Harvard professor, Randall Kennedy nerd is selling book company and or time of the strange career of a troublesome word. You write about violence by speech. What do you mean . Guest that book is about the word nigger and is a word that is triggered lots of violence and to some it is the final word in another cells. What i wanted to do in that book was to give a history of this word that has been covered with blood literally and sometimes figuratively and wanted to show the way in which this word has wrought havoc in american culture. Of course that is not all it does. One of the reasons why it was both worthy is because of the complicated word. It has a terrible history, a history of insult, history of terrorism, a history of intimidation, but of course it has been put to other uses, too. Its been made in an ironic and a term of endearment so the word nigger as a complicated word and has biomass space, but other aspects as well. Zenas dress, she was a domestic commercial as a strongwilled lady who raised a slew of kids and sent most of them through college. I knew her for a good portion of my life. Dieren she used a whole lot ofhe refert different words. She referred to black people sometimes as colored people, bue she also sometimes used the infamous nword, and shes been a person whose example and whose wisdom has been all my life to the estimate is it illegal to use the n word . Speing, well, generally speaking, nou although i take that back. If you use the inward in an employment setting for instancer if you are somebodys supervisor and refer to a worker who as a nigger or black people as niggers may be in violation ofhe law creating a hostile workplac and thereby making yourself t subject to liability under thetl 1964e call or under the civilrights law of 1964. So, under certain circumstancess you can would make yourself which subjects yourself to legal liability, or another way. If you commit violence and in the indication of a the commission of a violent act refer to people using the nword, you might be subject to hate law legislation, and thereby not only be prosecuted for assault or whatever violent act you have committed, but you might subject yourself to an enhanced penalty by running afoul of state hate laws. So, under certain circumstances, yeah, you would be in violation of the law. Generally speaking, though, because of the strong shielding power of the first amendment, people, for instance, comedians or writers, can use the nword and not have to fear the law, though you might have to fear a Public Opinion which itself can be a very powerful force. Host is that the near word versus citing word . Host the law of homicide, all sorts of Different Levels of homicide, and one big divide is between manslaughter and Second Degree murder. So, for manslaughter, the law gives you a little if you kill someone, but you can make the argument that you killed somebody in you were in the grip of passion. The classic example of manslaughter, you come home and you find your girlfriend or your wife in the arms of another, and you kill that person. Youve committed a violent act, but the law will give you a little bit of a break because you were in the grip of passion, and the law says, we give you something of an excuse. Not a full excuse but we recognize that you couldnt control yourself. Well, theres some people who have made the argument that they were in the grip of passion because somebody called them the infamous nword. They strike the person, maybe they kill the person. And the argument becomes, can you or can your lawyer make the arguement to a jury that you were in the grip of passion because this person called you this particular word. Now, in some jurisdictions, like washington, dc, you cannot even make that argument. Washington, dc, the jurisdiction that has the just words doctrine, and the law says no matter what the word, no matter what somebody calls you, thats no excuse for using violence. But other jurisdictions say, well let you make that argument to a jury. Host professor kennedy, you write in the nword book, theres nothing necessarily wrong with a white person saying the nword, just as there is nothing necessarily wrong with a black person saying it. What should matter is the context in which the word is spoken. The speakers aims, effects, alternative, to condemn whites to use the nword without regard to context is simply to make a fettish of the word. Guest yes. The best example to illustrate that point is mark mark twainst novel, Huckleberry Finn. Anythinger appears in that book over 200 times. I think Huckleberry Finn is a wonderful novel and its impulse is antiracist. Antislavery, obviously over the years there have been many people who wanted the book banned or wanted to erase the word. Im not for that. You have a white author, but he is using the term nigger for purposes that are clearly antiracist purposes. There are others. Lenny bruce. Lenny bruce was a great social sat satirist. He had a number of times when he used the word nigger, not to insult black people, but to turn the table on people who were antiblack in their feeling and he used the word nigger to laugh at them. Using the word nigger as a mirror on race simple in order to combat racism. Adore used the word anythinger in some of her