live here, or right here. or way out in the middle of anywhere, you should have access to fast reliable internet. >> mediacom supports c-span a public service, along with these other television providers giving you a front row seat to democracy. ♪ >> c-span's washington journal, our live form involving you to discuss the latest issues in government, politics and public policy from washington and across the country. friday morning, utah republican governor spencer cox chairs the national governors association. he discusses his disagree better initiative and talks agenda items at this week's gathering of governors at the winter meeting. then campaign 2024.

the role of social conservatives and this week's annual cpac conference. and the harvard kennedy school of government professor talks about the teaching of race in american higher education. c-span's "washington journal" join in the conversation live at 7:00 eastern friday morning on c-span, c-span now are free mobile app, or online at c-span.org. >> jason hill is a philosophy professor at depaul university joining us this morning as part of our series looking at black history month. of our series looking at black history month. he wrote a book "what to white americans owe black people: racial justice in the age of post-oppression." how did you answer that question? >> i answered it by making the claim that reparations have already been paid.

restitution to those that have been wronged by making financial restitution. my argument is reparations, by and large, have already been made to black americans through the 1960's civil rights act and through affirmative action programs, through cultural reparations have been made through black studies programs. basically the employment act. that a free society can go no further in making restitution to a group of people who might have been suffering from the residual effects of slavery. host: are those financial reparations? guest: those are not financial reparations. there is no one living today who was a slave. i was basing my notion of

reparations on president reagan's civil liberties act of 1988, in which the state made an apology for the japanese-americans who were interred through world war ii and made a payment of $20,000 to each former detainee still alive when the act was passed. because there are no slaves still alive today, there can be no, going by the logic of the civil liberties act of 1988, there can be no financial compensation. we can make the assumption under jim crow and racism that continues after jim crow when america was a systemically racist country, when white supremacy did reign supreme come that restitution was due to black americans. i make the case in my book that the 1964 act was a form of

reparations and affirmative action programs that followed were meant as forms of making amends to a group of people who are suffering from the residual effects of slavery. host: earlier this week the university of texas plenty old know joseph -- pelinial joseph was on our program and made an argument for financial reparations. take a listen to what he had to say. >> until 2020 many people would do not -- did not understand slavery and the way black labor built the wealth in united states and built global capitalism. there are extraordinary books about this, including the harvard slaver report, including empire of cotton. greg wilder's every and iv.

there are so -- ebony and ivory. there are so many interesting books. when we think about slavery. it is not just the labor of enslaved black people that produces the wealth. we were used as collateral, we were used as mortgage securities, we were used to provide global investment for everything from harvard university to banks and businesses. black people created the first financial instruments that lead to private equity and hedge funds and venture capital. not just in the united states but around the world. this is demonstrably proved with reams of evidence. first of all is the fact we do not want to talk about that. we do not want to talk about that. once you talk about that you

open up a pandora's box. it should not be a pandora's box that is negative. there has been reparations for other groups in the past, including reparations for the holocaust, those things were correct. those were the morally correct choice. jason -- host: jason hill? guest: he is right but he is talking about our ancestors. unfortunately the time has passed for that type of reparations. when you're talking about the holocaust and japanese, you're talking about people where you can point to the damage. there have been families in mississippi whose properties were confiscated from them and they could show through the unfair laws that were part of the jim crow system that their lands were confiscated.

they were entitled to reparations. that is the form of reparations i respect and i'm an advocate for. the sort of far-reaching collectivist notion that our ancestors were the individuals who built america in this broad reaching language, and therefore we the descendants are now due payments, i do not think has any sort of status in a free society. the time for reparations for those individuals has passed because they are dead. host: when you delved into this and he looked at the civil rights act, would you say is reparations, what evidence do you point to in your book? guest: i made a very startling claim in the book where i said the 1964 civil rights act was the greatest form of moral eugenics in america in the sense that it did violate property

rights. i made a defense for why it was the proper violation of property rights, because it said to whites you cannot use your property as an extension of your home or living room and you cannot say i will use my property to discriminate against blacks. even the collusion between the states and whites and given the way in which the state had played a significant role in creating race -- the 1964 civil rights act said it is not just you cannot use your property to discriminate against blacks, we will make you into nonracist. we will re-socialize your sensibilities and make you into proper nonracist individuals. we will tweak your sensibilities and make you good moral citizens in your approach to blacks. that was a pivotal moment in american history because it was a moment when the state took it upon itself to make moral agents

