And described as connecting black lives matter to oscars so white to Great Migrations and nativism. Talks about race, class, and diversity and its a collection of essays and in each of those essays he picks a major theme and in that theme of the collective as he calls and says we gon be alright. I could talk about jeff chang in his work for eons. So, without further ado and me getting in the way any longer, the brilliant, iconic executive director of arts at stanford university, my friend, mr. Jeff chang. [applause]. Thank you so much. Hows everyone doing today . Doctor m did is one of my hiphop education, urban education superheroes and if you all were here for the earlier hiphop Education Summit sponsored by the university of wisconsin you got to see his brilliance and action and i hope you check out his new book for white people who teach in the hood and all of the rest of us and we say us because its as. Please get that book if you are a teacher or if you know a teacher get this book. Its very important. Want to say thank you to connor and amazing stuff of the madison book festival. Its an honor to be here. Thank you for the kind invitation. Thanks so much to the cspan book tv staff for making this dream and telecast available. I have some a folksy and medicine and i want to give a big shout out to willie from that university of wisconsin. Feel free to clap if you want to, actually. [applause]. I have been able to work with him for over a decade now and its been an honor and he has introduced me to so many people and hes been a big supporter of hiphop education. Calls a, the first wave scholars in the house. I know you are in the house. [applause]. And to staff and faculty of the program. I love you all. You give me so much hope and hearts. Also to liz and her amazing family and friends from madison, thank you for making me feel like i met home when im here. So, got this new book called we gon be alright. Its begins with donald trump. It ends with beyonce because after beyonce, what is there to say, really in the book follows fast on the heels of a previous book i sit i did, cant stop wont stop, who we be. That looked at the question of how we see race and how thats changed in not changed over the previous past century, 50 plus years in the book came out two months before the non indictment of officer Darren Wilson and the murder of Michael Brown and ferguson, missouri, two months before. It came out two months before the movement for black lives changed everything for all of us and so this book, came from a visit that i took to ferguson to st. Louis city to north st. Louis county for the First Anniversary of Michael Brown staff in 2015. There were a number of demonstrations planned and i felt strong to ferguson, to st. Louis as many thousands of people have been drawn in the Previous Year to learn from that young organizers, most of the young organizers in the streets of their who put together really the longest continuous protests and civil rights history with the exception of maybe the montgomery bus boycott. Historic protests and so i came back to berkeley hoping to write an intro to the paperback edition of who we be. I wrote 50 pages and turned it in to my publisher and my publisher said this is not an intro to a book, but probably a new book. I had taken two decades to do the first two books, cant stop wont stop, who we be, but this one had the essay pour out a man so i finish the rest of the book in about four months and one of the main ideas that i traced in who we be deepens when i had a chance to be there in st. Louis city, st. Louis county and ferguson. It was paradox, this strange paradox but i think we face right now in our country, which is we live in a period during which the picture of diversity has become more prevalent than ever. Our culture seems more desegregated than ever. That, all of the entities show growing inequality across the board. For all of folks in the us, but the frontline of that is racial inequality. All the indices show this growing racial inequality across the board and health, wealth, income and life expectancy, premature death in policing and mass incarceration. Along with that is a rise in resegregation and so i wanted to do in this book was to try to explore the idea that may be resegregation and to be clear, segregation and were ended in many parts of our nation, but resegregation may be that under discussed condition of our time. Its interesting to connect the dots between whats happening say in housing and schooling with what was happening in the Popular Culture and in the streets. Its maybe think that this is a moment that we are living through right now in which we might have the opportunity to step outside of this bad cycle of crisis, this bad history that we find ourselves in regards to race. But, in order to do so we will have to recognize what keeps us in this cycle. So, entitled this book after kendrick lamarrs song, which if you did not already know its become kind of an anthem for the movement all across the country for young people in the black lives Matter Movement and another social movements. We hear it happening around undocumented young folks who are organizing. We hear that song sung around Climate Change folks, young folks who are organizing. Its become an anthem for a new generation of organizers and activists who are pushing us to recognize the new realities of it race in resegregation in this moment and i hear in the song sort