Marc lamont hill is the Steve Charles chair in media, cities and solutions at Temple University. His books include nobody casualties of americas war on the vulnerable from ferguson to flint and beyond and except for palestine, the limits of progressive politics. He also owns uncle bobs coffee and books and is the founding director of the Peoples Education center, a germantown based Nonprofit Organization devoted to community education. Todd brewster is the coauthor with Peter Jennings of the number one New York Times bestseller of the century. His other work includes the books lincolns gamble and in search of america. He also taught journalism at Temple University was a knight fellow at Yale Law School and was the founding director of the center for l history at west point. He is also the executive producer of the documentary into harms way. In their new book, seen and unseen, the authors examine the uniqueness of this moment in the overall history of Civil Rights Movements in the united states. Joining them in conversation this evening is award winner, Award Winning broadcast master and journalist tracie madison. Please join me in welcoming our guests back to the free library. Who will . Good evening, everyone. Thank you so much for sharing your evening with us. What a delight it is to be back in person. So were thrilled to see you all. Thank you again for coming all of that said, why dont we dive in and Start Talking about the book seen and unseen thought and work . Thank you and welcome back to the free library of philadelphia. Thank you. Its our pleasure. So i want to talk about your Partnership First on this book. I know that todd wrote the foreword to another book of yours, mark and todd. I know that you did a lot of work with Peter Jennings. You wrote a number of books together. But mark, talk a little bit about how you came to collaborate on this book and sort of who did what. Yeah. First of all, thank you for for hanging out with us tonight. It wouldnt be anywhere else. How about the sixers game . Not even there. Thats everyone else, right . It is. Its such a pleasure to be back at the free library and to be talking to everyone here tonight. Initially met. We have the same agent. Its i wish it were more like cool story, but we we have the same agent who did a wonderful job of bringing us together. When i was thinking about a book on ferguson and started to write about what was going on, todd was in town, i believe, and we all hung out and had lunch. And when it was time to think about the forward for the book and tyler was is a great reader, a great editor, a great everything, but when it was time to write the forward for the book, george said, hey, this is the guy you want. And id read the century. Id read some of his other work, and i knew that he was a phenomenal writer. And when i was on, when i was hosting huffpost live, he came on to talk about his book, lincolns gamble. And so i had an opportunity to read his work and so and his sense of history and i thought, wow, this would be a great thing to do. And then life goes on and you do other projects, you work on other things, and the pandemic happened and the uprisings happened. And in george called again and this time he said, you know, you should think about doing another project this time, maybe one with todd. And i said, well, you know, ive written other books with people and its always been great, but im not necessarily thinking about this. We say well just take a call with them. So then we talked on the phone and we had we had a bunch of ideas and we came up with an idea that resonated with both of us. And we were super excited about about writing together and thinking together. And in terms of division of labor, you know, every collaboration is different. Some collaborations, you one person, you know, writes the first draft, the other person edits and fixes it. Some people trade chapters. It just depends on the collaboration for this one. You know, every every chapter took a slightly different form. I think a lot of it was brainstorming through an idea, outlining the idea of breaking down every place we were going to go. And then after wed go there, wed sketch it out and then say, todd would pass it to me. And then id say, you know, were going to we each would nerd out in our respective areas. So, you know, id be like, todd, no, we dont actually need to know the entire history, you know what i mean . Of the firefly, right . And and the sentence doesnt need to be seven pages. Yeah, right. And then conversely, you know, sometimes i would be so invested in because ive been doing Current Events so long lately, you know, with media, id be very much interested in the current ness of the story. And todd was always pulling me back to give the story more legs, to give a deeper sense of history, and honestly, to be more literary in which in my writing. So it its been a fun collaboration. Todd this book has heavy and difficult material in it, and im just curious about what your conversations were like as the two of you worked on this and sort of immersed yourselves in not only difficult recent events, but also difficult historical events. Yeah, i mean, we thats one of the great things about the collaboration. We, we would talk pretty regularly about at the same time every conversation landed on something very deep and profound. Right . I mean, and one of the revelations, i think, of the whole process was that even as they were retelling the stories of of Ahmaud Arbery or to retelling the story of george floyd or retelling the story of kenosha or charlottesville and getting deeper into what the the actual details were, at which a retelling can allows you to do. Right. We live in a very fast paced world in which everything is running with we think we know something. But then when you go back, you can find out a much deeper sense of it. What we really found and i think what is the biggest contributor to this book is that the roots of this the roots are are deep and they run throughout American History well back into the past last century, well back into the century before that, such that the use of film, the still photograph of photojournalism, personal photography, and then ultimately the use of the the cell phone video and video. We just had the 30th anniversary of rodney king. You know, which was not a cell phone video. But whats a video and was a compelling video, that sort of started us on to this role of citizen journalism. But each time we realized that this doesnt this episode can or should didnt happen in a vacuum. Right . Charlottesville did not happen in a vacuum. These are the bubbling up of of of a rich history that is extremely dark and in a lot of ways, its also very hopeful. We found a lot of hopeful moments, but we as americans need to confront just how rich the history and news and dark the history is of america as a relationship with race and how that has played out in our media. The birth of a nation, the gone with the wind, the the terrible, terrible photographs of the lynchings, the late 19th century, the early 20th century, the role of those photographs at first in continuing the kind of level of racism, and then ultimately shocking and shaming the nation towards what they were doing. But i think that was a revelation, i would say was that the role of media wasnt just new. The newness was only the most recent manifestation of something thats been playing out and has gone back both ways. Both hopefully a lot of hope. Photojournalism of the 1960s with extremely powerful of the Civil Rights Movement and also very dark. Yeah. And i want to circle back to birth of a nation and gone with the wind and a little bit. But mark, the book is largely about the democratization of technology and changing. In effect, who gets to document history now . And you write that and im quoting here, it sometimes feels as though the history of communications will one day be understood to be divided between everything that came before the cell phone and everything that came after it. And the story of race in america will be different for it. Talk about why thats so significant. I think it goes to that question of democratize asian people have access to this. Who here has a cell phone . Now, who here . My mothers in the crowd. I know she she does not have a phone. I mean, that has a camera or a video footage option on her phone. It has a wire on it. