Good afternoon i am the president Bookings Institution is my sincere pleasure to welcome you to todays event celebrating our brookings fellow release of his new book. Know your face. Roughly 104 year history we have taken powerful positions on issues of race and equality and civil rights these matters stand at the top since becoming president i have made this a president ial priority both personally and for the institution that only has there an obligation then to study these issues but also our responsibility of the organization as well that we examine race and policy not just because were capable of impact and committed to the cap public good but based on washington dc our Nations Capital as a city of politics but also great adversity and history of the roughly 700,000 residents that call the city home nearly half are black america. Walking past such sites as the Lincoln Memorial in the immortal words of doctor mlk i have a dream speech a wonderful place to live and work we at brookings are proud to call home. Alongside this rich history is discriminatory policies and bias that continues to impact with a terrible milestone 90000 americans have died in just weeks the context of that number is more than the combined deaths of americans and the korean and vietnam were combined with conflicts that lasted years the numbers are all out of proportions black americans and other minorities have suffered terribly from this pandemic laying there the reality of their situation and their vulnerability of society this is to the sharp downturn of the economy and exploding unemployment and the devastating effects on small and minority owned businesses. Even basic policies dealing with a crisis shows just the essential of Wearing Masks has overtly racist undertones it is happening every day such as new orleans and new york and chicago. Besides robbing us of our precious lives to highlight other socioeconomic disparities and education and basic access and still you will see those who continue to be killed by the brewing hatred of White Nationalism and racism. Recognizing this reality we must center racist equity in the post covid19 recovery to ensure as part of the renewal process in her efforts geared toward reopening america and the world have to emphasize these issues. Here at brookings our metropolitan policy program has taken this looking to ensure at every level local state and federal there is a more equitable recovery and to take inspiration that also includes a deep dedication to fixing those underlying policies for the equitable recovery from occurring not just debating around the issues thats what makes a difference that is what the book is all about. Ladies and gentlemen, lets introduce the author andre perry a fellow and scholar here are brookings who is focused on structural inequality and valuing black assets is book know your price is a powerful and personal work he opens his book with the examination of his journey to the work in washington dc and in know your price he highlights and spotlights those two cities as well as for others over there long overlooked assets with the need for structural change. Know your price is exceptional with his rich compendium of work and he deserves our highest praise for this tremendous achievement. With that a brief reminder we are recording and streaming this section i. If youd like to ask questions please send them to us by email. Or through twitter let me turn the floor to andre congratulations on this great achievement it is a huge contribution to america. Thank you. Thank you for the introduction and thank you to all of you for joining us today from the comfort of your own home i obviously didnt plan to release a book in the middle of a pandemic but apparently theres never a bad time to publish a piece on racism i had grand visions to speak to live audiences signing books instead of enforce to develop a special relationship with zoom and as it turns out you can stay connected while being socially distant instead of the social distancing and bookstore closures my book has momentum that is already breaking records and i word the word black is written more time than any other Brookings Institution history there is a healthy buzz and excitement around know your price and a a great deal of gratitude to my team i could spend the entire our those that got the book to this point but because of time i will only name a few i want to thank my wife and our children for giving me the space to write this book also my wonderful workfamily the brookings program working with Brookings Press thank you and all my long time report editor for her helpful market and my deep appreciation to my colleague for reading and original draft and all the content editors that address housing and gentrification and black majorities cities shout out to my cruise in pittsburgh in Atlanta Birmingham and washington dc thank you david for your Research Support in coordinating my Community Engagement also my writing partner who helped to coauthored the study. Finally i think two people who are no longer with us but are featured in know your price my adopted mother and my father. Was told in my book she raise more than one children on one dozen children and adopted my biological brothers and me leading to my father being killed for most of my professional life i had to navigate a policy Research Community as a family construction as deviant since it was published in 1965 researchers and journalists continue to frame poverty as individual choices and moynahan offered a different analysis but had a dangerous example to identify a central problem black people not living