics and black liberation is that it is in many ways, it becomes part of the black political koolaid you have to drink in order to get ahead, right . So the idea the is weve been taught not to love ourselves, right . And then when you get into the sort of continuum that is blackness, were also told that gay black people didnt exist until yesterday when they wanted to get married when, in fact, you know, i often say to students when they say the great migration and this and that, i say, you know, black gay people were great migrants as well, you know . As long as there have been black people here, there have been gay people here, and what you have in baldwin is this conundrum of trying to reconcile that, and i think the way he comes through that which is why he advises love is love. Selflove, understanding that with americans. Theres this unrequited love for america, so you often feel like the bob marley song, youre waiting in vain, you know, for the love. 300 years ive been sitting at your doorstep, you know . [laughter] youre wonder, are they going to love you . And i think on the point about unrequited love and the sort of idea and waiting, i think one very powerful moment at least for me when i was even thinking about writing black city makers was this idea that at some point black americans, they pull out a boat along the southeast seaboard and say you can go to liberia if you want. And many people stayed. Many people stayed. And so part of the idea there is how do you come to terms with being in love with a place that you helped build that doesnt include you . So i think what he wants to do is sort of say, well, you know, the opposite of love is hate, hating only gets you so far, but what if you love . Love more than you can ever love before. And part of getting there is loving one another, often times its loving the continuum that is black people. Black people are not just, you know, standup preachers, doctors and lawyers, theyre also pros prostitutes, strippers and all sorts of people. And i think what hes saying is that to understand love is to understand all of the flaws of what that means and take it on its own terms and move forward with that. If you cant do that, you are not going to have the america that youre looking for. I always like a moment of silence during panel, dont you . [laughter] just to kind of let things sit. And marinate for a while. Im intrigued by this ons ovation or the connection you headache you make between baldwins writings on the ethics of love as a public value, right . Because hes not talking about private relations, intimate relations. Hes talking about love as a public value. Is and you seem to tie that, in part at least, to the fact that baldwin was a man who loved men and that his unique experience. He first left harlem, right . And then he left america. He said, he wrote once and this is a sentence which has been very important in my own intellectual life that he criticized america because he loved her, right . And and ive suggested that our love, for example, as gay men and lesbians for black america demands no less, right . We criticize homophobia and sexism in the black community because we love black america, right . So lets stay for a moment with this idea of an africanamerican morality or an ethics of love, a black american ethics of love which goes in two directions, right . One direction is toward our fellow americans, but the other is inward, right . The love that we bare toward one another. And love becomes a resource for the development, the nurturing, the support, mutual support and sustenance of a black public which can then engage with larger Political Society to argue about, debate, deliberate and make decisions about the race publica, right . Our common welfare. Is that a useful way of thinking about what baldwin can offer us and what baldwins ethics of love can offer us at this moment in the life of harlem and in the life of the United States . Harlem is the name. Brooklyn is wouldnt agree with this, but im using harlem as the name for something which we might call black america which is itself an imagined, constructed thing, right . Right. I like the point that you brought up and the passage that you recalled is from [inaudible] l i remember that particular part because he ends it, and i think of baldwin as a social scientist in particular. So among a lot of the terms that he gives way to a social concept, one of them that he sort of ends the autobiographical note on that is very moving is that what goes on internally for people while we dont value it in our society, we think about it as, you know, a sort of prif central issue, peripherally important, he suggests it is exactly why we live the way that we do. Your internal strivings, your internal sense of love. So the reason why love is important is because its both an external and internal concept. So one is Walking Around selfloathing, hating, in rage. His idea is that then gets expressed on other people. This then leads to all sorts of stagnancy, the inability to progress to wherever it is that were trying to go. So i think what hes trying to put there is to reorient the idea of love so we just dont think about it as what we to to each other. Like, oh, i love you, do you love yourself . Because if you dont, you find it has political ramifications. People, for example, dont think of certain people as american. They dont love them that way. And part of it is because in many cases there is something going on for them that makes them feel outside of the american perspective. So part of that is back to the earlier point i was making about just i how elusive americanness is in the first place. There are people who barely feel in it themself, and they project that onto other people, and what hes trying to say is, you know, were all weve got. Were all here on the same body of land. Black people have stayed long after slavery, so we become as culpable and accountable for everything else. Part of what happens is were hating each other, were mad at each other, were not going to get very far. Were still here in this place taking ownership over it whether we like it or not. Yeah. Baldwin as an american, an american if figure and an American Writer is really important to emphasize, i think, and even when he in the great letter he writes to his nephew which is in the beginning of the fire next time, he lays it out very straight and very harshly and in ways that would ring true right now. He says he was born in the ghetto in a society meant to keep you there. They gave you nothing but with mediocrity to live up to, but important thing is that you never think this is your fault, that racism is a white pathology. Its not your fault. And the most important thing again, and this goes back to your saying you have a chance to leave, you could go somewhere, and baldwin himself, as we know, left. Left. He kept coming back, and he kept coming back, and he kept living, and he said, well, its from far away i can see america better, but he couldnt bear it. But what he says to his nephew is, youre an american, god dam it, and dont let them tell you youre not. And he says it comes up in different ways throughout all his writing. I was one of the First Americans to be brought here, you know . We have made contributions here. We are the americans here, and dont let anybody tell you otherwise. Uhhuh. I love that, that letter is devastating and beautiful and provocative, but i also read it as a dare, you know . Its dare to imagine a world that cant imagine you. And youve got to do that kind of work whether its recuperative work, fantasy, just hard work or policy work. Youve got to do it, and thinking about love and selflove, i can just imagine never had the honor of meeting the man, but i can imagine him just cracking a wide smile that was also, that had a lot of anger in it, too, but in that smile that would issue a dare. Dare to love one another. Uhhuh. Theres that great quote, and i think you mentioned it earlier before the session started. Oh, goodness, im blanking on it now, but it speaks to how much in common, that white and black have so much in common, we arent rared to believe in it yet prepared to believe in it yet. And he wanted to dare us to do that. And that could be, you know, within the black community, it could cross any kind of line you want it to. But that love is not i guess it goes back to what marcus was saying. Its not a romantic love. You know, its a love filled with passion. Its an angry, engaged, robert frost lovers quarrel with the world kind of love. Thats hard. Its hard to sustain, and its hard to get other people to believe in it because it requires a lot of selfreflection in a way that people dont want to do. Thats heavy work. But baldwin was such a master of the internal workings. I mean, hes working things out in his words all the time for all of us, and i think inviting us to join him on that journey. That love jive, sweetheart he writes in another country love, love, love. Thats a beatles song. Oh, no. You know, im a little confused [laughter] be you know, because it seems to me that i think theres three levels. Number one, you know, its like, you know, im comparing baldwin to jazz. I think its a good thing to do because, you know, its just like, you know, hearing, you know, if we loan yous monk or maybe cornel west one day, and you ask somebody be, that was great, and, oh, it is, what was great . Like tell me . You know . And, you know, oh, its hard to remember. When it comes to felonious monk, you cant do it, you know what i mean . [laughter] you have to go, you have to, you know, like, like go there, you know . So the possibility, you know, like, the possibility of listening to the dalai lama telling me, you know, how, indeed can, im going to approach the world, you know . I said, well, thats the dalai lama talking. I think he might be able to do it, or at least he believes he can do it. So first, you know, does love cause conflict. To me, i think that love causes conflict as much as anything else in the world. And the second thing which we kind of it seemed it kind of got lost a little bit in there was the notion of democracy. Because, you know, like, look, i mean, i love my candidate, and my candidate says he loves me or she loves me and then, and i vote for him or her, and out of this love, and so theres a good chance that theyre going to represent me except for the 250,000 lobbyists that Corporate America and the corporate world hires that lives in the washington, d. C. Area to visit him every day, and they say, listen, whatever you like, whatever perversion, whatever money, you know, when you leave this, i got a Million Dollar job for you doing what im doing right now, you know . And its like i dont, i never talk to them because theyre in d. C. And, you know, part of so part of the thing is, yeah, lets talk about love, but lets not be, like, crazy and think that, you know, were enlightened and that our love is, you know, going to be accepted and its not going to bring us into conflict. And secondly, just to understand the practicality of democracy. Democracy is, you know, owned lock, stock and barrel by capitalism in america, and its fascist capitalism. Its not that free capitalism where i can go out in the street and sell candy bars out of a box. I get aletsed for that, you know . Arrested for that. Its the people who have the most money and the most power and the most people in their pocket be, thats the democracy were talking about. Be and so theres a fear in my mind even listening to this to think, well, if my feelings are pure enough and my love is strong enough, thats going to make a good democracy. I doubt it. Because were talking, when we talk about democracy, this is the Walter Mosley thesis, when we talk about democracy [laughter] were not talking about love, were talking about power and interest, right . [applause] be and what love asks of us, love is another name for concern and respect for the other, right . Other regarding this my own terms, yeah. Right . Which are flawed. Its love and respect for the other in my own terms which are flawed. Uhhuh. So just to say that im able to love. Right. Even me saying that might not be true. Well, but baldwin recognizes that impossibility, right . He recognizes the impossibility, and at the same time he says the impossible is the least one can demand, right . So love is the name for an aspiration, right . And at the heart of it is a deep humanism. Its the same humanism, perhaps, that is at the heart of the South African notion of speak speak. [speaking in native tongue] the idea that people are people only through other people, right . And that the possibility of knowing and living our own humanity is dependent on the extent to which we are willing to recognize and honor the humanity of the other or of another, right . And that act of mutual recognition, um, is part of the same moral field, if i can use that word, as love even if we might not sophisticates that we have want to use the word love. But love is the name for a whole complex constellation of ideas and practices and challenges or dares, as jonathan put down, that take us outside of the understanding of democracy as being