the u.s. information agency that was part of our show we say cold war apparatus? [laughter] and surveying post-colonial nations and keeping an eye on things so this is a benign side of the cia published topic magazine and richard tsongas was a photographer here taking a picture of james brown and legos nigeria in 1970. he has an expansive body of work and we have the entire collections of the images here are they meet the description of the show which is lesser-known images across the continent starting from pittsburgh to nigeria. it's a pretty the show. there also images of malcolm x for malcolm x for example or elijah mohammad as a rarely seen in terms of what people would find on a google search for example. >> let's see that elijah mohammad photo down here. this is elijah mohammad at the end, correct? >> right here, big as life and there is malcolm x. this is a 1961 shot in washington d.c. with a church of god figure. debating the merits of islam. >> host: do you think we could have that debate today? >> guest: i think we are having that debate today. it's taking place on a global scale and e we are having it. now polite and in front of cameras well it is in front of camera so yes we are having that debate. >> host: off we go. >> guest: one other fascinating image of malcolm x as part of richard saunders collection. here he is on a tour at the museum of natural history in new york in 1961 and he's essentially using the image of an african woman to talk about people in a broader context to young muslim girls and this is also fascinating because here we are talking about the boys and this is a history lesson being taught to young people in 1961 rated historian and sociologist. >> host: where we headed? >> guest: we are in one of the meeting rooms at the schomburg for special collections are held and we have some real treasures as part of the collection. i'm honored to have this work. >> host: is it okay if the camera comes in? >> guest: the camera can get in tight rate as you can tell this is an old look. it turns out that this book is 200 years older than our country. it was published in latin verse in 1573 by juan latino who is a man of african descent in or not a spain. yet been enslaved. he was emancipated became a scholar of grammar and publish this book. this is one of arturo schomburg's five possessions as part of this his original collection that came to the schomburg center and now in a rare book collection. >> host: i notice you are handling this without the white gloves. >> host: we are not -- >> guest: we are not as what's the word, particular about that even though we care deeply about the collections. part of it is that these materials are in the service and as much as we take great pride in preservation and make sure the books are in proper condition on not going to do any long-term damage i'd picking it up and turn a few pages. >> host: can anyone come and see the book? >> guest: anyone can see the bucket if they happen to read latin alba better. >> host: richard wright. >> guest: richard wright this is his first major novel native son put richard wright on the map in a big way. he was wrestling with some of the deep issues of poverty where they come from and how to fix and resolve them and an awful list hand. in this case first edition by richard wright. that's pretty special in and of itself with even more special that we have the manuscript of native sons of book one for all who know the book and here are the manuscript pages with richard wright's edit, crossed out, punctuation, different words. this is for a literary scholar a goldmine. this is exactly what they need in order to understand the vision of the book and see the difference between the final product in the editing process. >> host: khalil gibran muhammad do you have richard wright's entire collection? >> guest: we do not have richard wright's entire manuscript and we are proud to have the manuscript of native son. we can look it up we are library. [laughter] >> host: continuing our tour of the rare manuscripts. >> guest: they know that one of the most celebrated works of a woman writer and particularly an african-american writer who recently departed maya angelou. her first major runaway bestseller "i know why the caged bird sings." this is the actual manuscript with her title there are in pencil caged bird inside of quotation marks. >> host: this is her handwriting. very neat handwriting, precise. >> guest: this is her handwriting rate this is her staple. here she is laying out the actual manuscript making her own edits and beginning to tilt this transformative story. >> host: her archives are here. >> guest: her archives are part of our permanent collection, absolutely. >> host: from maya angelou to this is evocative of a recent moment of slavery study several of which have appeared in the last couple of years and more particularly the stephen mcqueen film 12 years this late date this is the first edition of the solomon northrop story that expired and here's the copyright page. i am turning, published in 1853. >> host: it got made into movie couple of years ago. >> guest: that's right. this work for the schomburg center was part of his early effort by arthur schomburg and his successors to find books by people in a time where ex-slave narratives or enslaved peoples writings were not appreciated were not valued so once we got past the abolitionist movement, pass the civil war it had very little value in the book world so arthur schomburg was able to capitalize on this kind of work because it wasn't expensive for mantu is very much lower to middle class in terms of his income to very much part of a burgeoning elite that was committed to this kind of cultural space. >> host: everything we have seen it if we walk in here today without a camera crew and credentials and said do you have maya angelou's collection, could we see this with the archivist? >> guest: that's right. that's what we were built to do. this reading room is in the service of anyone uncredentialed wanting to have access to this material to write to be inspired to make documentary films. whatever an copyright they are entitled to have access to it. >> host: my guess is that married the archivist here but keep a close eye on them if they had such valuable materials. >> guest: are curator cared deeply for the collection and then make sure people properly handle them and use the material when it is out for use. >> host: dr. mohammed where we now? >> guest: this is in some ways the heart and soul of the schomburg library. this is where people come every day to access the books that make up essentially so special collections with manuscripts or rare books. these are books that have been published and have come in and out of libraries but they stay here and they don't leave. >> host: this is probably the area for when you think of the library this is what you think of. >> guest: this is your traditional library reading room, a combination of computers. they have high-tech microfilm readers and low-tech microfilm readers and a research area where people can go. >> host: besides a research libraries but also in everett library? >> guest: no. it can function for a neighborhood resident is a quiet place to read a book that they made poll from the collection or they may bring with them but because of the size of our investment in this kind of space pairs of branch library that abuts this building 100 feet from where we are standing now that is much bigger in terms of a comfortable sociable space that you basically get a new book or just hang out and read. >> host: what do people come here to find? >> guest: we are visiting the library and a special request today. nelson is one of our librarians. >> hello. >> host: what are people coming to look for today? >> well and friday of things. they may ask for news and think of some of the requests for today. sometimes they may be interested in malcolm x papers. >> host: do you get a lot of those requests? regularly do you get those requests? >> guest: we have overrated for quite so malcolm x is definitely a popular one. currently there is a demand for this world. >> host: marcus garvey's cessation. >> guest: right, that would be the organization for that newspaper. >> host: thank you. this is a place that is committed to being able to field any question covering the african diaspora. it would be tough remembering all the different research questions that people have but we all work together and auburn is on the front line's like the other librarians who work in this division. as i said earlier that collection the book collections for schomburg always focus on the intersection of visual arts and print and cultures of this is a collection of haitian art that adorns the walls of this room. at the same time people are using 21st century tools to do research. and one other special thing i should show you. this is the caption for a body of work done by one of the most important 20th century artists aaron douglas presenting for murals to arthur schomburg here and the work that was completed in 1934 as part of the wpa. >> host: this is arthur schomburg and this is all part of wpa. >> guest: this is all part of wpa. >> host: aaron douglas is important why? >> guest: aaron douglas is important because his style of painting and storytelling became iconic so in 1934 as part of wpa workaround murals. this angular and jagged edged way of depicting people had already been crucial to a lot of print culture coming out in the 1920s. he went on to spend the rest of his career at fisk university but aaron douglas's depiction and people and telling the history i chronically became associated with renaissance and on magazine and book covers and so on and so forth. >> host: that is aspects of nay life. >> guest: let's go see it create these are the closest things to the schomburg's permanent exhibition. they pretty much stay on the walls. >> host: khalil gibran muhammad and you gave us a tour and now we are on the corner of 135th and lenox. it's not as quiet and serene as the library. >> guest: the city that never sleeps. >> host: we see the brick building. >> guest: this