short stories. She wasnt using it to be a racist. Rather, she was using is as an artist to delegitimate race simple. Thats what i meant. Obviously there are black people, too who have used the term nigger in ways that in my view, are completely unobjectionable. Dick gregory titled his first autobiography, nigger an autobiography. And Richard Pryor with two great albums, that nigger is crazy and bicentennial nigger. Host when you wrote the book, it was published in 2002. What reaction did you get . Host when i do. Guest when i wrote the book i got a lot of reaction, some positive and some negative. And continue to get some positive reactions and negative reactions. Some people took real offense at the title. If there was one aspect of the book that probably got me the most negative reaction was people who complained about the title, and who thought that i was being sensationalist, i was exploiting this term by putting it right there in the title, right there on the cover of a book that would appear in your book stores all across america. And what i said to people was and i still say and i say this unapologetically if you write a book you want people to read your book. There are thousands of books in any book store. There are hundreds of thousands of books in any big library, and you got a lot of competition. The first thing you want to do, if youre an author, is to at least have somebody pick up the book. And so when i was thinking of a title issue thousand what i can title this book that would get somebody to take a peek, read the first paragraph. And i thought, well, nigger. Nigger is a strange career of a trouble selfword. And i thought that would just think hard about words, think hard about examples, get the readers attention. Thats what i was trying to do with the title. The coming prosperity. He was in attendance at the book festival held in newly at the university. This is about half an hour. Now joining us here at George Mason University is professor Philip Auerswald his most recent book is this, the coming prosperity how entrepreneurs or transforming the Global Economy. Sure is the cover of the book. Professor auerswald, what role does your play in Economic Development . Well, thats a great question the and media i will talk about what role does fear play in our conversation about development and our conversation about our present, so when we talk about our reality and share our ideas in the marketplace we are competing with other ideas. There are three things about marketplaces for ideas. Shortterm sells better than longterm, fear sells better than hoped, negative sells better than positive and exaggerated but in moderate so we see a disproportionate number of short term narratives of negative exaggerated stories and essentially commesso shortterm negative. Thats whats represented the marketplace ideas and theres actually good reasons for that. We are creatures that grew up in environments where we were always subject to threat so we are looking at things that are going to hurt us, but we are no longer in those environments. We are in a complex economy this interdependent and that really relies on organizations to provide us even with other subsidies. As we have to update our thinking and think longer terms, focus on stories that actually represent the trends come and not exaggerate malaise, and we have to get away from a year. So fear played a role in the development of human societies and the earliest stages. It is encoded in our dna. But, to evolve to the sort of complex modern environment that we live, we have to update the most basic aspects. And so thats what your question speaks to. Are you fearful of venture capitalists . You know, the opposite of that i might say well, you know, venturecapital list has to be inherently optimistic because why would you invest in something where there are uncertain returns and so forth, telling the story about the coming prosperity, thats a story that is easily characterized and that is not in this book, and i really dont see it that way, from my standpoint and i think about optimism the definition of an optimist is somebody who is systematically late who doesnt get with the chiru distribution about comes, and a pessimist is somebody that is systematically early. They are there an hour in advance, so anything could have happened, had to be sure, theres those people, too. And so, you dont want to be systematically from about the true justification distribution of things in the bad or unexpected things that can happen or by overestimated them and i dont think that ive done either this is a narrative that looks of the true trends. That venture capitalists have to be missing world. They cant survive without an optimist. They cant survive as a pessimist either. They have to really look at the key devotees are, what the team is, what the market is, what the demand is, and what resources where they are needed to create the future and thats what im talking about. You say youre not necessarily an optimist but this book is very optimistic even though we are in a time of a lot of economic upheaval in the world. So, again, it goes beyond a semantic point. We are in a time of tremendous economic upheaval. I agree with that. But whats contextualize it in two ways. First of all, hours