that there would be some political violence that the republic would simply have to suffer as part of the price of freedom and they believed that price would be tolerable. essentially, what they believed is that we have to put up with idiots like timothy mcveigh in order to be free. >> last comment i think that wasn't within the constitution but it was an idea is that the people didn't give up the locking idea. that's partly where we disagree on these things. but i think it's been a real interesting debate and thank you very much. >> thank you. [applause] >> joshua horowitz is a visiting scholar at the johns hopkins bloomberg school of public health. robert churchill is an associate professor of history at the university of hartford and has published several articles. for more information on robert

churchill, go to hartford.edu for joshua horowitz you can go to jhsph.edu. >> university of maryland sociology professor patricia

hill collins said public education is heavily influenced by the media and influence of institutional racism. busboys and poets in washington, d.c. hosted this event. it's an hour, 15 minutes. >> i am thrilled to be here tonight. i have a tremendous admiration for busboys and poets and what is done here on a regular basis. and i have tremendous admiration for teaching for change, which is an organization that i'm now consulting with. and i am a tremendous admirer of our author tonight. for those of you who have not heard of patricia hill collins, you're in for quite a session tonight. and if you haven't bought the book yet, talk about shameless plugs -- if you haven't bought the book yet, get it before it's sold out because it's fabulous. let me give you a little bit of information about her background.

professor collins is a distinguished university professor of sociology at the university of maryland. she serves as president of the american sociological association, the first african-american woman to hold that office in the association's 100-year history. >> wow! >> yeah! go ahead. go ahead. [applause] >> her masters degree in teaching is from harvard. her doctorat is from bran dies. she's been a teach and curriculum specialist at three community schools in boston. she has written over 40 articles and six books. the one that put her on the map for those of you who do not know was black feminist thought, knowledge -- yes, go ahead. [applause]

>> groundbreaking, absolutely groundbreaking. black feminist thought, knowledge, consciousness and the politics of empowerment published in 1990. the award-winning book was gradually added to gender studies courses throughout the united states. then came the other books, race, class, and gender and anthology. fighting words, i love this title, black women and the search for justice. black social politics, african-americans gender and the new racism. from black power to hip hop, racism, nationalism and feminism. each one breaking new ground. she has done it again with her new book, another kind of public education, race, schools, the media and democratic possibilities. it is described as a tour de force of social analysis with

practical implications by demystifying what she calls racism as a system of power. professor collins argues that the generation coming of age at the turn of the 21st century in a ç

>> yes, yes. we'll hear more about that. i'm looking forward to that part. the idea of social blackness, honorary whiteness and all points in between and the crucial importance of media literacy as a tool in the 21st century. i certainly agree with her there. that focus is certainly near and dear to the heart of the organization teaching for change, which runs the fabulous bookstore. this is the second shameless plug. you'll be hearing it all night along here in busboys and has for years been working to produce the kind of educational material that can give our children an alternative realistic view of this new world and who they are. it is with great pleasure that i am very pleased to introduce professor patricia hill collins. [applause]

>> well, hello, gang, how are you all doing tonight? >> good! >> this is good. i mean, the first time i came to busboys and poets i sat out there and i heard a wonderful presentation -- wait a minute, i have to work with this stool. hold on. okay. is that cute? all right. the first time i came here i was out there and thought to myself, what a wonderful space this is for ideas. and how difficult it is to find spaces like this where one can share one's ideas. so it was really an honor to be invited here tonight. i'd like to thank those who invited me and made this possible. but since we have a few special folk in the room tonight, i'd like to do a special shoutout to the university of maryland and graduate students in sociology.

[applause] >> now you can all come and get your $25 check. [laughter] >> after -- oh, no that was a little bit of a story. this particular book comes from a very old place. very often when authors talk about their books, they're responding to a new issue. obama got elected. i must write a book about obama. hillary lost the election, i must write a book about hillary. oh, it's a global crisis. i must write a book about how we're all poor all of a sudden. that's not the origin of this particular book. this book has an old history. it goes back to the days when i was a student, back to the days when i was a teacher. my current experiences as a teacher and thinking about issues of social justice and resistance and teaching and