of a modern blues. Kendrick, 95 of the lyrics that kendrick is putting out are about struggle. But, hes the seems to still pull out this line, you are at up and i am f up and we going to be all right and it feels true in some ways, and so many ways because its a leap of the imagination and the kind of imagination i think that seem so important right now in this particular moments because we are living in times, i dont need to tell you this letter been defined as hemingway spied division mongering demagogues. We can talk about the debates here tonight, but you are probably exhausted by all of this stuff, but these times have also been defined by the movement for black lives, the moral imperative for black lives in what the movement has called upon all this to do especially if we are not is to see an address the growing inequality between the races on all of these different types of issues, resting violence, ran life expectancy. Of the movement for black lives as we ways asks that black lives be centered because the gaps are the widest with the exception of just a few cohorts between one point and of course all lives matter. Of course they do, but what needs attention is this, the fact that by all indices we seem to be valuing black lives less than others. In order to make good and i did not always matter we have to turn the idea of black lives matter from aspiration into a reality. Thats what black lives matter is all about. So, lets start there, your basic. We can also sort this, that more polls than ever show that americans are more concerned than ever about Race Relations that it any time since 1992, the moment of the los angeles riots and the previous spike in concern when all the way back to 1965, a halfcentury ago, the europe selma, the year of the peak of the Civil Rights Movement, Civil Rights Act had already been passed. Voting right act would be passed this year. Infrastructure, however, incomplete, however besieged was being put into place to help to try to move us towards Racial Justice. 1965, was the last year that we had a National Consensus for Racial Justice and cultural equity in this country. Its been more than a halfcentury since we have a National Consensus for Racial Justice and cultural equity. What we saw 1965, was the watts riots. We had a white Highway Police officer pull over to black men coming back from a party a couple blocks from their house and he pulls them out of their cars and starts talking down to them. In the neighborhood goes to the house. They bring back the two young mans mother in the first thing the mother does is to asks the boys what kind of trouble they had gotten into. Shes berating her sons, but then the police escalate the situation and soon the mother and boys are arguing with the police and the Police Respond by beating the three of them. So, amidst all this chaos the mother, her two sons are hauled into a police car. Of the neighborhood is getting very angry and the cars haul off and people start throwing bottles and rocks in the appraising begins. This is a moment where we see a beginning of a turn in policing in this country. There was a young officer named darrell gates who later becomes the chief of police in los angeles and the way he makes his name is he decides to talk about creating military forces. Sort of military teams, militarily trained teams. They call it swat teams as a reaction to prevent any of these kind of things from happening again. This is the beginning of the militarization of the police in 1965. It leads us into the moment that we are in now. This is the moment that you can actually mark as a beginning of the post Civil Rights Era and so its an era thats been defined by sort of this rich vital culture that has been born of demographic change in cultural shifts, but its also a period in which the politics of racial backlash has continued to play a role through this entire time and its often been supported by egregious and militarized policing, so from 1965 to 1992 to 2014 to now, we seem cots in this cycle of crisis, theres a crisis, reaction that, backlash, a sense of exhaustion that sets in. And we find ourselves in another crisis, so the question is how do we break ourselves out of this crisis. We have to recognize this crisis has taken away our focus from how racism has shifted over the last halfcentury. The infrastructure that was put into place beginning in the mid 60s has been dismantled, sometimes quietly and sometimes very very loudly. So, we have lurched back to resegregation appeared during this time of explicit racism it has become less acceptable with perhaps the exception of if you are running for president ial office. Racism has become Something Else had we see race now cracks i wanted to bring in if we could the great who wrote about the visual algae of race in my template the visual algae of race it is not as how we see race, but how we see race to preserve tolerance, racial powered hero im an invisible man. Payment is both of the because people refuse to see me. When they approach me they see only my surroundings, themselves or figments of their imagination , indeed everything and anything accept me, so prolonged time people of color were not seen. In not seen we were excluded from institutions of power. Politifact sorted to the 80s as demographics shifts and cultural shifts happen when the next generation of the Civil Rights Movement comes of age and so this becomes the era of the cultural world and there