so this our roundtable focuses on the impact of race technology and the media and how they all intersect and impact the way we

look at we look at our schools and education, at our communities, at the environment. so talk will focus on that. i will ask a series of questions and then each speaker will, after answering the questions, you'll have an opportunity to ask questions of them. but first, let me begin by introducing our speakers. begin with. emily rapp of propofol, who's here on my left, emily raboteau writes at the intersection of social and environmental justice, race, climate change and parenthood. her most recent work is lessons for survival. mother ring against the apocalypse, a memoir on race, climate and environmental justice. her previous books are searching for zion, the winner of an

american book award and a finalist for the hurston wright legacy award and the cult classic novel, the professor's daughter. she is a contributing editor at orion magazine and a regular contributor to the new york review of books, where apatow's essays have appeared and been anthologized in the new yorker, the new york times, new york magazine, the nation best american science writing. that's american travel writing and elsewhere. her distinctions include an inaugural climate narrative prize from arizona. arizona state university. the deadline club award and feature reporting from the society of professional journalist journalists, new york chapter. and grants and fellowships from the new york foundations for the arts. the bronx council on the arts. the robert b silvers foundation and the lane art foundation. and yaddo. she is a full professor at the city college. sister college of new york and cuny, and she lives in the bronx

with her husband, the novelist victor laval, and her two children. welcome, emily raboteau. thank you, dr. greene. thank you. we next have christine anna greer. i'm sure that you have seen her in on our news. that's were news networks. christina greer. she is an associate professor of political science at fordham university lincoln center. her research and teaching focus on american politics. black ethnic politics, urban politics, and quantitative methods, as well as new york city and congress. i'm sorry. as well as new york city politics. professor greer's book, black ethnic ethnics race, immigration and the pursuit of the american dream, investigates the increasingly ethnically diverse populations in the united states

from africa and the caribbean. she finds that both ethnicity and a shared racial identity matter and also affect the policy choices and preferences for black groups. professor greer is currently working on a manuscript researching the history of all african-americans who have run for executive office in the united states. her interests also include mayors and public policies in urban centers. and her previous work has compared criminal activity and political response in boston and both baltimore. she is the host and producer of the aftermath, where christina greer here and she she is received her b.a. from tufts and her m.a. and ph.d. in political science from columbia university. welcome, christina greer. and dr. bettina love.

dr. bettina love is the william f russell. professor at teachers college, columbia university, ph.d., and the author of the new york times bestseller punished for dreaming how school reform harms black children and how we heal. and 2022, the kennedy center name dr. love, one of the next 50 leaders in making the world more inspired and inclusive and compassionate. a co-founder of the abolitionist teaching network whose mission is to develop and support teachers and parents fighting injustice within their schools and communities. she has overseen over 250,000 and grants to abolitionists around the country. she is also the founding member of the task force that launched the probe. --, in her hands, one of the largest guaranteed income pilot programs in the united states, which has distributed ready more

than $15 million to black women living in georgia. dr. love is a sought after public speaker on a range of topics, including abolitionist teaching, anti-racism, hip hop, education, black girlhood, queer youth, educational reparations and art based education and to youth, civic engagement. she is also the author of the seller. we want to do more than survive. dr. love has provided comments for various news outlets, including npr, pbs. washington. the washington post. the daily beast, the guardian, and the atlantic journal. reconstitute. l.a. journal-constitution. welcome, dr. love. okay. are these some powerful women?

yes. and leaders. okay. so let's begin. now, i'd like to begin by we always say the personal is political. so if you can just spend a few moments reflecting on how your personal background and experiences engaged you in the work you do around racial and social justice. and let's begin with you and emily. thank you. it's an honor to be here on the stage with all of you. i'm. i guess i would begin to speak as a mother. i'm the mother of two black sons, their age 11. and 12 years old. i had back to back babies. and this has been a a very, uh, trying decade in which to raise children.

i have a new book out. it's called lessons for survival mothering against the apostle. it's, as you mentioned and. i want to say, you know, because this panel is also focusing on technology, social media and the fight for for racial and social justice. when my boys were two and four years old, i'm. trayvon martin's killer was acquitted and there was an explosive moment of anger that felt cyclical. i was reminded of. the l.a. uprisings that happened when i was in high school. the sort of cyclical anger. my own grandfather was lynched in 1943 when my father was in utero. this happened in bay saint louis, mississippi.