is the original 1905 branch of the new york public library where they sovereign collection arrived in 1925 and behind that first for set of windows is the exhibition hall where we saw the jacob lawrence. this is in many ways the historic home that is this amazing institution today. it's still in use. it's still a critical part of the overall facility and it is home to many treasures that we looked at. >> host: the red rep building is also part of harlem hospital over there across the street. khalil gibran muhammad director of the schomburg center thank you for your time today. >> guest: thank you peter, great. >> host: now live coverage from the harlem book fair. this annual event now and 17th years held at the schomburg center in harlem. all day we will bring you events on african-american identity, race, politics and more. first up though an author panel on economics. this is live coverage of the harlem book fair on booktv on c-span2. >> welcome to this welcome to this year's harlem but fair. it is such a delight to be here yet again at this amazing yet again in this amazing institution, the schomburg center for research in black culture. i am your director, not your director. it is incredibly important that year after year we come together and assemble in this place for an opportunity to engage the greatest minds in this nation. to wrestle with the ideas that animate the movement of our time, to really wrestle with the co to wrestle with the complexity of the world that we live in and there's no better place than the schomburg center to do that work. for 90 years the schomburg center has engaged artists writers, scholars, poets, performers and his important work of lifting up culture and history and using voice, to express a vast range of humanity and in his 90th year we are incredibly proud to yet again host the harlem book fair as an opportunity to lift up work that is critical and a moment of crisis and change. we have panels that will engage discussion about wealth and finance in civil rights america. we have conversations that will look at the history of wretchedness and racial science. we will look at the way some which african-american have defined their own image and shown the world the beauty within. we will also look at politics in a moment where voting rights the essential and gradient for citizenship and full participation in american society is yet again on life-support in the united states of america and we have some of the leading minds to talk to us about that the path is forward in thiss institution i am incredibly proud to say that the people whose stories are about and the schomburg center have helped to expand decade after decade the meaning and practice of democracy. that's what we do. that's what we plan to do and that's what we will discuss today. at this time i want to thank c-span for its continuing support of this event and for live coverage here today. i also want to thank max i want to thank max rodriguez the creator and founder of the book fair columbia university and the leadership of 15 of the school of arts at columbia university for her leadership and effort in helping to build a program today that i think will inspire all a few and finally i want to thank rich. rich is at school of the arts. he he is at the presser of anguish and has been a lead organizer in this event. rich will come forward in just a moment to introduce our panel. and one final word. the staff of the schomburg center have been incredibly gracious and generous in their effort to make today a successful event and i am incredibly grateful for all of their sacrifice and continued commitment to the success of this. thank you so much for being here today and i hope that you enjoy enjoy it as much as i will. thank you. [applause] >> good morning, good morning. before it gets started i want to introduce max rodriguez the founder of the harlem book fair. thank you so much. [applause] thank you and welcome once again to the book fair 17th annual where we caught together the best of our writers, the best of our thinkers to talk about vs the community and how we see ourselves where we see ourselves going and how we might get there. i want to take a moment to thank our sponsors for the event and c-span of course the schomburg columbia university barnes & noble, colmes enterprises john colmes enterprise and the beacon hotel. thank you so much for joining us as we continue expanding the conversation of the harlem book fair. i'm happy to announce that in october we will produce the harlem book fair midwest regional in kansas city in collaboration with irene from el centro in kansas city and richard made the president of the naacp and kansas city so the conversation about we as a community through the looks and the stories we tell. i hope you'll join us if you are in that area and we look forward to a very exciting 17th annual harlem book fair. thank you very much. [applause] >> thank you max rodriguez. my name is rich from columbia university and is my absolute pleasure to be your two-inch does the panel that will launch the harlem book fair is author panel broadcast on c-span on booktv. the panel has given staggering numbers about wealth inequality and poverty in our country which should be to my mind a national crisis. this panel is called welcome finance a supposed supports american moderated by mike colleague at columbia damon phillips the arabs social enterprise. he is the author on a book of emergence and evolution and publishes in top journals within management and sierra -- sociology. we are in good hands. damon take it away. >> thank you first of all rich for this fantastic event. this is a really fun time for me to have an opportunity to moderate this panel so i haven't friended me some top scholars and i want to introduce them. then we will do something in a discussion about the topic for the day and i will say a few words in between. really my job here as a moderator is to facilitate the discussion and allow us all to learn from one another but also to give some insights from these fantastic scholars. so i will start on the far end with dalton conley university professor that my you new york university. he holds faculty appointments in and they so show a department school of mexico and school of public service. he has written light of few books and articles. one in particular which will be a focus for today is "being black, living in the red" race wealth and social policy in america. next in him is vesla weaver the associate professor of political science and african-american studies at yale university and her book one of the more recent books is "arresting citizenship" the democratic consequences of american crime control and i'm assuming that she has been feeling a lot of reporter -- in the past couple of weeks. and my immediate right boy am tabb professor emeritus at queens college of economics political science and sociology undergraduate center at cuny university of new york. again these are fantastic scholars and as you can tell from introduction span multiple fields and perspectives and that's one of the great opportunists of the half year for the dialog to learn one another. i wanted to have the conversation and that's for pieces to it although the way they relate to one another i imagine that they are going to blend. the first goes to unpack the title. we have in this title we have wealth, finance and then post-civil rights america. first we will unpack that and then once we do that i imagine if we have about 30 people discussed the relationship between something like 12 with education, criminal justice employment, those things. we also want to make sure to unpack and equality and think about the intersection between race and class and what that means for understanding how wealth and post-civil rights america work together. finally we will and by how we move forward and what we should think about in terms of policy descriptions. with those given you can see how they plan with one another i thought it would be great to really take advantage of this opportunity to have you all here to talk about those four types of topics. let me begin with the first question in the first word of the title. so first especially in the context of inequality by race, what do we mean by wealth and i will start with dalton and then we will go on from there. of course when we talk about wealth we have a very rod club will definition meaning everything from literally how much money you have nothing to your social connections and cultural capital but really at least when i analyze wealth i need something very specific and something distinct distinct from income. if you think of income as the checks that come in every week month it's kind of like a flow of money. wealth is your pond and it's another term for a network. simply adding up everything you own that you could sell that his lip and a sense in paying off all of your debts your mortgage credit card student loans whatever, whatever that number is. for many people with a negative number. they are in the red and for some people it's a positive number. in research that now spans over two decades i have found that wealth is really the key network distinct from income are worth someone's job is is really key factor in explaining the ongoing continuation of her son sonic quality in the post-civil rights era. >> this look with this book one of the reason i think it's an interesting way of focusing on it because it will matter when we talk about policy prescriptions and natural discourse income and wealth are often blended or they may be discussed with wealth but not a sense of what actually is being captured and why it matters. one of the things hopefully we can get to is also the national discourse around the discussion of wealth versus what the research might be saying and what you have learned to doing your own work. before doing that i wanted to get a sense of whether that definition of wealth was one which is consistent with what you vesla and william focus or their other aspects that you bring into it? >> it's a good summary of what wealth is. wealth matters for so many things including