My name is kristin king and im the manager here and i want to thank you all for joining us this evening. A couple notes before we begin. First and foremost, the book is available for purchase in the bookstore and will be available after the event and in addition there will be a signing. Second, we have a really fantastic fall lineup coming at all six of our busboys and books location this fall. Theres an event signup list being passed around on a clipboard, so feel free to add your name and email address. Thank you again for joining us and without further ado join me in welcoming and he and doctor ibram kendi. [applause]. Think you. Pleasure to have you all here on this rainy afternoon. Although, compared to whats happening in houston our hearts and minds go to the people they are. I want to welcome all of you for being here and let you know that independent bookstores are dropped dying breed. They can only make a comeback if you support them and buy support them i dont mean to say its nice to have them, but actually buy your books their. I went to admonish you not to go home and buy from amazon. Amazon has other good things, but books is not what they do best. I know for authors its very important. Bookstores are equally important to show your love through purchasing books their. Thank you. We are thrilled to have with us ibram kendi. Hes of course a professor of history and National Relations and founding director of the anti race research. Frequent speeder speaker and commentator and has been everywhere lately. Hes been on many different programs and he is the author, of course, that we will speak about today and also black campus movement. The book we are talking today is stamped from the beginning. He is working on a third book right now. Thats how i became a racist, is that and what should we expect from the book . That is what your publishers asking . Exactly. Then i wont put you on the spot. Its a pleasure to have you here. Maybe some of you know that this place is named after Langston Hughes who worked as a bus boy while writing poetry. To ask you, america, the dreamer stream. A black man living in this country saying let america be america again and today we hear someone like donald trump say make America Great again here are they living in two parallel worlds . What are we hearing here well, i think Langston Hughes first of all i should say such provocative question sort of got my mind running. I would like to thank you, andy, for facilitating and being in conversation with me today about stamped from the beginning. I would like to thank busboys and most of all you all for coming out to dialogue with us about stamped from the beginning and if so back to the question. That gave me some time to think about an answer [laughter] i think Langston Hughes of course in the 1930s, which was a time particularly in the early 1930s in which america was experiencing the Great Depression in which millions of americans were out of work particularly black people and in many ways you had many different types of people trying to imagine the type of place america could be and they were measuring the type of place based on the dream that americas long presented itself as and i think thats really what Langston Hughes was speaking to. I think black americans have long been envisioning and dreaming for an america that was truly about freedom, unamerican that was truly about on america that was truly about equality and on america that lived up to what is professed to be ideal, so i think thats what Langston Hughes was speaking to. I think what the current president was speaking to was somewhat different and that difference was on america for white men by white men and i say that because the title from the beginning is the rise from Jefferson Davis who is the present for the confederacy who read before he talked about the inequality between the white and black races being stamped from the beginning he talked about how this nation was found for men will by white men and of course over the course of American History there have been racial progress. There has been gender progress. There has been progress in many different ways, but theres also been the progression of racism and other forms of bigotry. That progress for white men, that for them sort of took them away from their america that they desire, an america of white men supremacy and i think thats the america that donald trump is trying to recreate. You speak about the idea that John Mcwhorter was a professor at be at university speaking about the idea whats obama got elected we were in a racial america clearly, that has not come to be true nor was it to read anytime. But, speak about the state of race in America Today under trump as compared to an obama. Is trump better for Race Relations or worse . He just comes with these, 99mile an hour fastballs. So, i think that i just want to give you a moment to think about it, but preface with the understanding is what, i mean, by that to be clear is that trump has opened up a lot of wounds that were covered up under obama and those wounds needed to be opened and needed to see daylight and air. Of the idea that by opening these words you actually address them. We have ignored race and racism in this country for way too long. We had kicked the can of racism down the road hoping somehow it would go away. Clearly, thats not how conflict is resolved. We cant just avoid it. Is Trump Holding a mirror to america and saying you need to look at this . Well, i think so and i think to answer your question, i think the beauty beauty is probably not the best work, but i think whats actually good is that america has experienced obama and trumpet back to back and what, i mean, by that is to me in many ways and i think obama represented racial progress for america, but i would argue that donald trump represents progression of racism and historically our racial americas racial history