out of whites cap even the grotesque history that existed between blacks and whites. i think it was a heavy-handed approach but i think it was proper because civil rights is not a gift. it was something that was due to blacks. it was a moral form of reparations. i call it a eugenic will moment in history because it sought to resocialize white people to radically different types of people, to making them into nonracist by telling them how they could and cannot use their property. today racism is an evil. if there any forms of racism committed against blacks, those claims can be brought before courts of law. financial compensation can be administered to the victims of racism. host: as a philosopher, what is

your thought on that effort in 1964 to change white people sensibilities? guest: it was heavy-handed but it was proper. i am an independent conservative who belongs to no particular party. i reject the conservative claim that america was never a white supremacist country, that we never had an ideology of white supremacy and america was never a racist country. that is a bunch of malarkey. it is an insult to black people who have suffered tremendously at the hands of white supremacist and racist law that singled out blacks because of their race. i think it was heavy-handed. given the construct and the norms that were codified, laws that prevented races from intermarrying, as a philosopher

i think when you collude with whites and when you create racists -- there were white people wanted to deal with blacks on a strictly commercial basis. on a basis of interpersonal exchanges, but states forbade them with interstate commerce laws. they made racists out of white people. the biggest enemy against blacks were not individual whites, but also the states. walter williams the great economist pointed this out in his book, "the state against black." i think that heavy headedness was a repair moment in american history. the work is still ongoing. i do not agree with dei initiatives because they are too ideological, but i was and remain in advocate for affirmative action programs they

were originally conceived. that is my defense as a philosopher. as heavy-handed as the social eugenic moment of the civil rights act were, they were necessary to correct the harmful wrongs created by the state in maintaining the practice of slavery and in continuing the norms and codifying those racist norms into law. host: diane is in tennessee. our first caller. welcome to the conversation. caller: i've been trying to get in. i am glad to be on this. when they are talking about reparations for black people, i don't like the word black. i am a light-skinned colored woman compared to whites. all of our races are different colors.

i hate the word black. black is a color of a shoe. i don't like the term. i'm looking at him right now on tv. he has a trace of whiteness in his blood like i do. the majority of my relatives are light compared to whites. we do not have as many dark people in our family. talking about reparations. i want stuff done right now. look at black on black killing each other. buying drugs from the white man, buying guns from the white man. i remember when all of this hit the united states when reagan was in there. how come our black people are afraid to speak up about that? how the drugs are getting in her neighborhood. how old are black people have worked back through the years and some just get $500 a month on social security and will not get food stamps.

why don't you address what is happening to us right now. none of you are getting up there talking about that. host: let's give jason hill a chance. guest: i'm not sure what she means by reparations because of drugs. my response would be why would african-americans or people of color, whatever term she is comfortable with using, why have they relinquished control of their communities to these folks? there are communities of color. i will use the word african-american or black because that is the terminology used in this country that have taken their communities back, that have taken responsibility for their communities. 74% of black children born in this country are born to single mothers, the majority of whom are born into poverty. why are we not talking about the

fact that the state, through the welfare program, has played a role in descent devising parents , fathers from being fathers, from being married by rewarding single parenthood by glamorizing single households, which is a great predictor for crime committed by black men. i'm not sure how reparations would remedy the gang problem, the proliferation of black on black crime. there is nothing reparations can do. a lot of what we need to do is talk about the breakdown of the black family, the decentralization of marriage that exists in this culture. even among whites. the breakdown of the nuclear family is a colossal failure in this country. there is a wider conversation that needs to be had. i'm not sure how reparations would remedy any of the

phenomenon she is talking about. host: intranet in philadelphia. -- antoinette in philadelphia. caller: i have been a foundational black american all my life. reparations is the law. i will not get into this thing about black-and-white. when we were slaves there was no such thing. it is cause and effect. it is the scale of justice. we are human beings. black people are not being treated as such because each and every one of the people that were owed reparations have gotten reparations. you can try to speak for me and you are not even from this country, you are not even part of the cause and effect of slavery.

a lot of our problems stem from slavery. we've never had an opportunity, equally. we have never had a chance. we had inventions stolen. we have our language that was stolen. everything was stolen from us and now what we are doing is demanding what is owed to us. if you cannot understand that, you do not need to be up there trying to speak as a philosopher for me, walking history that was spat on in the 1960's, that was called a nigger. you do not know what that feels like. it is cause and effect. host: we will get a response. guest: i not speaking on behalf of you. you have no business telling me what i have or have not experienced in this country.