when we get to policy. people of color in this country and all people of color, about 37% of the voting electorate contribute 1% to financing politics. now the coat brothers by themselves -- the koch brothers by themselves do quite well and when you think of where the money comes from and think about the issues that concern ordinary people political scientists find that your elected representatives basically don't listen to anybody under the top 1% unless what ordinary voters want happens to be with their major contributors want. otherwise the lack of wealth for people of color impacts on the policies they would like to see changed but because they can't live politicians were influenced them the same way. wealth discretion in all these ways and also the accumulation of wealth comes from owning assets that rise in value and one of the things we know about how people accumulate wealth is the major way for most people is the value of their home and the extent to which people have historically been denied by the u.s. government as well as bigoted discriminating real estate people and so one means that people is not accumulated wealth in the same way. this is not just a matter of past history. since the collapse of the financial system from the sub-prime mortgage tobacco to people who are most affected by the sub-prime mortgage for people of color and actually middle-class people of color were the ones who lost the most because as economists looked at the situation and also our sociology and political science what they found was the banks and the mortgage originators went after people of color particularly, people who have been red-lined and tonight are bridges and the reason there was a change of policy denying people of color going after them particularly was because the more check -- mortgage originator sold the workers on and became derivatives and wall street did all sorts of magic with them which then collapsed with the people who sold the mortgage in the first place they got their money up front and they didn't care. they knew especially for people of color that they would be these defaults and people of color defaulted on their mortgages to a much higher extent than the general population. so the denial of access to accumulating wealth is seen in not just river stay put and education and the other things we will be talking about. >> if i could dad that when i think of wealth but think of a dynamic property, one that acts often through protective mechanism. if offers your ability to endure certain social risk, certain economic risks for most of us throughout our lifetime will at some point indoor losing a home spell of poverty, losing a job undergoing a divorce, having a loved one volunteered economic or financial crisis, having some sort of not necessarily catastrophic circumstance but having an important life circumstance and wealth is that offered, that offer to other types of vulnerabilities. often though i'm not an economist i think of it as a living condition. something that's going to allow you to endure aspects of life that regularly happen and if you don't have it you will not be able to bounce back. >> this is great because i think it's going to lead into other discussions about others cannot do these aspects of society of being a citizen and we haven't yet brought in health health care but i think that's also implied by what jeff is saying and vesla. he spoke towards the end of the prime and sub prime or break -- mortgage difference onto what have some of the banks admitted to participating. in terms of government programs are not helping working people and especially people of color. others, special treatment of funds that are put away for college education. if you don't have much money you're not putting extra money into these accounts. you don't have the wealth to do it. all of the programs for retirement, 401(k) program. most of us not me i'm fairly wealthy, but most people don't put money into 401(k)s. and when they do that to take it out in those emergencies of illness, divorce and so on. so they don't benefit. so we have a situation where almost all of the programs that the federal government has to build wealth discriminate in impact, if not in intent against people of color. >> thank you. so we've had now i think we've covered both wealth and finance. the last sort of race and that is post-civil rights america in our title. so the question to all of you is two parts. one is how would you characterize post-civil rights america today? and i imagine that the other part of it which you maybe already thinking, how do we think of post-civil rights america is something which has improved? >> if i could jump in before you and hard before doing this, is i don't accept those civil rights america. the attack on voting rights, the impact on the rights of people of color not just in the south but in the midwest now in states that were once very progressive, wisconsin, michigan, states where civil rights was sponsored by those governments, those states those governors, those legislatures are now taking away rights. i'm not comfortable speaking of post-civil rights america. i would be interested to know what you guys think. >> i agree with that. and i think no serious academic really use that term anymore, other than a strawman sort of category. that it would ask the question of what has changed and what hasn't right, what is truly different from what is new and what is continuous across our history. a couple of things. that jump out with regard to wealth and income inequality. the first is the rise in income based residential segregation. most people don't realize this but blacks actually used to live in fairly similar circumstances. poor blacks lived around wealthy blacks. today, income segregation has jumped much more up on blacks than among other groups. so that something that is a truly disdain. the second thing i think is maybe distinct, maybe continuous is that the levels even as inequality across racial groups has narrowed wealth inequality and income inequality among the blacks has grown. again, most people don't realize this because many of the national outlets many of the magazines you read in newspapers was a income inequality the fastest rate of growth in income inequality is among blacks within blacks. so that something that is truly distinct across time. the other aspect is come and she mentioned this in noting the economic power often bleeds into political power. those two are very connected. one of the things i'm quite worried about in my own work is what happens when interracial income inequality gets so large that the best off blocks are no longer concerned with the plight of the worse off blocks. we are beginning to see and social service and the like that though allegiance to the racial group is actually quite strong among the wealthiest blacks. when you ask them do you support welfare, do you support increasing spending on public schools, do you support increase government activism on a host of not explicitly racial issues, their support has waned. it has waned compared to wealthy counterparts back in the '80s. that's a new political stance and one that i find troubling because it means that the worst off blocks as conditions have deteriorated over time and is income growth has not kept pace have lost crucial coalitional partners in the struggle for class and race-based equality. if they no longer can lean on affluent blacks to help them and to support their policy preferences. we are in a really bad place and we are in a new place politically than we have been pretty used to be that political scientists is come used to puzzle that class variation within the black community did not, did not predict political variation, right? affluent blacks were supported the same thing that the least off counterparts to get those are think three, there are many changes that we should be troubled by. >> before getting to dalton, let me ask a question like this. how can we reconcile, most people this is a surprising type of statistic that how do we reconcile that with the understanding that there's this decline like middle-class? so you talked about sort of inequality between those are the most well-off and those of the lease. we are offering the to decline middle-class to but how do we take all of that together and understand something of a more coherent kind of story about what's happening? this is for anybody. these are, there's a statistical fact but there's also an heir to the i think evidence around the shrinking black middle class student the middle-class has been hollowed out. the simple answer to that is i'll give you one example. because we're talking about wealth today if you look at one of our best measures of wealth across longitudinally, back in the '90s exactly 50% just under 50% of just under half of blacks and latinos had no assets whatsoever nothing. no dollars to name into a bank account, nothing, no rainy day funds, no retirement account, no assets. today the exact same proportion is true. half of blacks have no assets but if you look at the best off blocks, way back in the '90s almost no blacks and latinos had the top wealth, meaning over $250,000 in the bank account. over $250,000 of assets. today that number is one in 10. i say that you said that while you have stagnation or kind of spaces at the bottom come he's actions in progress at the top. how we interpret that come we can celebrate the top at least growing marginally or we can say it's a really bad thing that the bottom has sure that as the top has grown. >> i think that the growing inequality in any slice of some slice of the populace would look at you are going to see rising inequality. it is not uniquely african-american phenomenon. it's a sight of the larger rise of inequality. if we look at back in 1994 when i was in graduate seminar sitting at a table of race by income and then showed the wealth love. what blew me away was even at the same level income you talk about unfiltered $100,000 a year or $50,000 a year or at the poverty line from there was huge gaps in wealth. we have haven't mentioned it at all yet. over the course of