is a kind of hysteria set loose by the emergence of what is named at that time americas most diverse generation ever, most diverse until we come to the current generation and still less diverse than the generation that will come after that, but pat buchanan at this particular point declares multiculturalism on assault on america and with the official history is that this is a period that was ripe with racial tensions. One of the places it showed up is on campus, hate speech, hate violence was on the rise and against that students protested for greater inclusion into the institution and by a large they succeeded in becoming visible. At the same time shifts are happening in the culture, so 1993 is here multiculturalism finally crosses over. This is the old cover of Time Magazine from 1993 and they literally created a grid of people from all these different races and pictures from all these different races across the top, down the side and in the boxes and in the matrix they put pictures of what they thought folks would look like and they pulled this picture out of the middle of that and she was a perfect example of a perfect mix of all of the different races at the time and she looked a lot like solidad obrien, actually. They called her eve and so there was visibility. As for the 90s were people color and diversity becomes not just a rallying cry for the left , but for corporations admitting that the decade even for the george w. Bush presidency. Remember those pictures of his cabinet with colin powell, Condoleezza Rice and so this creates new issues. Visibility creates new issues. Remember, hero when they approach me they see only my surroundings, themselves or figments of their imagination. Indeed, everything and anything accept me and so think of the kind of images that proceeded Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown ricky avoid and jamal rice and summary more. As ellison said when they approach me they see only my surroundings, themselves or figments of their imagination, everything and anything but me. The moral imperative for the movement for black lives is to fight and be able for black people to be seen in all their difference in all of their humanity and by extension for everyone to be seen in all of our difference in all of our humanity because if we can all be seen in all their humanity, we might have the possibility of forming a more open, more just, for your community. Com. In this moment people of color especially, i think, find themselves in a strange position. What is it mean to be so invisible and gets a visible at the same time . This i think is the condition that they speak to and also the student protesters of last fall. They dont see me and they dont see, so in our Popular Culture we have the picture of diversity that hegemonic image of a hospital, Health Care System based on the extensive treatment of advanced diseases and not on prevention and wellness. Heres the problem with diversity. The problem isnt with diversity itself. I run an institute called the diversity of the institute of the arts. Ad lib. With his everyday. I love diversity. In summary ways the word diversity has been uncoupled, decoupled from the word equity and so if we are really truly committed to forming community what we have to do is repair, repair diversity and equity together. Again, it is true inequality has grown for all americans, but the frontline of this again is racial inequality and so what is this picture of diversity hide . Lets talk a bit about that. One of the places where the picture of diversity has been most prominent is in the marketing of colleges and universities. So, last years fall protest should not have been surprising at all. It with students calling out the gap between the picture diversity and the reality of inequity. Campus climate is a term that came into both for my generation. It was going in an academic article in 1992. Through that people have done Campus Climate surveys at universities all across the country and one of the things we found is that Campus Climate studies done in 1992 and 2012, are remarkably consistent. 24 students receiving racial conflict on the campus the this more recent report from the university over in 2012, in it we learn that issues are so deep that students of color and queer students seriously consider dropping out and that is not including the one in five that actually do and when you look at the top student demand year students walked out at over 100 campuses last year. The demands had more to do with the hiring of more diverse faculty, more diverse staff, Mental Health professionals who are culturally sensitive, more cultural programs, more diversity training. They were asking for more than five times as what as much as they it have no method 10 of the campuses. Whats interesting is that the focus in the National Debate has been on the question of the freedom of expression. Johnny called, my run from your called it free speech diversion. We have students protesting for the same things that students like i was protesting for that in the 80s. 10, 20, 30 years ago calling at this and be visible and invisible all at the same time. The reality of inequity, reduced funding for programs, lack of faculty, lack of staff of color, so culturally sensitive professionals is what we have, but the debate has been about freedom of expression and focusing on these words save speeches and trigger warnings, but i think it might be fair to ask