that way he can form opinions. host: how much of these reports are based on unnamed sources, and has that trend increased with this president? >> all right, i think we will get started. thank you for coming. thank you to c-span. i am the director of the political reform program here at new america. i want to welcome you to this discussion on race and solidarity in the united states and the future of solidarity as a way of thinking about race. this discussion was organized by ted johnson, a fellow in our andonal fellows program also in our political reform program. his work on the complexity of black voting behavior and political attitudes has been eye-opening to me enter medicinally important. he is a fellow at the brennan center for justice, an you can see that here. it is occasionally here. we often do things in partnership with the brennan center, a wonderful organization. bit of ainging a nonlegal, beyond legal, scope of andysis to their work continuing hopefully to work in partnership with us. thank you for coming. ted will introduce the panel. thank you. [applause] you for coming. this is a topic that sort of originated in my book project that is started here in new america around the question -- it started really about whether the solidarity we see in black america that expresses itself most noticeably in presidential elections and the uniform way that black americans vote, i wondered if there was something in the solidarity we see and black america that the nation could take a lesson from and try to take -- create a solidarity that can bridge the gap we see and race. the panel comes to look at a basic question i asked was over early on. many have asked this question before me, naturally. is solidarity that thing that can save us? can it help the u.s. address this race problem? i do not know the answer to that. i hope that there is such a thing as a national solidarity that can bind us one to another. when you hear most presidents call in thesort of american civil religion, this idea that there are ideas and principles that bind us together. throughe rituals we go together. and president obama has a said, america is the only country founded on an idea. you know, so if we are all americans who subscribe to this larger idea, certainly there must be some way for us to identify some measure of solidarity we can all get behind. so the question we will tackle a little bit today is a multiracial version of the black solidarity that sort of piqued my interest. is that possible? what we do know is that race has proven to be an instrument that has been put to use to divide us. is it possible that we can create, established a solidarity that can unify us despite the racial issues the country has faced? one thing is certain, we need some solution. i was looking at a few polls before coming on the stage. saw this poll from nbc at "the wall street journal," and it said the month obama took office, 77% of americans thought that race relations were good in this country. this was the post-racial obama era that we all welcomed and soon learned was not a real thing. just last summer, this poll was taken again, and 74% of americans think race relations in this country are bad. on ourave done a 180 view of race relations. lots of reasons for that, and we will talk a little bit about that. the question of national solidarity, political solidarity, can it get us back to a place where americans feel a bond of kinship one to another? if you look at the state of race relations today, there is no shortage of cause for concern. if you look at the debate around immigration, the muslim travel ban. if you look around conversations in thelack nations caribbean or sub-saharan africa, race relations are not getting better. the rhetoric around race relations seem to be a bit more pitched over the last year or so. at the heart of my question is without solidarity, is it possible for us to close the gap when it comes to racial disparities? is it possible for us to improve race relations? even if we did everything possible -- for example, let's say we pass refugees -- a huge federal reparations bill, my sense is that we do not feel a bond of kinship to another. descendents ofto slaves would just be a really thetive incentive for industries, banking and otherwise, to find ways to get money out of people's hands. it would be a mechanism for the most creative, innovative initial instruments to figure out how to transfer that wealth back out of black america to other places,'this is not a question of policy in my view. it is a question of how we view one another. it is a question of who gets to be america, and do we see the ss in each other despite race and gender, etc.? that is what we will talk about. to move this forward, have three experts on the panel who i am lucky accepted the invitation. first is juliet hooker on my far right. she is a professor of political science at brown university, a political theorist specializing and racial justice, latin american political thought, black american political thought, and policies in latin america. she is the author of a book that has become a good friend of mine i stand. her current research project looks at aspects -- aspects of it have appeared in a couple journal articles just guessing -- discussing black protests and black lives matter. next is tehama lopez bunyasi, an assistant professor at the school for conflict analysis and resolution at george mason university. grounded in the politics of race and ethnicity in the united states, specializations and racial attitudes and ideology can she is completing a book on racial renegades and the politics of whiteness. perceptions of white privilege on racial attitudes. she is co-authoring a second book which looks at the 21st century movement of black lives as a cyclical moment in the politics of resistance. it will hopefully be out by the end of the year. does this to me is carole bell, assistant professor at the communication studies at northeastern university. research between nontraditional news sources, including entertainment media and social political attitudes and public opinion, interested in the role of communications and social change. group identities, including race, gender, and sexuality, with the goal to understand on how media and communications influence and could potentially help eliminate traditional social divisions. her experience spans media and marketing. she worked for eight years and direct marketing and interactive media development. she has worked with 100 clients in strategy and campaign executions. agency management and new business development. we will start with professor hooker and get her remarks. then we will move to professor lopez bunyasi and professor bell. then we will move to the discussion. then we will open it up to the audience for questions. thank you. professor hooker: good afternoon. thank you, ted, for the invitation and for organizing the panel and to new america for joining