Posted by the National Low IncomeHousing Coalition, my name is dave darcy and were glad youre able to join us for this live conversation with president and ceo day diane yentel and ibram kendi. We encourage you to submit questions for doctor kendi and if you start to have a question for our support team, click here on that right side of the screen. The event will be available on the site within 24 hours and is now my pleasure to turn it over to diane yentel. Thank you dave and welcome everyone to todays conversation with doctor ibram kendi on Racial Equity before and after the covid19 pandemic. Im glad almost 5000 people have registered today. Im heartened and encouraged by the level of interest in this topic so i am diane yentel, president and ceo of the National Housing coalition, where a Membership Organization dedicated to achieving socially just Public Policies and ensuring that the lowest income people have decent, accessible and affordable homes. And as part of that work you have worked on disasters, housing response, recovery and rebuilding for many years through our Disaster Housing Recovery Coalition and weve done this work recognizing that decades of Structural Racism and other structural inequities put their countries lowest income and most historically marginalized people, people of color, people with disabilities, people experiencing homelessness , lgbt people, people reentering their communities from jails and prisons at most risk of being harmed by disasters. And without our dedicated and intentional focus and effort, we know they will be left behind in the housing recovery and rebuilding so covid19 is the latest disaster to hit our country with the same pattern of harm and neglect caused by decades of Structural Racism. And in this disaster is different in some ways, its unprecedented in scale and magnitude and duration , but our urgent need to center Racial Equity and equity for all historically marginalized people in the response and recovery is as critical as ever. The coronavirus clearly is disproportionately harming people of color and its illustrating in even starker relief the historical and systemic racism and discrimination. And i believe that we have an obligation in our housing and our homelessness work on covid19 to center Racial Equity and at this moment when we are working together to get congress to fund over 100 billion in rental assistance and other critical housing and homelessness dollars, doctor kennedys work is so important. He urges us in really profound and practical ways to develop policies and programs that are explicitly antiracist. And he offers us guidance on how to do it. So this moment that were in right now is unique in so many ways. Most very terrible ways. But just as we are seeing covid19, in covid19 maybe one of the clearest and most obvious manifestations of Structural Racism and who is harmed and who is impacted by covid19, we also have this tremendous possibility with hundreds of billions of dollars flowing to states and cities in response to undo some of that harm, to reverse inequities, to center Racial Equity and Racial Justice in the response. So im thrilled to have doctor ibram kendi joining. Doctor kendi is one of americas foremost historians and leading antiracist forces. The hat is a New York Times bestselling author and director of the Antiracist Research and policy center at American University in washington dc, a professor of history and international relations, doctor kendi is the author of stamped from the beginning, a definitive history of racist ideas in america which won the National Book award for nonfiction and his most recent book how to be an antiracist reshapes the conversation about Racial Justice in america so doctor , im a big fan of your work. You for joining me today. Im glad we were ableto have this conversation. We have a lot to discuss in an hour and theres so much of your wisdom and work that i want to glean for our collective housing and homelessness work but i want to start with some of the foundational components of your work that can guide the rest of our conversation about Racial Equity in housing during and after covid19. So most if not all of your published work centers around racism being a core tenets of the american way. And foundational to our country. And around the need for us to overcome the pervasive racism through the work of antiracism so id like to start there if we can. You say its not enough to not be racist. We have to be actively antiracist so you can you describe, define the different terms and talk about what you need mean by that. So i define a racist as someone who is expressing a racist idea and racist ideas typically suggest a particular racial group is better or worse, superior or inferior then another or this is whats wrong or right about this racial group so i define a racist as someone whos expressing a racist idea or supporting a racist policy with their actions or even in action. And throughout the course of american history, almost every person who classifies being racist denied that they were being racist. Denied that their ideas were racist, denied that their policies were racist so the term not racist, i am not racist has really always been the sound of that denial. And ive never really been able to figure out what being a not racist truly is other than someone denying their own racist ideas, denying the policies thattheyre supporting. But i do have a clear sense of being what an antiracist is. If a racist is expressing an idea of racial hierarchy and an antiracist is one who is expressing antiracist ideas that theres nothing wrong or right, superior or inferior with any of the racial groups. If a racist is supporting a racist policy that is leading to inequity and injustice, then an antiracist is someone who is supporting a policy, an antiracist policy thats leading to equity and justice so theres really no in