racial realities in this country that have to be dealt-w poor schooling, horrible neighborhoods, the way in which people are racially profiled in retail stores, then you put the police overlay on it. so it s the aggregate of all the data that we can command here to suggest there are tremendously difficult things that black people and brown people and other poor people have to deal with who are people of color. and i ll tell you what else, chris, which is amazing to me, is that what many of our white brothers and sisters don t understand again is that the same kind of arguments they re making now were made against martin luther king jr. you re an interloper, you re exaggerating, you re addicted to the media, you re coming into places where black people get along with white people without your kind of intervention, there s not much racism here, you re making it up. the same thing was said in the 50s and 60s and 70s. i know. i ve done the history. i know what was said. martin luther ki
those are minor numbers. and it doesn t make a difference except if it s your life. if you lose your life over something that s wrong, one is too much. much less 300 or 400 of the like. so the reality is the way in which those numbers fuel other racial realities in this country that have to be dealt-w poor schooling, horrible neighborhoods, the way in which people are racially profiled in retail stores, then you put the police overlay on it. so it s the aggregate of all the data that we can command here to suggest there are tremendously difficult things that black people and brown people and other poor people have to deal with who are people of color. and i ll tell you what else, chris, which is amazing to me, is that what many of our white brothers and sisters don t understand again is that the same kind of arguments they re making now were made against martin luther king jr. you re an interloper, you re exaggerating, you re addicted to the media, you re coming into places where black
and i think if the detroit region comes back, i think detroit city may find its role within that region. detroit seems to be a story that s sort of in some ways opposed to your book and your thesis because it is a classic case where people left the city for the suburbs. you know, crime grew, it became a negative spiral. and the well-to-do white middle class and upper middle class just fled the city. they were doing fine, i suppose. in the outer suburbs, but the city itself imploded. it s sort of an outdated narrative. that was the path that everyone beat in the 50s and 60s and 70s. you had the white flight and everything. that s not happening anymore. i would agree with jennifer that detroit is in many ways an outlier. but one thing that s interesting about detroit is that it is a great model. planners are looking at it as a model of how to shrink. you know, nobody talks about shrinking in the planning world, but that is the proper response because you need to shrink the
narrative. that was the path that everyone beat in the 50s and 60s and 70s, you had the white flight. that s not happening any more. i would agree with jennifer that detroit in many ways is an outlier. in many ways. but one interesting thing about detroit, is planners are looking at it as a great model of how to shrink. that is the proper response. because you need to shrink the city to meet the demands of its inhabitants, otherwise you have abandoned buildings and that fosters more crime, not good for young children to see that growing up. when we come back we ask how the left-right divide in the united states plays into all of these urban issues. [ male announcer ] when you wear dentures you may not know
of obama, who has never thought of herself anything other than part of the american story and felt agony when she heard that verdict. is there something in the president s fatherhood we should learn about him as a president? i think there is. a, he is not content with things as they are. b, in a way, any president who deals with civil rights, whether it s barack obama or anyone else, has in a way a more difficult problem than the president of the 50s and 60s and 70s. you were dealing with integrating the schools in public places and giving voting rights to people and integrating housing. those was a clear struggle. now we are dealing with issues a little more nuance and more controversial and not as grandiose and a little more difficult for a leader. the difficulty is the train we have to cross together. we have to lear it there. thank you, michael. a pleasure. up next, trayvon martin s parents respond to the president s speech. i ve been coloring liz s hair for years.