us and to all of you for taking time from your afternoon to be part of this event. so i want to say a little bit about how, in my work, i understand the relationship buteen race and solidarity, also what i mean when i talk about solidarity and how we should understand what this has to do with democracy and why it is so important to cultivate. forne of the premises people writing about democracy, for good reason, is that political solidarity is necessary for a democracy to function. the reason for this is because democracies are diverse. right? citizens need to be able to come together to see them selves as messed in relations, mutual obligations with strangers. butay not know the people, because we see ourselves as being part of the same political community, we can understand that we have relations and obligations with them. ie premise for the idea that grapple with the my book, which came out in 2009, "race and the politics of solidarity," is that we have written about this in political science, analyzing political solidarity as this is isething that exists or something that we are working towards without thinking enough about the ways in which that solidarity is shaped by race for the mentally -- fundamentally. i am going to say a little bit now about what i mean by solidarity and talk about why i think it is shaped by race. what do i mean when i talk about solidarity? think aboutwe solidarity, you might think of it as a concept that emerges from labor unions on the left and the idea of those relations. you might also think about solidarity as empathy or sympathy, like feeling the pain of others. and i think in the view of people who write about solidarity in the context of politics, solidarity is not simply empathy. it cannot be just empathy or sympathy. it is not just any motion. it is an ethical orientation that moves us to action. one example is to think about the recent very tragic event in parkland, the shooting there. it is one thing to say, you know, thoughts and prayers are with those people, but it is another thing to say, you know, i may not have been in that situation, but i understand that this is a problem and am moved by what happened, and i am going to organize to make sure it does not happen again. for me, solidarity is visibly feeling the pain of others are feeling some of the or empathy, but rather, being moved to action. right? withresult of identifying the pain and suffering of others, even if it is something that is happening to me. so another way of thinking about this, right, is in the united states, people who support, for example, think of people who do not have children but support education policy because they think education is important to the well-being of the community as a whole even though they themselves may not have schoolchildren or may not have a direct stake in that policy area. so that is what i mean when i talk about solidarity, and that is the way in which i think ted is thinking about it in this discussion. one of the core arguments in my work and in this book was that political solidarity is -- in an era inen which we no longer have legally sodated discrimination, political solidarity, even in this moment, continues to be byved by race -- shaped race. so the concern as a fellow citizen is mediated by whether like us,ose people as and race is key to whether we see them as like us. so it is more difficult for us to see the pain and suffering of those we see as racial others. one way to think about this, right, is to think about, for example, many people have pointed out that the response to the devastating hurricane in puerto rico where citizens have been left without power, without food for months and months, that if that had been happening, let's say, in new york city or some place that was closer in the imagination in whatever way, that it would not have been able to happen. and there is a reason why when people say, how can this be happening to american citizens, right, they are not invoking a kind of larger human community. they are invoking the obligations that citizens of the same political community are supposed to have towards each other, even when they are separated by baskets. we may not all have gone to puerto rico and may not know any puerto ricans, but by the fact that we are part of the same community, we're supposed to have relations of obligations for them and have care and concern for what is happening to them. so in the book, i developed this concept of racialized solidarity to talk about the way in which i think race shapes solidarity. instead of functioning in this ideal way i just described, instead i think that because of racism, the pain and suffering of nonwhites is often rendered invisible or when it is visible, it is seen as less deserving of empathy or redress as that of whites, and i am using whites as the dominant group and the -- in the united states. wei refer to the way embodied racial differences, so that is when we see someone who is different from us or when we hear them big and they have an accent or we see something that makes them not like us, it results in differential care and concern towards their pain and suffering. differenceshem to in policy. that ine able to say some way these people are not american or they are less or foreign is someway, somehow undeserving, then we are not moved to support policies that take their needs into account. so this is the way in which i argue this racialized solidarity shapes our political preferences and the kinds of policies that we and act as a community. and what i want to say, i want to end my introductory remarks by reflecting a little bit on where we are today versus where we were when i published this book. with academics, use that a lot of years working on a book, it finally comes out, and you do not control the historical context in which it comes out. my book was published in january 2009. barack obama had just been elected president. we were in this moment where everybody thought that the legacy of racism had been overcome. we were in this post-racial moment. and there was a sense in which the argument did not make sense to a lot of people. the argument that race continued to shape whether we saw each other as fellow citizens and the extent to which we thought that we had mutual obligations towards each other did not seem to make sense at a moment when racial plotke the lines of the past were being election, the first and only nonwhite president. -- it isnot think certainly not coincidental that argument of the book seems much more relevant. of course, that is because the backlash that followed obama's which wasof course, heavily shaped by race in many ways and was deeply racist. i think i uncovered the fact that we have not transcended those racial fault lines of the past. this was followed by the whiteence of outspoken in the past year, incidents such as actsottesville and other of white terrorist, the bombing -- the murder of nine churchgoers in south