i came to america in this country when i was 20 years old and lived in the deep south and i have lived here 38 years. i've experienced as a black man in america. if you want to talk about what was stolen from you, which most people do not want to talk about which a professor at harvard university and many black historians have talked about, 90% of the slave trade was initiated by africans. 90% of the slave trade was initiated by africans and arabs who kidnapped other africans, auctioned them, and sold them to europeans. if you want to talk about reparations, you need to talk about looking to nigeria and ghana, and all of the other countries that were complicit in african transatlantic slave trade, which had the health of

african chiefs and kings who kidnapped -- they did not see other africans as their own people because they were tribal people -- who kidnapped under -- who kidnapped other africans. this is the dirty secret no one want to talk about. everyone talks as if there were europeans who landed on the shores. there was collusion among african tribes and europeans. if you want reparations, start calling the nigerians and other sub-saharan countries and talk about reparations from those countries. i reject the claim that i've never experienced racism in this country. you are not in a position -- listening to you i'm becoming a statistician.

you do not know what i've gone through in this country. i just do not make myself a victim out of whatever experiences of racism i might've gone through. i transcend them and deal with them and i not become part of the cult of victim ologies you seem to belong to. host: james from mississippi. caller: how are you all doing? host: good morning. caller: i want to let this man know, hello? host: we are listening. caller: you can say what you want to say about africans, about black folks rounding up american -- african people. you can make that stipulation. over here it is different. slavery started when they went over there, and whatever they did to get those tribes to do

what they did, they do not have a right to do it, and they brought them over here and they became slaves. not only slaves, but jim crow. segregation. they could sing, they could dance, but they cannot buy homes and houses because of slavery. you can sit up here and play these games just like they're playing the game with the debt. african-american debt is $16,000. you need to add a $16 trillion on the debt. until this country pays that debt, you will never get out of this debt. you know it for yourself. you have the audacity to try to blame what these people did over here. you're tried to put it back over there. i can say that about vladimir putin.

this is america. you know it. you can smile all you want. host: let's give professor hill the chance to respond. guest: i'm trying to make sense out of his incoherent ramblings. america was a white supremacist country. i have talked about jim crow in my book. i have talked about the sufferings of blacks in this country. no one can deny that. i said i am not part of the phalanx of thinkers on the right who believe america was never racist. i would never deny that. i'm not placing the blame on african-americans today. whatever he thinks i am doing, flipping the switch by placing the blame on victims. i will say this.

reparations -- the arguments for reparations are based on a collectivist premise. that is ancestral blame is to be placed on a group of people had nothing to do with slavery. the majority of whites living today, their ancestors came after the civil war. there is no one today who is living who is a slave. i will say this. there are no laws that single out blacks as candidates for punishment based solely on their race. there are disparities, there will always be disparities among different groups of people for different reasons. i do not believe in this mono causal attribution of pointing

to every disparity among races to racism. sometimes it is racism. i have said the 1964 civil rights act makes racism illegal. if you can show you're the victim of racism that your case belongs in a court of law. if you can show that damage has been done to you and the terms of property confiscation, even something like redlining, then you are properly dude reparations administered through a court of law. that is as much as i'm going to say in answering that question. here's another -- host: here is another viewer on x. can professor hill distinguish between affirmative action and the current dei movement? guest: affirmative action was meant to bolster both women and men, individuals and groups who

were victims of systemic forms of exclusion based on laws that systemically barred them from participating in institutional life. that is in university and corporate life and other forms of worlds and wish they could participate to enhance their well-being. that is affirmative action. a generally those that permeates -- a general ethos that permeates our country that makes it possible for disenfranchised and marginalized groups to become part of the general participants of individuals who constitute the workforce. the current diversity, equity, and inclusion system is a system of applying unequal standards to ensure preferential outcomes for

individuals based on race, sex, and gender inequality. it is based on unequal rewards for unequal performance it has become an ideology. people are subjected to diversity training. it is predicated. look at coca-cola, who have adopted a radical initiative where it wants to become less white, were less white beads being less punctual, being less certain, less arrogant. listening more. certain attributes that are universal. excellent, certain, confident, are relegated to the domain of whiteness. coca-cola has committed itself to becoming less white. i do not know with this nonsense means.