education and race and democracy for a very long time. so in some ways for me this is a book that's brought me full circle where i started which was a humble place to where i am now with this wonderful applause that i've gotten today. i'd like to talk to you about three different questions that most people ask authors. they want to know what's the book about? and you have a little bit of a taste about that so i'm going to talk extensively about that and read in a minute. the second question they ask is, how long did it take to you write the book? and very often they have this notion that you just have a, oh, idea, book. you rush home and you type and then there's the book. not so. it's a very different process crafting a book like this. and the third question that they ask is, why did you write this book? why? so i'd like to address each of those three questions starting with the question of how long did it take me to write this

book and recast it to give you a bit of context for this book. there's a historical past and the long past that i alluded to which you heard a little bit about from my biography. my path to becoming an author was not a typical path. my path to becoming a scholar was not a typical path. i have always thought about ideas as weapons, as tools. i have always thought about my work as bigger than my job. i have never thought about intellectual production as being collapsed into the conditions of my current employment. the size of my paycheck or the appearance of my office. so this is a book where i've been thinking for a very long time about issues of social justice, about issues of fairness and unfairness, about issues of democracy, about issues of youth because quiet as

it's kept i did used to be one at one point, all right? and about the significance of youth as the carriers of new ideas and new practices to take us forward. so this particular book does come from my experiences as a classroom teacher. long ago, my experiences as basal a community organizer, we can now say those words now. freely without worrying about other things. it comes from that whole history of working consistently on behalf of social justice in choosing different terrains of struggle to do that. but the more immediate how long did it take me to write this book is a pretty straightforward answer. one year ago i was invited to deliver -- and i did deliver four lectures at the race, education, and democracy series college in boston.

this is an unusual way this particular book was produced. i got a chance to give four lectures to an audience that was incredibly hetrogenius. faculty members, graduate students, high school teachers, parents, community organizers, high school students, undergraduates and one or two random folk to this day -- i don't know who those people were but they were in there, too. and i had the opportunity to give four lectures and have available to me the question and answer period, the kinds of things that the people in the audience brought up. so as opposed to writing a book from my imagination, i had an opportunity to talk with people who were actively engaged in the types of issues that i write about in this book. so in many ways this book is a dialog with them as the front line audience that gives me

access to a much broader audience, both public and academic. right? now, obviously, i've been working really hard. only in the last few days have i had the bravery to even look at my own book. i mean, when i finish a book, i let it go. it's a gift to you. it's not for me anymore. it's gone. and i thought to myself, this is not bad, you see, not bad. 'cause if you could have a do-over all the time you would continue to edit and you would never finish anything. graduate students out there, can we represent to the term "good enough," all right? [laughter] >> but what i want to do is talk by the now about the content of the book and i would like to open a discussion by reading a vignette. i will be reading three or four passages from this particular work so you get a sense of what it is. this is a work where i actually tell you more about myself and

use the word "i." the whole notion of vignettes that give us an angle of vision into larger issues is an operation. so this is from the first chapter. there are four chapters that roughly parallel the talks that i gave in boston. and this is from the first chapter titled what does the flag mean to you? education and democratic possibilities. i'm assuming you all were in high school at some point. oh? were you in high school at some point? was high school a stressful experience for you? or were you one of those people that said, i'm a cheerleader? i'm a football player. i'm a top scholar. most of us were not in that category. high school was a crucial right of passage. so i begin with my high school story to get into the issues of race, schools, the media, and democratic possibilities. another kind of public

education. by the time i began my senior year at the philadelphia high school for girls, my public school education had almost silenced me. the days of playing the lead in my preschool pageant or chatting away with my schools were in us memories all erased by the school district tracking policies that left me marooned in overwhelmingly white settings. i rarely spoke in any of my classes. as a working class african-american girl, i knew my place in a school that catered to middle class white girls. i could stay if i didn't make waves so i sat and i listened. given micron my chronic silence my teach asked me if i would deliver the flag day speech. what an honor to sit at the dais at the site of the liberty bell and declaration of independence

and to participate in a ceremony held at this birth place of american democracy. i had no doubt about my ability to write a speech or to deliver it. all i had to do was answer one simple question, what did the flag mean to me? i thought that writing the speech would be easy. yet, when i got home crafting it turned out to be far more difficult than i'd expected. when it came to issues of the american flag and its black american citizens growing up in my african-american neighborhood had apparently raised more issues than i anticipated. what did the flag mean to my father, i wondered? despite serving in a racially segregated army, his service in world war ii left him a proud veteran with a strong commitment to the flag. risking his life to defend the flag did not shield him from racial discrimination at home. despite his status as a veteran, banks refused to grant him the low interest loans that were routinely offered to white veterans. which would have enabled my