how much it took for the students from the university of missouri to be able to get the words to find the words to be able to come together to launch this protest in the first place. Jonathan butler who went on strike who vowed he was not going to eat until the university of missouri fired the president s, Jonathan Butler told me a story about his first year at the university of missouri. This is the year that president obama was elected and he had been celebrating in his dorm. He was one of two young black men in this entire dorm. The other one had gone home to chicago to celebrate with his family and so when victory was declared for obama he started celebrating in his dorm floor and he was quickly approached by four white guys who taunted him and started beating him. This is the first semester he was there at the university of missouri, so again i think its fair to ask how much students had to overcome. A much silence they had to overcome the find the words to watch this protest and i want to suggest that in this country its always been easier to mobilize people around a generational conflicts than its been to be with to mobilize folks around moving towards Racial Justice and cultural equity. To the extent that the backlash against the protesters has been about generalizing the words that they need to find in order to explain whats happening to them on the campuses, been the backlash and talked about limiting freedom of expression itself. One thing demographers will tell you is that young people these days are the most diverse generation this country has ever seen, but another thing thats not discussed is that this generation has come a page in a re segregating country, so lets ponder that person. Young people more diverse than ever, more segregated than ever. This is a picture of this class in 1955 a year after brown versus the board of education. Notes that the peak of Public School desegregation came in 1989. Since that time we have been backsliding. In 2010, 80 of latino and a 74 of black students attend a majority nonwhite schools, but whites remain the most segregated group of all. The average right student attended a school that 75 white and that rears the fact that the average white persimmons in a neighborhood thats less than a 5 white and its even true in the bay area where im coming from. The home, birthplace of multiculturalism. An entire generation that has come of age with resegregation as the reality and this of course appears in summary ways whats happening with housing. I will use bay area numbers again here, but we can look at the racial income gap in San Francisco where theres been a huge decline in the population of black people. Is devastated the black middle class and further isolated whats left of the black neighborhoods and what you see there with Median Income numbers is the result of that at the median white household is making more than 100,000 per year in the Meeting House called less than 30. People are displaced and have to go somewhere. So, whats happening now is that we see oakland, a town which 50 years ago produced a group called the black Panther Party for selfdefense and is known, i think, for its working class, vibe and is now the fifth most expensive rental market in the country. Since 1990, antioch is a town in the delta and oakleaf population same thing across the way has grown by more than a thousand and 2500 in terms of black population, so what we have seen is the last decade, this term is to fall small. It centers the gentry thats moving into the city. What happens to all of those who are disappeared . Who are displaced . They have to move somewhere and so they moved to places like stanford, florida outside of orlando. They moved to summers like ferguson, missouri outside st. Louis answered gentrification is part of a larger problem, which is resegregation and we can even talk about the culture, with happy in the culture. Lets talk about cultural equity. The field of culture, a Popular Culture as well as a place where we have been able to uphold these images of diversity, but its where we can also fledge diversity. Thats partly why we saw the oscars so white controversy training of the last two years on twitter. Is calling our attention to the underrepresentation of people of color receiving awards in hollywood. Lets take it further. Theres been a spate of studies that have come out in the last five years that whats happening in our cultural sectors, the places that produce and reproduce the knowledge that we need to maintain ourselves as a society. While, 87 of American Museum leaders, curators and educators are white. More than half as security facility workers are nonwhite. Of the largest bcm theater and Dance Companies in the us men have a budget of less than 23 million, but of the 20 largest africanamerican and Latino Museum theaters and Dance Companies only have five have annual budgets of more than 5 million. Heres maybe something as the most telling. In a survey of upper thousand new york city arts organizations, prevents all the organizations in the Nonprofit Sector in new york city, 61 of those polled strongly agreed with the statement i film i organizations diverse and get when you look at the Board Membership or the leadership over two thirds of board mentorship and leadership was white. The city is one third white. Why is this important . We need to be able to move past the picture of diversity towards resolving it relative in equity, so