taking what bush did-- >> host: a blueprint. >> guest: so, i think there is a lot of things they can do. for candidates, transition operation is something you want on the side. >> host: separate. >> guest: they need to coordinate time to time like clay johnson, for example, dealt with karl rove and karen hughes to say well, i will meet you to tell you what i'm doing. because you don't want conflicts between those because the worst is when political people think here they are working hard for nothing, eating big macs and the dollar menu. the transition people have got all the lists of the positions and they will appoint other friends. that is what you want to avoid. >> host: with someone who has had the privilege to serve in a white house and serve the american people, i really applaud you and am grateful for this very serious and interesting and revealing book. "before the oath" how george bush and barack obama managed a transfer of power, which it successful transition and i was struck by your optimism and i hope that the current president and our next president to be heeds your good advice and counsel. >> guest: i think they will because one thing about presidents that unite them as they care about the institution of the presidency. >> host: they do. >> guest: that's how they leave it. >> host: that is the right 01st in a him. martha, it has been a pleasure. >> guest: thank you very very much. >> that was afterwards, but tvs signature program in which authors at the latest nonfiction books are interview. watch past afterwards program online at book tv.org. >> pulitzer prize-winning critic recalls growing up among the blackley in america. next, and book tv. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] >> good evening. good evening. i am anthony brown, a faculty associate here and the chair of the department of africa and puerto rican latino studies. it is in this capacity that i have the distinct pleasure of welcoming you to hear that this evening and delivering a short introduction. before i do that i want to thank the staff here at roosevelt house. in particular, they rosenfeld, and cindy. no wealth who have all worked tirelessly to make sure that we have first-rate programming here at this institution. tonight as we know we have a special guests, professor margo jefferson and she will be speaking in conversation with karen hunter about her memoir, "negroland: a memoir" and this is part of our fall program series here. margo jefferson is a pulitzer prize winning critic, a staff writer at the "new york times" at newsweek and her reviews and essays have appeared in new york magazine, vogue, and many other publications. her other book entitled on michael jackson was published in 2006. as a sociologist who studies race, i wanted to briefly offer some-- negro land is pitifully written and a very important contribution to the relative dearth, if you will of serious writing about the black upper class. media and scholarly attention have almost exclusively focused its attention on the experiences of the black poor and working classes at the expense of the black upper class and i might add a class that has existed, we can document at least since the mid- 1800s. this early upper class-- lawyers, doctors, onto manures during the time of slavery through jim crow in the south and in the north persisting despite the fact of segregation in cities like new york and elsewhere. this group of african americans have about history of organizations and activities that distinguish it from any other classes within the black community as well as the white upper class. contrary to conventional understanding, the black community has often and always been differentiated particularly around and along lines of class and social status. historically, i see this book in conversation with a number of african-american writers, many of whom are referenced in the book. certainty including wd the voice and his conceptualization of the talented comic if franklin frazier's work, many of james baldwin's writings, mary for tiller's work, black picket fences, lawrence oden graham's book, are kind of people and perhaps most recently sag harbor. the-- they all engage the complex sensibilities around aspiration, ambition, achievement, anxiety as well as notions of responsibility that impact this group. the black 1%, if you will, has not existed without controversy within the black community. issues of classism, color is him, snobbery and the internalization of dominant and white notions of respect ability and beauty have at times been contentious. for some, its members are a success story. a group that has made it despite racism advancing their race in the cause a better race relations. they have been praised and admired especially in the late 19th and early 20th centuries as representing the best and brightest of the race. as well as a class that could most easily develop relations with whites. they have also been critiqued, especially since the publication of cartagena whitson's 1930s book, the miseducation of the negro. a favorite target of malcolm x and richard wright questioned their notions of appropriate blackness. as professor jefferson mentions in the book, the black consciousness movement of the 1960s challenged ideas regarding the conceptualization of appropriate blackness and inherit denigration of black culture and aesthetics that often occurred. many of these are massively addressed by professor jefferson in the book with astonishing candor, humor and wit. she do mystifies and dispels romanticized conception of black upper-class life. lastly, given the racial complications we witnessed ferguson with respect ability of politics with emphasis on appropriate model class behavior has reemerged as an issue in the black community. i would argue negroland provides us with ample reason for caution. to nice program will be an interview format. our interviewer, karen hunter, is a professor in the department of film and media studies here at hunter