so that kind of anger that came up again, that felt both historical and personal was so overwhelming. i remember talking to my husband about how we would and when we would talk to our boys about how to protect them from the police, when to give them the talk they were still so little and around this time, the writer jesmyn ward was so angry herself that she decided to collect a number of writers, essayists in particular in a volume in an anthology. she wanted it to feel like thinkers that she admired, sitting around a dinner table. she wanted to gather people who could help her be in community, be in this moment of anger. and so she extended a few of us an invitation to write for an anthology some of you may be familiar with called the fire. the fire this time. an extension of james baldwin's seminal essay collection from

1963, the fire. next time i. i was so thankful to receive that invitation. i felt honored. and i also felt like i don't know how i don't know what to say. i don't know what to write. and in the midst of that feeling of writer's block, walking my boys to their daycare in washington heights, i encountered a mural around 175th street. it's no longer there, but it was part of a series of murals called the know your rights murals. and i had never noticed it before, but it was as if it were had been gifted to me in a moment where i didn't know. i didn't know what to say or do. and it was a beautiful mural. it was it was painted in in all shades of blue. and it had bits of the fourth amendment, and it was painted for the people of our neighborhood where there is

inordinate police brutality to kind of educate us about how to protect ourselves from from police. and as it turned out, it was one of a series of murals across neighborhoods in new york, most plagued by police brutality. and so i decided i'm going to photograph all of them because i know this is street art. it's going to get painted over. it won't it won't always be here. i'm going to document it. i'm going to witness it. i'm going to use that art to work through my feelings. and so i wrote this photo essay that became a pattern of. kind of walking and thinking through social justice and eventually environmental justice issues in the city affecting my kids. so writing from a very personal place of motherhood about issues that are so large, it's almost hard to address without doing so intimately. and in terms of community. that's kind of how i started writing about justice issues as a as a as a concerned mom who wants her sons to thrive in the world.

thank you, professor. professor crear. thank you for having us. am i on? okay. i always tell people i'm pretty basic. i like to things. cities and black people and. and those are the two things i really care about. i've lived in cities almost my entire life, except for three years of high school during my father's. i call them the norman rockwell years when we were in northern illinois, near the border, wisconsin in illinois, the great time for me is difficult. it is it may have been because i make this argument as a political scientist that all states are red states. it's just whether or not you live in the blue city, in your red state. and that was three years of very formative years, living in the red part of the state. and i think i'm a better political scientist because of that. i started grad school at columbia. september 10th, 2001.

i was in class of timber 11th, had class september 12th, and we never talked about 911. hmm. one class we talked about for a few minutes. never. so that was the first time i realized that political science and politics aren't the same thing. and i'm interested in politics. but i was in grad school to get a political science degree, so i'd have to have a tight wire for both of those in that first week of grad school, i met with the dga, which is the director of graduate studies, and i told him i had done this amazing work in boston, baltimore, baltimore's my favorite u.s. city. all my students have to have two favorite cities one u.s., one international. baltimore is my favorite u.s. city. we can get into another panel. and he says cities are dead. we don't do cities here. so i said, well, first of all, you just said 911. second of all, how can cities be dead if millions of black people live in cities and there are

only two things that you need to know about me. i love cities and i love black people. so maybe it wasn't the best fit, but we we endure. so i realized my professional work would this institution would not be able to focus on cities. i have to go through a back door and that back doors brazen an obviously i wanted to use cities to talk about race in a in sort of a trojan horse. i was a classics minor in college so i want to do like a trojan horse type dissertation. so instead i just did a dissertation head on, which was my entire life. people had always said, oh, you're so smart. which one of your parents is caribbean? you know, oh, your sister's at harvard. so you're caribbean. that was it. no. and so was like, maybe just black. and so, you know, it's like, oh, you know, you're so well traveled. you're so well-spoken, right? you're so articulate. where are you from? from. and so it led me on this path to talk about coalition building