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. She has the first cell phone in Human History where for everybody else who has who has a video footage, who has a video camera on their phone, who can video call, live stream, who has it right. So, you know, if i had asked the same question ten years ago, wed have half the crowd, you know, just the ipad, as would a cell 14 years ago. Most people raise their hand, but almost no would have the high in, you know, sort of pda, kind of phone and so forth. But as time has gone on, having a cell phone is no longer a luxury. Having high quality video footage capabilities on your phone is no longer a luxury. And so that means everybody has access to this now, not the same level of access. And what we do with that access changes, right . Race isnt neutral class and gender neutral on this. But theres something about having access to this technology that changes the game. When we talk about technology, when we talk about race, when we talk about the struggle for racial justice, when, when, when Darnella Frazier and you know, Darnella Frazier, Darnella Frazier is the woman, the young sister who took the video footage of george floyd being killed. You may not know her name, but you know what she did. And its important that we raise the names of those people who are courageous enough to stand in front of state power and videotape, because that takes courage to it takes courage to stand it from police when they got guns. And theyre looking to give somebody a charge and use it in a videotaping this. Right. And so. That footage allowed us to get a window into something that we otherwise could not see is tacit. 30 years ago, there was an uprising in l. A. After the cops found not guilty after the previous year, rodney king had been beaten on videotape. So the Technology Allows us to tell a story that wasnt getting told by Mainstream Media, that wasnt being told by state power. Now, in 1991, the odds of getting a beating recorded it was almost impossible. Yall, some of yall are old enough to know. Seasoned enough to know. How big, how big a thing it was to videotape something. You need the big camcorder. You need to had a vhs tape. You already had something taped on it. You had to stick a little piece of paper in the little hole so you can tape over the thing. You tape the night, you tape matlock, the night before. And and suddenly you had this whole thing you had to do, and you had to catch the spectacle. You had to stop there while the thing was happening. Now, you just pull out your phone. So now being able to just pull out your phone allows you to capture everyday events. It allows you to stream your life. It allows you to live, blog. It allows you to tell everybody what you eat and where you go. What are you thinking about with which mad about all of it in real time now . Sometimes that can be frustrating when people are going on a timeline about something you dont care about it. Sometimes going live like its a big event and they just go on to the supermarket. That might frustrate you. But then theres the moment where a fight breaks out. Then theres a moment where somebody comes with an air weapon to a rally and shoots people. Then is the moment where the police are. Are shooting at somebody as theyre running away. Walter scott or we could look in grand rapids, right just last week. And so this was a story that was hard to tell now with black folk and people who love justice of all races have it. But im focused specifically on black folk because we were the ones being lynched, little ones being enslaved. We were ones being harmed. That some technology. Right, did. We always use the best technology . We had to tell those stories. Thats what i was talking to the camera. The Martin Luther king was using technology. He was he was relying on the technology of Mainstream Media to tell the story. What was happening on Edmund Pettus bridge . You said were going to get beat, but were not going to get beaten private anymore. Right. I had to be because burnett was like, were going to show the lynching, the same pictures theyre using as as full as postcards. Right. Were going to use to stir outrage. Yeah. You know, so but now we dont need a 5,000 camera. Now we dont need access to a media crew. Now we can just pull out that phone until the story. So that means everybody here has a fighting chance, not an equal chance that we can get in it, but a fighting chance. And todd but heres the question that comes to mind in all of that. And you mentioned grand rapids. So patrick. Leroy. All right. And so theres dash cam video, theres cell phone video, theres home surveillance video, theres body cam video, theres all of this video. And as it relates to cameras for all of their ubiquity, they are not necessarily a guarantee that justice is going to be served. Right. Theyre not necessarily even a deterrent. Well, we have i think weve both recognized in this era the miracle of video and what it can do. Weve also begun to recognize the limits of video, such that video in some ways, you know, our book is called seen and unseen. Right, too. People can look at the same piece of video and come to a very different conclusions is what you bring with the eyes. And this, in some certain sense is actually analogous to the historical roots that we bring out in the book. Your eyes dont come completely without a history. They come with a certain amount of knowledge that you apply to what you see. You know, one of the things my family whos here will know this tiresome thing that we say to them, because what i teach the First Amendment, i say it. The First Amendment allows you to say what you want to say this what students say, you know, and i say, well, to some degree, with some exceptions, but yes, youre right. You can say whatever you want to say, but you have responsibility to listen. And heres the third element. You have a responsibility to be willing to be changed by what you hear. Well, you have a responsibility to be willing to be changed by what you see. Thats what we all need to bring to the video that we see right. So you could take the story, for instance, of of kenosha and the and kyle rittenhouse. I would just remind all of you, a 17 year old boy who comes across the border from Illinois Armed to join those who are protecting private property right in kenosha, these terms are loaded property. You know why people were from most of American History, a good chunk of American History considered to be properties was not. Forget that. And that comes up also in the Ahmaud Arbery story. But hes there to protect property and he ends up shooting, killing two people, two protesters, one a man who would only that day have been released from the Mental Health ward of a prison, another who was actually trying to stop him, who was he was he