college. she's a pulitzer prize-winning journalist, radio host and author of many many books. professor hunter will ask questions or roughly about 35 minutes followed by a question-and-answer time. we ask that you come directly to your questions during that time. [laughter] >> i will now turn the program over to professor karen hunter. [inaudible] >> thank you. >> you are so welcome. >> i read the book and now i have to live up to it. to have to pass the microphone? can you hear me? good evening everyone. i want to thank you for writing the book. as i read it, i struggled as a black woman reading some of these historical passages, reading some of your very point it an honest depictions of this place called negroland, and i think it sparked a conversation that i had with myself that hopefully we will all have tonight. but, want to start with why negroland? you start off by saying i call a negroland because i find negro a word of wonders glorious and terrible. a word will runaway slave posters, per social construct and streetcorner for, a tone of language word with meaning shifting and setting and context shift as history twists, lurches, advances and stagnates as capital letters appear to enhance dignity as other arise to challenge its primacy. i call it negroland because negro dominated our history for so long because i lived with its meaning for so long because they were essential to my first discovery of what race meant or as we now say how race was constructed. this is like poetry. i wanted to know, first of all negroland, a memoir by margo jefferson, why did you write this book? >> you know, i say a little later on that i may chronicler, and allergist, and inventor all of the above. i was born in 1947. my mother died at last year 98. i wanted to really record a particular way of living as a person of color, as a person taking great pride in being in this as my mother once very wisely said what i said well we upper-class because someone had asked me this at school and she said, well, we are considered upper-class negros. we are considered upper-middle-class americans and their many white people who just want to consider as negros. so, i wanted to capture all of those distinctions and negotiations and certain-- surtees at the same time that uncertainties were going on everywhere. always identity being confronted and confounded. i wanted to get the rituals of a world that still exists, but that is not in the same way and that's why i had to use that word. land, by land i mean literally the geographical boundaries that we all know perfectly well in a city that had to do with middle class, ethnicity, race, but also that sense that we were between, we were bordered on one side by the large world of blacks, on the other side by white people some of whom we knew, most of whom we didn't. also, a land is a mythic space. anyone who has had to leave their homeland. you know, know that it's in your heart and your brain and it shapes your unconsciousness as well as your conscious, so i wanted that sense, also. >> as you are discussing negroland at that offense that in many ways you open a window that very few people get to peek into and i felt on some level when you were telling stories that have been secret to a mainstream audience and as i look in this audience many people have never been to negroland. not the negroland you grew up in and i'm like why are you telling semisecret in here about what's going on in our culture, in our community. >> i'm not by any means the first. >> you do it more than the others. >> novels, short stories, plays a little better. i had to struggle with that and then i thought because the pressure and this is not just the way i grew up or when i grew up. you belong to a group that is discriminated against whose value is always being debated, you can be black, you can be a woman, some sense of protecting your reputation is always there. was that democrats no, please, because you are always contemplating and confronting how a stereotype might jump up and hit you and finish you off or how you might in body the stereotype so you are taught to be very careful about saying or doing anything that gets prejudice as a means to say or bigoted people ammunition and part of that is you don't tell family secrets that are not flattering. of family and a sense of your people as well as your immediate family. but, i thought i could be as a writer and interesting for memoir because i was also interested in what a memoir can do-- and conflict almost with i am telling my story. i almost called this the subtitle was almost a cultural memoir because it is the story of a culture and the story of a individual, a personality within that. if it were a novel i would then believe character, but absolutely-- and don't knock over classes in public. absolutely, in this dramatized and reflected upon context. >> that was my struggle as i read it because you took us through a historical depiction of negroland and you talk about black slaves owning slaves, which we have seen it-- >> that wonderful novel. >> and i struggled with that book, to be honest with you. so, i'm going through this and i'm going through divorce his talented 10-- >> and later his critique a. >> and evolution out of this notion that there could be somehow this grand group of people who could oversee the rest of black folk to teach us how to be. so, take us through the work that you put into making sure that we had historical references and how you discover them because there were some things have been there i had never heard of before and i read a lot. >> i had a huge shelf of books, the most direct were several historical and several books of history on so-called black elite. they had various titles. i had book on chicago history. i went back to, i think it was an ira berlin book on i think it was called masters without slaves. it's about blacks in south carolina, the privileged class, many of whom were-- not many of whom, but some of whom were slaveowners. general