only about power and interest. You say willing, and also i want to stop you for just one second. You saying willing, but its alo capable. Im willing to love, but theres also a question of whether youre capable of loving. This person, this person, this person, do they all have the same capability for love . Again with, i doubt it. Uhhuh. So maybe i think what might be useful or useful for me to think about this question of love in the context of baldwins life is to think, and we just spoke a minute ago about his return, his expatriation and return. And if we recall there in the early 60s he returns because of his being inspired by the Civil Rights Movement, right . He says on multiple occasions various forms of, you know, the artists are important, but the revolution has to come from the people. And theres a sense in which i think his practice of love, particularly in light of the kind of heights and celebrity and popularity he achieved, are in part instructive for thinking about this question with respect to capital and power, right . So this 1963 he goes to have this meeting with rfk, and theres belafontes there and lena horne and lorraine handsbury and the like, and this is in light of the birmingham campaign, and rfk is hoping that these black political leaders, prominent artistic and political leaders will be able to quell unrest in the cities. And they turn this, this group of people turn the question back on rfk and say, first of all, we refuse to go out and offer palliatives to black people. And the question instead is what are you prepared to do, right . And i think that thats the kind of practice of love that is not dependent upon so that theres not in that moment a concern with kind of individual access and the kind of heights they might attain by doing the service, but instead, right, at every moment continuing to be kind of unflinching, right, and ethical in terms of the kind of values of what that kind of world would look like. Its about its of little bit about not demonizing of the people of differing with you and keeping again and again, it is also true that it is biographical, very strong statement. So important to his life and language. If you read through these essays you would be startled to come across the metaphors and similes he has with the relationship, even with what he went through. It is a wedding, family, blood ties, we have been through all of this. You may not know it yet, what you will. This is what it is. It runs through this language, maybe from childhood. It is what it is how he got through his life with the poison that was poured into him. If he did not hold on to this idea i think he would have been overwhelmed. He says he would have been overwhelmed. He talks about how we give our children an antidote for all the poisons that are being fed. And for one moment, and it is a rare moment. Do we really want an end to dutch . Maybe they should just have more poisons of their own. That is so rare moment where you can almost feel the anger that he is constantly tamping down and reasoning with and pushing away is because he cant live with it, and it is not helpful in his heart or in the cost, but you can feel it. So on this question, perhaps you will leave it. I will leave it by simply noting that we are having a discussion on this stage at the Schomburg Center about love and politics at the moment in our collective political life in this country at least 1 8 is no longer almost no longer possible to think of the person on the other side of the aisle as your political opponent. They have to be your adversary or enemy. So under conditions in which the very possibility of democracy must contend with a language and practice in which we treat one another as americans as the we were citizens of different countries, there is something to be said for the recuperation of the ethics, the political ethics , the political morality that baldwin wrote so powerfully and from many of us persuasively about in terms of the idea of love. And yet speaking mindful of the city in which this conversation is taking place and yet we still live in a society, we live in a city whose public School System, as i speak, is the most racially segregated in the United States, in the United States. A city which arguably prides itself on the celebration of difference and cultural and other kinds of pluralism. Integrated subways. We just go to places. I have a question. I mean, you know, it becomes very complex. I think that baldwin was a really great thinker. And somebody that one would want to read just retort. I am living in a place, everybody in here has a cell phone, right . You cannot really complain. I have one. And we all are wearing all kinds of clothes and have all kinds of ship that was made in china. They paid as people like 0. 16 an hour to build the chip that we are buying. Theyre is a notion i love my cellphone, but, you know and i call my mother and tell our lover. The problem is is that there is such you have to be so paid to take these motions. Baldwin was that big. Baldwin took those motions. Baldwin did that. I cant pretend that i am there with him. Well, yeah, he is great, but i am using my cellphone. Looking at this is smart phone that i want to buy. And so that means that as many women will get raped and as many people get killed. And i know. Blood chocolate, blood, you know, there is blood on everything that comes out of africa. We are talking about the diamonds. Its cool. Look at those blood diamonds. We are doing it, two. We are deeply involved in an economic politics that is a pressing the entire world. [applause] and it is all good and well to talk about baldwin, but it is really hard to be baldwin. That is why i was daunted about coming to this thing. You can talk about felonious mark, but i cant play the piano, you know, and that seems to be i dont mean to be to confessional about it, but you know,. I dont care. But in order to understand the world real living in a more weird going and the lengths that we would have to go to make that world a better world regardless of race or nationality, that becomes a big issue. And that is the question. I think our would ask it of baldwin. I know what he would say, and i dont think that i could do it. I guess i think there is something out to disrobing all of the fiction. You just made this point earlier about the way that we treat each other as though were enemies. And those of us who are treating each other as a we were enemies is happening right in the midst of wealth being redistributed up words, and so there is this sense, i think, that we live with some many factions. We demonize one desperate but not the other. So i guess i think that there is some value of simply beginning a practice of telling the truth. Telling the truth with some humility understanding that we are all deeply implicated. But that alone seems to me to be a precursor to even beginning the process of trying to do something better. Sven. I am intrigued by this idea of truth telling because truth arguably is like morality but a plural thing. There are many different truths. Hunger or violence. Right. But the truth, this practice of truth telling, if we think of it as something that is a purpose, directed toward a specific purpose, might that purpose given what of brother and sister at that end of the aisle are saying about capitalism today, capitalism and democracy, neil liberal democracy and the threat of kneele liberal capitalism and the threat that neil liberal capitalism poses to the ideal democracy, this practice of truth telling which perhaps Walter Moseley would agree with as a special calling of the writer, this practice aimed at creating or reviving, giving new life to renewing the culture of solidarity which may be a more pragmatic way to think about what we have been talking about, this idea that our faiths of linked. We are all in this thing together. We are all going to face the scarcity of clean air, of clean water. Though 1 percent can run, but it cannot hide from the hatred that we are showing toward the planet what is the relationship between this hard work of telling the truth, not just about the other person but ourselves, ourself funds, our clothes that are made in sweatshops. What is the relationship between that truth telling and solidarity . That would be one question. And so those of us to ride, have a unique location in that regard and trying to tell as best we can the truth about the way that we live now. In order to create the conditions for at least a conversation about recovering this very fragile and precarious tradition of solidarity that the black Civil Rights Movement among other social movements in this country held up the bloodstained pander to champion. I would offer a point about truth relating to my experience in writing my book. I am from philadelphia. The city that dont love brothers. [applause] [laughter] so i grew up not too far from the neighborhood. For people who are not aware, following to figure out what happened to the philadelphia negro after the publication. I bring this point up to say that so much of what i found was a complete revelation because i did not realize how fragile. We often think about what i grew up with, the 40 acres and a meal. As long as we can remember some much so spike lee has named his Production Company that name. There was this thing, 1874, upwards of a billion dollars. I would like to underscore, a billion dollars of black peoples money. And also just to say on that particular point, not only did i find that it was difficult to recover the particular piece of formation but that point black media become central and trying to recover what should be a black truth or a truth about american more generally. We stopped talking about Campaign Promises and really talk about hard core, you know, cash money that people never got. I think about it as black peoples first money. This was the money you were allowed to have, your first money you lost and never got back. Frederick douglass, w. T. De bois, booker t. Washington, they never agree about anything. They all agree, and i would say extrapolate to the contemporary moment, this mistrust that there are opportunities occur, Economic Opportunities for black people, looking ahead, but your money in a bank and never get it back. These are the sorts of troops that i think necessary so that we get off of some of the existing lps that we play all the time, black truth and really think about some of these other ones that have a real impact, we do today. Some tied to 186574. Many of us dont know that. We get a sub prime mortgage and our money and have to move out of the house. We dont understand why you give your money to the church. And then on her birthday you get this paycheck. That was a way of doing savings. These are things that other people use to measure by morality. They dont use banks. That is bad behavior. Really is informed by other black true is that we dont even know because we dont know that we dont know we dont know. [applause] says. I am intrigued by this idea of the production. Continuing to produce a black truth at a time when the very idea that we can speak truth that is rooted in our unique location in society is being challenged. And in which a others presume to tell us what our truth is. Then the law school i read all the time, the Supreme Court opinions in which the Supreme Court is telling me that black peoples right to vote this not being denied, devalued, or denigrated anywhere in these United States of america. We can vote as easily as any other citizen or that our schools are as scarce as the schools and in the neighborhood anywhere in the United States. Anyone in los Supreme Court, the current Supreme Court comes very close to embracing the idea from the notorious 1896 opinion. Black people are serve truth in which we continue to be marginalized, excluded, disadvantaged, discriminated against, it is because we are paranoid. We are imposing a fan schismatic false perspective on the egalitarian realities of life. So what is the special work that we as riders can do to articulate to give specifics and to insist on the value of giving specifics. At the moment at our history or even some of us are ambivalent about the idea that there is a distinctively black perspective, the shared lewd experience, the material realities one might say of life for black americans of all classs. What do you mean by writings . People will put words on paper. On paper or who throw words out into the digital public sphere. Okay. All right. I just want to make sure what you mean. People engaged in public conversation. A lot of people who dont read too much. That is the first. Of course when you write people read it and acknowledge its, you know, out of the world further and further. If you read things a you feel are true and to the point you realize you will do less well. So that is a painful same but the thing that i think you have to go with. Also a lot of people would just speak out. Poets camino, people like me now matthews in chicago speaking out about was going on in chicago. Anyone who uses language i would move in our little bit. If i remove riders then i cut down why audiences. I know that there is