the last 20 years, back in 1984 is the virtue we would have good data for wealth. we can't know for sure how much better or worse it was before the 1960s. but it's been pretty stable around 10 cents on the dollar. typical african-american them has one-tenth the assets of the meeting or typical white family. that's a conservative estimate. this is a medium, not an average which eliminates the effect of very, very wealthy people that are disproportionately white that brings up the white average. at some point i think in the '90s it with up to 12 cents on the dollar and pound it since the it varies a lot with the stock market report-remarkable since the financial crisis is a lot of us thought in 2007 inequality had gotten so high that it could reach the same level of 1929 in terms of their share of the top 1%. there's many measures but that's just one of them. when the crisis happened it seemed like it was almost a natural law, things have gotten too top heavy, they're going to tip over. i guess expecting history to repeat itself many of us thought that there would be destruction of wealth at the top that they would be a reduction of inequality just like the ones between 1929-1931, the greatest drop in inequality in the history of the country which kind of continued at a slower rate through what others have called the great moderation during the middle of the century. but we didn't get fat. we got t.a.r.p., toxic asset relief program and other bailouts of the banks and aig et cetera. and instead inequality has continued to rise and that's reflected also in the black wide gap which has continued to rise since 2007. why did we get a bailout unlike in 1929? the irony is because a much greater proportion of americans are invested through their 401(k) and through their college savings account for the kids or what have you come are invested for being in the stock market or so to save their pennies they had to rescue the pound of the very elite rich. and so we've got more of the same can increasing any questions the crisis rather than a rethinking of a leveling off. so i think given the importance of wealth to other things like education, you already mentioned voting. i think i've criminal justice is in your area where wealth has not been tested yet but for health education for job prospect watcher comes wealth is one of the most important predictors really the second most important predictor after your parents education level whether their college graduates or have graduate degrees, that this, i personally think of wealth as one of the route not to minimize criminal justice asia or health issues or a things but i think wealth is the most extreme even one-tenth ratio and really critical issue that's not as much in the public policy issues terms of racial equality of opportunities that should be. >> i know this is one of the areas you've done great work on. if you're making the case for health and central to this conversation, how would you make that particular -- >> for health or wealth? >> as relates to the wealth inequality. >> we know that there's a really strong correlation between social position, whether you measure that by your educational level or your wealth or your occupation and your health. literally how long you live. we also know that there's a huge race gap in life expectancy in other diseases. we also know that financial crises tend to lead to negative health effects and we know that negative, probably more important negative health events leads them is number one cause of bankruptcy in america now. we have just had finally the last couple of years the affordable care act go into effect. it really could be one of the most important policies that everybody is going to insurance supposedly got a passenger americans will have insurance that will hopefully stop the health care crises from being one of the biggest wealth trainers and crisis you're talking about earlier that destroyed low wealth, uninsured families best eggs. so hopefully that will attenuate but we don't know yet. >> this actually leads us i think into the discussion between wealth and other things. health and one of them. education and citizenship criminal justice. i will sort of say i have noted that there's i think a motion to strike post-civil rights america on this may be just strike post and that sort of second the motion. >> i just add to the very good summary what you are in the langston hughes auditorium and i was thinking of those of you who grew up reading the langston hughes as i do remember he may take years in a defense plant and he did hard physical labor. the health issue is tied to the kind of work people do. i'm retired professor -- professor. i'm in good health but i didn't do hard physical labor. most people of color to really hard physical labor and their worn-out a lot sooner so that the efforts to raise the social security beyond 65 because they want to do that because they think people are living healthy and later. but not all people are living longer. not all people are living healthier. i thought that was an important point to make because that's another area of inequality. just people being worn-out through how they have to earn their living. i just wanted to add that. >> so vesla can you work on citizenship and criminal justice. how do you do your research? how have you seen the relationship between wealth inequality and -- >> i mean, i think we were talking a financial instrument earlier. one of the biggest things that is not on the public radar. it is not a political savings right now but it is a huge asset trainer. it is a mechanism family dependency that really hurts low-income and middle-income communities come is legal financial obligations. so it's not just that blacks are more likely to get bad subprime loans, to pay more for their mocha kiss combat more student debt, more medical debt, to be more unbanked it's also the case that they showed a big burden of legal financial debt. in other words, when you come into contact with the criminal justice system, you are tagged with what's kind of in a properly called user fees. so anything from room and board in jails to probation, fees, all kinds of victim restitution and the numbers were strike you they are not quite as well researched as they should be, but to use the work of some of our sociological colleagues, the average black person that exits the injustice involved has $17,000 in legal financial obligation, which is crippling for even folks who have money. so i think that's one piece of the kind of hidden wealth constructive mechanism. i think another hidden wealth destroyer also has to do with the work of devon fergus. and just by virtue of what zip code you live in, what neighborhood you call home and you're going to be shouldered with higher auto insurance premiums. you will be paying more to lenders for your house. you have a bevy of different things that mean that you're making him your bank more for goods and services. you're paying more just to look at daily life. now, the thing that i really want to get into this conversation because one of the things as a political scientist bothers me about the national conversation on wealth inequality is it's often just statistics. blacks are so much further behind and asset accumulation. what is it about their behavior that is leading them to be in a situation? i want to talk about the policies and practices of various levels of government and private sector actors that drive those processes. on my mind today is -- we have this hidden history of a moment when the nation cemented the white middle class cemented affluence, helped them get educational loans, helped them by their first houses. and also a moment where we cemented blacks that having access to those things. i've never seen somebody run some numbers on this but how does that trickle across a generation. of not having access to those instruments of financial security. >> if i can jump in your i can tell you some numbers. the economist says 20% of lifetime inheritance is attributable to past generations. that does me just direct inheritance. one ticket graduates with zero student debt and another kid graduates with 100,000 student debt. larry summers put it at 80%. i'm going to come like those are all really find researchers so i will say 50%. that's what's really interesting about wealth as opposed to education. that it really directly literally picks up to bequeath but a past injustices and past inequities and will take longer even if we had the right policies can not the wrong policies, they would still take a couple generations at least to close the gap. i think it is the most daunting statistic. >> i almost elect we need to get away from that language, like the vocabulary of the gap in disparity feels very be populated to me. it feels very apolitical and ahistorical. it feels like we are just statistics walking around, just numbers. i have a colleague who has run experiments and he asks people to think about certain images. what images do you think of when his attorney inequality? people point to graphs and figures and statistics. then he says what do you think of when you think of the term unemployment? and they point to people, groups of people. i think we need to shift the vocabulary away from the gap, disparity, inequality and more purposeful language, that this was a policy driven phenomenon across all of this government come across the decades. it is continually remade. it has and currently feedback effects and that it's not simply well i didn't you like to get a bank account. well i didn't pay my car loan. on time. there's all kinds of mechanisms that have to do with policy choices, explicit policy choices. that's not in our national conversation. guess what. it's hard to start a movement. we have a great movement around policing right now because we can point to explicit practices and policy choices. wind you are talking about gaps in disparity, you don't have a villain. there's no, something, to move against the it's all about you just need to get yourself bank. >> i get to beckham so what's the alternative? what is the hashtag or the way to get people to