has been a dual history, a simultaneous racial progress in the progression of racism. Typically, racist progress or the Program Progress of racism has followed racial progress. Other words when black people broke down barriers when other groups broke down racist barriers, typically what happened is those who benefited from those barriers figured out ways to create new ever more sophisticated barriers and then created new and ever more sophisticated racist ideas to a blind us from those barriers and get us thinking that the reason white inequality is persisting our growing is because of the inferiority is a black people and so i think thats what is happening now. Donald trump has allowed people to see what they did not want to see during obamas presidency when they were so focused on his embodiment of racial progress. They now have been able to see trumps embodiments of the progression of racism and i think that that is good for america because especially from the perspective of people who are suffering ever under the foot of Racial Discrimination, who are suffering under the foot of racial policies and for americans to finally see that. Anybody know what im talking about . The dangerous black neighborhood with dangerous black people. In other words, the idea that southeast d. C. Is the most dangerous part of this city. Anybody believe that . Anybody thought that . Neighbor been told that . And how do we sort of come to that idea . We come to that idea based on crime data, and crime data is typically based on arrest and incarceration rates. And so what that then means is, apparently, the community that has higher levels of arrests and levels of incarceration has more crime than another community . So what that means is people in this room every time we commit crime, we get arrested . Or is it that certain neighborhoods have more Police Officers and so, therefore, and then more certain people are more suspected because of the color of their skin and so, therefore, thats leading to higher arrest rates and incarceration rates. Some people are look, so what about all that Violent Crime. Well, theres actually no relationship between blackness and violet crime. Violent crime. Thats why if you look at black communities, black middle income neighborhoods do not have the same levels of Violent Crime as extremely poor black neighborhoods. And if there was a direct relationship between blackness and Violent Crime, no matter the income level of the neighborhood, there would be similar levels of Violent Crime, but theres not. And then when we look at across other racial groups, we see a similar story. Whether white, latino, others. You have high levels of unemployment, you have higher levels of Violent Crime across racial groups. And so for us to think of these neighborhoods as dangerous black neighborhoods when, in fact, we should be thinking of them as dangerous unemployed neighborhoods or dangerous impoverished neighborhoods. But, of course, that would change the policy conversation. Right . Because then we wouldnt say that you know the problem is blackonblack crime, the problem is these people, the problem is they, you know, their families. Instead we would say the problem is jobs, right . Another very popular racist idea is that black children are achieving at a lower level than white children. Anybody heard of the achievement gap . Thats what that basically says. That black children are intellectually inferior to white children, to asian children. And how do people render this . Because they score, black children score lower on standardized tests. So, therefore, standardized tests, we believe that standardized tests actually measure intelligence. But then when we actually study what standardized tests really measure, we find that standardized tests primarily measure two things; that somebody can take a test well or theres relationships between the income level of someones parents and their score on a test. So it actually shows that somebody has money. But we think that it actually shows intelligence. So then that causes us to think that the problem is these black children, the problem is their parents, the problem is they keep making all these excuses. And we need to, of course, train them to be, you know, to take education more seriously. You know, i can go on and on. But those are just two examples of ways in which we use measures to render black people inferior and, of course, standardized tests as many of you should know were created by you genesis, the same who use these programs to sterilize hundreds of thousands of black people in the south, the same in america who inspired adolf hitler. You also speak about examples of the ore other side of the other side where in some instances lets say white men are more violent actually. You talk about drunk driving as an example. Yeah. So when we think of Violent Crime, we dont include are drunk driving in the category of Violent Crime. And then we start to think, okay, why dont we consider drunk drivers to the violent criminals . They kill people, they injure people. Typically, the people they injure and kill are people who are completely innocent. And what i mean by completely innocent is when we look at some of these neighborhoods in which there are high levels of Violent Crime, many of the people who are being subjected to homicides are actually involved, lets say, in particular activities whether drug or gang activities. But the people who are subjected to the wrath of drunk drivers are people who are just trying to get home, right . But we dont even understand that to be a Violent Crime. I tracked in 1986 when there was the height of the socalled crack epidemic, and there were more people died that year from drunk drivers than they did from homicide and drug overdoses combined. When we look at the number of people who are subjected to violence but, of course, we dont render those people to be violent criminals. And