up to white middleclass ideals this falls and lines of the white supremacist myth that claims harsh conditions in black communities are part of their moral failings and choices collectively we have heard them say it all starts at home if we could just have them be more responsible like white middleclass families we wouldnt have this problem. Of course white middleclass families are more disciplined and harder working just look at wealth and education. Black people will act black theres no need to pay them fairly or invest in their business. They are better off to give that investment to someone who has capacity to show black people how to behave like normal people that is a hierarchy of human values leading to that investment. One of the major goals of the book is to show theres nothing wrong with black people. Underlying presumptions of their unworthiness to invest in black majority neighbors theres a whole lot of programs and research not enough focus on fixing Structural Racism until we better self of the underlying assumptions between the Research Policy recommendations and reform we will always do more harm than good. Most black people dont need to hear somebody say overtly racist things when outcome tells us everything we need to know what a correspondent on the daily show asked if he believed if they would use the and word i need footage to know if he works out. Have you seen his arms know how property is devalued by racism and then we can simultaneously take that narrative that distracts us. If we can account for the associated cost of racism , then we can begin to properly restore value by investing in the people penalize simply for being black. The study such as Housing Quality and structure as well as neighborhood factors with education and crime, Owner Occupied homes in black neighborhoods amounting to a whopping 156 billion. The point is the value of homes about neighborhoods is much higher and isnt this true in other parts of our lives . 156billion is a big number the reason why say theres nothing wrong with black people that racism cant solve black entrepreneurs could use this money as they are denied bank loans more than twice as often as their white peers and when we do get loans we pay higher Interest Rates the loss of equity means many black Business Owners are less likely to have a financial cushion like the one we are in now during the Great Recession half a black student survive compared to 60 percent of white owned the 156 billion should have those Municipalities Fund essential services we have known for decades School Funding wealth and racial prejudice are correlated with academic achievement schools dominated by students of color 23 billion less largely as a byproduct of an educational system through a financing structure based on local property tax many reformers ignore Structural Racism saying is too hard to address segregation in School Financing that when reform is applied within the confines of the black majority like in new orleans with katrina there is little room but to blame black parents and teachers and school board for underachievement i saw a quote from the Charter School after Hurricane Katrina ten years after the breaches of the levees the black teacher population dropped 70 percent to 50 percent replaced by a teaching core two thirds who worked before katrina were no longer there and to show positive effects of black educators. Black students who had one black teacher by the other greater 7 percent more likely to graduate high school 13 percent more to enroll in college after having to black teachers the likelihood of enrolling in college increase by 32 percent unfortunately hiring more black teachers is something we have yet to try and scale. Theres nothing wrong with black people that ending racism cannot solve. The value is also behind why black women can buyer educate their way towards better birthing outcomes in spite of their educational gains in the past three decades. More black babies die before their first birthday that all of the racial categories the mortality rate among black mothers is three times higher than their white counterparts. These disparities exist even after controlling for education. In a study my wife and her coauthors found racial inequality like an educational payments , income, imprisonment, unemplos a powerful effect on racial inequality in employment increase infant mortality worsened they decreased in in quality to improve infant mortality that valuation of black lives is that the intersection of race and gender and occupation and consequently our Solutions Must be intersectional in nature so like all other issues presented in this book is not academic and the very personal struggle that we had to have a child going through a professional crisis. So i show instead of restricting access with the idea that we must expand their reproductive choices it should not continue to limit black womens choices. Addressing the structures is an option we have yet to try upscale. Theres nothing wrong with black people they cant solve. The controversial speech and then the hypocrisy fight for democracy abroad while actively suppressing the rights of black and brown and native americans at home king called for a revolution of values that included making a shift from the theme Oriented Society to a person Oriented Society with the government actively to normalize bigotry with investment for those have been denied wealth and dignity and opportunity and discrimination serves with Public Policy for so long it is an immoral entitlement and a form of social security. We need an antiracist policy agenda that