think about people and not some line graph when we talk about this issue? >> i mean, i don't have the answer. good question. >> i mostly think about white people, not black people. because most white people think that they are discriminated against and they are discriminated against more than black people are discriminated against in this country. the polls are just overwhelming that they think special treatment for blacks and blacks get more than whites do. so that these liberal discussions we have about blacks being discriminate against them most of americans, that's nonsense to them. blacks are getting special treatment, money, education things are being thrown at them. my kids don't have that are in white america it looks very different. that white america votes conservative, it's getting more and more reactionary it is getting more reaction because their lives are getting getting harder. effects of black people's lives are getting harder still because they don't see the point. i think that tremendously important. i want to comment also on, not just come and happy to talk about the past. i'm happy to talk about slavery and the fact that capitalism in america was built on the work of black people, the black people are the wealth of america, that at the end of the civil war started, 62% of our exports was kind at the new york banks their money off of slaves although the cotton trade, that the new england mills were built on time. the wealth of america comes from black people. you can trace it all the way through and the treatment, but if you look at now in a history continues that when ferguson came into the news and michael brown was shot by a white policeman, the thing that struck me was not just another black man was killed by a white cop but the way ferguson works, ferguson is a suburb of st. louis. st. louis, the whites left because they moved to all white suburbs. they moved to small suburbs that are now not economically viable. ferguson is a heavily black but it used to be all white. the whites who controlled ferguson paid account budget out of black people by addressing him because their tail light is out, putting them through the court system charging all of the seas. those towns around st. louis and that's not the only city it's true, make a big chunk of their city budget off of black people through fines jail these and all the rest of that. this is the reality of the. i think a conversation of this kind that works really well for liberals and progressive people about how the system is that there has got to be extended to think about how white oppression still works and how whites don't understand any of this. they think they're the ones being abused. i just had to say that, i'm sorry. >> just to add to that it's amazing to me how often those practices duty abstraction above and limited wealth that from poor communities. we don't have the conversation of what's going on there and the subprime lending, and the current national economic condition. we need to bring those two conversations together. people read ferguson as being sort of an anomaly aberrational outlier corrupt you know, government. but those kind of practices i think are lined up with the practice of extracting wealth through legal financial obligations from extracting wealth through greater mortgage payments go through zip code profiling. they are all we don't tend to think of them that way or talk about them that way. so that what emerges is a picture black communities that yes, they are hit over here by corrupt municipal budgeting office and yes, they are hit over here by the subprime lending and yes they are hit over by the auto industry charging them higher. but we don't have a language for discussing all of that kind of systematic policy driven extraction of wealth that regularly occurs in the life that makes people, it makes it difficult for people to be financially responsible. not to mention how incredibly -- >> we have covered some criminal injustice and health, and voting behavior. we haven't really touched on education or employment that i wanted to give you a chance either come from the research or going from your respective fields, sort of give a sense of also how we can do that if you think about the right language is the sort of capture this paper we haven't even covered all of the particulars of implications as well. so first on the matter of education. curious to get your thoughts on how when one thinks about the educational crisis that we have, how an understanding of differences and wealth, how that helps us also understand the issue of education. in particular one of the things i wanted to bring up, and this could be said i guess about crime from which i'm sure you have it in this debate about the what is causing what, right? there's certainly people who argue that education is a chief cause of wealth differences. i'm sure that argument has been made and it should people have also made argument that that relates to crime as well. i guess my question is into force. one is first to think about the relationship between wealth and education but also what do we know about how one of them affects the other? >> you are absolutely right that there is a bidirectional relationship. obviously, achieving a high level of education helps you in the labor market to earn a higher wage and that of course helps a team of wealth. we also know that if we look at if you just compare blacks and whites in terms of, or any other group, in terms of likelihood of graduating from high school, actually there's no real gap in black-white high school graduation rates. that is the quality of education budget is in terms of graduation rate. you go to college and you find that that's where educational inequality at least in terms of complete degree really starts to emerge. if you choose to do that comparison like it in in the newspaper and to talk about dropout rates or rates i pressure you are comparing apples and oranges because unlike many other defend countries, colleges are both expensive, four year college in particular. what i found in my own research is about we need to the apples to apples comparison, that is going to dedicate is coming from a family with the same provincial education and wealth level, you have to do both. both of those matters but nothing else really matters. then you find that a college graduation rates from a four year degree program by age 25 are the same. it's not rocket science because we know that college costs money. even if we are talking about a state school where the tuition is low and that is increasingly rare these days for four years institutions because getting squeezed, you select of living expenses and, in fact, holding down jobs and taking out loans and so forth. one of the major causes of folks not finishing college at all work on time. so will the israeli parental wealth, i mean this key to launching a successful or ensuring a successful post secondary educational career. and also for job searches and that kind of period of extended adolescence after college and starting a career you find that wealth of parental wealth matters. the unequal outcome of the previous generation becomes the unequal starting positions for the next generation. that's sort of the cycle that i observed and education is key in the cycle but it itself is affected by the prior generation generation. >> things are changing that not only are the public universities and i've taught my entire career and different public universities, and the government of giving far less money for education, for the colleges and universities. this means tuition goes up and the kids have got to come up with more money and they are taking out loans. they are taking out huge loans at a time when the jobs they did when they get out of college, if they get a job are not paying enough to pay back the loans. these kids will be in debt for the rest of their lives and the parents will be in debt because when the kid defaulted on a loan that is cosigned by the parents, their parents are then liable for that long. the banks got congress because the banks seem to have some difference with congress, to prevent default on student loans, even when the the students in no way can pay back the loan. so you've got this new chattel system that you are intended for life out of college loans that are not payable because you don't have jobs that earned enough to pay them back. the other thing about wealthy parents is they understand financing. both working-class parents and those young people who have no idea of the dead are taking on and the consequences of that debt are taking on these huge loans and they're creating a right of policy with a not be able to buy homes were and what if kids can't get married, don't want to have kids because they don't -- they want to bring to get up right and they can't afford. you've got a system where because the public sector is being defined, because tax cuts are going to the wealthy, the government has a structural deficit, the difference between basic expenditures and what it takes in in taxes, there's a huge gap. what the demand is more cuts in spending, and the spinning they were cut off the spending that benefits for people and especially people of color. this is different. this is not always been this way through the '60s. with progressive programs. we have a different political situation. so it's not just the development of education and costs and so on, but it's the politics that is intensifying the suffering that is going with that that needs to be pointed out. out. >> if i can jump in. i think we really have an to unpack the college costs or college loans crisis that really has reached a crisis. there's different components. number one, a two-year degree means very little in the economy. increasingly knowledge-based technical economy. a few need a four year degree if you're going to make it worthwhile to bar the money. the absolute worst outcome to berkeley for for the nephews and not get that degree. employers care that you actually have a degree. about the people end up in dire straits because they bar of ottoman and they never actually got a