Number one weakness. Christies biggest weaknesses hes a bully. Ridge gate is is number one asset is he did a good job of sandy and hes beloved. He doesnt care about politics and to get stuff done. These two issues are very important for him. Even if he is found not guilty so to speak as they go to the heart of his strength and his weaknesses. The number one asset is it the number one weakness. I was very mixed on his press conference. 20 minutes into it im thinking this is the best press conference in the history of politics. Why . Christie called it immediately so the scandal doesnt have legs. He was bold and tough. He answers any question directly that is what we want. Im sitting here thinking Teddy Roosevelt and truman would have done this. An hour later hes still there saying the same thing. An hour later, it was the longest press conference ever. What he showed me was that he seemed to be utterly without discipline and he probably doesnt listen anymore. If you want to end the scandal you dont stand for 108 minutes of repeating the scandal. 20 minutes to take the question, you are frank heads roll and you fire people and then you get off the stage. He needs to develop selfdiscipline. I thought it was sort of a psychologically interesting exercise. Christie is i think still the republicans best hope and i think is a legitimate candidate. Hes a centrist and a good fundraiser and he has household recognition. He is clearly a lot better candidate than rick santorum, the donald, michele bachmann, sarah palin and Governor Walker and so forth cities a much better candidate. Yes . [inaudible] [applause] i dont remind repeating that one. She said everyone would enjoy history more they had a professor like me. I will give you 20 bucks after my lecture. Its my mom. [laughter] so you know i love history. I grew up not far from gettysburg and valley forge so i suppose its genetic. I dont know. And i love the great leaders larger than life and as we learned in the war of 1812 its fascinating to read about the cowards and a lesson from the war of 1812 is a lesson in history that speaks to a solid time and that is this. If you take one or two folks out of that war you have a different outcome. Had to come sam brock lives much of what happened on the Canadian Border wouldnt have happened. If we didnt pick Paul Rensselaer and dearborn and why is everything named after these guys . [laughter] they must have donated a lot of money. If we had not picked those guys and if we would have picked Winfield Scott in zebulon pike canada would not have stayed. That is one of the remarkable twists and whats so exciting i think is every year i love the stories. Every year a story comes out that someone went to a yard sale in lincoln nebraska and they bought a painting for the frame and they get home and they tear the frame out, and tear the pending out and what did they find . A letter from ben franklin. Dont you love that . Every year this happens. We are still discovering unknown satellite camps from the holocaust. Six decades later with the worlds greatest scholars studying it, there are still secrets out there. History still has secrets. Warren hardings wife destroyed a lot of his letters. There is less we know about harding than any president of the 20th century. A year ago we found a heretofore letter from Mary Todd Lincoln a year before her husbands death. I love the letter. Even though the press tended to say its not much of a form i loved it because mary todd is writing in 1864. Shes having a big fancy white tie blacktie kind of gal at the white house and shes worried about a babysitter. Shes trying to find a babysitter for the youngest, the fourth boy tad. So in the middle of the civil war and the white house she needs to find a babysitter. I think thats the perfect duality. I love it and heres the person she is requesting to be her babysitter. A guy named Charles Forbes. One year later when lincoln is hit in fords theater Charles Forbes was the guard at the door tell me thats not freaky. So history, we dont know much about the war of 1812 by 450 pages down the first draft was probably 650 and im sure im scratching the surface of it. There is just so much out there but thanks for the kind words. One or two quick ones. [applause] tecumseh was shawnee but among many other tribes as well. Tecumseh had a rough upbringing. His tribe was sacked by another and he was raised by a chief from another tribe. His mother leaves him when he is young and moves away with another tribe. He is raised by an older brother he was killed by whites. Tecumseh has a rough upbringing. You might say he was schlepped around. He picks up skills from many different indians all of which would help him to later to be a great president. With that, i will hang out up here if you want to pick up a book or if you want to talk i will hang out up here so thank you everyone. [applause] if you listen to hiphop you are reminded they are 2. 5 Million People locked up. You can watch all these reality shows about real housewives and all these movies about vampires and the hobbits but you will never know that we lock up more people in the United States than any other country in the history of the world. In this encore booknotes presentation from 2002, law professor journalist and author frank wu discusses his book yellow. Or fester wu provides an overview of the official and unofficial policies that have shaped asianamerican history and identity in the United States. He also addresses asianamerican stereotypes like the model minority and illustrates how these concepts and others have damaged relations between communities. This is about an hour. Cspan frank wu, what is yellow all about . Guest thats a good question. Its well, its a book of questions, not answers. Im a law professor, so im much better at asking questions than i am at answering them. I wrote this book to try to provoke people to think for themselves, not to persuade them to think as i do. I wrote it to try to start dialogue about race and diversity and civil rights, and a dialogue thats different. Im trying to move us beyond black and white in two different ways. First, in a very literal way. Sometimes we talk about race as if everyone is either black or white, and thats it. And when you talk about race that way, you