black history, sociology, there were certain texts i knew i had to take up. of course, you have to take up to boys, the devil devil, justice and the talented 10, so there are certain sociological text that to take up a franklin frazier, black sociology i read etiquette books, manners books to remind myself of these rules and regulations. i read about housing or read at books on housing. you have to cast you know, your eye in many many many directions and it make sure anxious because on thoughtful i have a scholarly, but i am not a formal scholar. my training as a critic helped because i'm used to going in a lot of directions, but that chapter took a long time because i wanted it to be dynamic, but not drab, but not simplistic. >> i thought it was fascinating how you went from first person to third person so many ways you're going in and out as a writer taking us through this journey. >> sometimes on the foldable character and that also interested me in terms of memoir, the form of that, how many personae are populating the page, but also it seemed honest with the devil and sometimes triple identities that i was confronting. i keep using the word negotiations and there is that cryptic also of class, race and gender. you just have to change your position and your tone and your literary strategy. >> tell us the first time little margot understood that there might be something different about her family dynamic or her family culture as it relates to other blacks when there was that position of the negroland at the jefferson looting and perhaps the rest of like america? >> well, two things that really stay my mind, the neighborhood that we lived in for a good part of my childhood. i was increasingly-- >> in chicago? >> yes, in chicago. i was increasingly aware of what i wasn't calling what was the path of the block that was very quote respectable and the other half at the block that was starting to as my parents thought it slip down. i write in the book about being very interested in the girls at the downward side of the block and went into play double dutch with them and these little complex and event after a little fight with them overhearing my parents say i think we are going have to move this neighborhood is going down, that kind of thing. also, this is not a pleasant memory, but i registered it often when we all took trains in the 50s. we would take trains. i remember at the train station, the red caps, many of them were children that were among my father's patients, so they would say hello, doctor ushered doctor jefferson. yes, my father was being gracious and they were being maybe a little deferential. >> a chasm? >> i didn't see it as a cow has him at that moment because it was not unpleasant, but i knew there were distinctions. >> how did that make you feel? >> it depends entirely on the tone. my grandmother owns several buildings and they were hard-won. my mother's mother, and she would collected the rent herself. i once went with her, and she was very preemptory with one of the tenants. i don't have the rent this week. >> i'm really not interested in what you don't have. so, oh, my gosh and then i had to go home and take to my mother -- i do it my grandmother. >> you had never seen that side of her. >> margo jefferson, come back here. she's my grandmother. and my mother acknowledge that, to her credit. she said yes, i had seen that and it's uncomfortable. it's unpleasant, but then we didn't go any further. >> there's a lot of distinctions made, not just class, but complexion, hair texture, body shape, nose shape in this book that some of us reading it who aren't from the community may not understand that there are these distinctions made and you deal with them in a very-- just a matter fact. you list characteristics in a way that doesn't put us in a position to have to judge, but you do kind of walk away with somewhat of a judgment. at least i did. >> i wanted it to be laid out very clinically, so you had a look at the data and evidence, even if that moments there were certain gallows. >> tell us for those who have not read the book-- you should get the book. is called negroland, by the way. what are some of the characteristics of the people who live in negroland? >> the desired? >> yes. >> this is particularly important, you know, something to be insisted upon most particularly if you are nigro. these are traits, exaggerations and intensification's up things, i think, in a lot of women of any group will recognize in terms of fashion magazines and hairstyles and pretty little noses and what, but if you were white you are still white even if you didn't have the exact no. we were taking it for granted in some way that this is your world , so the backdrop of the appropriate look was you belong to a people who many of whom hope are hopelessly beyond-- without this appropriate look and at any moment you're constantly working to strive to not have that look, so at any moment something about your looks, your face, your body might slip back into that absolutely irrefutably undesirable character. it was all very specific. at best, you looked essentially like a lost. there were also-- there was a lot of room for the kind of mediterranean. perhaps mexican or latin american, that kind of look. that meant you could have curly hair if it was-- sort of like jane russell's hair. there is a reference that some people still get. that was a very good look, but it's even nicer if you looked kind of like grace kelly. then your lips should not be-- the lips we now see that our soap popular, the collagen, no, those first came in with french movies. a nigro with full lips, which were always called thick, out of the question. a broad nose. of course, i am a respectable light brown, but i went brown. then, there are many shades below. my sister was shot-- several shades browner and we were both extremely where. though, this is not something my parents in particular were upset about, but you cannot not be aware and again geographical