cultural equity is often thought of first in terms of representation. Oscar so i controversy. Hurry faces of on tv or in the movies, but theyre also questions of access as well. What cultural knowledges are accessible and available . Who are they available to . What is the cost of not preserving and passing on these cultural knowledges . Finally, these are questions of power. Who makes the decision about what we see, what we listen to, what we talk about, the stories we circulate. And they are about who makes and shapes the larger culture and what becomes of the knowledge we share. It sounds kind of abstract, but these are fundamentally questions of how we constitute our very country, a shared society, the values we uphold from our neighborhood to our community to our region to our country, to the world and thats why with diversity must come equity. We are becoming more diverse by the day. In 2042 we will all be minorities here, but if we dont attend to equity or condemn to the fire next time is of the springs is back to the questions again that the movement for black lives have forced us to consider by drawing our attention to premature death, to extrajudicial death and the movement also calls us to look at how does we live. How can we live . How can we live well . Equipment together . How can we confront these structures that create death and figure out how to live together . How can we move out of this crisis . This brings us finally to the work of the great revolutionary. The thing about it is that when we think about revolution, we often think about it as something thats one through bloodshed. In which one in place with another ruling power. As grace has put it, the next revolution might be better thought of as advancing humankind to a new stage of consciousness or creativity, social and political responsibility. So, her revolution will require us to move away from finding new ways to divide and rule, but to think instead of how to live in chair, to honor and transform ourselves and our relationships to each other. Grace insists that we rethink how we live and how we live together. At this moment when it seems impossible to get any kind of relief of this kind of, any kind of release from the stuff we see on a daytoday basis, from the functioning, the malfunctioning, the dis functioning of our institution of power, we still need to be able to keep imagination for change alive and so we have to remember that cultural change always precedes political change. Changes always within her hand and her agency and creativity will be the wealth spring of hope in these serious times and change in the culture while crating these alternative visions of how we can to the world ends of the song goes, those who believe in freedom cannot rest. Its true. Goes up as that believe in freedom have to continue to create new visions to produce new knowledges, to allow people to be able to imagine what has not yet come. We cant rest. We have to continue to work towards finding that sense of all rightness together. We gon be alright thank you very much for your time. Really appreciate it. [applause]. So, i think we have some time to have some discussion. Ask questions, make comments, issue rebuttals that kind of thing. Theres a microphone right here, by the way, in the center and since we are being live cast, come with a good question or good comments and please do it in the microphone, please. So, thank you very much. Thank you very much for that articulation of the complexities of the world we are in right now and the thing i would like to say is that in a time like this every point he made draws into the topic of food and lets not forget the topic of food when we talk about social justice, when we let anything because when we are talking about trying to prepare the world and come together, and something everyone of us across this universe understands because its something we have to do and when we can humble ourselves to recognize that that is something that draws us together and allows us to perhaps each more humbly and share more. Thank you very much. Thank you for that. I really appreciate that and i just want to make a point also to add on that food is implicated in segregation as well. There are questions of access, questions of representation and questions of power when we talk about food justice that we need to get to. We have language for this, food deserts. We have a clear understanding, i think, the part of what makes separation so foul that creates Health Equity issues is the lack of access to good food that folks may suffer by being segregated in the ways they are separated. So, i think that absolutely that food is really at the core of this. When we get to the question of life expectancy, the question of illness and Health Equity. At the bottom line we have to be able to transform the way that we understand the production and distribution and the access to good food in so many ways. How do we get more Economic Equity especially with the global forces, global capitalism in the middle class in this country . I think that is a huge question that im not entirely qualified to answer, but what i can say is this if we look at the impact of the great recession, that those who felt at first were communities of color because of the lack of enforcement of basic fair housing and fair lending laws. And that everyone was impacted, but in summary ways communities of colors though that first and most deeply. When i