family to buy a house in the burgeoning suburbs of philadelphia. what did the flag mean to my mother? she rarely mentioned anything to do with politics. by the time i was in high school, she had given up dream of attending college and becoming an english teacher and her secretarial job at the department of defense helped pay the bills but she was never recommended for promotion. she spent years training her bosses all of them white men who routinely started out as her subordinates. she simply went up went to her job and reading her book as receipt o- -- respit. i did all i could if and open the doors of opportunity could be closed to my parents would be open to me. i got good grades, was a church

organist, is a sunday school teacher, played the trumpet in my high school school band and orchestra. and i even made my own clothes. i was on the path to success. yet, i was also plagued by the growing recognition that the american ideal was a myth. and the lofty ideals of democracy suggested by my public school education yet my parents and others like them struggled so hard to improve their lives with many like my mother never achieving their dreams. why was i having such difficulty writing this simple flag talk, i wondered? despite my misgivings i wrote what i thought was a muted respectful speech that expressed my true feelings. my speech was no knee-jerk tribute to old glory. it aimed to breathe life into the principles that the flag seemingly represented. my speech stated my commitment to the democratic ideals that

the flag engendered in particular fairness, equal opportunity and justice. yet, it also tentatively questioned the contradictions that surrounded the flag. unlike now when i speak of racism so openly, i said nothing about race in that talk. but i remember that race was on my mind. i took my speech to my english teacher and waited anxiously while she read it. after a few minutes she calmly remarked, patricia, we need to make a few changes. out came the red pen. when she was done she said i've made a few minor changes. please look them over and once you make them, your speech will be fine. when i got home, i reviewed her comments. i had expected her to correct my grammar yet i was stunned to see that with the strokes of her pen, my teacher had completely changed the meaning of my entire speech. gone was my ambivalence about the meaning of the flag and by implication the meaning of the

democracy. the speech she expected me to giveev8 was anl/ñ uncriticalzyj celebration of american patriotism. when she invited me i sensed2rb that i was selected to give the african-american. by that time in my educational career, i also understood that you had to be careful what you said in school because none of my teachers really cared what i thought. if i said what i really thought it could be dangerous for me. i had strong opinions about race, school, and democracy. but there was no place for my opinions in my school. this speech incident stands out for me as one of the first times that i took a stab at saying what i thought albeit in a muted, tentative fashion. but this speech was also the first time that i became painfully aware that i was selected because i was perceived as being a certain kind of black person.

i was expected to deliver a specific message about race and democracy, namely, that because race doesn't matter in america, democracy has been achieved. now, looking back on that experience, are you still there by the way. how are you doing? okay. sometimes when i read i have to kind of make sure you didn't person next to you dozes, give him a little kind of thing. back to the book. looking back on that experience and experience telling you later in the chapter what i decided to do, i want to share some lessons that i took from it.:xj9ñ for one, this incident points to the significance of schools as gatekeepers for what can be said and done. it was no accident that this gatekeeping experience happened in a school. from the perspectiver(t a sociologist like myself, schools do many things in a society other than teach academic facts and skills. or statistics.

ideas, thatsq through a varietf ways and a thing called hidden curriculum reward us for seemingly appropriate ideas and behaviors. and punish others. schools have access to jobs, sort people into groups and what we think and say, attach privilege to some and not to others and via these activities, perpetuate social inequalities or on the other hand, foster fairness. for another, all of this was unspoken. ironically as is the case with many contemporary forms of communication about race in america, meanings are exchanged without the word "race" ever being mentioned. my teacher never ordered me to say certain things. and avoid saying others. that would have been a case of censorship a frowned-upon

practice. my teacher wanted me to deliver a racial message with my body through my visibility in a media setting and through editing my words she made it clear what message i was expected to convey. this incident also speaks to the ways in which african-americans, latinos, indigenous peoples, poor and working class people and new immigrant populations can be silenced within mainstream institutions. it is no longer the case that historically marginalized groups are simply excluded from good schools, jobs, neighborhoods and the like. rather, the terms of their inclusion, the rules that regulate their participation have grown in importance. seeing how my version of truth and that of my teacher differed dramatically led me to question the very criteria that are used to determine truth itself. why do we always believe certain people and routinely disregard others? how did we come to think this