already an Economic System against writers in general. And so just trying to figure out how the woodwork. Personally, talking about american the way that i see america which is close to the way that it is, probably not exactly, but close. I think that is helpful, but i dont think that it is enough. Enough to do what . To have anybody take their cell phone out of a pocket and thing, while, this is a san. This should be the 11th send in the bible. To really end the stand, you know, to really understand you we are in the world him what were doing, criticizing all kinds of other people and its easy to do. But who i am, what i am doing, and that is to actually identify the writer and reader with the essential truth. You asked what we need to do as writers. What can we do to offer some sort of truth to raise consciousness as Something Like that . And trained as a historian. This country is exquisitely get at ignoring history, exclusively and we all are implicit in that project. So what i suggest is if we dare to become even moderately decent historians so that we can understand how we got to this point many of he will know the essay in the atlantic are reparations. Does it matter. What he calls for is our recognition in terms of how we got to this point, why he thinks the call makes sense. You must realize, policies, human beings who make policies a long time ago or even in the g. M. Bill or insurance redlining, people make policies that have shaped the way we live our lives and create narratives. Create narratives that make presumptions about how sleazy black people are, how they are welfare queens are now they are consumers of the worst kind. They have no sense of delayed gratification. Our policies that are driving the kind of logic and a presumption about who we are as individuals. If we dont take the time to know what these policies are to the creation of a gi bill, the commitment to make sure blacks cannot live in certain areas, funnelling toward other areas, superfund sites. If we dont open our eyes to the past and to decisions that made as put us where we are today were going to be stuck. As simple as that. Granted, i am speaking for my own industry. We have to take the time to explore our own path, words and all. To have an honest recognition of how we got where we are. Laying the responsibility. I think writers in specific locations have that responsibility. Im being a bit liberal in a sense, but i think that consumers have the responsibility as well in the spirit of what youre talking about, but actually taken the time to pick up books and read. That is a Steep Mountain to climb, a Steep Mountain climb. Already. But if we dont make the effort, if we dont try, if we dont tell our students and their children to do this work of another kind of work will be done for us. So it is on all of us to do hard work. Yes, it is hard. It may be impossible. We go back to people like frederick douglass, you can to go across without thunderstorms. Anything worth having, reality to it, anything worth having should not come that easily. It is not value. Creating a logic in a system that ends up with a permanent underclass and people who are searching for fresh water, that is hard work to get to that point. Somebody invested the time and made the decisions and wrote the laws and practices. Now were at a point where this is not raise speaking. Cultural practices and this law does not have any dissert impact just happenstance. Well, disparate impact is not intentional. Exactly. We will create a lot. That is just happenstance. It is not happenstance. On the point you mentioned, the sociology and parties around what he charges particularly black and white, a special added. Later a cause this is specialness. When you encounter words that dont include you you cannot identify. That distance between you and what is on the page creates web when called the mask. Double consciousness, a special attitude which means that you look at shakespeare and youre already saying the were not a part of it. Take that special attitude and in many ways use the imagination and prayers of there. We are not included. They dont expect black people to play instruments. What if we just came from some other ships and landed here in the bay area. Boutique collins just had a bass guitar. Even though you are not included , the special attitude to my just to bring him back in some ways, this idea that if you are a big tree we will cut you down. The idea is the attitude, you can cut it down. Not included. Appropriate that special attitude, use it as a way to interrogate yourself and put it forward to people so that they can receive it. Something really he believed in the universality with dollars sarton salt. He often said, right about race because i am to get of the way. And when rosa parks, montgomery, in paris finishing gm pawnees ring, but that has no black characters of all. For him that is a kind of freedom not to be confined by his skin, not to be the person it was a write about whoever he wanted to write about him whenever he wanted to write about and in that was absolutely crucial. I know also there is a firestorm years ago, there are about called the confessions of nat turner. At that time baldwin was living in a studio in connecticut finishing some work. They were good friends. That is what we do. We are riders. We can imagine what we want. Imperfect and impossible as it , right, is a crucial resource perhaps in this project of building and nurturing solidarity, right . If we believe that solidarity is an indispensable component to the work of democratic progress. Imani . Yeah. I agree with everything that has been said, although i have a particular interest in asserting that i dont i think of blackness as vast. It is not a containment, its not a confinement, and it has a depth and breadth to it, and i think even as an object of study, so if i think about the question slightly differently not, perhaps, the responsibility of the writer, but the responsibility of the intellectual, for me, right, part of the responsibility of the intellectual, for example, when writing, when i wrote a book on race and what racial equality looks like, its actually a kind of rigor in examination, right . There are dominant ways of talking about race, one of them being that perhaps we live the vestiges of the past but not talking about the ongoing practices of racial inequality. For me that meant not just reading in sociology, in politic, in neuroscience to understand that there are patterns, that there are narratives, there are patterns, there are cumulative practices. If you go to buy a car, if you go to the hospital, everywhere you go in life when you look at the patterns, black people are disadvantaged. And theyre disadvantaged based upon individual decision making. So people have learned to treat black people in an inferior fashion. So for me, looking at that particular problem, right, of how racial inequality works today opens up all these other, all these pathways. And i think, you know, so i think that there is this, you know, theres this kind of aspiration to transcend the particulars of who you are, but also to go deep with the particulars to illuminate thing that are necessary for the world to see, particularly around questions of the persistence of injustice and inequality. And in the way that, you know, even when you survey black folks, the way that people talk about racial inequality is such a shawl fraction of how small fraction of how comprehensive it is in every aspect of our lives. I agree. I think thats wonderful, the notion of, like, you know, who we are. And then when you say black intellectual, that becomes a much larger kind of thing, you know, because theres, like, anybody knows in the library, theres whole bunches of intellectuals that dont have a agree degree, they dont have anything else, and they know stuff. They know stuff that i dont know. And is they certainly know it in ways that i dont know. Which i think is wonderful. I can think of an example of something. I dont know exactly how its used because, listen, if you want to talk about books, thats all good and well, but people watch television, they watch movies, they watch computer screens, and stories are being told to them, and we have to be aware of that. And im trying to, im trying to do a lot of stuff in hollywood, but im trying to do this one show, and its based on a character. I wrote, you know, a crime guy, crime novel guy, and the people who are ruing it called me up and and said producing it called me up and said we would like for this to be open casting, the main character. Because, you know, theres really no reason for him to be black. None. None. [laughter] theres no reason for him to be black. [laughter] i said, well, its up to you, there aint no reason for you to be black, you know . Why you black . [laughter] you know . Its like [laughter] but these are really powerful because they have lots and lots of money. Theyve done all these shows that youve watched many times, and they were asking me a question, but they werent really asking me a question. [laughter] and so i went, well, you know, he does have to be black. [laughter] it cant be open casting, he has to be black. Now, of course, open casting means hes going to be white, so [laughter] i said he has to be black, and they asked me why, and i said because im Walter Mosley, thats why. [laughter] [applause] now, they could have said no. They ended up saying yes, you know . They could have said no. But its really, theres a moment of importance of, like, that work to be confident. Let me tell you, there are a lot of black people in hollywood. If somebody be said that, theyd say, okay, you know . And really, you worry about the money you make. And you know the people next to you are not worried. If you go hungry, the people next to you are not going to worry about you. Thats pretty much a fact. We live in america. But the idea is that we have to go beyond that and say anyway, but its very difficult. Because you asked about writing, you know . It kind of bounces kind of off in my head. Yeah, writing, right . Who listens to writers . I mean, other than this room, you know . [laughter] but it has to do with movies and records and television and all that stuff. You have to, you have to, like, actually stand up, you know . Because i said to them, i said, look, if people black people have read this book. Now, if they see it on its with a white on television with a white guy, theyre going to be had at me. [laughter] i dont want these people being mad at me. [laughter] im sewed to be writing about supposed to be writing about black male heroes, so he has to be black. [applause] i think thats a really important thing to do. Well, you raise a very important idea that some black intellectuals have criticize the notion that the black intellectual has a responsibility to the black public, right . The black intellectual has responsibilities to the broader public, but the black intellectual can stand on and assert unapologetically a commitment to the notion that she has a specific responsibility to the black or africanamerican community. Uhhuh. And i just want to emphasize that, yall, Walter Mosley just said [laughter] that the africanamerican intellectual can choose, and its a choice. Yeah. Right . And thats the difference between an intellectual practice, neoliberal intellectual practice, let us call it, or intellectualism, intellectual practices under capitalism which is market driven, right . And which are about maximizing your investment, specifically in the human capital; that is, your intellect. In market relationships in order to, um, further your selfinterest. Right. And a very different vision, right, of the intellectual vocation whether it be writing or singing or whatever, um, which is connected to some notion of solidarity, right . That doesnt mean the Community Calls the shots about what you put down on paper. But it does mean that you are mindful that the work you do even though youre doing it in the privacy of your study or wherever you write, right, is indesociably connected in a productive, fruitful, lifeenhancing way. Whether right. To the larger black public outside the room, right . And we are all mindful that as we engage in this conversation together, what we are doing is connected to a broader public, a broader racial public made up of some black folk but also made up of others which is connected to us sol daristically concern. All right. [laughter] how about that . [laughter] even though we dont know them, right . And were nell meet them, right well never meet them, right . Yeah. And we dont need to apologize to anybody for engaging as members of black civil society, right . Of a black civil society, again, in which not all of us are black, right . Which is committed to the idea that we are doing work that advances the condition of freedom, the possible conditions of freedom that we know in this country as africanamericans and that folks in other countries can know, right . As well. So it is in that spirit, in the spirit of recognizing that we are all intellectuals, that were now going to turn to the next and final piece of this afternoons discussion, ask thats a