is the most dynamic and a promising year of year of human history. Why . Because a majority of the worlds population is joining the Global Economy. What does that mean . When japan industrialized, they brought nearly roughly 40 Million People out of poverty. When china joined the Global Economy and so for the firm bought about 300 million out of poverty pity thats a big story. Chinese savings in the world Financial Markets are a big part of what drove the most recent economic bubble because even Alan Greenspan couldnt figure it out. He wasnt looking at the reality of the moment. He called this the conundrum, he went back to it when he wrote his book. As brilliant a man as Alan Greenspan was, he was unable to grasp the reality of our historical moment. And it was in part to deutsch that failure, the systematic errors to the housing markets. And the policy was a change in the Financial Markets in growth elsewhere in the world. Well in the next 20 to 30 years, 3 Million People were joining the Global Economy. Its going to be a transformation ten times what we have seen from the China Exchange which is ten times what would happen in japan. Now if 3 billion people are suddenly given cognitive freedom, suddenly not thinking just a moment to moment and day to day in the subsistence existence but the creators, the collaborators, the new contributors they are human beings that are not just consumers, they are producers, and thats what this is about. Its all the possibilities that are created when that happens. And im certainly not the only person telling that story. Welcome a professor, who was one of the entrepreneur is that you have discussed in the coming prosperity . Talking about these global trends, and theres a kind of silly inevitability to that, talking about how there is increasing prosperity and people running the economy and how it is a great thing. But, the other piece is what you asked, what role do people play in that and nothing happens in the Human Society and less people make it happen. And i use the word entrepreneurs but i am just talking about the creators of the future. You talk about venturecapital. There are other people, artists are creating the future so, when we think about those stories that are the centerpiece of the book it is a big part of why i wrote this book is to share some of the stories that i learned, people ive gotten to know and eight years of editing a journal called innovation of the budget in real challenges. So just one there is a gentleman who is an optometrist in Southern India and in the 1970s he retired and as his retirement project he was about 57 and he wanted to do something for his community, and so she decided he was going to try to address the problem of meatless blindness due to cataracts. In the United States it is a minor outpatient operation you dont have people blinding to cadillacs the interest of the world was over 100 Million People blind due to cataracts so this was something that the doctor as he was known wanted to address so he started a clinic in his home and he had 11 kids and family members helped him and he got this off the ground. Anyway, cut forward not just one or two or three great ideas but hundreds of innovations, tenacity of an entire community and in entire team of people very brilliant who was one of the folks who contributed to the eve eradication of smallpox and an entrepreneur named david greene. All these people Work Together to build the hospital. And to this day, the hospital has toured 3 Million People of blindness. Now you imagine the entire metropolitan area about 3 Million People come imagine all those people blind, now they can see. Thats not an obscure story. Its not obscure in the words of people who circulate and know about the hospital, they respect the hospital. People traveled from all over the world to train to bring the programs to their countries. It becomes a movement to end needless blindness. Its just one example. You might say thats a crazy story. Thats got to be an exception. Hundreds of stories like that. And those are the stories that are transforming the Global Economy, not just the economy but the society in the future. As you say in the next 20 years, 3 billion more people will enter into the world of economic freedom. Is it the wild wild west, does it need to be managed, how should it be managed . Welcome my metaphor in describing the economy in the society is reinforced. When we go to rainforest whether it is the pacific northwest, we have a sense of life all around you, and the complexities and the independence and that is what the Human Society is. Its a self regulating environment where we put regulations and we would put government regulations that is a part of self regulation. We saw regulate ourselves and create rules for ourselves that is self regulation. We also regulate each other for competition. There is scarce resources just like in the rainforest but the main thing that keeps the rainforest fiber and is that you have the canopy which in the u. S. Economy would be the first, walmart, all that. And then youve got all the small business, but its the small and growing. Its the things that were small but can challenge and its what happens when the big truth falls over and then the amazing thing is it grows right