the current ddi initiative has -- the current dei initiative has become a radical ideology that commits itself to illuminating what it calls whiteness from society. i do not know what eliminating whiteness means. i know it trying to eliminate racism means. when you start talking about illuminating whiteness, i think that is a code word. some of the proponents of the dei initiatives, some of the more radical ones have stated in their work they want to -- the black race can only advance through the limitation of white people. affirmative action historically was simply based on overcoming structural racism, which i think no longer exists in this country. there is no laws in our institutions that with malice

seek to exclude minorities. dei initiatives go much further and attempt to indoctrinate individuals into a cult of victimology, which affirmative action programs did not do come into seeing themselves as victims of whiteness. if you are white then you are automatically a racist, that you have special privilege that are conferred on to you, and by virtue of your whiteness you become an oppressor. it creates an oppressive dyad in our country that i think is very divisive and very dangerous. host: jason hill is a philosophy professor at depaul university. the book is "what to white

americans owe black people: racial justice in the age of post-oppression." let's take the second part of that title. racial justice in the age of post-oppression. what did you mean? guest: i meant that since the 1964 civil rights act we no longer live in a officially repressive society. we do not have -- that does not mean we do not have individual racists. we will always have psychotics and idiots, which is what racists are. in terms of america being in officially oppressed society, meaning systemic racism exists, meaning there are laws that permeate our institutions. laws that improperly bar blacks from being participants in institutions. those do not exist.

the 1964 civil rights act helped bar such laws. if any institution is caught with any norms or laws that bar blacks or other minorities or women from entering those institutions, they will catch hellfire. a post-oppression society means nothing more than a society that is no longer officially constituted by systemically oppressive policies, that by law or press and exclude persons from participating in public institutions and private institutions. host: we will go to janet in pennsylvania. caller: good morning. i have a couple points. i laud the professor for speaking about the africans selling. they were kidnapping and selling their own people to the people

that were coming there on the ships to bring them to america. the other thing is, i never heard anybody say it, i know i have known that for a long time. the civil rights act would've never been passed if it had not been for the republican votes. the democrats in the segregated south did not want that bill to pass. robert byrd, who was a senator from west virginia, and strom thurmond, they were wizards of the ku klux klan. it was the democrats who are the segregationists and who were holding back the blacks. it is always put like it is the republicans. one other thing. president lincoln was the first republican president. he freed the slaves. after the civil war there were

16 blacks in congress. that went on until the 1920's. to say the blacks have not had any opportunities, we have had a black president, a vice president. we have governors, we have mayors, we have heads of police. we have district attorneys and congresspeople. i think the person that has stirred all of this was president obama. we never heard any of this racial stuff like it is today with clinton or bush. i think he is the one that has divided this country. host: jason hill. a lot there. guest: a lot of thoughts there. condoleezza rice saying she became a republican because the democrats prevented her party from voting and the republicans

said what you want to be and they said we will register you to vote and her family has been republican ever since. there was lot to unpack there that we do not have time to talk about about the collusion of the dixie democrats and their participation in the continued jim crow and segregation of the south and the historical role republicans have played in the enfranchisement of blacks. the other thing i want to say is i have lived in this country for 38 years and i have seen increase in market improvement of race relations. there is a larger thing to talk about. whether to attributed to barack obama or not would be a larger conversation and i would need a lot more evidence at my disposal. i would say we are seeing victimology, a very ugly un-american phenomenon, where the weight the more you make

yourself into an unattractive victim, the more you are rewarded. one of the reasons i think this is becoming the case is that excellence -- and i'm a big advocate of black history month. a lot of your viewers might not believe this. i belong to the 1776 movement where we talk about black excellence and talk about teaching people about black heroes is that the enshrinement of mediocrity and the annihilation of excellence in this country have become the coin of the realm. part of how we get beyond this cult victim balaji -- this cult of victimology -- in this country, if with tenacity and

resilience there is not anything a black person cannot accomplish. we still live in the latest republic on the face of earth and it deals opportunities to blacks if they wish to take advantage of it. there is no excuse for any black person not to take advantage of the plethora of opportunities. nigerians come here and they out-earn whites. if america were systemically racist, than the immigrants who come here who are black would not have advanced. i use myself as evidence of this phenomenon. they would not have advanced and made something as remarkable of their lives as they have. it is not that they do not experience racism, it is that they realize their creative agency and their capabilities are sufficient to transcend and navigate the racist terrain they

might find themselves in. kudos to your collar for making that point. host: clyde in new york. caller: hello? host: good morning. caller: first of all, mr. hill, you're entitled to your opinion. we foundational black african-americans take offense to how you are basically telling us that they are speaking gibberish. for us, it is a whole different thing. you are concerned about the slaves that actually went through it. we systematically have gone through this thing that we should be repaid.

when you said reparations, reparations means to repair. with our ancestors, they went through it, we did not go through it per se. in the long haul we've been systematically kept out of this geopolitical system. it is like monopoly. everybody else has been given a hand up. even martin luther king said in his speech. poor immigrants, white immigrants, came over here and they got the reparations we were supposed to get. now here it is, they own the land, they own the farms. because we live in a capitalist is society, we have been placed at the bottom. since we have been placed at the bottom is like playing monopoly. we are told to get into this game and to play with no money.