normalizes support for the injured. The next few months i will roll out an issue im calling and a virtual book tour and with the funding provided and to Impact America Fund to develop the index for the nation to advance black businesses. We are determined to increase employment among 15 percent of black businesses at a rate to add an estimated 55 billion to the us economy we will convene Business Leaders and government stakeholders and communities and provide them with the necessary steps to achieve this goal. In addition to social Entrepreneurship Organization will solicit social entrepreneurs in cities across the country with a one milliondollar competition to develop marketbased solutions with housing devaluation that will incentivize innovators we will seek to foster a new generation of generation that removes the racism the other is a collaboration with the paul from gallup to deliver a slavery lawn a survey that will enhance the quantitative analysis and further eliminate the black majority neighbor. Today is malcolm x. Birthday there are a few quotes on my message board that have given me fuel on my writing journey he would have said when a person places the proper value of freedom there is nothing under the sun that he will not do to acquire that. I. E. Deemed the book know your price after my favorite play in the whole wide world the main character is about to have his property seized by the city of pittsburgh they offered him 15000 and then the main character says im not selling my property for 15000 i know my price. I am paraphrasing but it is a refrain throughout the play. Give me my ham is heard all throughout we are not sure if he had a Mental Illness before and eventually he died and that 35000 for more of the story is clear you must know that what i try to do with the book is give people a place to stand on about the book because i know my price and i look forward to working with those who know theres also it gives me great pleasure in the editing of the book incredible journalist and the Kimberly Crenshaw the scholar i looked up to for years to help bring forth the idea of intersection now that he running through the book and she is a hero of mine so i will turn it over to you to moderate for this event. Thank you for inviting me to participate congratulations on the launch of your book and congratulations particularly for publishing a book that says black more times than any other in history. [laughter] and its an honor to be in conversation with doctor crenshaw the president of Brookings Institution the city that you pick in this book that you call black majorities cities birmingham, atlanta, new orleans explain why thats important they remain black majority. The main reason is i have a personal relationship because i was raised in one it was about 50 percent black but it quickly became black the majority black because of white light that i talk about a lot but i had all the assets right in front of me i had library and the University People working in the commercial corridor it was a great place to live and thats what i learned about the moynihan report people did not see about my town so for me with my professional career i tried to put myself as much as possible in places that supported so in terms of my professional advance it was instrumental because there was an overall feeling of support. Detroit is a little bit different because my father was murdered there but there was a lot of exchanges between pittsburgh and detroit and cleveland my father was part of that and so i grew up in pittsburgh but my family is from detroit. So thats the connection there but the other is about professional connection more than anything. Questions for both of you but you probably heard theres nothing that racism cant solve. Do you agree with that and how does that apply with the current covalent pandemic . And with those Racial Disparities and how is the absence of races of make that different . Thank you. I also thank you for inviting me to this important conversation to this book launch and not only am i excited to use the term black more than any other in history and i help many other publishers take note and follow accordingly. The specific question is in relation i grew up about 90 minutes from where you grew up in ohio. Which is just over the border. Now canton ohio is a majority black town and at the same time the urban renewal have Highway Development and basically black removal is very familiar to me i grew up watching my mother struggle with the Apartment Building her father left to her eventually it was taken she was given pennies on the dollar one of two black families in the neighborhood and the home that i still own is in relationship on the right side of town so much of what you say in personal terms i found myself nodding my head going between pittsburgh and detroit it was satisfying i appreciate you allowing me to do that. So to bring to the conversation getting to this covid moment is frankly in the rule of law and its difficult not only to see the devaluation that is the product of structural inequality but also making the expectation of whiteness and privilege and property not only those efforts but i think well positioned projects like this have a better understanding of the rules the law has played but also repressing the ability of the majorities that sometimes come together to do something about this using whites the reason why it cannot be done. The biggest part of what we want to do cannot be done because they stand in the way. So those dominant frameworks that have emerged in the post racial moment that were in opposed civil rights moment