distinctions. my sister would swear that my parents friends who were-- would come to chicago from southern states like south carolina or virginia, they were the went who she was quite sure were a little nicer to me. i don't think she was necessarily wrong. >> did it shape your choices of mates? your sister dated a white man. >> that was quite a little narrative. actually, mostly dated black men, married black men, divorced him and as a young divorcee in new york, began to date from a wide range. also, we had hit the 70s and-- >> free love, but the question i'm asking, where the conversations in your home about when you bring abdomen home, he's too dark or his lips are too thick or does he come from the right family? >> there were always comments in my home. there was always assessments being made in my home and other homes. this is partly, it seems to me, this is-- call it a middle class and upper middle-class and upper-class, in some way it is always policing itself. policing its boundaries and borders, however those doctrines are passed on. they might be done very tastefully and suddenly or they might be quite bold if that is the definition of class privilege. so, those were the forms it took, everything from who are his parents to, well, he's not very attractive meaning-- but, he's doing, you know, he's doing well in school. >> were there things that could get you into negroland if you didn't possess the physical attributes? >> men always had it easier if they were achieving. you could be very brown and you could acquire, this is the male story and much lighter wife and actually accomplishment, education, a certain amount of money, good manners. >> you describes harry davis junior-- >> when i'm watching him on tv. >> and the commentary because there is always commentary when there are black people on television in your home. >> yes, everyone would hover around. >> it was not about the talent. it was always about here-- >> it was all about how they carry to themselves. were they being suitably dignified or at least displaying their talent in a way that was not clownish. but, also there weren't that many blacks in the 50s on tv, so it was also a mark up, where we going in the larger world, how are we-- we got to see ourselves on the larger stage of the american culture. >> who was it an embarrassment back then to negroland? >> certainly people like the old-time movie people. hattie mcdaniels, tricky. you could laugh, but it was very very tricky. damaged a visit junior was an embarrassment because when he was playing around with dean and frank sinatra and the boys he could get very ingratiating. they would pick him up and tell strange little race jokes and it was all full of calm lottery, but he was more often the butt of the jokes and he needed them. he always laughed harder than everyone else, you know. >> as i'm reading negroland, i'm thinking about rosewood, florida , and greenwood, tulsa oklahoma, places that would absolutely pass muster with negroland, but despite all of the wealth and success in those places and there were dozens of them throughout the country, towns, hold towns completely full of folk that you write about in this book, they did not escape the horrors of racism. >> those towns made them targets in a way because that towns were so easy to attack and so easy to get angry at. >> how do you reconcile that as we fast board today? we saw last week james at blake, tennis player, harvard graduate, well spoken, great family. i think his mom is white and he is definitely part of negroland, waiting in front of a wealthy hotel minding his business and he ends up on the concrete in handcuffs. we go back a couple years to skip gate, professor, definitely part of negroland and he's married to a white woman trying to get into his own home and he's arrested and that becomes the thing where the president has a beer with the police officer. >> yes. >> clearly, with all of this insulation and on the upward mobility and aspirations to be accepted, at the end of the day you were just negros still. >> you know, my shoe are in a protected space you are .. get them away. but this person looks like this. it is very much the same thing and a political and social and economic frame. and it happens to women, two, and girls not just guys. >> no doubt. but is the role of negro land to a negro the negro? as i am reading the conversations about blacks owning slaves, andslaves, and the way in which the relationship was commanding you talk about having, for a better word a made. >> what you said was cleaning lady. >> a cleaning lady. >> she can twice a week. >> came in through the front door. >> actually, she did. >> these are important distinctions. >> they are. >> the navigation of no space for people whose domestic world has been part of the only thing blacks could do at certain points in history to now have a domestic worker in your home and to not treat -- and there is a chasm economically. >> absolutely, and culturally they're would be a distinction. >> how do you navigate that space? >> how do i navigate it? >> as a young girl. >> well, my mother and father instructed us, more my mother because my father was at the office, they instructed us basically in the navigation. there are certain rules. we end had to make up our own. we were not allowed. mrs. blake was not allowed to make up our bed. >> what is the point? >> i know. >> doing the housework. still eating our lunch in the kitchen. and my mother'sinto my mother's mind it was partly an acknowledgment that she had had grandparents who had been in service in st. louis to white families. sheshe said to me once, i love those women dearly. you know, a certain kind of -- certain degree of politeness to her was a way of not betraying them. you know, it is a small thing. it is better than nothing. i wanted to buy exposing, documenting, analyzing the contradictions and the discomforts, but also the little satisfactions and pleasures. i do some television. >> have to read it for