amongst black americans, caribbeans and africans in the united states and not in a capacity of who's better, who's smarter, but in how do we focus on white supremacy and work together to move policy forward. so that's that was the book. but i still care about cities and i live in one of the most dynamic cities in the world. even if it isn't my favorite city. so which has led me to the work where i talk about new york city because in so many ways, new york city is the canary in the mine for what happens to other cities in the country. in so many ways, black women are the canaries in the mine too. what happens to the rest of this country? and if i care about black people, i have to know what's going on in cities. and so this is where my personal and professional intersect. but cities aren't just people and buildings and transportation, which is my favorite thing. they talk about. it's also a lot of nature which we've talked about. and so how do we incorporate our

landscape and work with our parks and our waterways and our birds? and so really think about a city and a holistic way is kind of the direction that i'm going in and writing about these days. it's interesting how these are all related. yes, professor love or dr. love, not degree. what's up? everybody is really wonderful to be here. i guess my story starts having this city. i apologize, but i'm an upstate new yorker and you're right there you go. right. so i'm saying that's why we got a lot. that's how we got you know, we walk around with a chip on our shoulder upstate new york, because you don't know where we're from. right. when you say upstate, the furthest you can go is like westchester west. and then if you push albany. so i'm from rochester, new york, born and raised. it's thank you. and so i tell people all the time, canada.

just to be clear, so they know we coming from and the two stories i will tell that really got me into thinking about education in educational policy is i think it started when i was 17 years old. so i went to a large high school in upstate new york. i went to vocational high school so big we had a plane inside our high school, electricians, cosmetology, masonry, you name it. we had all you know, we were coming out with jobs and it's about 2000 kids at my high school, my freshman class was about 800 kids. wow. and we graduated 80 oh oh. so i means we had a graduation rate of almost like 10%. and i remember being 17 years old, walking across that stage and asking myself, where is everybody? i remember us i remember us at 14. i remember us being loud and young and rambunctious and thinking. we knew every thing and we were

kids and we were doing what kids running around getting trouble, skipping class. what you're supposed to do, you 40. and i've been always been curious about what happened to my generation, what happened to those 700 kids that were my friends. i go off on a basketball scholarship to one of the top schools in the country to play basketball. let me be very clear. i love to write books, but i can play. i can i can do that. thank god. basketball. okay, that's my love. you put that book to the side. but right now, right now, like it's march right now and women's basketball, the best women's basketball, the best ticket in town, baby. and so i go and i'm at the number two school in the country. you can't tell me nothing. the wnba is just happening. so i'm thinking to myself, wnba is cute. i'm probably going to the nba. like that's how cocky i was at this. and by my sophomore four year i

realized i'm not going to play. i put on a pound weight. i'm staying on the ground every day. every time they said a pick, i'm falling down. i said, i conflict. so had this epiphany and i realized that all my classes that i was with all the male athletes and i had never i had never understood that. i just thought that's what it was. and so i went back and i asked my other teammates, what classes are you in? oh, journalism, pre-med, chemistry. i can't like well, they got all these other classes. you ask, what was i taking? okay, i was taking first day in college. i was taking indoor recreation and then i took outdoor recreation. like, what are we doing here? how many ways can you put on a band-aid? i was just confused. first generation college student parents, you know, didn't go to college. so i'm trying to figure things

out. so i go to my athletic director who's in charge of academics and i tell him, you know, i want to do something else. i don't think i want to take these classes. i would like to take the class that the other girls are taking on the basketball team. and he simply turns to me and said, you are from the inner city. you went to an inner city school and you are here to play basketball. oh, i said, well, make it play. i say, what you just at that from what i knew walking across that stage to where i was now, two years later in college, i kept saying to myself, i did everything you all asked me to do. how am i in this situation? how am i being pigeonholed that i cannot even major in what i wanted to major in? and you told me i was going to college for free. you told me that i had made it that this was the dream. and so it really put me on a path of trying to understand education and education policies and reform when it comes to black and brown children, it really put me on a path of