carolina. these expressions of resurgent white nationalism and attacks on i thinkrs in some cases make it no longer possible to deny that race remains a major factor shaping contemporary politics and policy in the united states. in particular, the way in which we think about who the people are with whom we have relations and mutual obligations to. i am going to leave it at that. thank you. [applause] >> good afternoon everybody. i would like to thank ted johnson and thank you all for coming on a very warm washington, d.c. day. to help kick off the discussion, to get uske -- thinking about the opportunity for white americans to help bridge the racial divide. we see important changes in society since the civil rights movement, but still, we continue to fall short in realizing our potential. a study indicated that whites continue to have better life chances out of the people of color, even when we compare white individuals to those who are similarly situated on the other side of the color line, educational attainment, homeownership -- we see white slide higher-paying jobs and wealth. being white doesn't make someone immune total hardship but it can serve as a valuable asset. when it comes to reaching gaps, i believe it crucial question to ask us why do american seed the society they live in -- they understand themselves to be relatively advantaged and did they think we live in a country where everyone has a fair shake regardless of color or the whites view themselves as the underdog or being a liability? of white americans to close the racial gap has something to do with whether there is a gap and which side of the gap they fall on. weeks before the iowa caucus in 2016, i conducted a national study of color blindness and race consciousness and the study included over 900 whites and more than 200 block participants -- black participants. asked about the way of the american life, job, education, interactions with law enforcement, and the kind of treatment one receives when participating in the economy and goods and services. is that whites evaluate their status differently depending on the context. advantage whites view -- and are more likely to support policies reducing racial inequality. let's take a employment. i asked who has a better chance of getting a job or promotion. whites, blacks, or do they have an equal chance? we see a majority of whites, 50%, believe there is a equal chance of landing this job. a third of whites think the racial group is advantaged, and not to be overlooked, almost 10% of white people believe that blacks have an edge when it comes to the job market. to see whether one's understanding relative to blacks had anything to do with their attitudes regarding work-related policies. indeed it does. whites who believed their racial group has an advantage are more likely to support laws protecting racial minorities and discrimination and are more likely to support affirmative action. graph, see here -- the whites think their group is privileged in some way, they have a 91% probability of supporting a policy such as one that would protect minorities from discrimination in the workplace. i asked to different types of questions about affirmative action and in either case, we see the majority -- a slight majority of whites that believed that groups are that patient are more likely to support affirmative action compared to those who believe there is a leveled the playing field between whites and blacks, and certainly more than those who perceive a white disadvantage. has greate action support among whites, but when one perceives by privilege, they are more willing to get behind the policy. we should note that went affirmative action is framed from past discrimination, we find more support from white to believe their group is added this adage than when we asked the same question but say it is with the purposes of diversifying the workplace. will come back to that later. let's also look at education. who do you think has more access blacks,schools, whites, or equal access? again, we see a majority of whites who think they have an edge. whofar behind are those give a more colorblind answer. again, comparing whites to give a race conscious answer which isy believe their group privileged, they seem to be more -- also answer that question seemed to give more support than increase in funds or schools in black and latino neighborhoods, particularly for early education program such as preschool. barrel so supportive of disseminating college scholarships the black and latino youths. to round out a look at other whites are treated that they are treated better than police, we see a protestant edge -- percentage of whites who viewed that they are treated better than police. we see streaming media was over and over again of police brutality, which is not new, but the advent of social media, the smartphone, is a sending this information in a way that we cannot deny that something is going on. even though and court not everyone is being brought to justice, but for that everyone should be upset. but when we look at the realm of experiencing good customer service, which is something we all in one way or another engage in, it is not as consequential as how you interact with police are doing job, but most whites seem to think they are doing good, since the 5% think there is an equal chance of being treated well at getting good service when one goes out to a dining restaurant or going to a store. each one of these four measures andicts support for utilitarian racial policies. policies.rian racial if a joint over context when taken together about 20% of white americans believe it is beneficial to be white in all four of those domains in american life. of the way wese perceive what is going on, but because of studies showing there is a difference in the way people are treated. asould like to think of this the white population of being woke-ish. they will report racial benefits and favor policies to bring in greater equality and effectively undermined that on racial privilege. they have important foundational thannents to usher more just america, but solidarity requires more than beliefs and preferences and requires commitment and will. i believe we are seeing evidence of the spirit and his progressive political energy mounting in the trump presidency. based on what i've seen in expert mental studies and anecdotally, i believe there is room for anecdotal movement, in order to access -- rather to accomplish such a shift, we need a full accessible challenge to the dominant colorblind narrative. dominancehistorical will be treated in earnest and nuance. thank you, and i look forward to the next panel of comments. [applause] carole: i would like to thank ted johnson and the brennan center and the new american invitationfor this on the opportunity to speak to all of you and i appreciate your coming. and ia high of 73 today, appreciate that, i would like to be outside. address thelike to connections