yourself. >> i wanted to explore and expose and look at all of the -- i wanted to really look at all of the intricacies of privilege, especially privilege that is asserting itself. and yet is provisional. it also seems to me very american even though speaking about a very particular thing. it seems to me a very american negotiation. >> refreshing. >> contradiction always. >> always. we live in a culture right now where races unfortunately at the forefront of a lot of our conversations. >> class is huge. >> probably more important to have a conversation about than race. race is a red herring. >> a red herring that is used to keep people divided for the economic purposes. >> i promise. >> as i'm getting in, what strikes me is that it is, if you took away the race, just how people with money behave most of the time. so it's really about money, money, privilege. and even when there is not that much money involved it is about all of the accoutrements of privilege. >> you have good manners. maybe you come from aa distinguished family that has fallen on hard times. there is always some way to define it, to claimant, to insist on it and display it. and that is all fascinating to me. and howme. and how that lives on inside you as your circumstances change and how you struggle with it. what parts of it you are content to live with. i want to that series of dramas to be played out. >> is a person that ran away from negro land myself. don't tell on me. as a person that ran away with struck me is you build this kind of segregated fortress that we hope translates you from the larger mainstream society. everybody desires to be better than somebody. and that seems to be the quests. whether it's the american quest, i don't know how other countries do it. >> that's how you get to the top of the food chain. >> the possessions internal and external necessary to get that recognition. the perks, the respect, and for us there is this vast spectrum. you wanted to be treated nicely in a restaurant. new line sales woman. if she's white or black to be suitably differential which is not deeply attractive, but there you are. you keep going along a continuum. you want to be treated like a first-class citizen. you want just and honorable things as well. you want not to be closed out of the university. you want, if you are a responsible political person , and there were those, you want better things. more social justice for blacks as a whole. it runs from large and/or the things to patty and snobbish things. yeah. >> i want to talk about that in a 2nd as it relates to wv do boys. that is why i think race is irrelevant.irrelevant. we talk about so many people who literally walked away from being black. >> the ones who passed. >> passing. and your uncle walked away and then came back. >> my great uncle. >> talk about your uncle walked away. great uncle lou shade. >> great uncle lucius, i really knew very little about him,him, in fact nothing about him until i was in 5th grade. my parents,parents, at that point i was at a mostly white school. a cluster of blacks, but i was already having a little trouble negotiating because one of my classmates was white. i suddenly realized when she and her parents showed up at the same events that my parents went to a knew their world. i was working this through. my parents suddenly announced are great uncle them on my father's side, coming over to dinner and then they had to tell us that he had been living passing is a white man all these years. well, why was he coming back? and i don't know that the story all emerged at the same time because we were very polite. all right. high. very nice to meet you. it turned out he had retired from his job. >> he had retired from being a white man. >> that was a lot of work. >> i need a rest. i need a rest. so he moved back into a black neighborhood. over the years periodically he had seen my father, and the negotiation was always my cousin, their cousin million who is very fair, uncle lucius would get in touch with her, and they would meet at a white restaurant, then she would call the dr. member of the family and say, someone would like to come visit you. lucius is in town. or we will come by the house. so he came back. we had dinner with him. i really don't remember much else. i think we saw him a few more times. a few years later my father said, uncle lucius has gotten so difficult. he is always calling and accusing all of his black relatives of neglecting him. if you know anything about psychoanalysis, it's kind of sublime. please neglecting? so i don't really. i did not do this in the book, but the fact is, i don't really know when he died or any such thing. there are a few pictures of him. but i don't remember much. what i do remember is the premise and passing which was accepted by these older generations, the premise was, you are doing this because you are going to find more opportunities. you are -- in many practical ways you will have a better life. whether you are my uncle, cousin, twin brother. yes, they're could be that. i'm not going to tell. i am proud of you in some way. i have mixed feelings. whiteness, pretty ridiculous. my parents were a little disdainful. and here is where it comes in. in essence they said, if you're going to bother to that, he had been a traveling salesman. he certainly needs to be doing better. you know, again, they did not have that. i'm a dr.. my brothers are judges. living as a white man. what a waste of your time. so all of this is always going on. another cousin who had risen higher in the world. i just use initials in the book. >> yes, you do. >> john eddie had been his southern name. i'm sure when he moved into business in the north he became john edward no doubt. >> and that is what i think ultimately when i walked awayi walked away and is trying to understand what is it you want to leave us with , i was left with this notion that is really just about wanting to be better than and wanting to have the most that you can get out of this