discussion and thats a discussion in which you are all responsible for participating, right . So kendall, and i want to say these brilliant authors books will be outside. Theyll be signing their texts right outside after the panel. Would invade you to join this incredible round table conversation. Okay, theres one mic . One mic. Right here. And keep them to questions. Thatd be wonderful. Yeah. So if what you say is not in the form of a question, i will let you know. [laughter] all right, move [inaudible conversations] yes. Good afternoon. Thank you. Good afternoon. Thank you very much for a brilliant, enlightened conversation. Your spirits, your minds, your souls, putting it and focusing it through your intellectual capability be, thank you for that. That was an excellent product. Id like to ask very simply, are capitalism and democracy completely incompatible . Theyre not the same thing. I dont know if theyre completely incompatible. Socialism and democracy arent necessarily incompatible. Capitalism is about wealth and the distribution of wealth, and so its just not the same thing. The question is, is to what degree does democracy control capitalism and vice versa. Thats always the question to be asking. Because, you know, capitalism is naturally a fascist organization. You know, the richest people are on top, and the poorest people are on bottom, you know, and all the wealth is going up. And democracy supposedly works against them. If you dont have that tension, which we dont have in America Today, you have a problem. Okay. Thats it. Thank you very much. This follows, i think. I just wanted to go back to the baldwin quote any real change implies the break up of the world as we know it and leaving the refuge of safety. And i just wanted to say what did it take to get rid of slavery . A civil war that killed more people than any other war up til that time. And, but was cataclysmic and was essential. And i just want to pose to the panel, i mean, going beyond solidarity and thinking about could, and could you really do anything that would ameliorate any of what weve been talking about today short of a revolution . And i would just like to posit that i dont think its because people dont want to give up their cell phones, but people dont have any sense that another world is possible that would be a world worth living in. And im from revolution books. There is such a strategy, and people should come and talk with us about it. But i would like to, you know, pose is there an alternative to revolution . No, thats not my question. Or is revolution the only way . My question is, can anyone on the panel talk about the could you actually do this short of revolution, and could anyone talk about the positive possibility of actually making revolution and getting to a world where it isnt dog eat dog and you dont have capitalism, you know, as a thank you. Thank you. I think we have the spirit of the question. I would is there another way called revolution, and what would revolution look like . Would it have to be a violent revolution . Well, yeah, that reminds me of angela davis point that a revolution actually isnt about war, but actual unseeding of previous convention and a sort of inserting of new ideologies which is very scary to people because as much as race is a problem and its organized our lives in such ways that the idea of there being no race is very disorienting for people. So i think part of it isnt necessarily thinking about revolution with a big r, but a small r and an s added on to it. I think part of how you get there is something that i completely agree with, blackness is vast. What if we live inside a world where we thought that blackness was a ca arabs term . Just to borrow from hiphop, that you could be black and Something Else, and that actually is not a limitation. So, for example, what if being a black president actually meant an expansion as opposed to a contraction of the way that we think about it . So some of, i think, the answer to the question is thinking about those deepseeded realities and ideologies we take for granted and thinking about a world where we dont have those. And i think for many of us, that is very scary. What if we lived in a world where there was a house father, you know, who was a homemaker . We dont even, that scares many people. So some of it i think when we hear revolution, we think about these bolsheviks taking over russia when, in fact, im thinking about everyday acts of revolution where we, for example, acknowledge that as black people there are lesbiansing, there are lesbians, there are transgender people who are black. [applause] that would be revolutionary to me. So i would also say to keep revolution in context, to think about the conditions and the constraints that we lay over ourselves that actually dont require a meeting with white people. [applause] just the things that black people do to each other. That is revolutionary, perhaps with a lower case r. Can i Say Something briefly . I absolutely agree. I also, im always concerned about you taupic thinking, and i think oftentimeses we talk about revolution, we have an end in mind, and im much more interested this how we practice how we engage with each other. So movement is much more interesting to me. And so i was in jackson for the 50th anniversary of freedom summer recently and saw all these extraordinary youth organizations putting together movement, movement that was progressive on movements that are progressive on multiple fronts. And i do think that the lesson of sncc, the lesson of both the early and the late movement is that movement allows its not just sort of has the capacity to transform social relations, but can transform internally, right . And transform the sense of internal capacity. So that, i think, is something that moves us somewhere good whether or not, you know, were focused op what the end exactly on what the end exactly will look like. Uhhuh. Next question. Thank you. Question is with the backdrop of baldwin as lovers, is it possible for you guys to expand upon, like, baldwins black imaginative which gives black folks agency and empowerment for political agitation . Specifically im thinking about that was the question, can you expound upon [laughter] how can we empower black people with agency and empowerment . Im thinking about your book, marcus, where you get, where you talk about duboiselaying the foundational lens for black people being [inaudible] and we often think about black people where things happen to them, right . Negro [inaudible] happen to them. All these other things happen to black people, but you give agency to black people that gives us power for revolutionary, right . And im thinking about this more specifically around baldwins contention between his blackness and his sexuality and his queerness, right . How could like a black brown Queer Movement give agency for transformation politically . Thank you. What were going to do, with your permission, is to take two questions at a time. So we have one excellent question, and well take a second one from someone who seems to be wearing a i love Columbia Law School tshirt. [laughter] so this better be a really good question. Laugh. No pressure. Thank you. So my question, hopefully its worthy of my school [laughter] is basically, i mean, how do you deal with this . You talked earlier about love and mostly directional love, but how do you deal with love, i guess, masquerading or, i guess, yeah, how it has the opportunity to masquerade as Something Else . Implicit bias masquerading as love . I think of us as a black community, or we in the black community, we love each other more than, i think, ever before. And what that does also a laughs at criticism, that selfreflecting we do more than i think we probably need to, but also it allows maybe our politicians to then say in the spirit of love and in the spirit of, you know, trying to improve our nation, were going to also be very critical and point the finger at us. So when baldwin says that it doesnt take, it doesnt take hatred, it takes a spine, these politicians saying were going to grow a spine and point the finger at your community in the spirit of love. And i think that is disingenuous, but it kind of also seems to be what we are advocating for, so how do we deal with that . And its certainly happening. I put to you simply the figure of someone a colleague of mine calls our scolder in chief, right . Right. Who seems to have taken upon himself a special vocation at almost every opportunity that hes given to speak to a black audience. To emphasize, i would say overemphasize, sometimes to point of fiction the failings of the black community, particularly of black men. So thats a very, very good question. Panelists . Well, ill speak about the agency point. So part of, you know, im a sociologist by vocation, and i guess by training as well, and part of whats interesting there is i said earlier at the beginning, at the start of my comments that the black experience can be used as a barometer in these ways, but part of whats interesting is it is often a barometer that doesnt require for you to gather black people and ask them what they think you should do. Its instead heres a policy called urban renewal, lets study some black neighborhoods and see what happened to them. And part of what i think is important and especially if you were a philadelphia negro, harlem, usa, wherever you might find yourself that everything that you do, especially your commitment to place, is agency. You are staying somewhere. And that staying has real ramifications on why this city looks the way it does. That is empowering on the same hand that it is also disempowering. Because it then means we are responsible in some ways for what were seeing. You know, the existing paradigm, the great thing about not having black Peoples Agency in it is you can throw your hands up and say look what white racism is doing to us. As imani said earlier, blackness is vast, i cant tell you how many times even in 2014 you go somewhere and who black people are does not include a number of people, you know, single mothers, teenage mothers, you know, adopted kids, wards of the state. Theres a very particular black person that were talking about, and then as black politics or black political actors, we look at white folks and say why arent yall being be inclusive . The inclusivity must begin with us. If were not including the people in this room, how do we expect somebody not of us to acknowledge us . It is a very dangerous connection, i think. The agency point is meant to give wave to the idea that where you live and the city that you live in as long as youve been there, you matter, and what youre doing matters. And sort of, i say, like the spiderman sort of uncle ben, with great power comes great responsibility. [laughter] so the idea of the citymaker sounds like, you know, people Walking Around with cs on their chest, you know . I want this, im changing this, im doing that. But it comes with great responsibility because when you look at south philadelphia, my neighborhood, which is now no longer 98 black but now 15 black and declining, there is a more complex story that involves what black and white people are doing in the city at the same time. If i, if i could jump in really quickly, you know, my i work on a University Campus be, have to live on a University Campus, so ill tell that story instead of a city ward, but a small campus population. I cant tell you the number of times ive felt the need to talk to black and brown students just going to a meeting or something. The narrative comes out, well, students other students here basically tell us in many ways large and small we dont belong here. And i get angry every time i hear that. Because these students are now buying into a narrative that they did not write that tells them that they dont belong. Now, you can take this from a University Campus to a city ward to a nation, and i said its your obligation to tell them that you do. And its your obligation to not, and to not listen to that and to believe, in fact, you do belong. You got in, after all, so you belong. So you actually i mean, this is not to ignore or to let people get off the hook for telling that terrible narrative, but theres also hard work that has to be done by saying, dammit, i do belong, and you cant tell me otherwise. Thats, frankly, work that has to happen every single day, and can its not fair and its not fair, but this is the world in which we live. So i think this speaks to a kind of important in this context black agency that black folks also say to everybody white, straight, gay, black, whatever, i belong here. Whatever my conflicted ideas are, this is speaking to a capacious blackness or a capacious humanity, i belong here. And were going to have to work it out. What did baldwin say . I have nothing to prove. The world also belongs to me. You know, id like to respond to the brilliant columbia student [laughter] question. See, because for me every time somebody says love, i get nervous when people talk about love, you know . [laughter] i really do, because i believe in the hallucinatory, you know, qualities of love, you know . I remember, there was 