was a shooter on the run. He had already killed the first victim. So there was no moment. What would stop the mass murderer who may be among us kind of thing . Right. So complicated things were happening, but those of us who look at the video with a certain set of eyes would say, we know whats happened. You know, and its tragic. And this 17 year old boy who whatever his age, was in a position where he he had actually encouraged the very events that he participated in. And that resulted in the loss of two lives there. But that video, that same video even refashioned to be shown as an agent to raising defense funds for kyle rittenhouse, was a different kind of narration, a different approach to the words, the images youre seeing now. You see them in a completely different way, encouraged by the voice of a narrator whos pulling upon some historical references that others of us dont wish to entertain in our on our moral judgment of something. And so video is very a great tool. Technol g is a moral right. We need to remember that. And we need curators. In the end, weve discovered we still need care of free. Speech is wonderful, but it helps when people the speeches constructive and it leads to people actually helping us understand whats happening not just expressing something. Yeah, i want to talk a little bit about birth of a nation. You know, you talk in the book about well, let me let me back up a little bit before i get to that, because in the book, mark, you cite the American Civil War as a prominent example of white storytellers controlling the narrative, which Robert Penn Warren called are felt history. The history lived in the national imagination. Im quoting here. So there was this northern view of liberty. There was the black view of felt history, which was quite different. And then, of course, there was the southern myth of the lost cause and i wonder if you can address those competing views of that time and how the lost cause in particular has continued to gain traction even till today. Yeah, it had like a remix, you know, with the red hats and, you know, the presidency of donald trump. I mean, theres been a real nostalgia not for the lost cause per say, but for but for certain key dimensions of it. Right. And some people are explicitly saying no, the civil war was was fought for this for for this noble grand purpose. And so let me back up just for a moment, because i think in time, please jump in on this as the history is the history in the civil war honored a particular of the duo here. But part of it is that people have to understand that history is always its not a site of objectivity any more than anything else. Right. There are always competing narratives about how a story is told about what happened. And as we know, the powerful are often best resourced to tell that story. And so how we understand history, how we understand change over time, is shaped by who has the ability to document history books, who has the ability to offer their narrative, who has the ability to codify their narrative in in the law and all of these other things. This is all part of the power of it. And so the reason we lean on birth of part of the reason why we lean on birth of a nation is because birth of a nation becomes another way that this terrain of struggle that we call history is fought for. Its not just in the history classroom. Its also on the screen because on the screen now, you can have an image of black people as lazy as black people, as sexual predators, black people as in equipped, unready for democracy. And these types of narratives play out in the popular imagination. So when people watch birth of a nation or they watch a much milder form but still problematic form of racism and subtle forms of racism in the kind of the southern nostalgia of gone with the wind, right. You can see how this thing plays out. And so for the south, many people in the south, the idea that this that the civil war was simply a valiant attempt to rescue states, to salvage states rights and to protect the interests of southern governmental structure. And that it wasnt about enslavement, that it wasnt about domination, that it was about all these other things is a very particular narrative that is held on by people even after the civil war. Now, they didnt win. So to a large extent, thats not the dominant narrative that prevails in American History, but it is one that allows people to hold onto a type of southern pride, a type of confederate nostalgia, a type of belief that we were on the right side of history. We just lost the war, but we were on the right side of history. And we have a right to these these these practices and rituals and texts and memories and images and flags and statues and and monuments and all the stuff thats still being fought for right now and marched for in places like charlottesville. And so all of this plays out to add to that. So the story of the birth and i may people who know, you know, the reputation of the birth of a nation as a racist film, but the story is the reuniting of two families, a northern family and a southern family in their common cause. The common cause being that the the north straight made right, the north strayed from the sort of the the the the principles that the south was willing to defend and so the ultimate union of that happens in the birth of a nation is that the two families join together in marriage. And that is a sense. James baldwin described the birth of a nation as a two hour long justification for mass murder. Pithy phrase, but a powerful one, right . When he did that, what hes essentially saying is that the myth of the lost cause was an attempt to join white people across the political spectrum at the time. And rewrite the history of the civil war to negate what had happened after the civil war. Not only the civil war amendments to the constitution, but even more profoundly the granting of power to black people which had happened in reconstruction and then had to be reversed, according to the principles of the south. When that happens, we have to remember moments in American History where monuments are built into confederate generals and confederate heroes. One of the waves happens right around the time of this of this of the birth, of a nation. The advertisements for the film, the birth of a nation, appeared next to advertisements to join the ku klux klan. So it is a revived rival of the south, in a sense, saying, lets look at the war again and what see it with different eyes, just as we talked before about how seeing the same thing and seeing it differently right. Its also real quick, its the first film thats shown at the white house right. Woodrow wilson has a screening of this in the way. Its the first film ever shown in the white house. Another interesting point that i think reflects ill be real quick is w. E. B. Dubois. Marcus garvey. They attempted to raise funds to make a counter movie to birth of a nation. They couldnt get the resources up. So this is reflective of the same challenge we have today, dominant Corporate Media has the power and the resources to construct a particular narrative. And those of us who dont have the same perspective dont often have the resources to push back with the same kind of megaphone. Now, these tools, these weapons of the week, as james scott would say, are helpful because i can push back on twitter, i can push back on instagram, i could push back on tiktok. But it aint the same as birth of a nation, just like aint the same as fox news. Right . I can tweet all day that same thing. Its Tucker Carlson. Similarly, there was a challenge back