american dream by any means necessary. if it means sectioning yourself off and creating a whole subculture within a culture that puts you at the top of the food chain, so be it. is that the message you want to leave us with? >> that is part of really the examining of, you know, the structures of, i hope, race, class, gender. but i also wanted to look at how an individual, how a particular life -- it's mine, bs bringing that particular life. here it is on this, you know, elaborate cultural, social, political map. how is one shaped? how are you made? how much freedom do you have to make yourself? to leave some of it behind? i wanted that, what is it like? you know, for a single psychic to engage with all of this, you know, and yes, you are solitary come on your own, but the world is constantly making you, your family, your larger group, your race, ethnicity, class, gender, how are you being made in the made and remade and what is the cost? now everybody has there own cost. but that was key. >> and the responsibility, wb do boys talks about the talented ten in the way that is the responsibility of the talented ten. >> every race, he says, has its superior class. no race is without its 1st rate leaders who basically, they are the ones, the group, the race, or the nations takes his reputation on and, you know, we, too, use at the start of the 20th century, we have our talented 10th, and they are supposed to both exemplified intellectual, social accomplishment, moral because he was aa victorian, and they are supposed to call by example but also through action will lead the race forward. many years later delivered a speech to a posh black fraternity which was not as severe critique of him. i did not fully realize, though i wondered how easily these accomplishments, this privilege, the status that i'm talking about to turn inward, become narcissistic, and basically, you, you know, become a question of self-congratulation and self-satisfied advancement, only for one's own. >> did they dropped the ball? >> some of them did. not all of them. julian bond died recently. i could do good examples, but you know, as a class there is much to be criticized. you know, as i say, there were things in that world that i loved dearly and that it gave me, and i cannot lie about that be virtuous. at the cost of honesty, but yes. in crucial ways they dropped the ball turned away from the ball to pursue their own lives. >> youlives. >> you write that i am obsessed with james weldon johnson's 1933 diagnosis of his condition, and the condition that you write about i want you to talk about, and it deserves repeating. cramping limitations and buttressed obstacles in addition to those that must be met by youth in general, how judicious. talk to us about the impact of this james weldon johnson >> i found that as an adult, of course, but it resonated with me because the passage goes on to talk about how the parents -- and again, this is something that spreads out to any family in which older generations have had a great suffering, great -- a real burden of historical oppression, suffering, whatever, how does this pass itself onto the child? and often it's unconscious, but every parent has to think about how much despair the negro child the full knowledge of the burdens of discrimination, oppression, hatred. and how much you prepare them. and he said either course. can lead to -- and he uses the phrase spiritual disaster. and there are so many of us, and i do not only mean blacks, though that is what i am writing about in this book. this historical legacy and burden that our parents have perhaps imposed too much on us. the parentus. apparently talks. no. this is what these people will do. i had a friend, child of a holocaust holocaust survivor whose mother used to lock yourself into the bathroom have threatened to kill herself regularly. what do you do with these things? what do you make of them? what do they make of you? the other thing is, you know,know, how do the parents -- the parents have inherited that from their parents. they are negotiating constantly with these legacies and with the possibility has they see you advocating a spiritual disaster for themselves, too. so it is very complicated and kind of heartbreaking. i amheartbreaking. i am thinking less about myself at that moment that about my parents. >> there was a recent study of holocaust survivors that show that trauma is passed down genetically. when i was reading that i was thinking about that, the trauma that was passed down during just -- and i say just, but it was a short point of time. i'm saying. >> no, time. >> ten years. >> and it is not a comparison. >> okay. >> the larger point is that historically whatever trauma happens to a group of people , it does get passed down, whether you speak it to your children or not. it is in their dna, the responsibility for the parent to prepare the child for what is going on inside themselves. >> and if the parent even if the parent has been relatively sheltered if they know the history of the people, then that is there. there. also where is the child growing up, how are the threats constituting? as long as your status, your protections are not secured, you know, that burden, that trauma. i am amazed at that hasn't. i think more psychoanalysts maybe have been working on that than we think. i am amazed that that has not been talked about much more in terms of the history of oppressed groups. >> you have covered an awful lot and i could literally talk to you are leaving and spend a lot of time with you it has been a pleasure, but i want to make sure that we get people who have questions involved and asking. >> and we have about 20 minutes. >> i'm not the timekeeper. >> he should know. >> and who is facilitating? okay. all right. absolutely. the man in the wonderful redshirt. >> i would not have worn it had i remembered i would be here tonight. how much connection is there between negro land and non- negro land in dealing with something like that james