leave out, well, not just asianamericans. You leave out hispanics. You leave out thousands of people, millions of people of mixedrace background. Its as if they dont exist. And im suggesting it doesnt matter who you are, what your identity is, what your politics are, what sort of policies you think we should have, if you cant see yellow and brown and red and all the different shades, well, you leave out a huge proportion of the population in california, on college campuses, and in the future of our nation because its changing incredibly rapidly. But im also trying to move us beyond black and white in a different sense, in a figurative sense. Sometimes we talk about race as if, well, youve got villains on the one hand, sort of hardcore bigots, you know, who are doing bad things. And then youve got, you know, victims on the other hand. Now, we still do have villains. The kkk is out there. You see skinhead groups using web sites, you know, to try to bring the young to their hateful cause. So there are still villains out there. But sometimes its not just villains and victims. Sometimes we all have a responsibility, even if well, my family wasnt here when there were slaves. My family wasnt even here when there was jim crow. I grew up knowing that the n word was bad and, you know, i would certainly never use it, but i recognize that i have a greater responsibility, that its not just about am i someone who has malice in my heart toward people of other racial backgrounds, but rather, there are these tensions and problems that we have to address cooperatively and constructively, recognizing sometimes were all to blame. Sometimes none of us is to blame. You just have these situations where the people to be blamed well, theyre long dead and gone. Nonetheless, we still have this mess that we have to muddle through. So thats what its about. Cspan where does this title, yellow, come from . Guest well, i wanted to have a provocative title, and and you know, its a great dust jacket, i think. I owe a lot to basic books for having done it. Really, i joked the title should have been gray. It should have a dull, drab cover because its about how complex all these issues are. But yellow comes from the idea of taking something that was pejorative, you know, a name that was attached, a label, part of a stereotype, part of these images of the exotic oriental, something with not so nice connotations, and saying, you know, i can be proud of this. Im going to take yellow and claim it for myself. I you know, if other people are going to call me yellow, im going to say, hey, sure. I am yellow. And not only am i yellow, im proud of it, and im going to put it on the cover of my book. Cspan but where does that come from in history . Guest well, it comes from the idea that every person could be fit into this neat racial classification scheme. You know, now most biologists recognize race is, well, sort of a fiction. Its the kind of thing we make up. There arent clean, neat lines. A whole lot of people out there who are characterized as black, in fact, are more white than black. And there are a lot of people who are white, who we treat as white, who, in fact, have some black ancestry. And then these lines blur, and most of us share more genes than we know, and the differences are tiny. And the differences within racial groups are every bit as big as between racial groups. But there was a time not too long ago, 75 years ago, youd find the most respected scientists at Ivy League Schools had these elaborate tables. You know, they you know, there were these huge debates, academic debates, serious ones, over are there 19 groups or 73 groups . You know, and which you know, where do we put south asians . Where do we put, you know, this group or that group . Where are are they on top or on the bottom . There were hierarchies. And yellow was just one of those categories. Mongoloid was, you know, another category another one of those groups that they created. And thats gone by the wayside, in part because nazis had tables like that. They tried to look at the shape of your forehead or the slope of your nose and fit you in. And i think its important to recognize that we may be past these formal tables, but we still socially and culturally construct them. So that even if race is fictional, it has a social reality. It affects peoples lives. Cspan as you know, somebody who reads this book would be a little bit intimidated to ask you questions like, where are you from . Guest well, i would hope not. Where are you from . Is something we all ask everyone. Theres nothing wrong with. Cspan where are you where are you really from . Guest well, thats the question that causes the problem. Let me explain why. And i try and make it clear this is a book where im trying to explain things, and im not trying to complain about things im trying to explain whats wrong with where are you really from . You know, when strangers meet it could be at a dinner party or you youre a freshman in college, doesnt matter, or you start a new job everyone says, where are you from . Well, place people in a context people ask me that, and i say, well, i was born in cleveland, ohio, grew up in detroit, michigan, used to live in san francisco. Then i moved to washington, d. C. , about seven years ago, give a very detailed answer. Sometimes ill tell people every place ive lived in the past 10 years. They shake their heads and say, no, no, no. Thats not what i mean. I mean where are you really from . And that one word speaks volumes. Why . Well, we dont go around asking everyone that. I know. Ive asked the people who ask me this question right back, where are you really from . And they look at me all puzzled and say, what do you mean, where am i really from . I just told you im from iowa. Im an american. Thats exactly the point. They theyre just assured of their own identity, even as they assume well, what am i . Im a tourist, right . Must be a visiting student. Im a guest. Im eventually leaving. And so this where are you really from . Says im not a real american. Im not really who i say i am. Now, when i explain this, im always very careful to say theres nothing wrong. There there are people who recently arrived here from asia, not born in the u. S. , as i am, who want to be proud of that, want to