degree. and talk about the wealth extraction industry we have the fact that for profit colleges can get can get guaranteed student loans. is basically a giant vacuum mechanism. i know the obama administration is trying to do something right now but a for-profit colleges have very strong allies in congress. pat toomey scenes the most tragic thing. the decrees from those schools are not worth the decrees from any state university in the country. and they cost a lot more. they are exactly like subprime aggressive lenders in advertising ever from the city subway to late-night tv and so forth and making promises about the value of decrees which is not true. it's really at extraction mechanism of the public funds for private shareholders. i think that needs to be really on the political radar as well. starting to be a little bit but hopefully very quickly. >> there's a great book about that. and just basically if you look at the racial demographics of who is going to the for-profit colleges, is largely black women who end up with a degree, as you said, that doesn't mean as much. returns and wealth are not as great. they are saddled with debt spent a lot of these for-profit companies are owned investment banks. this is not taking any stuff. they send their people to welfare offices and to black churches to drum up business line two people about what the benefits of this private education, people pointed out. the other thing about it is that the government pays for it. you touched on that but it's tremendously important to legally these for-profit colleges can get up to 90% of the income from the government. and they do. album is coming from taxpayers it been that debt goes to the students, people of color. so we lose at both ends. and it is again is wealth extraction that targets people of color just so heavily. so in education. the other thing at the top in the ivy schools you are not seeing very many people from the bottom of the income distribution. you are single legacies of people whose parents went to yale and columbia. my daughter is now teaching at columbia. it's a very different kind of situation that a public university. what it takes to get through college, had the privilege of some people have of living in dorms and having enough money for says other kids, these differences are just a man's. and become from a total system. i think what i get out of our discussion from what my college on the panel have said it's just the totality of this oppressive extractive system is huge. and i know we don't have much time that you want to talk about what to do about it, i think looking forward to the panel later on the politics later in the day which i look forward to being at, but perhaps we might say some things about that. >> so let's move to that discussion. i will ask a couple sort of specific theoretical motivating questions but then maybe we can get into some of the details around it. i'm just going to throw out a hypothetical let's take a genius appears in front of us and says i will grant you two things. one is about if you take it policy to eliminate, that will be illuminated. the other is -- [inaudible] those are the two you get. what would you say? >> i'll go first. i would use to a laminations. i believe the positive. i would eliminate any sort of public funding whether it is loan guarantees or pell grants or what have you going for a pro--- for-profit colleges and tried to squeeze them try. second i would cap the home mortgage income deduction. the interest deduction. because i think was said earlier, you know, we believe in homeownership as a coach. goes back to jefferson, but there's no reason that we should be subsidizing you become as much home, mansions up on mansions, even second homes. .. they're not as good as the four-year public institution degree but that they're allowing people who are working without degrees to go back, often times in their 30s and get -- >> i think there's plenty of public -- in most places there's plenty of public options. i worked for free for the university of the people, that is essentially free. and just as good as the university of phoenix which is going to charge you a lot of money for exactly the same amount of educationsive convenience. i think the language that would work in america in american politics -- you hear the plate tall pundits -- is the fact that these are not -- this is not private enterprise. this is corporate welfare. they're getting the public -- really known cussing on the fact that they're just hoovering up public resources they're not really free -- they're not really businesses that are standing in competition in the real economy. they're just these -- just like defense contractors with no bid. they're just something that are actually just like welfare sucking off the government, and that is a language that most americans will resonate with and will turn the tide, i think rather than focusing just strategically to focus on that, on them taking our money, rather than the fact that the damage it does to the students, which is the ultimate issue but in terms of political tactics focusing on the fact they're taking taxpayer dollars would the more effective argument. >> uh-huh. for me i'm going to go with one big philosophical transformation, so not necessarily a policy intervention, and then one smaller thing. i think the smaller thing is to close the mismatch between the extent of student loan funding pell grants that are available to people that often are unable, first-time collegegoers, to access college opportunity. close the gap between pll grants following behind and tuition costs rising over time. and then my big philosophical transformation -- this is something we haven't yet touched on but that keeps coming back to me in every conversation i have like this, and that is that as a society we tend to think we can get equality on the cheap. we think that we can do this by tinkering around with policy designs, and not actually challenging the private decisions that all of us make daily in our lives and one of those decisions that i think is still very politically correct it is not -- there's no public norm. there's a big public norm against discrimination but there's not a public norm against constantly re-affirming segregated neighborhoods. so the affluent are incentivized to make private decisions to accumulate more wealth to keep their kids in an -- i live in knew -- new haven and i see this. the yale faculty and anyone affiliated with yale lives in one specific neighborhood, and there is one specific good school for the entire city of new haven and they all send their kids to that one specific good school. or they -- if they can't get into that school, they send them to private education. i think until there's a real norm against private behaviors like that, we're just going to keep having the same conversation across generations. in other words -- i've seen this month progressives, liberals, who believe to their core in equality and they want to do the right thing but then they'll say, bit decided to live in this neighborhood and i decided to send my kid to this school, and i make a little donation to the other school in that neighborhood and i feel okay about it. i think until there's a strong public norm against private behaviors that accumulate wealth and that drives enter generational- -- enter generational wealth accumulation, we're not going to get very far. so that's any bigie. if the genie was here and i could wish for anything it would be the similar norm against education would exist against private choices that adduce benefits regularly and that hurt. don't have a language that these actions actually hurt others. they draw down resources for failing schools. they mean you don't interact with neighbors who have different income levels. they mean you don't even need to see the poor on a regular basis and i think that until we have that conversation, you can tinker around with getting rid of the home mortgage interest deduction, tinker around with maybe -- my other suggestion, increasing pell grants but we're not going to get very far. >> let me ask a question with that. so sort of bold, let's sort of change even the way we're thinking about it. so what would we say as an alternative? i'll give a bit of a personal story. we lived in chicago for 12 years, and we were one of the i guess, black special families that moved back to the hood. and maybe the first couple of month we were there there two two boys coming buy on a bicycle, and we got in a conversation got going to school and he went to school in the local school in the neighborhood. when i asked him about the school he said do not send your children there. so this is a young black boy just broke may heart for him to say it. but he went on to talk about just how challenging it was and that he -- it was -- this ten-year-old's recommendation, based on his experience, that he should -- i should not send my children there. so what does one do, then? what does one do with that norm? it doesn't -- the norm isn't wrong but speaks to the totality of what would need to actually change in order for that conversation. >> i'm not sure exactly and this isn't what i study but why not organize a community jump where several families that believe in the value of not just getting your kid up the ladder but of giving them a diverse environment, and teaching them the value of living around people with different means and teaching them value -- i live in a similar neighborhood, and 90% black and latino, mostly working class, lots of people falling under the asset poverty line, as it were. if i didn't live in that neighborhood i wouldn't have a chance to give me old laptop to to 12-year-old kid that lives next door to me. wouldn't have the chance to interact and say check out the preschool my kid goes to. and people said to us the same thing. it's more criminal in that neighborhood. your housing value won't appreciate this, this and a third. and you know what? we're fine. and i like it. and i think there's value in my child's learning to not hyper segregate himself and i wanted to -- i guess that's my big kind of -- if i were to transform something it would be that. i don't know how you do it. maybe when he gets to regular school age i'll have different feelings. but there's -- it's really funny to me how quickly people become pseudo scientific when it comes to their own children. and when it comes to their own decisions about where to live. there's no science saying that if you send your child to a school that doesn't have the greatest test scores that the bad test scores will rub off an your kids. there's no science saying that. so why not embrace the actual science, which is that parenting matters, that reading to your kid matters that talking to them matters and regardless of what schools they're going to. but i think that this conversation is not one that i'm seeing in "the new york times," not one that i'm hearing. in fact i hear quite the opposite. the regular messages when we first moved to yale, you need to live in this neighborhood, you need to send your kid to this school. >> it's not just yale. >> it's not just yale. it's my example but you're absolutely right. it's everywhere. >> william? >> until we october of these things in structural terms and not individual terms we won't have the change we need. i think it is important that people struggle, as you explained, with your own situation, and how you live your life. that is important for each and every one of us. but change comes when people get together organize, demand that the sim change, and that that's really the issue. i would endorse the suggestions that you made on education and -- there are thousands of these changes that would make a difference. the freedom budget, black lives matter now has an economic program that some people are working on, which i think is very good. we know what needs to change. the question is how to change. so i was thinking, your genie coming here and granting us the wish, anybody here -- probably not as old as i am but remember ozzie davis' play, pearlie victorious you remember the genie, and he turns that racist cracker black and it was such a great image because if white people could understand black reality and just get out of what they're in -- well, ozzie davis was great and it was brilliant but that's what i'd ask of the genie, the problem is stupid white people and scared white people. mostly scared white people. and until they understand why -- where their impression comes from and it's not from blacks -- we can't have the kind of changes that's going to make a difference for people of color. so i go for ozzie davis' genie and help white americans understand a great deal more about the realities that people here have been describing, that people in the audience know very well. because academics we're always asked for policy advice. i'm going out to detroit to be an expert witness at a trial against the emergency financial manager in detroit but it's not just detroit. every black city practice dominantly black city in michigan has an emergency financial manager who has taken over from the democratically elected governor, while white cities in as bad shape -- a lot of white cities in detroit that should have -- but they don't because they're white. sort of basic stuff that has to be fought, got to be understood, has to be seen structurally and has to be changed through collective action. so i want that genie to help me organize the white folks. thank you. >> let me build off of that. with the followup question. what would you say to someone like me, just a concerned citizen -- talking very high level policy and sometimes when we talk very high level we talk policy and we're often asked about policy -- it's much clearer for say a concerned citizen what one can do. so, let's say i -- this is -- we're done here and i walk off and say incredible, i'm not a policymaker, i don't know any policymaker, i don't have enough wealth to influence policymaker. what are some things that i can do? >> each of us is going to work in ways that seem sensible to us and that are consistent with who we are and we can't tell people you know, that some people here might have been a year ago a man was selling loose cigarettes in staten island and got murdered bay cop. well a year later that is still eric garner's reality and the eric garners in across the country, and until we manifest in large enough numbers and with the intensity to change that, it doesn't change. but what we see happening as people get angry as they get organized, de blasio is a decent guy and i think he is making some differences. i think we support the politicians who do good stuff but we also say that it's the system that is broken. this is a broken, sick system and it needs changing, and the only way it's going to change is through organization. now, as individuals we're each small. we can't do it, as you say -- just a concerned guy. what are you going to do? but we can give money to the organizations to support the young people who are out there when we're not so young anymore and the marching isn't quite as easy for us. we can teach them and give. the a sense of the history of the only changes that matter came through struggle. frederick douglass, without struggle -- and that's what we can do. even if it seems small collectively as we all do it, the world changes and that's basically all the genie could tell you. >> it's a very good question. i think there are organizations out there that are pushing economic justice initiatives. there's one starting up, i serve on the advisory council for it, at the center for community change, for example. a way that's going to re-orient and make economic demands. right? so i think supporting their efforts -- i think also more broadly, realizing that all of our fates-linked. whether you're wealthy or not your fate is linked. we as political scientist have begun to say that we have reached levels of income and wealth inequality that make us look more like an oligarch can i than a democracy and the stream levels of wealth inequality and income inequality are hurting the democratic function of our system. they're actually contributing to political polarization, contributing to spatial sorting so it you've look at maps from then 1970s versus today you're much more likely to police in counties with other people of similar political persuasions. it has meant that the parties have pulled further and further apart. it's more difficult to get compromise legislation through. the ach achievement notwithstanding it's extremely hard to eek out political broad consensus on legislation and conditions of extreme polarization and that polarization i think has everything to do with wealth polarization and income inequality. they track each other. if you look at political polarization and income inequality they track neatly. so i think by realizing that we're kind of all in this boat together and if we're all in an oligarchic boat, how safe are any of our achievements? right? when we are -- you see this in tax dynamics all the time. when you are forced to pay for emergency healthcare of somebody else, or when you are forced to pay for failing schools over there and you're paying in new haven it's not uncommon for somebody to own a regular old house and be paying $35,000 in property taxes. because the poverty over there i might be able to keep it over there and live in a different neighborhood but i'm going be taxed for it. i'm going to be paying for it. so i think until we have that broader conversation that we have really reached levels of racial and class-based inequality that are just simply not sustainable for the democratic health of our nation. i think that can be a sort of broader mental transformation that makes people realize okay, it's in my interests to support bringing people above the asset poverty line. >> i'm of the small little policies from universal preschool to an early childhood to paid family leave to something like a nest egg for every american when they're born that they can accrue and everybody can have, by virtue of being born to this rich country have a nest egg a sovereign wealth fund where we all own one share by virtue of our citizenship. i can go on and on literally probably -- not in a thousand but maybe a hundred different policies getting rid of the cap on social security and on fica taxation. to save our pension system, our public pension system. rather than raising the retirement age as william mentioned. but iles recognize you don't get those thousand changes without a social movement behind it. i'd like to ask my panelists what you think because we had this moment with obama wall "occupy" we'll street a couple years ago and it passed and seemed like there was a potential for some real policy change or political change from that, and now that seems to have slipped beyond our grasp. so that is -- i assume what you're talking about in terms of social movements william but what could we have done differently or do differently now? . >> i'm stumped. >> that's a great question. >> i think the way things are going, that we talked about the shrinking middle class and again, something like -- the statistics are 25% of young white people born after 1970 to middle class families dropped out of the middle class. it's 37% for african-americans born into the middle class have dropped out. so this slink s-h-h-h rinking of the middle class as impacted black people and has impacted white people, too and with the globalization, the loss of jobs that -- factory jobs that people without skills, without education could do, those jobs going abroad to the global south, with technological changes that have taken even accountants, paralegals -- there's a lot in the information processing arena where processing can do so much. even retail trade with amazon and having stuff delivered to your door, people are working in warehouses at very low wages under horrible conditions. we don't see them. they're preparing this stuff that you buy but you don't see the exploitation. the better jobs, the unionized jobs the jobs with protection, with lifetime security, have been disappearing. the public sector, the attack on teachers and saying that poverty is no excuse