between political communication, social identity, and political psychology. by that i mean how america relates and citizens reflect how they think and feel about society in a place with different groups within that. including social groups they belong and those that they see as the other -- as outsiders. that symbolic discourse and thinking shapes political behavior and ships politicians that we support and those we uphold. media discourse and framing should be seen as one component of that. although an important component. i see two themes relating to national identity dominating political discourse, and therefore the american psyche in this moment. first, as we have heard many times, we have america's changing demographics. thatuch discussed idea america is changing rapidly. that white americans will soon be outnumbered. that is framed as a problem. the second theme is closely related to that, and that is that white americans sense they are under threat. that they will lose dominance and lose their status and place in american society. the way the media frames certain public policy issues associating societal problems and their potential solutions, with particular racial groups, both reflect and contribute to that sense of threat. it pits different groups against one another in competition. this media framing helps exacerbate the decision, but was not created in a vacuum. if you look at the 1990's, bill clinton for example talked about how progress -- how every single advancement that has been made has been made on the backs of white men. upon existingay fears to mobilize specific groups of voters, and they defined what it means to be an american implicitly, but also explicit terms as well. illustratemples that the real-world consequences of the racial eyes asian of political issues -- racial political issues. poverty is visualized and personified in the media as , that thisrown depressive support of safety net programs like welfare. by kathleenrch cramer also support this finding, her multiyear study of whites in wisconsin show that white residents in that state felt deep resentment towards the government. in a large part because they believe the government spending didn't go to people like them. it instead went disproportionately to other people -- undeserving people who don't work hard and who live in cities. these people are envisioned as being black. so the economic anxiety that is often discussed in 2016 is not in competition with the thesis that it was largely about race, but rather inexplicably intertwined with racial resentment. many white americans really do feel as though they are forgotten people. make it right for a figure like donald trump who promised redemption and restoration of their status in society. the second example of how racial izaton -- research shows me getting the idea that blacks are disproportionately involved in and incarcerated for crimes -- reinforces existing prejudice and can encourage support moregst whites for a punitive law and the three strikes laws. they matter because they spread and reinforce these ultimately divisive believes backed by centrally important issues that should matter to everyone. these faulty assumptions have consequences. the extent that problems are seen as affecting others, they will not be seen as relevant by the dominant group. images matter because they shape public opinion and shape public policy preferences. they also shape election outcomes. thend specific policies, media also adds to the perception among whites that minority groups actually already comprised of a much larger percentage of the american population than they actually do. africanty, for example, are 12% of the american population. survey research however, whites estimated that it is more than 30% or double that. this idea largely from the overrepresentation of african americans in the media, in particular in use about crime and in sports, actually. this further exacerbates the threat that whites feel. at the same time, i think it is important to contextualize the current racial discourse as an ever present, long-standing element in american social identity. that has been true, even though it is arguable that it is more present in our rhetoric right now. is closelyohesion connected to group identification, meaning a strong psychological connection and attachment to a group, and a sense that your fate and success are connected to the fate of the group as a whole. this can be activated by political context, i particular events, by the media, and i growing sense of threat. so how can we have political cohesion when americans have not thought of themselves as having a shared fate and shared values when most americans self concepts -- their image of themselves, and the country, does not and has not included its citizenry? puerto rico becomes less relevant because so many americans don't even realize that puerto ricans are americans. it is not just a feeling, it is knowledge. crime,, welfare, and works within the constraints of america's existing psychology, and historic lack of collective identity. , verbal andetoric visual, or vehicles that media candidates and public officials use in these social constructions of framing societal problems in keeping with their own worldviews. but i don't think that is created in a vacuum. thinking about our ideas, what does the phrase all-american conjure up? how has it historically been visualized? how have american presidents or the first lady been contextualized? if you think about it, you see a narrowness not just in mass media but also in how individuals think about and speak about their leaders and themselves through social media, at rallies that we saw in 2016, public events, and most importantly and we study how americans speak to each other in their own homes. finally, the conflicts between american ideals and the realities of race have posed as a problem for national identity and social confusion. the election of donald trump, someone manifesting racial conflict and resentment in a much more explicit terms than we were used to -- we built the struggle over american identity has come to a head in reaction to change. it is in reaction to the demographics, symbolically, as juliet said, it is a reaction to and a backlash to the presidency of barack obama, which accelerated these divisions. and we know this, not just from andown sense but research articles for example, and books that have shown that there is a return of what is called old-fashioned racism during the obama presidency. these two presidents, barack obama and donald trump where shone a light to the competition and vacillation that exists between two narratives of america. america, or asf bill o'reilly calls it, traditional america, is therefore christian, patriarchal , and white. that is the national order of things in this narrative, and unity can only flow from cultural deformity and multiculturalism is a threat in the pediment on national identity. the