18, this girl was defying gravity, and this guy, you know, who just came out of the woods i was in vermont, and he saw this girl, and i watched him fall in love with her. Now, he didnt know her. He didnt know anything about her except she defied gravity. And he was just like, wow. And the power of his feeling was so strong that she couldnt resist it. It was interesting, you know . They ended up leaving together. I dont think she wanted to go with him, but she couldnt help it because he was so in love with her, you know what i mean . Laugh [laughter] the idea of love, you know, i know your question was just a little bit different, but i think a lot of people, you know, you always have to kind of question love and where it comes from in you and how youre feeling it, you know, for other people. And, you know, and this is that whole thing, you know, because every time we get back to baldwin, i think about felonious monk, and i can only really think about him when hes playing because other than that its beyond me. But one of the simple things i can do is question what that love is. Because you know, like, you know, really, were black people in america, so we love a lot of white things, a lot of european things for unconscious reasons, not conscious reasons. You have to really interrogate why do i think this, or why do i feel so strongly about this, or why when i think about this am i brought to tears, you know . Why should i feel like i should kill people in iraq and afghanistan because of something that happened here and not thinking about what weve been doing forever, you know, to iran, for instance, and to iraq and these other places. I want to say that they once asked me to read for salman rushdie, they said they wanted me to i like him, hes a nice guy, but they said we want you to read for him. I said, okay, but listen, first, i need to make a five minute statement apologizing to the country of iran for what we have done to them for so many years. [applause] and they said, you cant do that. And i said, why not . You know, because its a white organization, they think theyre not, but they are. Even well, anyway. I said, i said why not . They said, because were a writers organization. We dont represent all those people who got tortured in those basements. We represent writers. And i said, okay, fuck you, i aint gonna read. [laughter] but, you know, we have all these feelings, you know . Andst the really and its really important to question our love and our being loved and how it works and what impact it has, you know . I think its a lower level from what were talking about, but i think its really important. Two questions. All right. Im going to be really quick. Im piggybacking on the wonderful student from columbia, he had James Baldwins book on his back, so i borrowed it to get back to the love. If we and now i mean the relatively conscious whites and the relatively conscious blacks who must like lovers insist on or create the consciousness of the others, to not falter in our do not falter in our duty now, we may be able handful that we are to end the racial nightmare and achieve our country and change the history of the world if we do not now endear everything, the full facilitiment of that fulfillment of that prophesy is upon us. God gave noah the rainbow sign. No more water, the fire next time. That is from the fire next time. My question very briefly is, what are active things that we can do as human beings going out into this world to help bring back the love or some type of solutions . And i want to start with the historian. [laughter] and im charles reese, by the way. You can handle it. Did i mention im also in american studies and africanamerican studies . Okay. I mean, ill go back to what i said before, what proactive thing can we do . Find ways to get our children to turn off the screens and read books. Now, i know were a visual culture, i mean, i might have just caused some pain to my friend at the end, but i think reading is fundamental. So start there. Thats my one i have to do one, just one, right . Sex is fundamental. [laughter] i dont have to convince kids to have sex. I mean, really, come on now. I mean, honestly, i mean, we live here, right . You know, i mean, its like its not gonna happen. The passionate about knowing the value of what you do. Now, i know you believe that it can be done. Let me tell you why. Because of was socrates did. Socrates brought together, yes he did, socrates brought together a disparate group of people in l. A. For thursday night tenors and he can bring in el a gang youth become a carpenter from mexico, l. A. African American Lawyer thought with some gumbo we can do the same thing here in new york, harlem, brooklyn with the boys and get them reading. I would like to ask you to help me to do it because it is urgent that is a challenge. All right. It is a challenge that could only have been thrown down here. It is a challenge not simply to those of us who are sitting here on the stage, but to each and every one of you in this room because you are all stakeholders in this community, however you match in the community. The sister is certainly not leaving. I would invite you to join me as we began that close discussion conversations. I can put you in touch with the person who organizes book clubs through thats very practical. I have that easy email address. Im not going to say it out in public year, but anybody even knows me i can give you the information. I this has been a wonderful conversation. It has been my privilege to share and with these extraordinary folks. Lets conclude this part of our time together by formally acknowledging and thanking them for their generosity. [applause] again, map promised to rich and all of the sponsors of the book fair. We will see you again next year. Thank you. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] of. [inaudible conversations] we will have more from the harlem book fair in about ten minutes. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] book tv is on facebook. Like us to interact with book tv guests and viewers, watch videos, and get uptodate information on events. Book tv asks, what are you reading this summer . Well, i am looking ahead because we have the first in the nation caucus. Iowa has made a recommendation to new hampshire, South Carolina along the arrest of the country. I have been involved in that process for a number of cycles. The want to make sure they have the considered judgment of a couple of dollars on the topic. One of them is grassroots written by dr. Chris hall who happens to be my chief of staff. I want to poke through that carefully in analyze the intense studies and probably verbally challenge a little bit about any of the conclusions and see how that fits with what i know in my experience and working with the president ial caucuses. And then also caucus chaos, a new book written by dave price. Dave is a journalist and a reporter for the television station in the morning. He has really paid a lot of focus of this and interviewed a lot of the players who are involved in the iowa caucus. It is new. I want to read both of those periods and this is the first year we have been able to celebrate the placement says. Statuary hall in the United States capitol building. Born 100 years ago. Happens that there is a work on my table called my daily bread that writes the story. What he did in his life was he saw poverty during the Great Depression in the 30s, decided he wanted to do something about it. So he went to work. Sent to mexico and started working with different wheat strains. And on those that he selected he selected the disease resistant, rust resistant, light resistance and through his work in mexico could not raise enough food to feed themselves and a matter of 13 years to reverse that to where mexico had a surplus of food that they were raising. And there was also another book that is written by ambassador who put together, i had the privilege to know. An illustrated story about the life who is credited with saving the life. And after his success in mexico he went to asia, pakistan, india and in different countries. Africa and began to continue to develop and improve the production of wheat, rice, and other products. In a matter of 30 years is worth more than doubled the Grain Production in the world. Because of that the people are saved from starvation, and it says so on a statue in statuary hall was replaced on reduced to the day. Within 10 feet of the author of the book, ambassador standing with congressman life and when they presented the congressional. And i was standing about 10 feet from ambassador quinn and congressman lay from talking to dr. Borlaug. As i am talking to him i got the idea that we should place the statue there. I know what he thought at the time. I stepped away from that meeting in new went to work to see what it takes to approve the statute coming in one bill and placed in the United States capitol walking away from the circle of inspiration from this great, great man. Now learned a few years later on the morning and replace the statute that congressman life and an ambassador quinn or having a discussion about facing the statute. So whether it was providence, happenstance, serendipity, we all got the same signal. We were standing within 10 feet of where a statue stands today. Want to give up to speed on two things, celebrating the second century of his birth and also up to speed on the caucus rules and the caucus chaos. I imagine we will have a Going Forward in the next two years in iowa. What are you reading this summer . Tell us what is on your Summer Reading list. Posted to our Facebook Page or send us an email. Booktv. Org. Live coverage of the 2014 harlem book fair back in just a few minutes. Here is a look at some book fares and festivals happening around the country. This weekend includes the annual free avestan loss vegas, a libertarian conference halls of the discussions and debates on a wide variety of political topics. Flew. One of the books that i just started that will be finishing in the next few weeks is the big burn. Anti walked through some history of the creation of the national forest. It is always good to know your history when youre on a Committee Like energy and natural resources. A great story about Teddy Roosevelt and the big fire of 1910. Hopefully lessons. Anything else . I am also reading looking forward to reading a book called the nuclear age. It is a book by senator jack reed the senator jack reed gave to me when i came to the senate. Been putting an offer to lot. Always had an interest in mexicos history and our role in the Nuclear Deterrent looking forward at this very changing post cold war landscape of Regional Nuclear power. What does that mean for our policy . And hopefully some answers along the way as well. What are you reading this summer . Tell us what is on your Summer Reading list, tweet us. Posted to our Facebook Page. Send us an email. This week book tv takes a look at the Weekly Standard online bookshelf to see what that publication is recommending. On the shelf this week is turns cathedral, a count of the digital revolution following world war ii as well as the great war and james calls cultural history of the self portrait. The Weekly Standard also recommends stanley panza said the spanish civil war. A complex political history. Former first Lady Louisa Catherine Adams diary excerpts and memories from our early years on the shelf as is the metamorphosis of fat in which George Fiorello maps the evolution of western ideas about obese people, paying particular attention to the role of science and Public Health campaigns. Also a selection of essays and an idea whose time has come, the political battle to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Finally, the Weekly Standard online bookshelf as jay ridleys pyrography and Charles Murrays the curmudgeon guide to getting ahead. To see the full list visit Weekly Standard dot com put stuff. The next panel from the 2014 harlem book fair takes a look at the black Arts Movement. Welcome back here to the harlem book fair. My name is anthony kneele. I am the moderator for your next panel. The panel is the new urban aesthetic, the black Arts Movement in which we are going have a conversation to talk about the connections between the black Arts Movement and what weve seen now has new forms of urban a static. I am joined to my right to my colleague who is doing double duty today. Professor from princeton university. To her right we have barstow, the author of pure bronx, but she wrote with the historian. To her right we have mr. June archer who wrote the book yes everything can be a good thing. The adventures of the untouchables, illustrator. At the far end we have mr. Mr. Anthony wright had published a book of love to die, a piece of what some folks might describe as urban fiction or st. Fiction. Real talked about the complications of that as we go this afternoon. Thank you. One of the things it is interesting about this panel, any number of people even in this room as i sit here and look at Sonya Sanchez to can describe what the black Arts Movement was about who were there in the room what makes this panel unique