trying to understand what happened to eighties and nineties babies, right? we are the generation, what you would call the post-civil rights generation. we are the hip hop generation. and we were a generation of young folks that were labeled thugs, super predators and crack babies. and so my work really looks at the last 40 years of education reform and how these labels of class morality and criminality not only was in our streets, but also became parts of our schools. and so my book, punisher a dream in, i think is a book i've been trying to write since i was 17 years old, really trying to understand how educational policy is the root cause of many of educational outcomes that we see for black and brown children today. thank you, professor. thank you. so, so just continuing with that thread you've identified what you see as the most pressing issue for you to write about. why don't we continue with you,

professor rap for what is the most pressing issue when you look at what's happening around social and environmental justice. for me, it's become the climate crisis and environmental issues and the ways that there in equitably distributed depending on what neighborhoods we live in, what part of the world we live in, what are classes, what are resources. so i mentioned being gifted the this insight from this series of murals the know your rights murals and then i was gifted similarly some more insight and. glimpses of i would say care from another series of murals. we were talking about birding a little bit and i became like a backwards birder through this audubon. mural project. that's that's uptown. and i don't know if any of you

seen in harlem in washington heights is like gorgeous. i find them gorgeous. murals of birds, dozens of them. when the project is finished, there will be over 300. and that is the number of birds expected by the year 2080 to be extinct because of climate change. and the project is named after john james audubon. who who lived in the neighborhood and is buried there. but i couldn't help but wonder, you know, this is this is a project that is supposed to be about conservation and beauty, but it's also unfolding in a neighborhood where. there are all kinds of other endangerment that seem not to be part of the story that audubon audubon society is is telling when they think about conservation, meaning, you know, through forces of gentrification, these neighborhoods really changing.

nevertheless, the people who've lived there for a really long time suffering deleterious health effects because of poisoning. front line community. you know, my have asthma like a third of the kids in the neighborhood because we live in a in a place encircled by highways and where there's a you know there's a bus depot and a wastewater treatment and so interestingly, this this like beautification and project about conservation and birds, it became another thing i wanted to document it with my camera. i knew that those murals would owing to time and the forces of the city and grit and grime and the fact that they get tagged over would disappear and so in an act of witnessing memorialize zation, i wanted to dwell on those birds. document those birds, witness those birds, but also write about. the neighborhood in which those birds are appearing and and the other forces that are

endangering people. there. that kind led me into, into thinking, you know, what it means to live in a frontline community and then also to think about what it means to live in a coastal city during the time of climate, climate crisis and the ways that we are threatened by the rising sea and we sort of had a widening aperture of interest in of threat. so yeah, for me, i've been i've been i've been writing and dwelling on environmental crises and thinking through that. thank you. and see, i think about use the term i think climate refugees. yeah we have climate refugees is and professor greer yes. yeah. well fun fact i mean i always remind my students that the bronx is the only one of the five boroughs that's attached to mainland america restaurants, which is a little island like we are right now.

so for me, i've dedicated my entire professional life to figuring out how black people fit into america in a political spectrum. and i think the biggest danger is our politics right now is george washington warned us in his farewell address about the polarization of the two parties, but also the threat of foreign interference. and we're at that moment right now, he wrote about it pretty cogently. the fact that there's real voter apathy and disdain amongst black people. but you and i were talking really quickly before we came out here about the diversity, ideological diversity of black people. but we're sort of we have this party capture where roughly 90% of black people identify as democrats. and we know why. and there's been party realignment. but in the past 50 years, black folks are solidified, by and large, roughly 90% in the democratic party because the republican party has chosen to cast lot with white nationalists and white supremacists as an anti black agenda by and large.

but what do you do with all that ideological diversity? right. so for me, someone like eric adams makes total sense, right? we know that black person, most black people have that black person in their family. yes. and we meet them at the cookout or valerie union or thanksgiving or every night when you go to dinner. and so we have a moment right now where it seems as though there's a growing faction of black americans who are tired of being captured in one party, but the nature of american politics is that we always rest in the two parties system. parties aren't mentioned in the constitution, but that's just naturally how we've organized ourselves from the beginning when we have a third party. one of two things happens. either it subsumes one of the two dominant parties or one of the two dominant parties subsumes the third party. we always end up with this kind of balanced equilibrium. so in this moment where a growing of black people seem to be frustrate it and don't want to engage, that is of great