then about this. So this was a powerful moment. Well, we cant ignore the fact theres also a technological advancement. It was a in terms of the mode and genre of film. It was a huge advancement. It was a game changer in many ways. And so many people were drawn to the film, not just for its content, but for the actual construction of the film itself, which made it a very complicated and messy thing. And lets remember the myth of the lost cause. The word myth is really critically important here, not only because it reflects on falsehoods, but because it reflects on this kind of dewy eyed sense of of a rich, shared kind of kind of fundamental history that informs the heart, right. And and all being explained in a medium that is as magical to them at that time as Artificial Intelligence is to us now. So it was exciting. And it was also like tapping into the ether to use a favorite phrase of mine, that to pull these sort of things that are that are nonliteral, right into into the into the public sphere. And to say that, oh, but yes, we know that the armies of the north of the north overwhelm the armies of the south. But the real power is in these myths. And they they outlast even a war victory that came through the guns and the uniforms. Well, and along those lines, mark, as i was reading the book and reading about the lost cause and i couldnt help but think about the big lie and whether there is a direct line that goes from the lost cause to stop the steal to the big lie about the election. That i guess the question is is stop the steal passive lee and extension or a modern day version of the lost cause. Absolutely it it it it empowers people to. Make choices that they otherwise could not justify within the context of liberal democracy. Right. Right. So i can say, well, of course i believe in democracy. Im the one wearing the american flag. Im the one saying make America Great again. I couldnt justify overthrowing the government unless the elections not for you, unless they stole it. Then, then i can do it. And then when evidence is marshaled to substantiate that claim or people who are respected do not denounce the claim, even though they know its not true. I think about all the people who are sort of who remain silent in the face of trump saying the election was rigged and stolen, etc. , etc. They didnt even agree. They didnt say anything. It was like a tacit approval when all of that is happening, it allows people to hold on to their their assumptions of the world. It allows people to to not disrupt their practices similarly to this this myth, i can hold on to the confederate logic. I can hold onto my beliefs about slavery, i can hold on to antiblack racism, i can hold on to american apartheid, because i believe that i was fighting a more grand and noble cause. Right. And im willing to, as you pointed out, to even organize. I joined the ku klux klan at the time because this was a huge recruitment tool for the two ku klux klan. I can do that. Similarly, this is a recruitment tool for the protrump wing of the republican party. And for more broadly outside of electoral politics, just a kind of renaissance of white nationalism, which never went anywhere. We just got much more energized in this moment. Yeah, im tired. Mentioned marc just a moment ago. James baldwin and you write about the rise of the influencer as a byproduct of social media. And you make the point that way before there was youtube and there was instagram. There was James Baldwin can you talk about why he is such a seminal figure . Not only as a novelist and an activist, but from the 20th century, but why he is transcendent and still so relevant even in the 21st. Its an interesting question, and this is actually an idea that had kind of brought to me as we were talking through it. So id love to hear your thoughts on this as well. But i mean, this is an interesting moment for twitter in the postferguson moment, the ferguson uprisings of 2014 after mike brown was killed, we began to see a couple of people really kind of reemerge in this generations consciousness. One of those people was assata shakur, right. A political prisoner exiled in cuba. Right now, at the beginning, at every rally i was at at ferguson, people would start to say, you know what, we love and support each other, right . You would hear the kind of the language of of of assata shakur. Right. We have nothing to lose but our chains. Right. And her quotes would start to emerge again. Right. We saw malcolm x reemerge. Right. But baldwin more than anybody else, when you actually look at the numbers, the number of quotes on twitter post 2014, the person most cited, most quoted in all of this is James Baldwin. Now, some of it makes sense to me. James baldwin is just a genius. He deserves to be quoted, incited everywhere at all times, because thats what he is. Thats who he is. But theres a way that his influence has shaped converse nation. It shaped narrative. I think part of it is that hes a compelling figure. I think part of it is that hes written across such a wide range of genres. Part of it is it as a black queer male, he at a moment where people were talking about intersection and or politics, the intersection of leadership, i think he makes for a very powerful and convenient figure and some of it is people are quoting him out of context and some of it is people dont really fully appreciate what was messaging. And sometimes theyre quoting him. Does it to be saying the exact opposite of what hes actually saying . And so for me, the idea of him as influencer is somewhat fascinating because when we think of the influencer, we think of the modern person we think of. And its also interesting, think about what it means to be an influencer. That was not a category that existed before. There are people who had influence. There were celebrities. But now the idea of influencer as idea where it could be, it could be a teenager, it could be someone who just does tummy teas, right . And suddenly someone who wears fashion nova, someone who listens to certain kind of music, suddenly they are influencing public opinion. They have millions of followers. And in their shaping and driving culture, thats a very different moment in terms of how it plays out and. Baldwin ironically, as one who was doing it, not in his own time, although he did, but certainly more now and lasting, id say, on the hip, is that its somewhat interesting that at the height of baldwins popularity, he was somewhat marginalized. Baldwin couldnt speak at the march on washington for jobs and freedom, just like Bayard Rustin couldnt. In fact, you know, people like Philip Randolph said no threatened king if he let those people speak at that at the dais, you know, you think about it, Martin Luther king actually helped reference the Robert Friend warrens notion of, you know, we had this felt history, but the felt history also part of was there was that on the hundredth anniversary of the civil war that we were celebrating americas a coming to a sort of second founding in the civil war, rejecting slavery, raising the notion of equality to be equal to the notion of freedom, obviously. And and there there was a sort of celebration that happened. And Martin Luther king fell into that, not as an aspirational message. Baldwin was very different. Baldwin was a brilliant writer, but he was also a brilliantly obstinate and his idea was that no, no, we need this is not enough affirmative action, you know, small programs to better the lives of for black people is not the answer to our our our sin is original. It came with our founding. He would be very interested