is none of us were in the room. And so it becomes an interesting Vantage Point to talk about with the legacy of the black Arts Movement is for people who may not necessarily be engaged in the black Arts Movement the way that we understand it historic we but have taken examples from the black Arts Movement in their own work both in terms of content but also in terms of context and also in terms of form. And of the things i want to start with this task all the panelists about what your sense is of the impact and the legacy of the black Arts Movement on the work you do has riders monkhmer illustrators, creative artists in general. Well, good afternoon. Back in the day i love someone who was doing a show, maybe some of you have seen or heard of it. The main character in the show been doing her research to tell me, anthony, your writing hiphop literature, which is great. She said did you know the blanks and used it jazzed poetry . That was news to me. A researched it and realize that jazz renaissance was begging the time, but Langston Hughes was doing his thing here. Hiphop music is big now. There is some kind of correlation between this work and my work historic the speaking. But to use the music of the time, the rhythm of to be the backdrop of his lines. So in saying that my dialogue meaning he iconic expression of rappers or a use for my character know, its colloquial. Communicator. It is young, fresh command for the kids. A lot of kids get into where the parents want to. Theyre is a correlation between jazz poetry and hit pop literature, the rhythm. I want to stay on the for a second. When you think about some of the black arts poets weather were talking about john hadley, professor sanchez, they were all conscious of writing poetry that would resonate for young folks. Talked about writing poetry that literally you could hear on the dance floor. Some of the rhythm and cadence of of the pauls or rhythm Team Coverage more calculated to be able sonically connect with ten people. That becomes an interesting kind of way. Almost reminds me were the Previous Panel talked about these. We dont even accept it exists. Of these young hiphop artists tapping and a finding ways to connect with him folks, of course, is about the multicultural contemporary bronx thus just own up to the fact that the bronx mean the home of hiphop, the boogie down as we refer to it. What does the black Arts Movement look like in terms of the legacy in the bronx 40 years , 50 years after that moment that we all celebrate. It is really in attention to vernacular, and attention to here in the streets, to being inspired by walking along streets, to listening to our conversations are formed. And it just really trying here. He was my coauthor, a also started the bronx africanamerican chorister project. That was also really in fused in terms of its the way we thought about the book. I was thinking about oral history, and for me thats the work of sanchez, even before that someone like gwendolyn brooks. Ill look at the work thats been going on, some of this available on video now, the historian who grew up in the bronx, went to mars highschool in the bronx, for someone like yourself your working outside of a literary context. This is a conversation that came up in an earlier panel. What to is the black arts a static look like in terms of where youre working. I think anthony touched on a good point. Was creating characters. Im kind of known. He had 10,000 characters. So what he said about the rhythm from the blues there to the hip hop era, when i write a work in about. So the weather are writing or a drawing, its always of the rhythm of that. Of course some going aggregate a lot toward pop. Begat tmz preconceived a lineage. So i would look at them as the poet with writers that im really researching from properly late 70s when i was born in to 80s, 90s, so one. I look at their story. One story that the right crowd to become a controlled me and makes me want to go and create the art. So you know when people come up to you and say that that means the really kind of sing im i wanna buy that. To me when youre looking at that we try to make the illustration speak for itself. It as a literary form. I had one page and the source, one or two pages. Recon came up to me one time was like youre the reason i get the source. He was like nobodys talking about a. All right. But i did it because he wrote this attack the correlation for me was you of a song. Grabs you and motivates you. It takes each of the next level. Sort think harmelin is a mecca. The bronx. That infusion is really the support. Confusion comes from that. Like an extension of that. What is the legacy of the black arts required for you . Well, you want to touch on the hip hop aspect, from the riding them my book was a matter of breaking down barriers. In some mail driven. One thing that we have done so far away from is saying that i love you to one another, giving each other a hard. In my book a kind of create up to it is for us as in man and man of colors to break those barriers and say its okay their embrace your brother when he seemed. Hes holding himself. He gave him are really tight hug why shouldnt we . Regards so far away from that he turned a break those things down. You can still be a pop and be loved. Let me ask you a slightly different question. And we think about the black Arts Movement its very hard are difficult to detach that away from what was happening politically at that particular moment. And for many of bus bar introduction to the black Arts Movement is solely in the context of a Political Movement. Political poetry, stuff that could be uttered in public that he could not here. If we think about the rhetoric of malcolm x in a particular moment and the black Panther Party in last of the reason esthetically in the work, lake gwendolyn brooks, those kind of folks, is there a way for us to talk about the black Arts Movement outside of the content . Was there and a static form around the black Arts Movement that was just as important . And let me tell you where i get this from. Elizabeth alexander was named as the inaugural poet. The New York Times to along interview with her shortly before the inauguration, its always about the sociological realities but cant represented in the content of the poetry. But theres also a form. As a black form it takes place. So what does that look like in terms of the black arts . In no, this is that the point that you ended with this part of why i even wrote the process making the argument that theres something going on aesthetically. Theres a part where people just reduced have popped a sociological conditions and not just that but because they do this. Recognizing what is happening. But i think im quite skeptical of the desire to turn away from the political content just because everything has political content. Some of it is not explicit but it all has political content. For me the significance of the black Arts Movement for cultural production subsequently for africanamerican studies as enormous and part because what happens is that there is this kind of explicit content with the encounter with urban space. Urban spaces are always cosmopolitan spaces. A report coming. There are now beginning economic landscape, climate, technology, the dream of migrating weather is margaret in north or to the urban south of the midwest, the dream and its referral. So that political moment, that artistic and creative moment is really talking about the work of the intersection of all those forces. It opens up space for a black cultural studies, for this idea that there are things we ought to the draw, and a static foundation that can be taken of various kinds of expression that comes out of language and movement. Of this negotiation between the vernacular and the explicitly artistic. But think for me in particular i was born in 1972. The album and my home, the poetry of rooms, the music, and this kind of emersion into the celebration of black embodiment. So we usually talk about in the academy, but we talk about black consciousness, the transformer power of the celebration of black experience in the body. So i dont want to so there is this a static to mention, but i dont want to separate it from the politics. Bubbled and courageous and climbing the politics were so often particularly western art does not claim the politics. Zero one to ask a broad question. But this question. If we think about the movement, what was the sound of that . And in what ways has hiphop tapped into that has an ongoing legacy . Because theres a way, john morgan did this wonderful review of ice cubes americas most wanted. And without even talking about the content of rescues music which at least at that time was pretty explicitly political she said this sounds like a warrior music, and she was talking about the production. Even when you listen to doctor draper as problematic as politics might have been, there was something in surgeon about the sound of what was coming out of california in terms of the sound of a gangster rap. Can you talk about that a little bit . Jim. I always feel that we carry, i think, every individual, every person, every unit carries a certain rhythm. We walk in a certain style, a certain rhythm, we run with a certain rhythm, we do it at our pace. I think with in writing, poetry the month even short story, in the instance of creative writing now we get into the blood flow. I always think the sound is the sound of your heartbeat. Its Something Like and you can check your heart beats sometimes can almost feel the rhythm coming out on the paper to on to your computer. You feel it. I experienced that all the time, whether are writing a short statement for an essay or poetry and usually i write a law. So i feel the. It has always been a pauper me. And i go way back. Ill listen to his chance. I say the same thing. Those are warrior chance. As an out im begging you for something. And going to take this. Economy qc hawaiian. Its more explosive than there is no holding back. You cant tame it. You have to let it out. You have to let it our raw. So rescue saw that, americas most wanted, that was and lyrically he was at his peak. So i think the rhythm is extends to our riding in, torre dancing came. It carries us through. And sort of, its like a wave the ride on. So he either go and hide or you go in real low, but youre going there was an interesting feature where no one had met mr. Mr. Baldwin except for Walter Mosley. But when you think about a black arts figure, he was a man of the people in the kind of way that literally you could be walking down the street in new work and he would be there. Saw not going to start with my conversation. Literally almost everybody in the room probably a sad one of those moments. But i did have the opportunity to interview him for about an hour and half around the time of spike lee, malcolm x. In one thing that he said to me that a state with me a long time was this idea that for all the money that was being spent for in his opinion was a bastardized version of miramax that it would be better for folks to some of 20 seats in the basement arouses and do communitybased are. And that always stuck with me. Particularly as we have been watching all losses that we have been watching a over these last 18 months the idea of independent black institutions as one of the lasting legacies of the black Arts Movement because they could not cope to mainstream Publishing Houses and get this stuff published. There were no black studies programs as we know what that can subsidize black scholarship in that kind of weight. Most folks dont know about the institute of the black world. Vincent harding in folks of that nature. So particularly for all of you on this panel who have done work in terms of more traditional media, how important as a panda see yourself as independent artists with the capability to produce your work independently outside a major Publishing Houses what power as the internet provided in terms of being able to do that kind of work canal important for us at this moment has there is so much pressure for us to take our talent to him as nbc or fox news or espn and a place like that, how important is it to continue to cultivate the idea of maintaining independent black institutions. For me it has been i still am currently in the music business. Of bin innocents 95. I know how the machine works. Kind taking everything that i have learned from the machine and bringing it to an independent stand point. We love so much humanistic, organic behavior because we are leaning on technologies instead of going out and shaking hands and attending programs like the harlem book for because theyre trying to hide behind the technology. We will find success when you start saying, i have a book out. These and the things that brought me to the point of writing. I think as we get back to a instead of using social networking, shaking hands, were going to highthings, but for me its been the have to touch the people. For the people to embrace what is he giving them from an independent stand point you have to go out there and really do the footwork. Its easy to send a facebook message our poster of tweet. But and so theyre