concern to me as a political scientist and that's on the local, state and federal level. we focus on the federal level, but obviously in new york, you all know we have roughly 17% of people who bother to show for municipal elections that's across new york. and the number of african americans is pretty, pretty, pretty low. so what happens when we try to inspire young people and they can tell you all the people and the real housewives of nowheresville, but they can't tell you who their state legislator is or their city council member or who their two u.s. senators are, who their member of the house is. and that's i'm trying to inspire people to not just run, but there's so many different ways that you can be involved in politics without being an actual candidate as well. thank you. so we know that part of what's also happening is, is when you look at technology and social media is impacting on how people are responding from whatever perspective, from the politically in our school plays,

in the environment, what would you say are the pros and cons of technology in our environment, you have the rise of the ai that's impacting all of us. you have the the chat. what what have been the benefits and the cons against technology from your perspective in the work you're doing? why don't we, professor, love. yeah, i'm you know, i think it comes to technology. we have to see it as a tool. it is not to say all, be all. it is not in the beginning. it is just a tool. but for me, there's always the divide of the tool. so i'm looking at right now of colleges in this country. and we just saw i think it's dartmouth and yale say that they're going to put the sats

back in. so over the last two years since war, they didn't use the sats. now they're going to put their sats back. and so that means pretty much the creative writing side of those students who may not have had the best sat score is going to be gone because they feel like, you know what, these kids are writing college essays anyway. there's just you didn't charge b.t. so what we're going to do is just say test scores, test scores, test scores. and so trying to balance where the creativity, where the arts were young folk who don't do well on standardized tests, how do they get into these places? how do we use ai to solve some of our most critical issues but not rely on a.i. as a way to solve all of our issues? so for me, technology has to be used as a tool and the biggest thing about technology for me as an educator and i'll just tell a quick story. you take someone like bill gates right? if you read the book by malcolm

outliers, the really cool book, the way he tries to situate that, you have to have 10000 hours to be good at anything and what he does, he tells the story of bill gates. and bill gates was this goofy white kid in somewhere in connecticut. and the mom group had the foresight to just get a computer. now, mind you, back then, the computer was as big as this room, right? it was huge. it wasn't a little laptop. you just you know, just bring around. they bought one of these huge things. so bill gates and his friends, they began to get to play with this technology before really most americans knew what this thing was. not only that they would leave a door open to the to the window to sneak in to the school at night so they can keep coding. now, if a black child did that, that wouldn't be called just coming into school at night. they would call the police and that extracurricular activity you were trying to do would be. so what happened was that when

the idea of a computer became big, bill gates was like a 19 year old kid and had more experience with programing than any grown person could because he's been doing it since he was in high school. so he got to play with the technology and think too often we think the technology should tell us what to do. instead of us telling the technology what to do and our kids would have an opportunity to just play with it, to create something new with it, to see what it can do, not just for a job, not just for this. how can they create and use this technology to help solve issues? and we don't let children play with technology like that. we have to they have to they have to be doing it for a job. and if they're not doing it for a job, they playing around and you're not series now let them play. let them find out what's new. you know, the three people in our society that we talk of as

geniuses did not create anything. hmm. elon musk did not create tesla. he bought it, but he did not create it. yes. mark zuckerberg stole it from his friend who right. and bill gates bought everybody out. these are the three people that we we called geniuses a make, not it. you think about instagram. what is instagram? you can make a picture bluish grayish top. yeah they sold that. they were like $50 million. and all it does is take pictures. but what i'm arguing is that think about what the ground was when it first started out, when it was just playing around these three white boys in their basement or moms and dads basements. you got to give kids time to play with it. you got to give them time to experiment with it. and too often when it comes to black and brown youth, we don't have time to experiment.