way? more importantly, who get to decide which rules we will follow in determining what counts? this all leads back to questions of ideas, democracy, and the centrality of education to power. democracy speaks to issues of political power. here in this book, i emphasize that ideas matter in the exercise of political power and that democracy is not a finished product but rather is constantly in the making. in the united states, what counts as legitimate knowledge about the meaning of the democracy when it comes to the democratic process to the ideas of some people count more than others. because my teacher disagreed with me and made it clear that she would decide which speeches would be held at the flag day podium and which remain unspoken she has become in my mind the symbol of what i have come to see as an army of gatekeepers whose purpose is to silence

alternative points of view such as mine. from where i stand today, it is clear that many individuals as well as many different groups are still denied access to the power of the podium. their ideas are ignored, dismissed, and/or co-oped all in the name of fostering both a false feeling and a feel-good multiculturalism that obscure our understanding of important issues that confront the american public. including pictures of individuals from marginalized groups on the covers of college catalogs or hiring friendly for major corporations does not mean that universities or businesses take seriously the ideas of women or people of color. experiences such as these raise several broad questions that i'm -- in some ways do schools

perpetuate racism and other forms of social inequality? what will it take to prepare youth from backgrounds for the challenges they will face in sustaining democratic institutions? what kind of critical education might youth and the american public need to envision new democratic possibilities? what can parents, schools, and teachers and students do in response to these concerns? these questions ask us to think about schools as key sites for the public of democracy. not simply as institutions that teach people how to fit into social inequality. now, before i move on and talk a little bit about what happened, there are many themes embedded in this particular vignette. the unspoken nature of race and how i feel that this particular experience was the front end of racial integration and the emergence of a colorblind racism that is difficult to see.

this is what i'll talk about in a minute. this is the argument in the second chapter. in many ways when you have a racism that's organized around exclusion, you don't have to worry so much about boundary maintenance because the boundary has been associated for you. but when you are in an integrated or desegregated situation, whether it's gender, whether it's race, whether it's sexuality, whether it's class, you have to wonder how you recognize one another across these differences of power. these differences of power have to be remanufactured so my teacher became a gatekeeper because she didn't have to teach a student like me before. she didn't know what to do with a student like me. and i was a quiet student. i wasn't even one -- she should have met some of my friends. that's what i was thinking at the time. i mean, a good one. why are you giving me grief? i write this peaceful simple placid talk and she had the nerve to revise that talk. i was really quite fascinated by that, you see?

so race, the politics of race and the emergence of a colorblind racism that becomes difficult to challenge because we do not have conceptual tools to analyze it. therefore, it's hard to think about how to resist it. it also speaks to issues of youth. you see, you're dealing with the new and improved and grown up and wise patricia hill collins, well, kind of wise. maybe? help me out here, group. thank you. [laughter] >> i did not pay them for that. [laughter] >> but this experience happened to me when i was 16 years old and i don't know if you can remember yourself at 16 years old but it's a time of trying out lots of different things. you're not sure of yourself. i mean, i have students now who are far older than 16 and yet they still doubt themselves. can i write? i'm not sure. can i do a dissertation. is this the right way to do it dr. collins? i'm not so sure. i mean, really, come on people. get over yourselves.

i trying to deal with this woman @&hc% before i even formulate it. and that happens to so many people. that happens to youth which is why youth is a theme in this book because i think there are a 3p-ot of youtúi who don't get s down. in many ways thoseçó9?$r(áq forced to assimilate in situations like my teacher set up are the ones we reward. we reward the quietñr placid on. we run off the rowdy ones the ones who have ideas that, in fact, might breathe some new life into democracy. but anyhow, another theme in this particular vignetteçsñi is power of schools. this should be obvious to you.q all of you have been students. some of you are teachers. some of you are professors and some of are aspiring to be professors and teachers and many of you are parents. and parents really are the first teachers. of the teaching, learning process and that is a process that can be

and we say toçó those behind us like me. i have all the right answers. all you have to do is copy me. i will be your role model. .. you do have an opportunity to take a look at this book should you be interested, this is written in a very accessible