out of it, right out of their. Thats a metaphor, but its real. Because when we lose something day in the economy its vital that we know how to reconfigure the resources and create something new out of it. So, do we need control . We need feedback loops to repurchase in this country we need to build a robust platform for people to realize what they have inside of them. Thats why people came to this country and why people work for a Better Future that will be like the Better Future that their ancestors look to when they came. So i would say yes, you know, we need a country, but we need control of all kinds of interdependence sees as of regulations and all kind of ways of understanding was happening and whats working, whats not, where do we need to go, and what gets us to the end point which is the betterment of human lives. Its not gdp, its not income per capita its defined purpose and meaning in those lives and that is what we have to vote for. Professor auerswald, one of those treaties to take the algae, gm a couple years ago nearly went bankrupt or did go bankrupt and they were bailed out by the federal government to the issue did have been bailed out or should it have been allowed to fall . I am just on the verge of flipping on that one. I am just on the verge. The same thing with chrysler. If you read my book i talk quite a lot about gm, and Charles Wilson is a guy that allegedly said whats good for gm is good for america. Wealthy actually never said that. I thought it characterized the worst of the sort of corporatism and feeding of the elite, the incumbent industry. It doesnt say that. He was a courageous guy that cut the Defense Budget by 20 in the late 1950s and theres the Defense Budget cuts in the late 1950s within a number of reason we have the silicon valley. A lot of radio engineers have moved out there and was a beautiful part of the country suddenly they didnt have jobs. And those people were saying well, you know, we want to stay here. And they created p equipment all the rest. So we were in a very tenuous moment. We had a financial crisis and on top of the there was the financial crisis that led to that crisis in the industry. Adding on top of that, psychologically the failure of the big three auto makers tough call. By the become i dont know why anybody in this president ial election notions that this is a bush program. I mean, i have a chapter about left, right come forward and i am not concerned that this. Start with one out of fenestration and continue to the other. So you know, thats not what its about either. But what would happen if we let it go . There would have been of this manufacturing, all these contracts out the door. Couldnt they have bought in the three factories and scale the self by a factor of ten . Out of those resources what would have happened if we had had the courage to do that . Again, i am thinking that that would have been a big risk. But it would have been exciting. It might have been a great thing for the American Auto workers. We are talking with Philip Auerswald, professor here at George Mason University to the id this is his most recent book the coming prosperity how entrepreneurs are transforming the Global Economy. You also serve as an adviser to the clinton Global Initiative. What do you advise on . Welcome to for asking me that question. I was just a Global Initiative in the last three days, and ive been working with them for the last three years and the reason i am thinking you is i really appreciate that affiliation. They had a wonderful platform and they made advisers on the program. What sort of things to feature, what will bring new ideas and challenge that audience to think about the different ways to engage in the world. Its particularly relevant because and every participant bad as they register this year they received a copy of Time Magazine in which president clinton had authored and essay entitled the case for optimism. And that the clinton global the initiative this year Chelsea Clinton wrote a session called the case for optimism. And then again she was interviewed by charlie rose and the was the focal point of the conversation. And so, you know, i am totally synchronous with that message and the quantum Global Initiatives focus on finding a Collaborative Solutions to the worlds greatest challenges and we have a lot of great challenges. Though we dont we dont address those challenges by propagating exaggerated narratives of fear. We do it by finding the Creative Potential of people and working together to build a future that we can all believe in. We solve those problems by focusing on the positives. A lot of Big Companies in america. I dont know if catering is the right word but so let to the federal government and develop policies that are good for selling to the federal government. The federal government is a big customer. Is this a good trend . Is this the way that our economy should be structured . Yeah. Well again, you know actually it ties back directly to the question that you asked. Its a good contextualize asian. One believes in markets and entrepreneur should so they must be over there and then on the other hand i am saying as for president clinton i dont think ive talked about hillary li
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