undocumented or outside aliens are not inheritors of the american dream and citizens must be protected from outsiders. through the muslim ban or the wall, and all those who challenge you to be protected from those who challenge the national identity. this is the america that screams i want my country back and we need to make america great again. the other narrative, the one repeatedly referenced in almost everyone in barack obama speeches, starting with this 2014 up at the dnc, the one in which he declared there is not a black america, white america, blue america, red america, that there is only the united states of america. gender, religion, sexuality -- it posits that diversity can be a strength. later in the presidency he also posited that those born in other countries and came here as children or adults can be legitimate inheritors of the american dream. bill o'reilly's version of america, give way to barack obama's vision of america and clinical rhetoric, on the left, people privileged with the existing system. increasingly under siege -- they felt that their version of america was slipping away. thatosing, i want to state i don't think -- cohesion is impossible. i don't think it is impossible in a multiracial democracy, that it is obviously very challenging given the struggle between groups that is reflected in these two competing narratives. nonetheless, both of the include a path to national solidarity, the first, the one supported by o'reilly and conservative writers, and also given lip service by donald trump rejects multiculturalism. denigrates that all cultures should be embraced and the cries identity politics. to change, buted instead solidarity includes the submission of many groups and cultures, so some outside of that traditional paradigm are invited to participate in this america as long as they uphold are then challenge existing hierarchies. marco rubio, ted cruz, and fox news would lead us down that path. barack obama and hillary clinton are considered public enemies number one in this version but also for ballplayers who call attention to inequality. the other narrative symbolized in the field of the first black president, the multi-racial president, tells us solidarity and tells like wishing cultural and economic dominance residing in one group. this a sense that we must make change in order to realize the promise of america, which path we choose -- that is the billion-dollar question i do not know the answer to. thank you. [applause] i want to leave time for questions, but i have to follow-up a little bit with some of what was said and some of the work you have done. one of the things that struck me about one of your most and pieces was how you contrasted lossay people experience and how that communicates to the world at large. if we think about what happened in ferguson after the killing of michael brown and how protests, riots, and these confrontations playedmed police force out on our screens, and then we saw how charleston reacted to the killing of nine church members, which was forgetful -- forgiving, and the reaction of the nation to those very different reactions to loss tells us something, it seems to me, how solidarity is racialized lossow the experience of contributes to larger discussion of how we feel empathy or solidarity with other cultures. can you talk about that phenomenon of loss and how the display of it tells us who we are and who we identify with? juliet: i think one of the things at stake, it has to do with the point that carroll made in her remarks, the terms of inclusion. if you think about that famous line about the price of the ticket, is talking about the ways of which is distorted by racism -- then what is required of nonwhite people to become full citizens, but the interesting thing about this question is that is certain reactions to lost is accepted and others are not. in ferguson, it was rage and anger, and in some ways, anger at a horrible event and an injustice is a totally understandable reaction, but there isn't a current understanding of who gets to display anger or who gets to react to loss by being angry. that is not an option that will generate sympathy, so one of the besidesof ferguson -- that anger is justified, it was counterproductive because you are not going to generate empathy by reacting that way. astead you should react in way that people in the civil rights movement did in the 60's, and the example of the folks and charleston. this was a striking thing, when folks the day after the relatives have been murdered, or being asked, do you forgive the shooter? in what context does that make sense, right? even if your particular religious conviction is that this is what you should do, it somehow is an interesting expectation. that you would simply forgive this terrible act. i think part of what is going on there is that we need to think publiche differential sympathy that is generated a different kinds of losses. that havet the pieces come out about trump voters and how we need to understand them and think about how they are suffering loss and economic anxiety and this is why they are voting for trump. or think about trying to understand the folks who are drawn to these neo-nazi organizations. that is the type of reaction to this perceived loss, that they are different from the reactions of the people in ferguson, who are saying this terrible thing happened and i am angry about it. different have standards for whose loss we can understand and what range of reactions we think are permissible to those losses. ted: that is an interesting point, after trump was elected, we endeavored to understand the people who elected him, but after obama was elected, it wasn't like people were scouring black communities try to figure out why did you vote for the black-eyed. guy. it was understood. in whatnt of interest move people was different in those two elections. mentioned- you colorblindness and color consciousness, and following up point, hiset's policy required to be colorblind in order for it to be acceptable? or is color conscious policy the only way we have hope of closing gaps in racial experiences? even barack obama said it was policy where the tide falls, and politicians on both sides are quick to quote martin luther king that we don't care about the color of skin but content of character, but that speaks to colorblindness. but i'm not so sure, what is your sense? actually, i am sure but i would like to hear your take. what we saw in the johnson and nixon administration was real support for race conscious policies. point and timeme an advocate for affirmative action. the supreme court also backed that up rather strongly for a period. i think this was also in the liftthat these policies do numerous folks. not just the people of color, and there is a significant attrition of support around these matters. agreek whites start to with whites -- not all, but the dissatisfaction with this, this idea that their children are