via. it is written to the public, a published document, but at the same time there are very complex ideas in this book. it operates on many layers. that means you can read it on many different layers. tonight i am going to go through the highlights and not get into the trenches. the second chapter of the book is entitled, what did i call this? social blackness, on larry white mishandle in between, colorblind this as a system of power. what wanted to do in this particular chapter was to get beyond the racism is horrible, and i chose race because it is one of the most tractable systems in this country in terms of democracy. i do not think it is the fundamental system but it is one the we have to go through in order to get to the other side of democracy. the way i approach racism or is to think about race as a test

case for how we might think about gender, class, age, ability, sensuality, immigrant status and religion, perhaps. so that rather than coming up with a system that analyzes just colorblind racism, what i was interested in was developing an argument that would allow us to think differently about contemporary systems of power, in this case colorblind racism. it is hard to read you something that you don't think israel. in this particular chapter i argue -- i introduce the remains of power argument, it has four dimensions, a structural domain, a disciplinary domain, a cultural domain and and interpersonal domain. the structural domain would be the institution that discriminates and sorts, so the structural domain would be the fact that i went to school and my friends did not. that is how the structural the

main of power operates. you as a person are irrelevant to that. those particular niches, the incarceration of young black men, to lock up black men and latino men, if they were not men in federal prisons they would not be prisons. doesn't matter which person, what matters is those people fill those positions. that is, structural domain operates a, and it operates through differential legislation. it is on the table right now. the cultural domain has become increasingly significant. this is something that a young generation recognizes. we are constantly bombarded with representation and music and images that struck idea systems for us and help us see or not

see things. they will make color manifest itself and the cultural systems in which we participate might affect race racism. on television you see multi-cultural at the people running down the street smiling and getting into the corvette. obviously there is no problem because everyone is getting around, as opposed to the sour dr. collins who is bringing everybody down, with the discussion about racism and structural discrimination, that kind of thing. the disciplinary domain is one of we have to pay attention to. these would be the ways in which we had disciplined on a daily basis to go to our assigned places without realizing often that it has been done at all. i have a consciousness when i was in high school that this teacher was attempting to discipline my mind in a certain direction and i knew that i had choice in response to that. the are invisible to us, difficult to see because they

are not named as race, not named as gender, they are pattern behavior, not busboys and poets. my family is very tired about this. when we go into a restaurant, i routinely am seated next to the bathroom or the kitchen. if that happened once, i would say bad luck. if it happened twice, i say bad luck again. when it happens a third time i say hmmm and the fourth time m hmmm and the fifth time what is going on? and the sixth time, your server walks you past 15 empty booth to see you in the booth next to the bathroom, and you ask to be moved and she says we don't have any other boots, we just walked past 15 empty booth, we don't have room in those boots, you have a person come way back here

in the quarter and wait on me and my black friends in his corner? when you have enough experience is like that, you begin to realize something is a little squirrely year. disciplinary behavior is like that. often, people who see the patterns of discipline are the people who are recipients of that discipline. and not necessarily the people who are given that particular discipline. why do you think it is that young black boys in cities all of a sudden decided they are not going to get down and assume the position. they don't want to do it for the twentieth time. they're walking down the street or for whatever reason and then you have a flare up, you have an altercation, you have violence, a riot, things that happen that appear to come from the irrational folk on the bottom. those black women are so irrational, i don't know why she just went crazy when i seated her in a booth. it comes from the nature of the

pattern reaction, and this is the disciplinary domain. just as we have the power to implement rules in a particular way we have the power to subvert those same rules which is the next chapter. in terms we have to understand what is going on before we can craft strategies to deal with it. the fourth domain will be the interpersonal domain. most people think about the interpersonal domain as the only domain of inequality, basically if i have learned to not be prejudiced against you, there is no more racism. do you have any students running around on american college campuss who actually believe this? i have a black friend. and poor little susie, the black friend, is the black friend of 50 individual white people. but nobody counts it up. that the famous poem that talks about this. we are in a period of time where

this is the front line of replicating inequality and responding to it, the domain of one on one. if it doesn't start with each of us, clearly we are not going in the right direction. but when it comes to colorblind racism in a context where we are encouraged not to see structures, not to see the power of the media in shaping ideas, not to see every disciplinary practice, we tend to collapse everything to the interpersonal skier and what that tends to do is put it back on the victims because when the victims raise the issues, they have created it. there was no racism until patricia hill collins started talking about it. i think there might have been a little bit there before i actually said a few words but i anniston ones who actually told me that, you're the most racist professor i ever had. i said i doubt that. however, i tried to get into her