say im from china. Let me tell you about it. Theres nothing wrong with that whats wrong is when we do this selectively and against someones will and we pigeonhole them that way. And it shows that were not colorblind because we dont ask everyone this. We ask people who are asian, people who are hispanic, people who are a little foreignlooking, a little funnylooking. And its not just this question it leads to more. Sometimes people say to me, oh, how do you like it in our country . And this is true. They say it less and less often now, but im still asked that. Or people say to me its as if theyre wondering, well, what province of chinas cleveland . They say, oh, when are you going home . Or ill give a speech, and someone whos very nice see, whats interesting about this, and im always careful to explain this its not mean people. Its not evil people. Sometimes very nice people. Someone very nice will come up to me this happens maybe only once a year these days. It used to happen all the time. Theyll come up to me, and theyll say, you know, i just want to tell you something. You speak english really well. I always wanted to say, gee, thanks. So do you because they dont expect that. They dont expect when someone who looks the way i do opens my mouth that out will come articulate, fullyformed english sentences without an accent. Theres nothing wrong with an accent. My parents have them. But they theyve attached a stereotype to me, a script. They expect me to talk a certain way and behave a certain way. And sometimes it gets ugly. I will bet you because this is true almost every time im on any tv show if you want to say anything meaningful, eventually you Say Something controversial. And people will will say, i disagree. I welcome that. I welcome people saying, i disagree. Let me tell you my my view and i want to start this robust dialogue. Whats interesting, though sometimes people dont disagree with what i have to say, they dont like who i am. I will wager you that i will get an email or phone call or letter that says something along the following lines. If you dont like it here, well, you can just go back to where you came from. And what does that say . It says i cant really be an equal american. I can never be critical of the United States, of its government or its culture or its policies. I should make clear i think this is a great nation. Its different. This is a nation where we say we believe anyone can come here and become an equal and become a full participant in this great dialogue. And i want to be a participant in that dialogue. I want to make us live up to our ideals. Its because im proud to be here, proud to be an american, that i want to do this. Cspan you were born in cleveland. Guest thats right. Cspan how did your parents get there . Guest well, my parents were students. They came from china. They grew up in taiwan. And then my. Cspan they came from mainland china. Guest yeah. Thats right. They were born there, and when mao took over, like a lot of others, they fled. They grew up in taiwan. Then they came here. They were very lucky. They came in the 50s. They got scholarships. My dad, in fact, went to college in iowa and went to graduate school in cleveland. And thats where my mother was in school. So they met. So you know, asianamericans are all over the place. You can find asianamericans in, well, fargo, or in the deep south. Its amazing how diverse these stories are. Cspan you say that there are 10 million asianamericans. Guest roughly. Cspan explain first what would you classify as an asianamerican . Guest yeah. Thats thats an interesting, tough question. Its a harder question than it seems. I wouldnt classify anyone. You know, i would allow people to declare for themselves. An asianamerican is well, its a strange concept. There arent asianamericans in asia. You know, for one thing, the people in asia well, theyre there. Theyre not here. And for another thing, there isnt a panasian identity, except for sort of a bad one, you know, when one nation wants to conquer another nation. So the people who are asianamericans well, their people whose grandfathers or greatgrandfathers would have hated one another, would have been at war with one another. But here, we recognize we have a common cause. Sometimes people say, well, why why do you have to be asianamericans . Balkanizing . Arent you breaking up into little groups . Actually, asianamerican is a coalition identity. It brings together people from about two dozen Different National origins. Youve got pakistani, indian, hmong, vietnamese, cambodian, thai, korean, japanese, chinese, all sorts of different ethnicities, languages, faiths, walks of life, class backgrounds, different stories as to how they got to the United States. And what theyve recognized is that being asianamerican can be empowering, that even though our forefathers may have hated one another, here weve got a common cause. When i grew up, on the playgrounds in school, i used to get picked on. Kids pick on other kids for all sorts of reasons. Some of its just a childhood sort of thing you grow out of. But sometimes its racial. And i think when its racial, its different. I used to get called chink and jap and gook and kids would, you know, pull back their eyes. And they had that chant, chinese, japanese, dirty knees, what are these . And whats interesting is theyd call me jap and gook every bit as often as theyd call me chink. And if someone said to me, hey, you jap, and i said, oh, excuse me. Im actually a chink, you know, thats not going to do much good. So i realized because i was told i well, you all look alike, anyway, right, that i had better reach out. And even though, growing up, i didnt know very much about koreans or thais or pakistanis, i realized, well, in the United States, we have this shared identity and a set of experiences, even though were incredibly diverse different politics and different cultures there is a common thread. Its that when are you going home, where are you really from thread of being a perpetual foreigner. And we can turn that into something empowering and positive. Cspan you say and correct me if i give these figures wrong that the census shows 2. 4 million chinese americans, about 1. 9 million filipino americans, about 1. 1 vietnamese americans, about a milli