being forced to integrate in schools, and that is not what they signed up for when they moved to this neighborhood. and so, i think race conscious policies are rather important. i think there should be an articulation of race when drafting policies. certainly colorblind policies have all kinds of racially -- such as the new deal. , when youyou allow write into legislation that friends are supposed to be -- opportunities are supposed be at the same level, and you give that instruction for the local level to do, then they will carry the will of the local level, which is hostile politics. you can find anywhere in the new deal policy where it is blacks , thehites, that the impact g.i. bill, same kind of thing. actual you want to put racial labels and the policies, or not, i think what is more important is how it is drafted and carried out. i think we need to take race into consideration, and let's be honest with ourselves. let's talk about poor white people, let's do that. white people have to be talked about various things, they're not all the same. i agree with juliet when she talks about shining light on the forgotten whites. certainly, they haven't been articulated as white and poor. asy have been articulated poor, but people are fascinated with this i get that they are white import, a different type of poverty, let's talk about that. and certainly we should, we should do that. we should also talk about the way poverty, gender, and a number of things. this rolls into your area, carol, racial policy determines if policy ever see the light of day or not. we can look at the obamacare and when people were shown the different elements and obamacare, they like them. and then when the policy talked about as evil as the affordable care act, they liked it, but they hate obamacare. there is a professor who has the studies and showed one group of people, a picture of a portuguese water dog. john f. kennedy has this dog and obama has a stock, but depending on who he told the respondent's thethe dog belonged to, level of cuteness of that dog to them differed. whereas it was the same picture of the same dog, obama's stock was less cute than kennedy's dog. this has nothing to do with policy, but it has to do that once you stick a race onto something, how it is suddenly devalued, and politicians have known this for some time. it is possible to talk about color conscious policies, and still get it to pass, and the only way to get good policy past is to talk about in the colorblind fashion? >> at the graph to be conscious of the different paths of policy, but not focus so much on the labels. public as much of a elevated way -- because that activateinvoke and that racial resentment. i also referenced the michael tessler research that talked about the return of old-fashioned racism. not just to people's attitudes but also to their voting behavior. i sometimes think of it as having a reverse midas touch. everything barack obama touch that was associated with his name would suffer in the eyes of some people. i never refer to anything as obamacare. never. put the benefit in the name, don't put the person, because when you put the person and an end, then you are really asking people what they feel about that person. so don't personalize it, and it also deprives the opportunity of understanding why they should support this bill. i would say that i think, unless we have some way of radically changing these underlying believes and attitudes and feelings, then i think we have to work within the existing context. do things to diffuse and not necessarily attack debate and exacerbate existing resistance. we have seen -- as soon as we got rid of barack obama, we have seen that affordable care act, and also, it was being threatened. we have seen the popularity of the affordable care act increase substantially. so i think we have to stop associating policies so much with race. i think that is an important component, and to your point about property -- poverty. i can't imagine what it would be like to be a poor white person in america, you are invisible to the media. the media pretends you truly do not exist, both in terms of the news media and in terms of entertainment media. the only whites on television and entertainment media are predominately upper-middle-class at minimum. i could list on one hand the shows that now attempt to the picked working-class. white working-class americans, they are few and far in between. i do think that helps exacerbate resentment. want to move the questions in a little bit, but i would like each of your takes on the fundamental -- is it possible for a multiracial, multiethnic democratic public to exist? have we seen it in the world in latin america or other places where it has failed and was the cause of it? i am a military guy, so i can today america is big enough for all of us and the principles are good enough for all of us to get behind to want to create the country our founders produced. on we have fallen short that, unquestionably, so how do we close the gap? is it possible, and are there examples we can learn from either in the positive or the negative on what we could possibly do to bridge the gap, the racial gap between americans? you mentioned the military, and when we look at the social psychology literature, one of the ways prejudice is reduced is when you can create that sense that is missing of that shared fate. carole: when people come together around a common goal, and when that cohesion is sanctioned by the authorities, when they are working in concert rather than in competition, then that does tend to reduce prejudice. doesn'tup contact always reduce prejudice, sometimes it can make it worse. but intergroup contact that --panies by working status equal status and working towards a common goal, been endorsed by authority, i think you see all of these requirements in the military at certain stages. and you do see people working together who seem to have more of a common kinship than we do in the general population. >> go ahead. i think we have to be careful of not presupposing. if you look at latin america, you see that have argued that there is no racism, even though there are existing racial disparities and that people are all equal citizens. sts have been used in different ways -- if you don't acknowledge racism, and people are accused of being racist are the ones forcing, there is the racial disparities. they become the people who are threatening national unity i bringing up, bringing race into a discussion that doesn't belong. on the other hand, those ideologies have been used by people to say, this is your official claim, but this area shows that there is discrimination or racism happening. you need to live up to your ideals, so i think we have to be aware that discourse functions and multiple ways. what i would say about the u.s. right now is that i think -- there is cause for hope in the fact that many people, many whites have been activated to oppose what they