in i think to know about the 1619 project if you were alive today, to know about Critical Race Theory. But he would have said what is wrong with admitting our failures . What is wrong with our meeting, our mistakes . You know, he his what if his his first chosen profession was to be a preacher . And you can tell this in his language, these matches that were the reasons hes so great on twitter is because he has that gift for the for the phrase that just rings in the ad that incorporates contradictions. So its like its like a cemetery. It sort of nags at the mind right. And and so you see it emerge into twitter because it can be it can quickly communicate something and it sticks in your head as it has stickiness, to use a phrase that is used and in modern internet winco. But but the fact that he wanted us to say no, we need to admit what weve done. Theres nothing wrong with admitting failure and trying again. Right . Our last chapter is called another chance and it is in spark response to what baldwin and our book is called seen it on scene, by the way, which is also referenced to baldwin, who wrote a book called the evidence of things not seen, which was a book about the 19 early 1980s, when there was a wave of the murders of children in atlanta. And he went into his last book, actually, he published was was the evidence of things not seen. But it also quotes from its a reference from the bible. So you see, he had this gift for language and we think of him as an activist in part, but he would have reject to that and said the only reason he had to be an activist was because he was a black. He was a writer and he was black. But he really wanted to be thought of as a writer of universal values. And the universal values would include that people who had made mistakes like White America listened to white supremacists. You know, who had incorporated racism into our law. Well, how about reversing it . How about admitting it rather than papering over it . And so its hes an extreme, really powerful influence on the book. I think weve seen whether weve done seen it unseen, because i think it does go right to what are we willing to accept about ourselves. Yeah. And mark, you know, all you have to do is open your news feed. Now to see the reluctance to admit to our wrongdoings as a nation, to see the resistance against teaching the of history, allowing children to understand some things that really happened in this country, talk little bit about that, if you would, about the resistance that we still see today. Yeah, i think we live in a country that grows old but doesnt grow up. It it continues to hold on to very immature conceptions that hinge on us not allow allowing us to say this original sin, whether we talk about it as capitalism, racial capitalism, racism, slavery theres a theres a theres a theres enough sin in for a few things. But the mix of it is something that we dont ever want to acknowledge. We dont want to come to terms with it. Now, weve done that very weve weve refused to come to terms with the very direct and explicit ways like the race conference in durban, you know, 2022 that summer 2001, right where we literally were like, you know, we are not making an apology. Slavery, right . Thats a very particular thing. But theres also a way in this country that weve decided that any type of race talk, any type of identifying nation of race is an act of racism itself that we would the way that that our our grand democratic aspiration is to be colorblind, to act like we dont see race, we dont see color, we dont know it. And that if we could just be colorblind, everything would be fine. But in doing so one, we we negate difference. We ignore the things that make us who we are. In other words, to see me as human, you have to not see my blackness. Thats thats fundamentally problematic. But it also means that were not willing to come to terms with the things that got us here, that got us through those processes of racialized nation, that made that made race a relevant factor, that made race the social construct a relevant one in our social world, american women to come to terms that. So when you get these fights against Critical Race Theory, which are not about Critical Race Theory, theyve never been about critical race. Theyre theyre not about solutions. When delgado and kimberly creed, theyre not about these legal theories and law School Articles that like five people read right at time. Right. Its not about that. And its a rich body work that everyone i think its worthwhile to read. But its about saying christopher said this very directly. He said, im going to take the word Critical Race Theory and make it signify everything about race that people dont like. Every bad story, every crazy idea, every controversial im going to call all Critical Race Theory so that when people hear Critical Race Theory, they wont want it. They even take 1619 through that in their everything is Critical Race Theory so that when people hear it, they hear danger, they hear victimhood, they hear blame. And in a world where white people dont want to be accountable for White Supremacy or White Privilege and honestly dont even want to be known as white, they dont even want whiteness outed. Right. Thats a very convenient thing to do to make the boogeyman of Critical Race Theory. But its not about 1619. Its about 2022. Its about 2024. Its about these elections. Its about amassing power and knowing that in an enraged outrage, or at least an outrage group of white voters going into that voting booth will mean that well see a swing in the house, well see a swing in the senate, just like we saw trump elected out of outrage, a were losing our country. The same sentiment that animated. The white public, the white south after after birth of a nation and so forth and so on and so on. And in an age of socalled democratization of technology and media, it makes it easier to get that message out. It makes it harder to filter. It doesnt take away the curators. To the contrary is to try to point it amplifies the number of curators so you can get the curator you want right . You know, you can get you can kick out rittenhouse. Ill tell you whats happening down there. You can go, Tucker Carlson to tell you what just happened. And you already want to see it a certain way. Youre going to get out what you put in. Yeah. And thats a very dangerous, dangerous moment. The confirmation bias. Exactly. Yeah. Let me end with this question before we go to questions from our audience. And id like each of you to briefly answer this. You close one of the chapters with the following words consider what it would have been like if technology, including the tools of the nascent art of moviemaking, had been available not only to embitter descendants of the confederacy, like d. W. Griffith, the maker of birth of a nation, but to those who would call out their allies, heres a question what our history flowing through different waters have made us a better people. More important, will the arrival of these tools make us better people now . So i put that question to each of you. Will the arrival of these tools make us better people . Now what do you say, todd . Ill go to you and. Sure, yeah. No, i. I think it depends upon all of how we use the tools, right . I mean, the tools, as i said before, are dont come with a morality. They dont come branded with justice. Meeker you know, its not like the the peacekeeper bombs that you see. You cant you cant take the technology and apply a moral compass to it. It depends on how we use it it is has been an empowering tool to constituencies that did not have