some studies show that the vast majority of drunk drivers in this country are white men. And so those communities with all of those drunk drivers who happen to be white men, people dont understand their neighborhoods as dangerous because people dont see white men as dangerous no matter what they do, no matter what the statistics show. Because to be dangerous is to be black. You what prompted you to write the book . Just, did you think that this needed because its, i find it a really fascinating treatise on race. Because a lot of times you have the same kind of stuff that gets talked about when we talk about race in america. You know, i dont think theres been any great ideas about raisins james baldwin, frankly, personally. And i think yours gives a very different, fresh look at race and Race Relations. Is your intention here to what is the intention of the book . Sure. So im going to calm down. I feel like i was a little bit [laughter] yeah, yeah, yeah. [laughter] this gives me the opportunity to sort of calm down. And ill try to slow down on my questions. [laughter] so in terms of the really, i wished i had this sort of beautiful sort of flowery story, you know, about the sort of creation of this book, but really it largely came about as the result of another sort of research project. Research project in which i was looking into the origin of black studies in the 60 and i found that black students who were calling for black studies were saying that, you know what . All those disciplines in the academy are racist, and so we need a new discipline which they called black studies. And then i started writing a history of the origin of black studies, and i wanted to sort of chronicle the scientific racism that was pervasive in the academy as these students were saying. And then i started reading up on the history of scientific racism and racism more broadly, and i started finding that many of these histories were saying that racist ideas were, had become marginal in the 1940s. So you had students in the 60s, you had black power more broadly stating that racism and racist ideas were pervasive, you have scholars and historians saying that, no, it became marginal by the 40s. And so clearly this conundrum is what actually led me down the path of writing this book. And what i realized was that the way we were defining a racist idea was actually the problem. And so these two groups were defining a racist idea differently. So students in the 60s, particularly students who were inspired by black power who were pushing for black studies were calling assimilationist ideas racist ideas. And historically, scholars and historians have not chatfied a classified assimilationist ideas as racist ideas. In the book i differentiate between segregationist ideas and assimilationist ideas which i classify as two kinds of racist ideas. Segregationist ideas are more well understood or known as racist ideas. These are ideas suggesting that lets say black people are by nature inferior. So black people are biologically inferior. While assimilationist ideas have typically stated that the racial groups are equal, but black people are inferior by culture or behavior. And so black people are not inferior by nature as segregationists would say, black people are inferior by nurture. Black people are not permanently inferior as segregationists would say. We, assimilationists, would say have the capacity to develop them. And thats what they need, and thats what we should be doing. So clearly these student in the 60s who were inspired by black power, right, who were growing their afros out, who were embracing africanamerican culture, for them hearing their professors who were assimilationists who also were calling themselves nonracist like every other racist in history [laughter] because, you know, everyone, im not a everyone says theyre not a racist, right . And these professors were black or white. Black or white, yeah. You know, clearly when these people were suggesting that that the key to solving the race problem is black people assimilating is, is that africanamerican culture and the black family was pathological. When they heard these things, again, they were inspire by black power, they viewed those ideas as racist. And those were the ideas that primarily were dominating academia in the mid 60s. These assimilationist ideas. Through the works of people like Daniel Patrick moynihan. Ever heard of him . Or nathan glaeser who wrote a prominent book in 1963 with Daniel Patrick moynihan called beyond the melting pot. In that book he said black people have, they dont have a culture that they can guard and protect. Or somebody like gunner mirdahl who wrote a book called the american dilemma which was largely the inspiration for the civil rights movement. In that book he classified africanamerican culture as pathological and said it would be in the interests of black people to assimilate into the customs and culture that white people hold in esteem. So these were the ideas these students pushed back against, and these were the ideas that i classified or i should say reclassified as racist ideas and showed their, the way in which assimilationists and segregationists have long argued about how and why black people were inferior while antiracists were like, no, were all equal. You divide up the book into five sections named after five major figures in the American History starting with Cotton Mather and going to Thomas Jefferson, William Lloyd garrison, w. E. B. Dubois and angela davis. Well come back to Thomas Jefferson in a moment, but i wanted to ask you more specifically how did you come up with these five individuals and why them . So first of all, i wanted to make this long history of racist ideas as accessible as possible to the average reader. And, you know, i didnt want really write this book i didnt really write this book for the Academic Community, although the Academic Community<