see as a resurgence and support for white supremacy. think about the people left protested or joint protest, people like heather in charlottesville, people who have said this is not my vision for what the country should be. at the same time, i think there is still a lot of reluctance in some quarters to recognize that racism is a major problem. we see this with people involved in these debates, saying it is economic anxiety, it is tribalism, it is all these other things, and it is not racism. i think it is wrong to think about it as an either or question. as long as we don't recognize that racism is bound up in whatever this other explanation that you are putting forward as, you're not going to be able to solve the problem. i am agreeing with both of you, but i also think we need about howal reckoning we got to where we are. i think we need to have a explication of people on the basis of other race, other gender, certainly other class, and a rule of reckoning about who did build this country and on whose back forceds, and that was on cattle slavery, black labor. all kindsthe backs of of immigrants, people who unit at some point became white. that is another discussion, we should have that discussion because if where going to be in solidarity, what we are coming together around -- the idea of f being in concert. we have seen peaks and values around solidarity and have been reading some more about the reconstruction. fascinating. is this thing slips away because there is a lack of well on the part of white americans who at the time were republican and democrat. we see in the 1930's the real resurgence of a unity that is articulated around a socialist, communist kind of language. there are people who are functioning in the capital society who are saying, i can get down with this. let's recognize people as workers. i think we need to have a a reckoning, it can be scary, but we are not going anywhere, we have to deal with this. that is where i stand on that. ted: we will go to questions. in order to get the most amount of questions, please keep your questions direct. that leads to the question, is it too late to have a truth commission,iation kind of convening, so that these things get out on the table where you have descendents of the victims of a system of --very and descendents of even if you are talking about immigrants, my ancestors were bricklayers and the irish were treated in a certain way. the scope of the truth and reconciliation commission may be some it completely burden and you can see the light at the end of the tunnel of putting all of this suffering out on the table. would you guys think, truth and reconciliation, is that viable? >> it has been done in one place that i know, greensville, north carolina, recently. it seems to have been a good thing, a hard thing, but a good thing. there was compassion and forgiveness and places that i don't think people anticipated. something that has to be on local levels to be successful, not just reckoning our path, and also, what are we doing right now that replicates more deeply and trenches of inequality? is it even possible for people make thingsalso difficult for other people of color? darker skin that people of color are treated differently than lighter skin. that has empirically and shown to be the case. half-truth and reconciliation does that have to be historical, but ongoing, but i do believe it is possible. ted: right here in front. youhanks very much, thank so very much for the great conversation. they would be courteous, some of the comments you made is taking it in this direction, but i would be courteous to know what the panel believes the potential of using an explicit class identity and seeking class solidarity as an approach to begin to see the shared humanity between -- and the shared interest between the trump white color, so people of to speak. and to be able to achieve solidarity on that level, not it.al eyeize and through that approach, devaluing some of the racial identity that is polarizing the country. >> my take on that -- i think the problem is we can't separate class from race. think part of what we need to grapple with, i think absolutely as a strategy, the is to get for a working middle-classly white and nonwhite people working together, sing that they have a shared interest. but we also have to reckon with the fact that for many working-class whites, the way they have experienced economic "success" is measuring their distance from nonwhite people, to the extent that those poor whites and those working-class nonwhites are suffering in the current economic configuration. the problem is who are the cause of thethat suffering to. the foreigner, the immigrant taking the job, or you are suffering economic anxiety and therefore you need to reclaim some kind of lost dominance. compatible with shared interests, so i think simply arguing for focusing only on class is not going to get at that feeling. in which classes are experienced through race. i think we need to do both would be my answer. i would definitely agree with that and it is important to recognize that solidarity is important in classes and can be achieved, but we can't have racial denial. bachelor should be a requirement, the awareness of that shouldn't be a requirement. it is not going to be helpful if we subscribe to what john the supreme court, that the way to stop discriminating is to stop talking about race. that is not going to work. that is part of the argument of not needing protection and needval the governor stock to have approval when they change some of those voting laws. that has been really disastrous, and that is why we are in the many legal fights and places like north carolina right now. we have seen what happens when we retreat to just colorblindness, so we have to be across come together class, and i think part of the definition of the threat rather than being at each other can be exploited in capitalism. you don't have to believe in socialism to understand how capitalism functions now, tax withm is functioning disadvantages of working class people. can bring class solidarity, but i don't want to do that at the expense of racial denial. really quickly, i think robin kelly's work speaks well -- thepotential to be socialist, hominis, solidarity realm of working-class identity -- that race and class being iniculated rather well certain parts and united states in the 1930's, that black communist in the south were racismating this axis of and they were also able to articulate their belief and god. not necessarily being communist and atheist, but perhaps that brand or strand of socialism or communism is indigenous to the united states, and doesn't necessarily have to look back something we have seen overseas. with our ownkoning particularities on racism, and i think it has been done before and it can be done again. ted: i would add that a lot of duboisfor example, turned to cognizant and of his life, but this was a turn to a totem -- dubois