it before. It is also a very malleable tool. And that means that we need to engage with it and we need to engage with it daily and regularly in ways that continue to promote. I think the values that the best of us still adhere to, you know, we talked before about baldwin baldwins. We mentioned that baldwins gift for language is in part why hes quoted frequently in social media. But whats also sort of wonderful is the way that social media takes language, carves it up, repositions it, reverses some of baldwins own phrases, as we say in the book. Sometimes it doesnt look like baldwin anymore, but it looks like Something Different that has evolved from baldwin. Well, weve taken one good and productive and constructive thing, and weve added more constructive things to it, and that is using social media to its best purpose. The use of video as a truth teller is using video to best purpose, right . So if we have the opportunity to use these tools, if we continue to be hopeful, if we continue to engage in the world in a in a belief that it can adhere to these important values, then yes, i think these tools are extremely important as tellers, as just as makers. And something that i think we can take advantage of as we try to create a better society. But its up to us. Yeah. Yeah. Im going to answer your question with a quick story. So we started with george floyd this book was started with george floyd. We said we have to tell the story of george. Then i came to tie it with another idea. I said, you know, we got to have a chapter on and i didnt even know her name yet. It johnetta charles, right . Yeah. Yeah. I said, ive seen this video so many times. So youre asking you about to lose your job now as you were about to lose your job right. So this is woman. If you havent seen it, youre missing the remix. Yall might have seen or heard people say, theres this woman, a black woman. She is walking outside of a strip club, strip club . Yeah. Yeah. After person is just what she said. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So she said, i need to get back in there because i left my, i left my purse. You know. And security wasnt right here. It and eventually Security Guard ends up detaining her holding her right and she sees a camera and and shes like, what . She said, you were about to lose your job. You were about to lose your job, get this date, and then she start dancing. Like, because youre not youre not supposed to be detaining me, right . Youre detaining me for you. Detaining me for nothing. Thats what she said, right . Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it was powerful. Oh, yeah. It was a beautiful moment. I think we got to tell this story because its. It speaks to the power and possibility of people feel empowered by the cameras. Yeah, people feel empowered. This was this woman who was who had to struggle with lots of things, was unable to get. Do you think this black woman in the history of black women being beaten, being killed, being sexually assaulted by Law Enforcement . Thats i mean, talk about in everyday life that they held of black women kids but im talking just by Law Enforcement other insecurity, a state power, parole officer, correction officers, etc. She felt empowered in that moment to be able to fight back. That became another tool in her disposal. In her disposal now. And this Security Guard when doing that. Wow. The fact he actually posted a video on his own facebook. I say i think its kind of funny. And you know, he let it go that that wasnt a real issue at the thing but it was the fact that it signified something. But she didnt know. She became an internet viral sensation. This video went all around. We were at rally, liz. We were at election rallies. We were at protest rallies when donald trump was about to lose. He people had made the video you were about to lose your job and they had biden and obama and and it became this whole rallying cry, similar to how. All right. You know, Kendrick Lamars all right was it was a rallying cry in ferguson from ferguson summer right point being she didnt know that she was an internet sensation. She was like your mother. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And that was never for channel. Channel youtube. She dont have none of that. So but beyond that, she also was struggling with substance abuse. She was unhoused for long period of time. Yeah. She she was trying to find her family again. She she didnt know any of this was happening because the world underneath her was falling, because the social safety net was unavailable. So there was an entire Water Resistance and tired. What a spectacle that was that utilized the mobilized her but that she couldnt utilize and mobilize. And so i say that to say that these weapons of the week are important. It may be indispensable, but theyre insufficient because they operate within a world where we still have huge gaps between the have nots and the have nots. We live in a world where theres still state violence. We live in a world where people still dont have access to the things they need to be okay, food, clothing and shelter. What can i say . It was a good love, healthy choices. And second chances. We aint got none of that. So does it make us better people . No. Can it make us more accountable . Yes. But only if we commit to actually radically transforming the world in which these media platform and technological advances exist. Until we do that, its all moot. Yeah. Okay. On that note, what do you say we go to our audience for your questions as if youve got a question for mark or todd . Just raise your weve got some Staff Members with microphones and theyll get a microphone to you so that you can ask your questions. So please dont be shy. Its a great opportunity to to talk with both of them about their book questions. But dont ask us about the sixers. Okay . Unless they win it right now. Right . Yes. You meet some great points about the ubiquity of the technology and how its available to everyone to use. But im despairing now because after looking at that gruesome. Murder of george floyd, i thought, well, maybe this kind of thing would stop, but its only if anything, accelerated its pace and these people who are who their social shameless they lie that crazy congresswoman from georgia greene, i think her name is she she she was sending out tweets encouraging trump to declare martial law, which she spelled mrsa el al. She never lets us down. Does you know, and we have tapes this we have transcripts of this. We have them on camera, but it doesnt do any good because the vast audience of of fox dwarfs, whatever you had, i used to watch your show every night. Thank you. And i tried to get my friend, but where do we go from here . I like to think that one show, you know, this shows depth of the problem, right . I mean, i dont think that means that the the of george floyd was not important powerful impactful. Well it had a certain power that we discussed this at length in the first couple of chapters of the book that went beyond, sadly, the multitude of videos that weve had, starting with rodney king and going all the way through. Walter scott and others and in part because it was this long, drawn out death that was like a crucifixion. I mean, it really was something that riveted the consciousness. You marry that up with what we said earlier about James Baldwin and what he understood about his own time. And while he would have loved to have spoken at the march on washington, i think he knew the march on washington was still a blip. The story of American History, and that it would require a steady