just because a kid comes to school hungry and goes to a place where there's no room to study and prepare for school the next day. that none of this matters. it's the fault of the parents. it's the fault of the teachers. we're interesting -- we're in this period that is a very dramatically different period than the post war period. the technology, the globalization, the financialization, so many of us are in debt and that the debt is dominating our lives and the inability to get out of that debt. this is stronger in europe because the euro has created real problems for the peripheral countries, greece, and others, and in america we're actually doing better than these countries, but we're not doing well. and so we're in a very different historical period, and it is my sense that, especially the young people know this -- and we will see -- i was thinking as you were talking when i was in college, the vietnam war was just starting, and a group of us antiwar activists before there was an antiwar movement -- every week would go to a different dormitory a different fraternity and explain that kennedy had sent so-called helpers to train the south but what was really going on -- this was going to -- it was very frustrating because we never thought we would get anywhere. but as things developed more people joined the antiwar movement. the same with the civil rights movement. when the kids sat down at the counters but things, i think we are entering a period where -- we're in a period where that's going to happen. it has to happen because what is happening to so many people in this country is not good, and it's the inequality that you both were talking about. it is more extreme than any year -- not since 1929 but since 1928 as you pointed out once the depression started the rich lost a lot but the difference was this time around, the federal government gave it all back to them. and that is why the ruling class did not have the same interests as the new deal did in dealing with the system to create a demand ask create jobs and so on because with globalization everybody is trying to do it through exports to somebody else but unless the martians are going to buy a lot of stuff china can't keep experting because we can't keep buying it. so you're working with a very serious, very serious global economic situation and again while it seems big like the war in vietnam or the civil rights movement there will be organizations. there has to be, and the kind of changes, the big and small -- i certainly agree with all of the small suggestions. they're not so small. they make a big difference for real people and you're really right about that. but i think that there's going to have to because we're going to have a more jobless economy. there are too many people looking for work and not finding it. it means wages are going to continue to be pressed down. it means the one percent -- the one percent is getting 95% of the increase in national income. so growth really doesn't help the other 99% because 95% of it is going to them. we have had wage stagnation for three coming on four decades now of people's money incomes going up but their real income after adjusting for price changes has been stagnant, and for a lot of people surviving is a real issue, and i think that what is preventing the kind of economic movement that can change that is racism because it is the racism in america that keeps whites thinking that if government has programs for education for building infrastructure, for all of the things the country needs it's going to help them and it's going to come out of my tax dollars. this is the racism of the current period. it's different than the old style racism of lynching and cross burning but it is a very real racism and hence my objection to post civil rights america. and i think that we have to both educate ourselves and work with other people to understand this current moment, what is wrong with the way it's set up, the kinds of things we can fight for, and i think that's what comes out of this and that's our job. it's no easy way. that's the work we have to do. >> just -- i've also been struck by the rise and fall of the 99%. my speculation is that we are still in the era where we're learning about how to do protest through social media. and while that allows for the spread and gathering people, it doesn't necessarily yet allow for a way for them to coalesce, whether it's through a consistent message or a leader even if that leader is symbolic or anything else, but just as an observation, this is one thing that i've noticed. i'm quite curious to see how we evolve and through the use of social media for these types of activities but certainly with the "occupy" movement, at some point -- many groups are out there with multiple agendas and i think that made it difficult to sort of maintain consistency. there were other factors, of course but that's certainly one that i observed. so we have just a few more minutes and i just wanted to both sort of pull things together. a lot that was covered. but also just give each of you a minute not to wrap up your statement but when this type of gathering is here, i like to have the broader conversation and then just one minute of what your book is about. and the specifics of it. so, thank you first for coming. this has been a fantastic discussion. and i think we could keep talking and i hope that offline we do keep talking not just to one another but with all of you as well. there are a lot of factors but one nice thing about this -- the way we wrapped up there are also paths for hope and progress as well. and that we can think more sophisticated about how all these different factors that are associated with wealth, wealth inequality how we can start to think about how they all work together whether it's something as concrete as voting rights or how -- but also thinking about how we even use in our discourse. so i'll end there because i want to make sure everyone has their minute, and it is a minute to just -- what your book is -- current book is about. >> well, the book that -- the reason i'm on this panel i think, about the social poll? i america think tries to put wealth at the center of the policy debate and specifically racial inequity and wealth and argues for a new affirmative assets policy and other policies to promote integration of neighborhoods, family homes are the primary vehicle of wealth for a typical family; and sort of goes over all the evidence and -- of the importance of wealth and what we can do to promote equal opportunity in the united states. >> thank you. >> my current research is on intraracial inequality across cities with jennifer but that is not yet written. half the research didn't done mitchell book last year was called "the regs citizenship" and its main intervention was to say, look, major part of government for the black poor and governance is -- happens through being involved with the criminal justice system, so and so we need to understand if we want to understand what democracy means what citizenship means in these communities, we have to actually understand how being stopped by police being convicted being booked being sent to the halfway house affects one's political life world affects how they see and make claims on the state affects how they weather and how much path they have in the american dream. affects how they coalesce with others around shared interests and if you can believe it, most political scientists mostly treated criminal justice as an apolitical institution. surety of a bureaucracy wasn't something to the studied wasn't consequential, and so i was trying to argue along with amy herman that this actually is very important for how people make meaningful the quality of their citizenship and we argue that what came out of this intervention 0 over the past four or five decades was something we called custodial citizenship. people that feel that they need to stay under the radar people that feel that the only government they see is the police people that feel that they don't have an equal shot at the american dream. and so most of my work has to do with the bottom half of the distribution. not the top half. i do believe that what is going on at the top has everything to do with extraction and custodial supervision at the bottom. >> economists look at macro economists look at the large and inequality -- it's bad for all the reasons we have talked about, and you have all thought about, but it's also bad economically because it means people don't have enough money to buy the potential stuff we could produce and that would make their lives better. the people at the top end up with all the surplus but they don't invest it to produce more goods and services because the ordinary people don't have the money to buy that. so it goes into financial speculation, and it bids up markets, bids up financial assets bids up derivatives bids upped stocks and bonds and then crashes and that is what happened in 2007-2008 and will happen again because the inequality slows economic growth because we can't make the things people want because people don't have the now buy it. it's that which makes inequality economically harmful to us as a society, and i want to leave you thinking a little bit about that. >> thank you very much. thank you all. >> thank you so much, another round of applause for amazing panelists. bill, want it to say something about post civil rights america. that title is more than ironic, that was the focus of the conversation. so we want to invite you to stick around but before that we ask you to go outside to the barnes & noble tent, purchase your book of these amazing authors, bring it back and they'll sign it right out here. join us back here in the auditorium at 1:00 p.m. for a panel between pamela new kirk didn't olife of ota benga her new book. thank you for the panel. [applause] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] >> that was an author panel on economics from harlem book fair in a few minutes we'll be back with more live coverage. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

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