went to suggest here is that its not a question of one or the other. Its a question of all of the things at the same time. Theres a term thats academics like to use called intersection analogy. Its about class and race and gender, sexuality of all of these things at the same time and so the violence that is done economically to the american middle class, to the white middleclass is being practiced on communities of color and that when we get to a point where we are in the country in which theres a fullfledged sort of ideological push to gain homeowners ship homeownership, while there is lack of enforcement of these basic laws that are about enforcing equity and justice for everyone that what we saw was the redlining of even the wealthiest black communities, wealthiest latino communities, wealthiest asian suburbs as well and so we need to be able to figure out, i think, are next move is to figure out how we are able to articulate these questions are once. Not this one or the other, its all of these things at the same time. We all have different entry points in these different entry points give us a way to understand the problem in total and thats why i feel like the next movement has city something that builds upon the kinds of ideas that Bernie Sanders was doing, but something thats more intersectional. Something that figures out that Racial Justice is really the frontline of all of these questions. Thank you for that. I just had a quick question about how this current dialogue about it knowledge presented in the 13th, example, documentary how you can take the notions of massacres ration and beyond institutional racism as sort of like societal constructs of racism and how do we move through Something Like that and how does that inform the discussion now when you look at that by knowledge and how it kind of flips this discussion. You said we were never really segregated, so how do we take that notion of we are still segregated, massive corporate math incarcerated and move forward . Thank you for the question. I think that what we have seen over the last three, four decades in particular has been the rise of the politics of continuing. I think things to movies like the 13th, thanks to the scholarly work of Michelle Alexander excuse me Brian Stevenson and 70 others were able to understand how incarceration has become a key part of the development of an unequal system, a system thats based on any quality for all. The idea is simple, that if we can figure out rather than figuring out places to be able to employ people to able to educate people anyway that frees them, but instead we went to relegate people to educational system in a criminal Justice System that will lock them away. So, again, this question that we see, that happy rainbow picture of a hospital is sort of the counter image, the image that is sort of out there of schools that are not teaching, of society thats hellbent on incarceration of young people of color. I think that what we have to do is as we are reaching a point where we are thinking about trying to turn this ship around, we have to be about to take all those kinds of things into consideration, that its about the cars ration, absolutely. But, its also about the escalating policing, d militarizing, also about building up the structures that create Healthy Communities and educated communities at the same time. So, theyre all these kind of things that have to shift at once and i hope we are at that point where folks are able to see those discussions connected. Thanks so much for the new book and the work you do. Point to ask about coop patient. So, you gave us this provocative statement that cultural change proceeds political change. And we can think of that in the positive sense of for instance, grassroots, at the grassroots level, racial barriers, segregation are transcended before that happens a lot, but theres also the reverse scenario that you touched on. I dont know if you want to save your comments about beyonce income for the book. I have my copy here and hopefully everyone will grab a copy, but i will invite you to Say Something about how our progressive and im sort of piggybacking off of christians earlier comment about how things that look and feel liberatory in terms of our styles of cultural expression are not intersectional in the way that, you know, they can orient scribe the very things we are trying to fight, so the way trump for instance serves as a bogeyman that allows hillary to look like a good guy will in fact she re inscribed all kinds of things that trump makes us so worried about or beyonce with her beautiful and provocative and powerful work, how its not intersectional in terms of class we are describing in these kinds of things. So, i wonder if you i know you think about this, so if you have some jewels to drop on doing this kind of cultural work while also critiquing and keeping in check, you know, these kinds of ways in which our forms of expression argues to counteract our liberatory work. Wow. So much in their. Thanks, professor. So, the first thing i see is to go back to something you mention i think in the last hiphop Education System is that criticality comes from radical love and that is key to our developing this notion of radical love that we need to be able to maintain our criticality at the same time we maintain our love, that its not about bringing down folks. Its about recognizing whats good while continue to patient each other further