pace, not a drop by drop, but a river by river, in a sense. Right to be communicating the very things that these videos do tell us about ourselves until we will finally confront our own history honestly and yes, you wake up in the morning, it feels a little as we talked backstage by grant groundhog day, right. I mean, you end up feeling that heres this this days video. Its daunting. Its disturbing. But it should just reenergize us. I do. I do think that i mean, i am a hopeful person i do think that that that jordan the george floyd response was as a powerful, impactful thing. I think it did change minds. I think it moved people to action. But now, now today is another day and we have to pick up the same cause one more time. Yeah, more questions. Yes, jake. Im just curious. You know, this week with elon musk buying twitter. Just curious thing about what were you guys see some of this Technology Going and how we use it . You know, i think people have talked about the culture in his company and tesla, you know, the culture around race there and some of their concerns about where he might take the platform in the future. But just curious where you guys see these things going if, you know, people will still be able to bring light to these issues in the same way on that platform and, you know, just where you see things going. Yeah, you know, i, i its a good question and its, its at the forefront of everyones minds. Assuming the sale goes through, you know, fingers crossed that it doesnt. But it likely will. I think it its disturbing to me for multiple reasons. One, again, its a reflection of a larger problem. Twitter isnt just a Platform Forum in many ways. It functions as a public sphere. Right. It is the ground on which we have the conversations and the debates and all of this stuff. And for someone to live in a world where someone has the capacity to say, im going to effectively buy a huge slice of the public because i dont like the way its working. And i want to take something thats ostensibly private and make it ostensibly public and make it private for me is very, very dangerous. And it speaks to the danger of billionaire ers and just gross amounts of wealth accumulation in the world. The fact that he can buy this for 45 or 47 billion with a b dollars and not really have any other discomfort in his life. So he says everything to you about what . About the gross inequality in the world. Theres another problem for me, which is how beholden many of us are to the whims of these corporatized media platforms. Right. So we can think about twitter as a free space in a democratic space, just like i could say, i can have my own youtube until youtube decides. They want me to handle a show where i can tweet my behind off until they shut down my account, which is i, i dont feel i ever lost a wink asleep on donald trump getting shut down on twitter. There is a conversation to be had about what that means for something that operates as a public sphere to shut him again. Im not saying he shouldnt be shut down because i think there need to be boundaries here. But what im saying is, is that its not an entirely public sphere. And when those of us who challenge the powerful, whoever we are using our voices in the right way, were very susceptible to being shut down. And with elon musk having more and more unilateral control over it, that scares me a lot. He talks about it as a bastion for free speech. No one will be shut out. You can say what you want here. That scares me to. I like the fact that you just cant be a white supremacist on twitter easily, right . You got to at least hide it a little bit. You tuck it in, you know what im saying . But his idea is that somehow just that all things go does that what does that mean for the person whos a child predator, who does something thats not technically illegal but is gross to all of our moral and ethical sensibilities . What does it mean for the anti semite . What does it mean for the for the antiblack racist . What does it mean for those people to now be able to promulgate their stuff . What does it mean for the anti the person whos whos promoting allies of our covid and about vaccines and about masking. Right. And not just trump, but a whole bunch of other folks. What does it mean when theres no mechanism of accountability because you are worshipping at the holy grail of free speech in a sort of abstract, grand and nuanced way . Its not even, as you pointed out, what was historically intended. That all scares me. And it also reminds me of why we need to have our own stuff. Let me add into that. Yes. So ill repeat what we talked about with al sharpton the other day, because i think it is significant, important to keep on referencing. So the on his show on his show, yes. We just have caucuses hanging out. The the notion of speech as the founders interpreted. And were in philadelphia a place where the founders are extremely important, not that they shouldnt be important. Everybody is the place where they resonate on the streets here right. It was in this very city that the concept of freedom of speech was first established with the First Amendment reinterpreted later. And it opened up a wider pattern of expression pretty significantly after the first world war. But the notion was that the speech was to be constructive. They they value political speech at a higher level instance than other forms of expression, because they that that speech contributes to the betterment of society. You know, it was a progressive idea, really, before the word progressive was being used in the way that we think of it now. It was that when i Say Something and then you add something to what i say, we become better as two than we were as one, right . But when speech loses its communicative value, when it becomes essentially more like an assault, becomes like conduct which is regulated, blown away all by all judgments about law and order. We would say conduct is a thing. Were regulating. Then it becomes like an assault and then it doesnt function like speech, it doesnt have communicative value. When you lie, when you use abusive speech that is intended to demean and annihilate entire race of people, you are not contributing to the public dialogue in a way that furthers the ambitions that the founders had when they thought of the freedom of speech, the freedom of speech was supposed to be constructive. So theres two ways in which you want musk is wrong about when he preaches freedom of speech. One is that that complains that its that that that voices are being censored. Were only First Amendment only we regulated government contact not private. The second is his misguided notion of what the founders meant by freedom of speech. And so when i hear him say that, i think two things. I think that. And then i also think, you know, that the americas entire history has been a struggle between two competing. But similar notions freedom, equality. Right. And we often value one more than the other, mostly the freedom more than the equality, but we need to have that balance, the tension between those needs to be part of how we create ourselves. And we need therefore to when we have a public forum, a public sphere, to recognize not only that, we want freedom of speech, but that we want equality of access to speech, because without that, those who are not who are denied it, are denied a freedom, got time for one last quick question on whos got one last question. Yes, sir. So i will say i am todd, son. So im going to ask mark this question. But so i know you cant have the car on saturday. No, but i just read like part of the book. Ive