between diana, as you know hierarchy andinequality. So just as no in between notions of racial policies that need to equity and inequity and so again, i dont really know what it means to be not racist but i have a very clear sense of what it means to be racist and antiracist and so im encouraging americans to the antiracist because if theyre not and chances are they are being racist. Part of this definition or this idea is that being racist, its not a fixed identity. It can be a temporary state of being and that all of us that are working towards being antiracist have ads and flows. It certainly including me and including you. And you wrote about in your book, you wrote about your own process of going from eating racist to being, working towards being actively and consistently antiracist so can you talk about your process and how that applies to others. I think the process for me was largely coming to terms with definitions. So having a very clear sense of what it means to be racist or even antiracist. Can you imagine if you do not have a very clear definition of racist, its easy to deny that youre racist because we dont even know what that truly is so first and foremost it was coming to terms with basic definitions but then i think one of the problems with classifying someone as racist is as you mentioned, we are actually thought that a racist is a fixed category. Its literally a person is, not what aperson is. Its literally in their dna. Its in their heart, its in their bones. That someone becomes a racist. And thereby a racist is an evil bad person. And theres really no remedy for those racists, they cant be cured. And so with that type of perspective i can understand why so Many Americans arelike no, im not racist. Im not a bad person but thats actually not how we should understand racism or an even antiracism and these are descriptive terms. They describe what the person is doing at any given moment and the reason why this is critical is because see an example. You have an abolitionists when who they would emphasize people like William Lloyd garrison would say things like and call for immediate emancipation area that slavery is horrible. We should not live another day. In those moments they were being antiracist. William lloyd garrison and other white abolitionists sometimes in the very next moment would say the reason it should end is because its so evil and its so evil that it is literally made black people into brutes. So we need to not only free them but civilize them. That very next moment they were being racist. They were essentially like slaveholders imagining these enslaved black people as subhuman. So in talking about how racist isnt an insult per se, its a changeable state of being. And its just a fact, its not necessarily a judgment. I think its really important because definition really then compels all of us to name and call out racism when we see it and i think that a lot of people and maybe especially white people feel uncomfortable calling things racist. Theyd rather say, wed rather say there Racial Disparities or racial inequities in the outcomes and thats true but its not the full truth. And in being unwilling to call something that is racist racist , we can do more harm than good. Can you talk about whythat is . Where it can lead to when we talk only about racial outcomes and not about the racist systems that created those outcomes. I think with anything, when were talking about human beings and when were talking about problems, it is absolutely critical to name problems for what it is and that, even if its a personality characteristic of one of us, the characteristic of americaor an institution , the first step in receiving treatment and it being remedied and it changing, is identifying the true problem. And i think its the same thing with racism. Its hard, particularly if we are self identifying our own ideas as racist or self identifying our country or our institution or our sector of society as racist, its hard which is why so many people in some institutions in so many societies refuse to grow and refuse to change because the first factor in that growth is recognizing the problem and so i just dont know how we as a nation can transform ourselves if we dont truly recognize the true source of this pain and that true source is racism. It looks like the r word. Its not the r word. Its not a purge or an intern. And its not the equivalent of an i dont like you. Indeed, someone by the name of Richard Spencer once said that. That he lectured to white people that racist is a pejorative term. Its the equivalent of saying i dont like you and he just so happens is a white supremacist and White Supremacists have been spreading those ideas particularly towards white people so that they will continue to deny their own racism so that those White Nationalist organizers can recruit them based ontheir racism. And also in not naming racism as racism and talking only about the outcomes, it can lead, it gives room for people to blame personal failings on the outcomes rather than the structural inequities racism that created those outcomes and i think in housing, when we talk about this as an example , we know that people of color are disproportionately low income and are disproportionately homeless. And then some see those outcomes and say well, its a result of personal failings and actually ben carson the secretary of hud today talked about how poverty is a state of mind and that kids should reform like he did. So he sees poverty as a personal failing so his proposals are about fixing character flaws in individual people when that so clearly and probably purposely misses Structural Racism that causes these disproportionate outcomes. So aside from ben carson i think there is now a broad understanding by many of us in the Housing Field that many past housing policies are racist. Redlining, subprime loans. A lot of other