turned communism towards the end of his life. and so, if you look toward other systems -- i think where it began fundamentally, if racism -- if we have not dealt with that problem, no matter what system you put in place, it begins to affect everything. democracies tend to be a good thing, and capitalism when properly regulated can be a good thing. if we don't account for the racial divisions in the country, no matter what system would implement, we end up creating something that is undesirable. we have just two or three minutes, so any parting words? i am a hopeless optimist, and i actually do believe that the nation can find a way towards national and political solidarity. know what the path looks like but i believe it is within the capacity of being in american for us to achieve it. i think the nation that this figure it out will leave a legacy for prosperity for humanity and a system of government that is inclusive and we have never seen before. any final thoughts before we wrap up? >> i am also an eternal optimist, and i have seen in my own life, people who buy their lives to one another will go the distance for each other. live segregated --estyles, and more and more to the extent that people are greeting one another, knowing one another, and loving one another, and really testing the capacity for compassion -- i think we can get somewhere. i know that sounds hokey for some people, but i think compassion is hard work. if we need to do hard work, we need to love each other and be interested in one another's lives, and be interested -- be in a similar boat. ibelieve it is possible and know people who do this and i have seen people's lives change because they care enough to do hard work, to say, gosh, am i benefiting from a systemic privilege? am i benefiting from something i should not be benefiting from, and that is wrong and we should do something about it? passing people do that, and that gives me hope. i have seen people do that, and that gives me hope. >> i think the education system is at odds with us in achieving any solidarity because -- this summer we saw the fight about how the confederacy should be thought of. teaching high school students, and they don't have any sense of america's or ofy with slavery, reconstruction, or of the confederacy and why the civil war happened -- if we are revising the narratives to leave out important components, and they don't learn about the civil rights movement, and we know from research that all of these things are in flux, and problematic that there is an -- entrenchment, an effort to put this idea of knowledge of slavery and civil rights and so on. there is an effort from to sayks to the ap exam that we have been concentrating too much on what america did wrong in the past, and i don't want to see more questions about genocide or slavery. those changes have been implemented. we are going backwards in terms of people having an awareness of our history and white inequality exists.- why inequality not just to the media, but also how we are teaching, and socializing children. i think that is an important component. i am going to take your question in a different direction and say the thing that gets me hope is that i think we have the resources to think about these questions. this is very appropriate in the context of black history month, but if you look at traditions of thought of black political thought where you have thinkers and yet the question of how do you think of the whiteblem working class? dubois does that, and without the sources of thinking of how do we grapple with the united states this realistic way. this country on the one hand has ideals and has never lived up to, and how do we think about it. many african-american thinkers have this interesting relationship with the united states where some of them are very critical of it even as they want to hold onto the idea that others are more pessimistic about the possibilities. i think what gives me hope is that we have the resources in terms of, we have thinkers and text and traditions i can help us think through the current moment. said, if we turn to those and value them rather than marginalize them, i think that is one way forward. ted: thank you very much to all of you for coming out. was aeciate you, and it great conversation and think you for your questions. [applause] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2017] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] >> tonight on c-span, will show the summit from new orleans looking at campaign finance, the electoral college, and redistricting. actress jennifer lawrence took part in the former chair of the federal commissions, trevor potter. if there is a wall between candidates and super pac's, and if i, as a political donor throw pac, myy at a super personal politician does not get to decide how it is spent. right? >> well, that is technically correct, except the people who do decide how to spend it pac, e usually in the scenario, the former campaign manager of the candidate or close friends of the candidate, and my favorite example, the parents of the candidate who are running the super pac. what is also can share called common vendors, so they can share the same consultants, so you basically see it as the other pocket of the candidates coat. candidate tells a super pac exactly what to do with the money >> -- ahh. that would be illegal. >> ok. >> however first they have to has toght, then the ftc have a majority vote on whether to investigate it. as you may have heard, they are basically deadlocked on all of this in the last couple of years. announcer 1: more with jennifer lawrence's interview with the former federal election committee chair trevor potter on the relation between super pac's and political candidates at 8:00 eastern. ♪ announcer 2: c-span's washington journal live every day with news and policy issues that impact you. wednesday morning we will relationss. foreign on the trump administration with former obama administration are state department policy planning director jake sullivan. then we will talk about rebuilding the nation's infrastructure with michael bell amend, president of associated builders and contractors. we will be live in oklahoma city, oklahoma for the 50 capitals tour. the governor will join us and talk about key public policy issues in her state. be sure to watch "washington journal" on wednesday morning. join the discussion. announcer 1: our live coverage continues shortly with a conversation on how the press covers the presidency including white house press secretary sarah sanders and former press secretary mike mccurry. that is live at 7:00 p.m. eastern. until then, a conversation on the role of the press and how they are covering the russia investigation story and other news events since president trump took office. and the host of long island university announces the winners of the george polk journalism awards.

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