we don't have time to what we would call fail. and when you don't have time to fail with technology, then you won't ever be at the cusp of what's next. so if it's ai, if it's chat gpt three or whatever is next black youth, brown you need an opportunity just to play with it and to explore with it. so they have an opportunity to build what is next and any nets to do that. thank you. did you want to comment on that? yeah, i agree 1,000%. i think that the sort of dovetails into this kind of steam movement where it's not not just stem, but there's arts involved in it. and i think part of what i hear you saying is it's not just about playing when it comes to technology, but i advocate for play, period. and, you know, i come from a household where you know, listen, there's an expectation of excellence. there always was academically. but i will say my parents were

sort of i did have freedom. now, granted, this is a class conversation as well, but i had freedom to kind of explore, not fail as much as my white boy friends, boyfriends, friends, but but there is a certain level of freedom that black and brown people tend not to have in this country. so there's there's kind of like the tracking that happens in school, but there's also the tracking that happens in our society because we know that we we don't have the same wide berth that others do. i think when it comes to technology, for me it's like garbage in produces garbage out. so i was at a lunch a few weeks ago explaining to my white colleagues that when i go to the bathroom and try and wash my hands, depending on the sink, i can't get any water or stuff right. they'd never heard of that. and i was like, ask any black person, i'm literally getting

toilet paper and like pushing it underneath the sink so i can get the sink to turn on or i'm just asking white lady like, hi, nice white lady, will you run your hands under here so i can get some soap and some water and they never heard of it. and i said so this is also a divide in the conversation of technology where my lived experience with technology is incredibly frustrating in this new thing that's so great because it does it, you know, produce waste in the bathroom. but there's a whole segment of the population that doesn't know that black people and people of color are excluded from it. and so the people who program it don't think about it. and so you know, american auto, which is a short lived nbc show, the pilot episode is hillary is because it's a self-driving car that doesn't recognize people of color. so they're just so excited about this new product. but it keeps plowing down black people. and so they're like, wait, is the car racist? it's like, no, the people who program the car only practice this car on white people. they never thought that black people might be crossing the street. and so like, yes, it's a comedy.

yes, it's a sitcom and we can laugh it off. but this is actually what's going on in these non-diverse settings where we are not at the table. we are not in conversation with folks. and so then they create this amazing product for everyone. but we've had no discussion in the, in the building of it. and we are sort of not just recipients but sometimes victims of it. and so that is kind of my political concern with technology. yeah. thank you. so, professor rapaport, you are a creative writer as well as a nonfiction writer. and there writers very often create fiction that allows us to look at reality in a different way. and this time and moment, how does fiction or how can fiction be used to address some of these issues in this moment that we're in? and how have you used that in your work? i in recent years, i've been i've been really compelled to write nonfiction, too, and more

so than fiction and maybe i'll turn to fiction again. but like i said, since in the last decade, since having kids, i have felt it's been really imperative. i felt really drawn to write about social and environmental justice issues in, the form of essays, the writer that i that i really look to and admired the most. you kind of did it all in terms of genres. james baldwin, who i mentioned already, just a lodestar in terms of, i think being able to handle social justice issues in fiction as well as in essays and i guess i just wanted to touch on also on this sort of technology question, the social media piece and how it connects to justice. i it a since the advent of media, we haven't had it all that long. right? but, but since its advent, really ordinary people have been

sparking in grass roots movements and environmental change by uploading and sharing video. right. like capturing injustice, youtube, facebook x formerly known as twitter, instagram. we have now. and that's part of a really long history of citizen journalism, which has always been used as a really effective tool when we have eyewitness testimony to abuses of power, i just i didn't want to leave that unsaid. you know, i'm thinking about diamond reynolds, you know, live streaming on facebook as her boyfriend, philando castile, was bleeding to death because he'd been shot and she had the presence of mind to use what was at the time a very new technology, live streaming on on facebook just to demonstrate that injustice. just still thinking through

summer 2020, that uprising summer and you know how witnessing george floyd's murder connects back again to this angry moment of of seeing what happened to rodney king. so, you know, we've been talking about technology as a as a as a place of play and a site of potential, but also the social media arm of technology to be a really vital place. you know, both bystander and citizen journalism, just to stare grim asymmetries of power in the face. and i can't leave it unsaid where we're seeing this now in gaza, it's just it's intolerable to us to to witness. children losing their lives, crying over, losing their parents. and our understa ending, you know, the moral imperative are understood ending of what's going on is so much to do with