housing policies fell more into the race neutral or race blind, colorblind category and ultimately they also do equally or if not more harm to people of color so can you talk a little bit about or give us examples of how race neutral policies and actually harm people of color and perpetuate Racial Disparities . In the 1960s and certainly by the 1970s, that is when a lot of affirmative action policies were put in place. And the racist reactions to affirmative action policies that were actually leading to reductions in racial inequities from state contracts to admissions and highly selective colleges and universities, their reaction was to create this framing of a race neutral policy versus a race conscious policy area they created this idea that a policy that has no racial language in it , is race neutral and not racist and a policy like an affirmative action policy that has racial language in it is reversed racist or racist. And in fact, when you look at the history of american racism, the vast majority of policies that americans collectively considered now to be racist did not have any raciallanguage in the. So you mentioned of course the housing policies, we can go to boating policies and literacy tests to grandfather clauses did not have any racial language in them. Even the u. S. Constitution itself which essentially made it such that enslaved people were 3 5, there was no racial language so just because a policy does not have any racial language and it does not mean it is antiracist. So again if were thinking about policies as either racist orantiracist , the frame of a race neutral or a race conscious policy falls to the wayside and we can lace that framing with if a policy is leading to racial inequities, then its racist area if a policy is leading to Racial Equity, its antiracist and the reason why for many people who are supporting racist policies, the reason why they want us to conceive of this idea of a race neutral policy is because they do not want racist and antiracist policies defined based on their outcomes cause if we define all policies as racist , antiracist based on their outcomes and they then will have the burden of proof, proving that their policies somehow is not racist as opposed to us as we do now. And as far as im concerned you need antiracist policies leading to equities and justice and let me just say very quickly also, when you have a racial inequity, theres only two causes. Either its to provoke a policy that is favoring the disfavor in particular racial groups for its because theres a thing wrong or even right with a particular racial group. If youre a policymaker like ben carson, you and your not instituting policies that are leading to inequities, i should say equity or justice or you dont want to be blamed for the persistent inequities under the administration, then youre pointing to the only other option which is this the problem is the people,not my policy. How do we create antiracist housing and homelessness policies from the start . Where do we start and how do we create these policies can correct or even achieve Racial Equity . Id suggest first and foremost figuring out the true source of the problem. Meaning what are the racial inequities and so collecting that not only the sort of quantitative data but even the qualitative data area speaking to the people to truly seek to understand the source of their housing harms. So once you have a clear and consistent and sophisticated and complex understanding of the problem, then from there, then from the evidence and research and the data or from the stories of low income people , you can then get policies based on that research or i should say create policies based on that research that have the capacity to alleviate the harm that has been more or less expressed through that resource and then they become test cases. In other words admission policies. Offer these policies reducing racial inequities and if they dont, then we shouldnt also blame the people, we should go back to the drawing board and innovate new antiracist policies and keep testing policies in different places based on different circumstances until we have a sense of what policies work or we use policies that actually are working in certain cities than others. So theres so much that we can apply that to now especially with covid19 and with new resources. Going to communities to recover so certainly were seeing a tremendous amount of Racial Disparity in covid19 and in who gets sick, who dies, who loses their jobs, who is harmed so you created i think very recently a covid19 racial data tracker. Can you talk about the project and what you hope to achieve with it, what you are planning sofar. So we started calling for states to release racial Demographic Data on covid19 patients in early april. At the time only a handful of states had released breakdowns of was being affected by race and who was being killed by the second week of april, more and more space releasing this Demographic Data and there was no place. The federal government was not presenting and collecting this data so my colleagues at the Antiracist Research and policy center partnered with the covid19 tracking project to begin collecting the data and ultimately with the efforts to present the data and we, our site went live thismorning. But not only did we want to sort of collect and present all of the racial Demographic Data, weve been able to compile the most comprehensive data sets available. We also have to build a network of people in different states who are calling for this data. And who are continuing the call to this data because some states have only released infections and others have not released debts and were finding that in state after state, particularly in the midwest and certainly in the southeast, black people are disproportionately dying of covid19. Were finding in states like new mexico and montana that nati