eventually we can go around the board of monopoly. eventually we will get trampled on. we have not had any base. considering that after slavery we wound up having 60 towns that we built. they deliberately destroyed those towns that we segregated ourselves. not to mention all of the atrocities they do not speak about that happened to us. here is. you gently. -- eugenically. there is psychological stuff that has been done to our people that it will take generations to get out of those are the things that need to be repaired. host: professor hill? guest: i do not think you can

speak on behalf of all black people. blacks are not a monolith. the monolithic take on which you presuppose your arguments are false. there are blacks that are for reparations and blacks that are not. let me get to the meat of what you're saying. in my book i wrote, "we have overcome," which preceded the one "what do white people oh black people," i tell the story of immigrants, and i tell the story of a gemini worked with what i was working three jobs to put myself through school. working 40 hours a week. this gentleman cannot speak english but he was working in the bottom tier of the bank with me stuffing envelopes for four dollars an hour. i do not know what kind of handout he got. i tell the story of immigrants.

hundreds of immigrants i have met who did not speak a word of english, who came to this country, some of them legally and illegally. i do not know what kind of handouts the vietnamese or the chinese or the polish or the tons of african immigrants i went to school with at georgia state -- i got into a lot of top-tier universities that i cannot afford so i went to a state university and i went to lots of immigrants who are working up to three jobs at gas stations. pakistani immigrants. i do not know what kind of handout you're talking about that these people got. i have kept up with some of them and they have made something remarkable with their lives. one of them went on to become an architect, a surgeon will the vietnamese immigrant became a restaurant tour and owned two restaurants and retired at the age of 40. i still cannot afford to retire as a professor.

these are people who came without a sense of entitlement. they are grateful to be here in the greatest country on earth. some of them mastered the language with great difficulty and achieved a level of articulate with the language that far exceeded people who had the privilege of being born in america. i take umbrage with the idea that people came to this country and got handouts. i've never met a single person who became a millionaire, and immigrant, who got a handout in this country. you are right that there is still generational trauma. i think generational trauma emerges from the trauma of the standards in which these individuals are born. a lot of these individuals are born in families ruled by single mothers who do not have the time of day to look after their children because they are too

busy working three jobs because the fathers are not there. this generational trauma that you are talking about, this country has been trying to deal with this through various programs, affirmative action, the civil rights act, the various programs. i speak as a college professor. if you are a black man and you are considered an endangered species because you arespecies . if you have a c average there is no liberal arts college that will not admit you into their domain. there are no excuses. i want to reiterate, if you pull yourself up with your honor and your integrity, your perseverance, your resilience, and take ownership of your life, you are responsible for your life, your destiny and fate are your responsibility. the white man is not going to save you and he should not save you. your life belongs to you, and your life is yours.

god bequeaths to you this precious thing called your life. stop looking for others to immediately take care of what's yours. host: you said black history month is important. why? guest: because as a college professor of 26 years i am appalled at the knowledge americans have. i have a student last year he didn't know who president clinton was. one month devoted to any kind of history. i think it's important. next week i am teaching martin luther king, a class called what is freedom. we are going to look at dr. king's letter from a birmingham jail and the notion of what it is to be gifted and black in a country at a time when america

was systemically racist. mason who was born a slave and died a millionaire. we will look at the black wall street of america founded by jb strasburg during the oil boom of the 1920's. tulsa, oklahoma where you have thousands of black moving into the black wall street, creating hotels, insurance companies, banks, traffic systems. we are going to look at marva collins, the elementary school teacher in chicago who formed her own elementary system and became a pioneer in black education to excellence on the maligned west side of chicago. and johnson who worked for nasa and was integral in forming orbital mechanics at

nasa. that reason is also because people just don't know about black excellence in this country. they don't know enough about the enormous contributions that blacks have made to american history. why? because we have lived in a country that has shortchanged black excellence and black heroism. a country with radical pernicious policy seeking to abolish the humanities history, sociology, and replace it with a radicalism and activism. i think that black history is important. my students can know something about billy mason and black wall street tycoons and heroes. that is a very wonderful thing. it's not going to be more divisive. this is why i want to advocate that people not think of black people as victims and helpless

or as pawns, but as people who are capable and used their heroism to make something remarkable of their lives. these stories must be told. black history month is the month that is selected to tell the stories. then it's a good thing. host: professor at depaul university. the book is what do white americans owe black people: racial justice in the>> let me .

[applause] >> i want to officially