what we're seeing. right. just feeds of what we're seeing and not not unlike, you know, what my parents generation were seeing with the vietnam war and turn it turning their opinion against that. yeah thank you thank you for insisting and adding that i think that that is a very critical period. we'd like to hear from you. i like you to go up to the mic, which is i think there's just one in the right. and if you come up to the mic and we are going to spend some time taking, there are two like couldn't see you can go up to either mic we'll spend time taking questions and as you come to the mic this is from for anyone in the group given these these times given given what we are dealing with within our mental racism and and the social justice issues and the impact of technology, how do we move forward, open that up to all of you as we come and get ready for

our questions? okay. so how do we move forward given where we are at this time? how do we move forward? i mean, for me, there's just one simple word reparations. i don't we have to be very clear at this moment as we watch as we're seeing the idea of teaching black history be banned, as we're seeing the idea that our very existence be banned and the one thing about the one thing about banning the curriculum is that the curriculum tells you who's important. the curriculum tells you who this country believes is important, who has contributed to this country, who will be our future. but the curriculum banning black folks from the curriculum also means that you never have to apologize because you did nothing wrong, because where's the record of that? so for me, you know, my book ends with a detailed examination

of what educational reparations would be. and i work with economists and policymakers for a year. and we looked at just my generation and the last 40 years of education reform in a very conservative amount that is old to black people of my generation, this $2 trillion. and that's a very conservative number. but the thing about reparations, to be clear, is that we just don't want to check. we do want our check. yeah. yeah. but what we also want is for the policies to change is for atonement, is for a real apology that these are some type of strategies and system and structural changes. so you're not just cutting me a check. i don't want you to do the same harm to my grandchildren and great grandchildren. and so we have to be advocating for repair, not just more data. i think we live in a country now. what thinks that because they give you the data of the harm that they do into you, somehow that's justice because you tell me what you've done doesn't mean that's because you have been

transparent about what you have done. that doesn't mean that's justice. and so i think as a country, black folks and brown folks and indigenous folks, we have to start getting very clear that we don't want just the i we don't just want more policies that are lay in anti-blackness. so that's why these policies never truly work. what we want is actual reparations. what we want is actual repair of the harm that has been done. and so you have to name your president, you have to document what your president done, and then you have to come together as a community asking and demanding for what you know is right. and i'll just end by what? well, you know what, robin? d.g. kelley says, robin? d.g. kelley says any monetary money given to black people is not a gift. it is a down payment on what is owed to us because of the violence, the exploitation, and that has happened to us. and so what we have to be arguing is that are we not worthy of the investment is already our money.

so what we really want is what is owed to us. so they're not giving us anything. it is what is owed us. and i think we all have to be having a conversation that really starts. and in my opinion, ends with reparations thank you, thank you, thank you. can we just really quickly for q&a, since there is quite a few there are quite a few people and we have very limited time. can we make sure that we are heavy on the q? that is the question and not the prolog to said question. thank you, professor greer. yes. why don't we start here? we're not just alternate my questions for dr. love. and so that's a little i would appreciate it. the comments are just me. and i'm curious if there are examples of institutions that educating our children in a manner that you think that they should be? well, i mean, we have a history of afrocentric schools in this country that i think do a pretty good job. we have a history of these schools not being, you know, funded. and i have improper funding. but i think they do a pretty

good job. we also have a history of what we would call like saturday schools. and we have ella baker schools that are really amazing but i also think we can never not talk about and run the data on hbcu right? hbcu, you know, when you think about black doctors. okay, hbcu represent about 50 to 70% of black doctors. we talk about stem education, 25% of all stem teachers come hbcu lawyers. dennis, all of them. now, these numbers seem like, oh, my god. but if you think about it, we're talking. 30 to 40 schools producing 50 to 70% of these black professionals. we have to be asking ourselves, well, what are the other 3000 schools doing that are taking our black kids right? howard university medical just last year had 9000 applications for about 150 slots. mm. so we talk about, you know, the