read about 100 pages so far. And i got to the part about how you guys are talking about why floyd resonated with the american public, that that video and i watched the grand rapids video, which was equally as hard to watch. It was basically i called an execution. I asked some people, friends about it. A lot of them had never even seen it. Im wondering if you guys can talk about what you talked in the book with floyd and your take on why the grand rapids video and the aftermath have not generated nearly as much traction online. Yeah, its a good an interesting question. I was talking to the other day and i was saying i think i was doing an interview. I initially thought this and we started to talk through it. Theres the george floyd moment sparked a Huge Movement in this country at the policy level, on the streets of this of all around the country, we saw something we hadnt quite seen before. And you could argue that george floyd is the touchstone moment of this time, in the same way that we could say that, you know, 1955, august 1955. And emmett till was a touchstone moment that gets us into the montgomery bus boycott. But if you would have asked me the day before george floyd was murdered, i would have bet my life that mike brown was the moment i couldnt i mean, the ferguson summer seemed like the thing. It seemed like the touchpoint. It seemed like the thing that had changed this country and conversation that changed the country. I dont use that line. But they had had had at least it was imprinted on our memory. And i probably would have argued the Trayvon Martin was that moment before then. But in between trayvon and and mike brown and george floyd is a whole bunch of stuff that doesnt move the needle. Some are more gruesome. Walter scott is a more gruesome case. Incontrovertible act of malfeasance to me. I mean, the man was shot running away. Eric garner. We had video of him being choked out with an illegal chokehold within, within, with something to be clear to the police, dont shoot me. It was against Department Regulation at the time. It wasnt technically illegal, but against regulation. And he didnt need to be killed, clearly. Right. But Daniel Pantaleo did it anyway. That didnt spark the outrage. Sandra bland is to Breonna Taylor and ashley mcbryde. Were going down the list. Right. Tamir rice, 13 year old boy. So why some and not others . Why some . Why the outrage of this and not that some of it is about our own politics. We tend to prefer men than women as victims, right . We this country does not mourn the death of women and certainly not black and brown women. Its simply the case. Patriarchy, sexism, misogyny all plays into how we do this. We prefer straight victims was the same. You saw march for a queer man, right . We trans women this summer that the summer that mike brown was killed, nine black trans women were killed. No outrage, i wont say no outrage, no national story. We prefer them to be middle class for them to be going to college. We think about mike brown. We had he was on his way to college that monday. Not exactly true. Were not true at all. Actually. But it enhanced our narrative when he found out he stole a cigarillos from the store before he got shot by darren wilson. It was like, oh, some version of my middle class boujee friends. Like, oh, wait, no, this this isnt the clean case we thought it was. So theres a way that were looking for perfect victims. And our notion of what it means to be perfect is to be male and straight and christian and etc. Its and cisgendered, etc. , etc. And so this plays into why some of it is about the gruesomeness of it that you had to look at. Mike brown be executed for 9 minutes. Its its hard to look away. Even mike brown. You can you can read Darren Wilsons jury tests, grand jury testimony, and hear him refer to it. Mike, is it in how he was . Look . He was walking through the bullets and all this crazy stuff, you know what i mean . But you dont watch this executed had the power of a still photo because it didnt move. That knee didnt move. But it was the the rawness of live video. So you had to sit with that. Some of it was was a pandemic. We were sitting there doing a pandemic. We were whole. We were angry. We were poor. We were frustrated. We were tired. Wed already heard about my arbery. We just watched Christian Cooper harassed in central park for bird watching is a harvard educated black man. Bird watching central park on memorial day that in a safe brother and even he got harassed and the whiteness was weaponized. So all this stuff plays an image. And then the last thing i said i would pass the time is theres also a way that america has a very low threshold for this kind of stuff, right . White america is only going be outraged about black death, but for so long after ferguson, we started being outraged about trump again and we lost our way. Then, you know, then we found our way back to ferguson, you know, then we will lose our way to something. I just its not sustainable because black death largely is still acceptable. Its normalized in country. And until were genuinely, genuinely and generally outraged by it, i think youll always have these occasional generational moments of outrage. But most of the stuff is going to pass and it was a knee on a neck. It was a knee on a neck is an image that is symbolic of the white strangling of the black race in this country. Get your knee off my neck. Theres an expression that is so important to understanding, but its not give more programs. Its not give me more. Affirmative action is get your knee off my neck. And so it had a symbolic resonance that went beyond it. Its the actual action itself. Theres an element of theater to that, right. I mean, we have to acknowledge, i mean, the brilliance of the birth of a nation was it was a great piece of theater. Its amazingly done. The george floyd video communicator and so many levels of community with that community, with that symbolic notion of the knee on the neck, it communicated in 9 minutes. It communicated like a crucifixion. Hes calling out for his mother, like christ on the cross. These things resonate. I mean, we talk about the resonance of the myth of the lost cause. There are universal resonances with a knee on a neck with somebody being crucified. Right. All that we talk about with a phrase we use in the book is that, you know, a shooting is an instant, a a lynching is a is a performance. Well, that george floyd was a lynching. And lynching has an extraordinarily powerful is Extraordinary Part of American History, something extraordinarily shameful. Its something that that we we all need. We know we need to come to terms with as well as with slavery itself. And how do we bring it back since were coming the end of this, James Baldwin because it was he who said, dont stop at these little bandaids. Right. Look at the bigger picture. Look at the the other the bandaids will always be matched by new scars. Right. Lets lets try to see the whole totality of the problem and then respond to that. Only then when we face whats really happened, can we change. The book is seen and unseen technology, social media and the fight for racial justice. Ladies and gentlemen, please join me in thanking lamont hill and Todd Brewster for writing this book and their thoughts. With us tonight. On behalf of the free library, i want to thank andy and laura and all of the other events team for bringing all of us together. Thanks to all of you for coming. Please be safe. Enjoy the rest of your evening and well see you next time. Goodnight
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