blake situation last week? and i am wondering if the child of negro land is less able to comprehend that than, say, can he see. his son would be able to deal with that and understand that. >> you know, again, it is a good question to ask coming out of the james weldon johnson quote and what we were just talking about, this complex balance of protection and preparation, warning. james blake, i can't address. interestingly to me, the newspapers were identifying him as biracial, which he is, but that is quite recent that they use that identification. he has been described as black before, african-american. i don't know what he was taught or not, but once you also become a celebrity you are living in a very sheltered world. so hard to say. very, very hard to say. it is going to be more of a shock protections you have had the more shocking it is going to be because some part of you, whatever you are being taught in school, by your parents, the child in you has always been protected at some part of you is going to think surely this will not stop. and that is not a criticism. i know i was still have that reaction. >> was now i'm talking. >> and i think of james blake, it would have ended a lot more horrifically. his incredulous, am i actually on the ground? whereas somebody that experienced this on a regular basis, it might have ended up because this guy came out of nowhere. they might have ended in a fighta fight that would have probably ended in the death of god for bid something. negro land protected him. >> it did. >> it took him thatthem that long to figure out. >> and he was easily the protection of in addition to look at how i'm talking. his fame protect him. you know, and good for him, after a few minutes of protected him. he said that himself, to his credit. some officer, someone said wait a minute. and he has been very good about making clear, yeah, it is good that it happened to me because it is calling attention to people who don't have my resources when it happens to them. >> wonderful. we will bring in mike to you. >> to the gentleman in the bright redshirt. yes. i really like your question, but i will say that his son experience of being african-american in america is a lot more mild. he is protected by class, education. >> so the same question, mr. for experience in negro land differed from that of your parents point in what ways are you more innocent and protected, in what ways are you more -- >> very good question. >> wiley. >> all right. my parents put me in a progressive, largely but not only white school when i was in kindergarten. in a certain way, again, it was within its limitations progressive. they did not suddenly sent me to the equivalent of the military academy. there was a space in that school, and you know, it was a space in the school where four and five -year-olds were making friends. there were moments. my moments. my book is partly about the disconnects and dissonances, but there was some space bar something that i would call taking each other for granted as personalities. we all knew we were very smart. we all knew we were being constituted treated well because of that. you can start early in as generous and environment as society will permit at that point. that already was something my parents chose and give me aa comfort level which is a form of whining us. you know, to move into the world with. you know, they made sure that we, you know, got all of the cultural pleasures and reports and duties, you know, does not want to take ballet lessons or whatever. but they wanted us,us, all of this to feel, you know, like part of our world. and like our legacy, our lineage. they had to balance it with making sure we got enough black history. we arethere going to see the catherine donovan truth and the royal ballet. and they also had there own. they were much more suspicious of white individual people with good reason. but they also, my parents, there were things that they just loved. my mother probably could have been a writer. you know, and she read to me all the time. books and love literature. my father had been a jazz musician and the classical musician college and grad school. jazz was myis my legacy. going to the symphony was my legacy, too. of course i am simplifying it a bit, but they made sure we had all the things. they have both grown up with less money and less access. their parents were very ambitious and have had -- both of my grandmothers had gone to a little school in the south. everything was much more difficult. and they, you know, sheltered us and prepared us in the best way. i we will tell you a gender story from my father that shows you the meticulousness. he said at one point, you know, it is important that we make sure and take the girls out regularly to very nice restaurants because when they are old enough to have boyfriends and sutures, i don't want them being so naïve that they are blown off of their feet. so every little detail was attended to. you take what you take for granted. eveneven as it can also make you naïve and somewhat spoiled. and i was not exempt from both those things. the instances -- insistence that we achieve did not stop us from being total breast that day. >> the beautiful lady in the shirt with her hand up. >> thank you for that. two beautiful ladies of there. thank you so much for coming in speaking with us. i am finding this fascinating. given the title of your book , why is your audience lacking in major numbers of african americans? >> well, my audience tonight i don't know. >> this is a basic demographic. normal, pretty normal. been here a couple times. >> it depends upon where one appears. >> i have been getting. now i am starting to sound dependent. i have been getting e-mails and responses and whatever's from all manner of black and people of color, but i think this is probably the roosevelt house. you know, i want the book to connect to people other than my group of black people. >> is this on the bestsellers list? >> 's number 20. [applause] >> that's