examples we have so many amazing hbcu shoes that are the examples of what we are doing. we have so many black folks who come out of hbcu that are examples of what happens when you can nurture black excellence, nurture black talent, and then give them a safe space to be black. and it grows. so i hbcu, i think is the best example. and to also look at these white schools pwi eyes and say, you're taking our money, you have this legacy that you somehow deserve that i don't see the receipts for, particularly when you are, you know, the 3000 pwi is in this country and there's 101 hbcu and look the data. so for me, i mean, i've already told my children i got to i'm only pay for hbcu. now, if you want to go somewhere else, that's fine with me. but where my money is going and hbcu because i can see the value of my dollar from how they nurture black folks right. just as as as i point, i call

them h.w. schools that pwi is because hbcu were set up for the production and cultivation of black knowledge and h.w. schools were set up for the production and cultivation of white knowledge. and we just happened to get in where we fit in. there you go. there you go. and i'm tell you that went to a whole bunch of these. okay, so i'm going to because of the time, i'm just going to ask everyone to just give their question and then open will have any one of the speakers respond. so why don't we just give us your question? my question is very specifically for the greer. i'm from baltimore here. so i wanted to know why was that like this great city for you? i've lived there for 30 years and i needed to know how you quit. okay? okay. know, i just want to get all the questions. the question? yes. hi. how do you guys respectively navigate utilizing social media to inspire our youth to get involved in our social, political education, national

issues without the false allies --. like how are you navigating inspiring our youth and avoiding people just jumping in because it's trending. thank you. okay, we'll go to you. yes. okay. let me try to focus here at the social media addict. right. i've been doing social media since 2006. and there is so much information out there. but there's also so much noise. and as a creator and i think everyone should be on social media if they're not, because it gives you a voice that. you know, you just you can be on any public forum, but we are social media. people can find you from all over the world. but how do you focus your voice and focus your attention on the things that you want to to put out there? i think that's just the question. how do you focus it? how would you go about it? thank you.

yes. dr. bettina love, thank you for representing rochester. we know how to thank new york frederick augustus bailey, washington. douglass is smiling down. my question, dr. bettina love, what is our call to action? what are two things? we the sons and daughters of the diaspora in this wilderness that is north america. what can what two things can we do before march is all going? thank you. and the last question. yes, greetings. my name is claudia joyce vance and i want to know if you have some ideas about what it is that people of african descent, no matter where we live, but particularly in the us, we can cross the divide. that divide us so whether we're an immigrant from the caribbean or from africa or from latin,

how can we begin to see that we're really one and working with a common goal? thank you. thank you. so why don't we begin with why baltimore? listen, i'll be fast. baltimore, super black city to hbcu coppin, captain morgan. right. there we go. as birder. okay. you got the orioles. you got the ravens is on the water. architecturally, it's one of the most fascinating cities. if you're interested in buildings and cobblestone streets. at one point in time, it was like a competitor to new york city, new york one with finance, baltimore one with shipping, new york one. but it has i think the accent is beautiful, but it has this northern southern feel as a city and, you know, if you like good food. sure, i'm allergic to crabs, but like that old thing too. but you can feel like you're in like a charleston or savannah at the same time.

you can feel like you're in like a philly or new york, depending on what neighborhood you're in. so it's just it's a magical place. it's called charm city a reason. thank you. okay. so for next question and this is for anyone, any of our speakers. how do we get our youth to navigate social media? what are some strategies we can with our youth around social media? i've got really quickly, i don't fight with strangers on social right. these are people just like in the ether. and so that old mark twain quote, the words attributed to mark twain, it's like, you know, don't fight with people in the street, crazy people in the street. passers by won't know the difference. and so there's a lot of misinformation and disinformation also on the web because or in social media because it's free. and we know that as we put up more and more barriers to real journalism, more people going to places where they can just get free information and not all of it is accurate. so i think sort of making sure young people know sort of how to identify something, if it seems outlandish, then do a little

digging. right. you know, we sort of pass around these stories really quickly and it's like take a beat. like does that really make it make sense to you? and to spend a little time to sort of verify sources to make sure? but i think also there's a lot of people who hide behind anonymity. and so i'm quick to block my i don't i don't engage with people who aren't in a positive intellectual space. i hear that yes i hear that the question was asked about a call to action. i'm going to ask each of you to respond to that. what is the call to action? love started with you? but from your own perspective, in your ownhi.

good afternoon. how is everyone? i know we are a bit happier and brighter to be in this of medgar evers college at the