actually able to touch it or understand why you wrote these things be, want to know the fabric of what makes you who you were. We lose just of the world because we are doing when need to do. Independently it makes sense. If he thrown out there for monitors some point it is lost in translation most the time. I think thats whats happening in the music business. For events like this it is important to be mocks the people so much style lock. I would send an from head of some point its a battle culture. So when you look at how i was brought into it at an early age, i got into graph on the trains. In and, of course, your comments , unlike what is that, i need to be a part of a. At the same point of why was there . Any find out that there was no element supporting it. I was in the neighborhood, the playground is always broken. No basketball room on the basketball court. Theres no support. You get some crazy neighbor and everything. Cabane downtown brooklyn. You know, new yorks service is a lot of different neighborhoods. But hiphop draws you in no way where its a necessity, being a part of something and just as energy and fire. Its a battle culture, and you have to do it live, so you really cant hide behind. You can promote it, and there are a lot of guts of the he said it is in that. As much as i get in the corporate, it always comes back to if youre going to have teeth in the game yearandahalf to finance it. Its just taken away from you. The no less in your swimming with sharks there were coming back to the culture of doing in life. I feel more blast when im doing something live. Seeing it in real life, thats different. You know, i always encourage capstan battle cipher or breakdowns because as live. There again going back to reinforce that, you have to experience it as a family. And then that a policy go do something. And its a struggle. It aint easy. Some days i have nine people have to pay and some days i have three. It fluctuates. And then theres times we have no more money. Lighter why keep doing this . The energy. In the picture back up. Love of want to say about the revolution, it still has to be financed. One of the folks who has carried on the legacy of the black Arts Movement, particularly in a pop, check the pds this great land about the need of rock booze or and the boulevard. Reno what rock and the boulevards like. Less talk a moment about rocking the bins. In particular one of the places where the black Arts Movement has continued to be vital is academia and particularly in terms of black studies. The have the opportunity to work. For those of you dont know mark, part of it is that he has been this amazing historian of both labor history but the history of the bronx. For those folks who dont know the historian, they know him as the white guy that was on dave ship else did. If you remember he was described as a black studies professor. So what does it look like to be able to continue into the work around the black Arts Movement in the academy and particularly around this idea if. All those folks who were doing the groundwork in the late fifties and early 60s and where blossoms, their idea was never that the stuff would go into places like duke or princeton prostitutes prices and students to come out of families and work the quarter of a Million Dollars. How do we post to the work that is educationally still true to what the vision was of the black Arts Movement in terms of the educational project but to that in spaces that both devalued during that kind of work and devalued the very narratives the represented. Actually want to combine that your previous question with this question. One of the important legacies of the black Arts Movement, creating communities the first people were doing workshops. Its incredibly important because writing, its something that you only do by yourself. Its a collaborative pact. You need editors, feedback. Nobody puts out a book, anything that is fully their work. I think that this subtenant can be seen in africanamerican studies department. People like alexander and other professors or very influenced, especially when there were not necessarily spaces. Thats also created for us in that department, we really value the history of our department. We value the struggle does come before us. I kaynine. Does not come happen. Does not go fly. Were very overprotected of our department. So that kind of community building. In his seat and other things. Exec and. Sewn just a start answering the question, one thing thats important, in the midst of a black arm movement and Political Movement theyre is a steep commitment to analyze short. We see this as a precursor to the renaissance. Really extraordinary a literal production. In some it makes sense that universities become, to a certain extent, places the embrace much of this work. There is pressure from universities in general. Theres pressure after the movements of the politicize laxatives, to do politicize everything. So there is this pressure to move. A perfect example because the assumption of africanamerican studies is so deeply connected the movements, the panther trials. So this pressure system is a this work is just an election will, not connected to is live in communities. That becomes a complicated tension because, of course, the work is not a political. Its a political work. How to navigate and and also not suffer under more of the generals all which is generally true in. One of the things that has happened is the bifurcation is, elite institutions are investing in black studies. Its under assault everywhere. And so this question of institutions is complicated. How much to invest in maintaining institutions and on the mainstream places because we know this work is not just intellectually of value as the potential to transform people who value it which has some purpose persons choosing other kinds of institutional formations that we need to create an actor. The challenge is the answer the question in your work. You have some sense of responsibility. That absence of social responsibility is at the core of the very in a price. But that instead interesting question about the work itself and to the work reaches. You know, on the one hand we know what some of our classrooms look like. Nunn and in no are run agree the difficulty of getting students who look like us in the some of those glasses. Were looking and for all kinds of reasons, black and latino students, and it talk about this a great deal in. They dont see how taking a class in black studies or womens studies are latino studies would have the is going to make them a better lawyer ironically them. In some cases at the same time we also are looking at a generation were talking about a small population the folks who make it to college. What are we doing with the cats on the corner. What exactly do they know about the black Arts Movement let alone legacy. Added they connected this is no listening london. And in one of the things is but did was give 14, a 15 year old guys reading. They wanted to here. But it created a different context for him to be able to read. So now we take the legacy of the black Arts Movement and translate that to these audiences that are not going to be sitting in the 185 section of the library trying to piece together this history. I think its a wonderful question. Nafta approach the question with a certain degree of humility. Its not always the ones are quick to do that work. But i think democratize and access to information and knowledge this part of the responsibility. That can take different forms. Beckon to reforms in terms of community organization, writing the kind of running windows, mentoring, actually supporting organizations that are already doing network and actually standing in the back. Can i provide this from pe on campus. Think all kinds of resources. In a pair of free will the come here. But i also think it requires a kind of humility that oftentimes people dont have. At think we need to create those platforms and have a dialogue even when those who are empowered to what you make it happen. Weve got so used to people saying know that we dont created ourselves. If you look back years ago, we were just talking about it, there was a time and end people are on their soapbox talking in creating. We have to get back to having dialogue. The book was great because it gave a Platform Work is the lessons and pop, i dont think they understood. It was just a book about him selling drugs. It was an arc history book. It created a platform. The need have someone come back in. Lets discuss this in a sense for let me break it down for user you are looking at it from the standpoint of his drug dealer don goode in alleys talking about the less talk about the journey and a grove and hal lets put it in a sense where they can take it. Its interesting you mention it. It going back for a moment, most folks did not know the reference is a graphic novel. And given the kind of work they you do, my youngest daughter, what cut her interested in reading was to present her with graphic novels. Talk a little bit about how just thinking about the literature and and literacy and very different kind of ways to open a book or open an ipod, ipad and rated, how we can think about other platforms of which to engage these influences by graphic novels are, these. Graphic novels are similar to rhymes a you will hear. There were reading 78 books i might get half the book in the summer. The of it. Updated. Why use a college . Gonna start giving him books, loving to read. And he was like him. Specifically bless you ever created to literally. The answer bridge. Theres a gap. So with his book, i think what you do is find a way to get them interested. It opens up another level or a tunnel to get you through that. Graphic novels. Eris on. Everyone deciphers. It was funny. We do those statistics for stuff were doing the little house wines, White Americans, about 50 million. They always in the. And you know, so when the culture, so into hiphop the we really have trouble understanding it. Its universal. People decipher runs. Theyre bridging themselves to learn more. I guess theyre also figuring out there other things. No, i learned. They came. And i used to be in front of us heebiejeebies. So you see this other culture, but you get interested in and start opening the books. Desert figuring things out. Youre saying also, it becomes a bridge. Graphic novels are visual bridge to get into the story. Especially when you go in, there are talking the language. Every show. There are into that. A steady it. The key government. Apple, you know, we call clause of nerds. Had the normal stuff tonight well, i started from marine accident. For real . And a half of this of the universe. Tracinda of the things. At 22 you start valuing education. Was one of the things thats interesting going back to the legacy of the black Arts Movement, particularly around the sunday. When you think about some of the jazz musicians were engaged, they decided there were going to get rid of boundaries. In the look of some of the black arts poetry and the way they laid out their words on page to my very nonlinear, nontraditional ways. When you think about the music of colman or under the terms of how theyre breaking up the notion of form it makes me wonder ways if there are ways in which we have no knowledge of the freedom that the black art movement in the house in terms of creativity we are actually seeing played out in genres and styles that are far removed from obviously the black Arts Movement but even black people. A was a good question. One of the booktv plagiarism in writing. Will we do is formulate things that are great. In atlanta tried to do something that doesnt work. Is not going to yell. He tried. Maybe it will fit, but you can adapt. A variation of that. Now youre in a hybrid situation. He almost create the inspired. Every time i here, can someone the knowledge she just sounds like salt and pepper. And most of the folks in decker can ignore some. This sounds like a few. The bar of the cadence planarian will get it. Only because a reminds me. So i did. Her respect affected see levers writing a rhymes tried to make sure the bridge that gap. Any talk about the kind of political autonomy of black creativity and tens of just asking the question about how many sculptors, writers, painters, musicians created in the 1950s listening you know, i was inspired to do this culture. But miles davis was there in the room. Pick creativity, and theres no way not to think that inspired the same compact when you think about the kind of inyourface strategy that came of the black Arts Movement how much of that can we translate to a Political Movement, everything from occupy wall street and to various things of eocene play out of the last 25 1 3 years. The movement, i think about those going to visit him. I think about all those connections. Exactly when you think about the context, none of this happen in a vacuum. Talking to the chicano students and backandforth in getting ideas for which other. Thats what made some of those movements richer. That exchange. As the same thing with the pump. That exchange is what created it and also what keeps it lively. Its interesting. My