good. >> a questiona question about income inequality. we all no it is the buzzword. what has happened to negro land as a percentage of the population from 20 years ago to where we are today? what do you think it will be like 20 years from now? >> well, we couldwell, we could be heading economically in this country and politically for just major -- come 20 years20 years i can't say. it happened. negro land has integrated a great deal which really started in the late 60s when suddenly job opportunities and training programs opened up for particularly blacks, privileged blacks. you know, so they're could be, you know, a citizen of negro land who is the head of american express or blah blah blah. it is really expanded its reach in terms of being a portion, a population, a world a world within what one might call white land. >> would jay-z and beyoncé go they're? >> jay-z and beyoncé i would need to be called café society. >> okay. >> show business. >> michelle obama before the white house. >> no. no. i take that back. michelle obama when she was growing up in what was a very solid working-class, lower middle-class family. number but,. no. but, you know, the world being what it is we know perfectly well that once she and her brother got to princeton and once she got very good jobs in chicago. >> got drafted in. >> yeah. >> okay. wait for the microphone. wonderful person here. >> here. >> hello. i am curious command i have not read the book yet, how much explicit preparation that your family give for interacting with white folks? the larger more hostile world. we were given particularly as we got older each year and particularly when as adolescents approached we were given talks, warnings. some of them took the form of white people will always think, therefore you must behave well. the piano teacher who enters about five us into some national penn of teachers front contest. we are getting that. you youthat. you are also overhearing these talks. so it is a combination of all of the things that you are taught and the in urgency of them and then those turn into specific warnings and then as adolescents comes everyone is worried about interracial and sometimes enter religious dating. and i think all of the parents of everyone in my school, but certainly not the black parents sending out intense warnings. be careful, keep your distance. >> did you feel adequately prepared? >> for my life? >> my parents tried to raise me as a race this human being. >> i'm sorry what? >> as a race this human being in a white neighborhood. i guess i am just. >> race less, yeah. you are much younger. yeah. >> for me i felt completely unprepared. i got to school and kids were calling me the n-word. i had to go home and asked my dad what it meant. i have been curious about people who grow up in negro land and how they are prepared are if they had moments like that. >> both things. you are constantly being prepared, but some of thatit is not spoken. it is just the intensity have your manners and the demands placed on you.you. this book is partly a record of many little shots. again, the particular protection. there are always a series. and then how much do you tell your parents or when do you decide to hide that yourself? >> any other questions? >> and to piggyback on that, you werethat, you were raised with two sisters. >> yes. >> was the script different? would you know what the script would be if you had a brother? >> they would be more frightened for him and also more frightened for him and white world and be more frightened that he might be tempted to my you know, by an unsuccessful jay-z, by the glamour. this is how they would have put it. the glamour of the ghetto. >> the way you want to play double dutch down the street. >> in a tiny way, the boys had more license. be afraid of his possible actions and the perception. >> any other questions? >> we are going to get a microphone over to you. this wonderful person right here. >> i hope this is okay to ask because i want to ask you something personal about the voice intonation of negro land. i am an english professor. when i speak as sound like a person from queens. i do not have an upper-class accent. your accent, like we both like professors. i have an accident that marks me as not an upper-class person, like an outer borough person. you have a patrician accent. it is almost like not spoken now. what happens to the language of your grandparents who spoke southern where your parents probably did not have this patrician accent, and your accent is so upper-class patrician that it almost sounds like a contemporary eleanor roosevelt to me. [applause] >> it is an interesting question, andquestion, and i will get to it. you wanted to say something. >> i was struck by the differences in your speech in the two of you, saying that you are to five. >> all-purpose. >> i gathered. i gathered. and i wondered why. because as a person who grew up in negro land, i would never have been allowed to talk like that or play with people whose grammar was bad. >> my grammar is bad all the time on purpose. i was raised and rebelled and have been rebelling my entire life. i reject all of that. >> now. >> and i heard that exactly. that perfect. >> this was something that we all grappled with because, of course, we wanted to have black voices. my friends and i want and i wanted to have black voices, so we would practice them. they did not go over terribly well with my parents, but chicago did have a range. my mother spoke a lot like i do,, though i had a little career in the theater. >> but she could, she had a wonderful. the kind of genteel southern ms. miss. my father had a slight easy seven accent. chicago is full of people who emigrated from all manner of places. you get a lot. i wouldlot. i would say my parents having grown up much more and black worlds were much better at moving between black vernacular and standardized english than either my sister or i

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