harder. So, for me what i found really im just quick to start beyonce. I think i can talk about some things after beyonce, but lets start beyonce. What struck me about lemonade was that heres an problem that on its paces basically about a relationship that has gone bad, that its about her lover has cheated on her and then she goes through the motions. She goes through the anger, she goes through the suppression. She goes through the despair of it and what razorback is what brings her back is the sense of trying to figure out how to make herself whole again, so she finds on redemption and as a part of that redemption she is actually forgiving the person who did her wrong. This is, i think, constant with the doctors idea radical love. Its consonant with the idea of changing consciousness and with James Baldwin idea of trying to think about Race Relations through the lens of others as well and that is that justice has to hold off the possibility that the zero press or can as well. It is a very difficult that. Its a very difficult kind of thing. Its easy as perez to like the first part of the problem than the last. We can be critical about the last part of it like did she just sell herself out and let this dude off, like that kind of thing. I think that is partly where our imagination has to come in is to figure that out tickets not about letting people off the hook, but taking them through the process and understanding the burden is is on us to think about that or do that as well. Unfortunately, those of us who believe in freedom cannot rest and we have to continue to take steps to creates the new images, the new songs, the new ideas, the new narratives that help push the wheel forward, recognizing that the wheel could turn it we could get crushed under it. So, the idea of people equal opportunity as it advanced in the 1960s as part of the Civil Rights Movement becomes part of the wheel that is turning in the 80s and 90s such that when anti affirmative action initiatives, the ballots in california, in florida, all across the country they are called equal opportunity initiatives. The language is appropriated and taken from us. The exact facet of what we were demanding is what is offered up. So, understanding that that is the way that we have to play it. And that, unfortunately, is a was going to be more difficult to try to get to that new thing and it is to be able to reinforce the crappy system thats already here. So, maybe i will stop their. There so much more that that i can talk about, but maybe i will stop here to get to other thoughts. And glad i got a chance to see you speak. I guess i went to kind of narrow the focus down onto the role of Asian Americans. May be a little bit about the unanswered question that you posed in your book, perhaps, about kind of the divide amongst Asian Americans, protests or but, also that is balanced out by the focus on trying to address that asianamerican movement etc. You addressed a couple of the issues and im wondering within this movement how you feel you could give examples or possibilities of how Asian Americans can be involved in the Current Movement as well as the future movements in your dressing would be more intersectional and perhaps how the oppression of each other in different ways, you know, and i feel like you finished the booklet that with the question itself, but i wonder if you could go deeper into how you think about that feel about that at this point. By this movement you mean that movement for black lives to make yes, the next movement so, current time. Ya. So, theres an essay in the book called in between on asianamerican this and its very personal and it was difficult for me to write. I ended up writing it in second person, actually. I couldnt write in first person it was difficult to even imagine myself being able to do that. What i was trying to do was to get outs the notion of where asianamericans land in the racial hierarchy, which is in between. In between black and white, in between complicity in freedom and in semi ways its in between and to kind of dive into the i know how it personally feels. I know how i direct my own personal energies and they are not with trying to undo Racial Justice initiatives, such as affirmative action. They are exactly the opposite of that. Yet, i had to sort of conference the idea that having grown up in honolulu, hawaii, that i may be did not have the same kind of feeling and anger about previous historic and continuing discrimination that those folks who grew up in San Francisco chinatown might have. So, i needed to do that. And i think that the reality is is recordation american privilege lies is in the ability to be able to sit on the fence. To sit out the street, to kind of figure out who the winner will be and maybe jump on board with them. And i think that that is something that we have to do be able to confront and we had to be able to undo and frankly, to find unethical and immoral kind of stance in the background to be able to articulate an alternative politics because theres a way in which you can articulate a narrow identity of politics and many people have. That it should be all about asians all the time. Have heart is like oh . I could tell you that in the San Francisco bay area where asianamericans make up a large percentage of the population and growing, a quarter to to a third in some cities in some major cities there that what we see is asianamerican activists under the banner of asianamerican