entrance into urban fiction is through listening to spanishlanguage epo. And allison to latino hiphop. And allison went back assert going to a 1990s and 80s and learning. And then i start paying attention to urban fiction its infused with spanish and characters from all over. And so all of that is really important to consider when talking about the black Arts Movement. But i want to ask a question or a lease go out, the idea of thinking about the black Arts Movement in a technological context. Theres a whole host of things you cant do the least of which is being able to watch netflix. You know and when we deal with reality for them since the majority people of color particularly of african descent in this Country Access information on mobile devices. So if you can think for a moment about filling out a job application on your phone as opposed to being someplace on a laptop with quality broadband. So a colleague of mine going back to the institute of the black world has really been on this whole idea about us being able to control access. Where i will just call for the moment digital nationalism. Wheres the movement where we are creating our own servers and owning our own servers . All the information we have now we are sharing with facebook and twitter. We dont own those servers. Thats property that we dont own. We have been able to use it in particular kinds of ways towards powers that but when all is said and done we give it to the nsa etc. Etc. We have no way to push back on that. Even if we owned it the nsa is going to get it. Real talk, real talk. And i think we can press that point in some other other directions too to think about this question of access but theres also the question of what we encounter what technology is substandard lan access to learning how to code and also at the same time some of the most interesting innovative Creative Things that are being done in the digital arena are being done by communities of color globally rated so often the cutting edges resourcefulness and so it all makes me think one there is this kind of surveillance and the other is this issue that has to do with capital. It seems to me we should all be having this conversation in the power that goes along with a concentration of capital and with the inequitable distribution of capital. So for example when we pose this question about Cultural Property really what is at issue is not who owns culture. Culture is always permission but who makes money off of it. Thats her issue in their seems to be, we are stuck in this pattern that people are always on the cuttingedge of the Creative Production seem to continuously with this very narrow few exceptions to be the ones who have been broken at the end of the day. So to me the question is not simply just to create more corporations but actually to think about what is the vision for a kind of political vision. So for example people talk about Net Neutrality but dont think, dont push the conversation further to think about what would Public Access to the internet actually look like, like truly Public Access. What would it look like to not have all of these things run by corporations and i do think people would like to see the black Arts Movement push a more revolutionary imagination at least in these institutions. Anybody else want to jump in on that . So i love her comment. She takes it in a different way and youre like all code thats another another thought in the other that and another that. But are we just saying to create the server that will control the true art of the black culture or monetization . Alternately what i was trying to suggest is that its about when we create this work right, are we able to claim it as ourselves and the youtube and the Digital Space. I will get the youtube example. You can give beyonce credit for when she was pressed she would own up to where her influences are but this is someone who is digging deep into the archive that youtube has presented to her and representing that out into the world. We know the long history of people of color not being paid for what they produce and then going on to produce stuff. Talking about the chess brothers with relationship to muddy waters and those folks. Talking about berry gordy in relationship to the black audience. But you know as we get to this particular moment and we are in fact bringing and energy to the Digital Enterprise its changing how the Digital Enterprise functions. With that black folks use twitter has changed how twitter does its business. One example, at what point do we take an accounting thats not just about money but of the spirit of innovation we bring to the enterprise that make sure that innovation and experience goes back to be able to feed folks behind us with that same spirit and innovation and creativity. I think its definitely a great new frontier. As i find we are trying to we talked to lineal aunt lena was open to do a deal. We said wheres the backend for us and in our place so guys came back for us because its a lot more i feel a lot more than any deal because there are so many traps in it. There are so many things. They have for example they run gameplay inside of the game inside of the game. If youre running a show the industry game is in the gameplay and there are 20 ads that they are getting money. So you have to have your own Digital Space and the storefront and the other interesting thing we were in kind of like a bored Conference Meeting about apps and apps and web sites. You can control your own pushes but also everybody at first was like well i dont know if i trust starbucks with my credit card and i dont really care. What it is that your phone is your new web sites of the app is your web site in the app is your story. To have as much control of your own independent so i feel like we have studied a lot for three years to say lets comptroller on the web site and comptroller app into a partnership to make sure the wording is because they are very devilish. Because you have so much open space and theyre throwing everything out there. Thats really what has been happening with the conglomerates of media. They are buying up things and they things and they are our cost platforms and whether its archived or whether like you said when beyonce is throwing something out. She is already rich so shes looking at a situation as a person and as her own empowerment and business. You can overlook things because your rv rich so how much money do you need but in actuality Digital Space is the most profitable thing because its now. So you really cant compete with cbs. Cbs will on digital sioux but you know you cant control your space. So it was her server putting that app out and youtube in the last few months started saying we are not going to air a lot of free stuff. They are going to start monetizing and they are going to start restricting. Its just a platform. Whatever he gone there and we will control it. And then conversations about in actuality and access. I think if you have the apps and you have the web site the most important you can do is use it as a platform to bring it back home. You control, you know instagram and his facebook, bring those people back so thats the only way they can control it. Let me ask a very different question. We have been talking about cultivating and controlling what we are producing now. Have we done a good enough job taking care of the folks who created this . I will use hiphop pioneers is just one example of it and god bless cornell and their hiphop archive for creating the space for africa lambada but id be hardpressed to think about many cultural groups or rachel racial groups that would have artistic pioneers that would not fundamentally find ways to make sure that those folks are taken care of. There is no reason for the great innovators of our expression whether its a black Arts Movement or jazz modernist or hiphop pioneers to be able to live there last days destitute when they have created so much wealth both culturally and spiritually but also monetarily in the world. So how do we create a system that better takes care of it . As suggested earlier how do we start to use these university and institutional spaces we have to leverage resources to be able to do a better job. Also in terms of our community you know, love the fact that we just crowd funded don t. Knows film from miles davis and spike lee has use crowd forming. How about we club form some black artists poets . I think is a piece of that we have some absurdly wealthy black folks in this country who trade on a black audience in the east at least initially to get where they are and it depends upon that as a foundation and yet we dont have systems of holding them a comical that all. So theres a sense in which, and i take your charge really seriously about how do we think imaginatively about it in this is the history of black artists. We have generations of people who have died destitute. So i think that we do have to, also part of that has to be to hold those who make absurd while accountable as well because there are many of them who can take care of all of the pioneers without feeling it at all. I kind of disagree with that even though its a good idea. Its great but the idea, i think we have all got to look to ourselves. I think we have got to look deep inside of ourselves sometimes and you know its really one of those situations where i used to tell my mom you know like is it okay to beg and she would just give me that mean look like how dare you ask me that question when i send you to school. That is not supposed to be embraced so the idea of us looking for help, it seems for in and it should be treated as such. It should be the last resort. I think what you have to do is look inside yourself real day. We have the energy, we have the passion. Use it wisely and a lot of times we dont because some of those people you are talking about who are very wealthy, abundance of wealth they have created it and kudos to them. I think accountability is different than hill. If there is someone who has made extraordinary wealth off of the community, off community, off of the legacy having a responsibility. So you know exploitation is defined and there are whole bunch of people doing the work could one person out of that group gets all the profits from it. And so we have an explicative situation i think that leads to an appropriate demand for accountability. None of these people were able to create, they couldnt create the cultural forms and create the work independently so to create it is to say okay you have been able to do this because how might you reimagine your responsibility to the people who made it possible for you to achieve it . Look at berry gordy. Would you blame him for the motown experience . Would you say you did something wrong when you created this opportunity and some of these guys were on drugs and some of these ladies they threw a. The different site is barry gordy blatantly exploited some of these artists. Im saying you are saying its not okay to work with barry gordy who is a great mind. You are saying you know what . The question is how do we pull barry gordy like people more accountable in terms of how they take care of their artists . And again as monty said theres a whole history of black artists regardless of john merra who did not get paid their due. Record companies and we talk about any hiphop artists about your 50,000dollar dance. And the car and the cheap gold that you got and how much the record company, and we could be talking about rockefeller as easily as we are talking about any of the transnational companies. In the same sense, in the same sense those people created opportunities and we have utilized the opportunities and we enjoy them. We danced to the motown blitz, we did and we enjoyed it. I certainly did. I still love the temptations. I also think that. What im saying is there are two sides to the story. Theres also a reflection for example you want to make awareness of the responsibility if someone has made a lot of money. I know that when i would see them play for a lot of people to work too but on the same note if someone is like barry gordy and you make sure that the fan base that is supporting barry gordy and paying him back to okay you make it aware that you need to be accountable. Because then the reflection is going to go on. Hes going to make more money and we dont want to support that person. I also thing when you look at the arts and of black Culture Movement of the arts i wouldnt be here without that. There are a lot of people that either created their livelihood or who have just enjoyed the creation and they lived a better life. I know what chuck d who was ursulas publicist they are trying to create a foundation to support elders and hiphop whether a break dancer dancer or proper or people that have gone back to it because they never really had money. I think across the arts is important because you know we live from them. They gave us and they had to do things where people dont remember. When i was writing theres a risk and thats why you do it. But there were also a lot of people saying buddy you doing with graffiti on the train tracks that gum gum, that s. T. A. R. T. There was the