activism try to claim say for instance all of the spots at the Magnet High School for themselves. Thats not the kind of society and went to live in. Its not ethical position. I think its offensive and if you believe in Racial Justice and equity, if you believe in fairness and so, i think, its difficult, but i also think it is symbolic of the position that everyone else has to look at as well who is not indigenous or not africanamerican. We have to be able to look at how we are in between, the ways in which we can choose not to act, that we can sit out something, that we can choose not to engage and i think that in order for us to be up to get to the next movement we all actually have to be able to figure out what our place of engagement will be and how to broaden that. Thank you for the question. Thank you for coming here and speaking today. So, he pointed out that Kendrick Lamars music is about struggle, but at the core of the struggle is optimism and thats where you got your title for your book. So, im just going to ask the really sort of vague and nebulous question, are you as optimistic as your title suggests . I think it depends on the day [laughter] i think its like that for all of us. You know, you have to have a reason to get up in the morning. You have to have a reason to get up and fight and do your thing. And to continue to try to push forward the rock a little bit more up that hill so, i try to be. Yeah, the book has an optimistic title and people tell me its a very pessimistic but it is hard for me to disagree with that on that level, but i just think of all of the things that, you know, that my previous generation made possible for me and i think its not fair for me to be able to disengage. I have to engage, you know . I have to be able to do it i carry my lifetime to make it better for the next five, six, seven generations. So, yeah, i guess that where optimism comes from. Thank you,. [applause]. Your talk was great. Thank you so much for that. You ended your slideshow with this powerful quote the cultural change always precedes political change. Im wondering, you kind of immersed yourself in black lives Matter Movement and all the its other things, but the last time communities of color strongly pushed for a cultural change that would lead to political change, we saw what happened with the black Panther Party where the government kind of moves against them and kind of brought them down from within and it led to the beginning of the Prison Industrial Complex that led to the criminalization of the new form of slavery of color, so my question is probably cannot immersing yourself the weighted in the black lives Matter Movement and the change we are pushing for now. What have you seen that gives you hope that this movement in the future movement thats going to lead to the political change, cultural change that leads to political change wont be necessarily undermined in such a way that the cultural change in political change receipt. Wow, thats a good question. Its a real one, i mean, one of the things that i think anyone who is a close observer of movements has been able to see over the last couple of years is that there has been an increase in tension with folks within the movement. People are getting burnout. People are coming to stages where theyd feel like they can continue on in the movement and we know this has happened historically. We know that some of this is done, you know, through surveillance, through constant policing, through the court system. We see a lot of activists who are now like two years later like still working their cases through the court system. Their entire lives have been put on hold because they have been standing up for justice. And ferguson, baltimore, chicago , in oakland, in San Francisco. These things are happening and i think that the thing that maybe gives a help us to think about the fact that these are ideas that have now infected, if you will, an entire generation. I noticed it as a teacher coming in in the fall of 2013. Students are coming in after the death of the shooting death of George Zimmermans killing of Trayvon Martin and then in 2014, and every class since. I spent some time in chicago, two weeks ago with a number of High School Students who are initiating all sorts of programs in their local neighborhoods around social justice and Racial Justice and i look at whats happening now amongst artists that theres an of a renaissance happening amongst artists and these ideas are getting spread. I take heart in the fact that the numbers that we have now are much larger than they had during that particular time and so maybe and the last thing to say is that yeah, this election has been hellish. Its shown the worst of what we can be, but maybe perhaps by taking us to the brink, the openings being created within the culture like might be able to lead towards a politics, grassroots politic, infrastructure that we do not put into place after obama won, to be able to build out the kind of Progressive Movement we really need to see this country in the next generation. Thank you very much for your time. Thanks so much for coming. Appreciate it. [applause]. Thank you so much to jeff. Jeff will be here to sign books and if youre interested in learning more how to put this into practice in our educational policy chris will introduce brian mooney reading at 6 00 p. M. From their books. Thanks so much. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]