mind and really, she was very much a believer that we had achieved a colorblind society and people who were raising issues about racism or sexism or homophobia or heterosexism or poverty were creating those very issues and what needed to happen in this climate of individualism was to simply think your way out of that and work a little harder. but i say how do you work a little harder in your ap chemistry class if you're in a high school that doesn't offer a pea chemistry? how can you compete in a school that has a pea chemistry and a tutor, and we are told it is a level playing field. i don't think so. i don't want to depress you because when you see the magnitude of the argument that can be applied to sexism in a variety, there's a tendency to get depressed particularly if

you hang around sociologists. sociologists, i will just say very briefly, sociology has a reputation of being the discipline of doom. so they are not happy unless there are major problems. some of that reason, what tends to happen with many of us, we get depressed. you understand depression and you want to get depressed. you go out to the bar and say i want a double. i am depressed. as opposed to moving on to the question of how do we think aggressively and actively about resistance? we don't need a theory to do it. do you know how many people are already engaged in substantive areas of resistance in the structural domain? in the cultural domain? they have written all kinds of stuff. the interpersonal domain, they're married or not marrying people they're not supposed to be with, there are all kinds of

things. the disciplinary domain, to actually subvert those rules and work those rules and find cracks to do things differently. what i decided to in this chapter which is about resistance, takes the domains of power framework and draw from many of the ideas my audience in boston shared with me and my ellen experiences and talk about things that people do or can do. what i would like to is read you two pages about a classroom exercise that i used to use, that i call developing countersurveillance. a major trend, major mechanism of power is to place people under surveillance. if you get to a certain point where you start thinking they are watching you even when they are not watching you and then you basically internalize your english teacher saying you can't

say that, you can't say that, because it becomes -- you are practicing surveillance on yourself. it is we did but there are a lot of books written about this, trust me. hard to read books too. i am saving you time. be grateful. i think what we don't spend enough time on is the notion of how people work within those rules and engage in practices of resistance in the disciplinary domain. counter surveillance is interesting. keep in mind that my years in school i was practicing countersurveillance. i graduated knowing far more about my teachers and curriculum than they ever knew about me. that prepared me well to see the gains that coming my direction but that doesn't mean you have to suffer through years of education to come to this point. you can actively teach people to do this. that is what i want to talk

about. i was a schoolteacher, so let me just read. kids need not undergo years of quiet suffering to hone their countersurveillance skills. teachers can be corrected in developing skills of counterssurveillance in kids and do so within the norms of acceptable practice for their institution. this is one important lesson that the board nets off and land. one can follow the letter of law but perform it in such a way that you bend it to your own agenda. principals, teachers, bosses and store managers can tell you the rules but it is extremely difficult for them to micromanage every detail of how an employee chooses to follow those rules. one of my favorite question exercises indicates how teachers can cultivate a form of active listening that underpins countersurveillance. i went to ask my sixth grade class to listen carefully to a ten minute lecture that i'm about to deliver on president

abraham lincoln. you have all heard about president abraham lincoln. you know lincoln, right? monument down the mall, big guy, a chair, the whole thing. i told them that i was going to tell them three lies. their task was to raise their hand when they thought they heard a lot. using a standard just the fact tone, i began my lecture with some unassailable fact, the day and place of lincoln's birth and the day he was elected president. in my boring rendition of lincoln's life i stated one of lincoln's major accomplishments was that he freed the slaves. at this point many hands went up. i stopped my lecture so that we could discuss this point. they yelled no he didn't, no he didn't, we know he didn't free the slaves. i'm reading when my students use to talk to me. no he didn't, no he didn't, we know he didn't free the slaves.

other students were puzzled, saying he didn't free the slaves? this was a great starting point. not everyone agrees on what is the truth. every time even one hand went up by stopped my lecture and we discussed why we thought i told a lie or not. i recall one especially heated exchange where only a few hands went up, the remaining students look at the few hand razors and amazement. why are your hands up? everybody knows this was true. because the minority hand razors stood their ground we discussed the notion of minority opinion. just because a minority of people -- majority of people believe something and it is published in prestigious journals doesn't necessarily mean that it is the truth. as this lesson continued one girl finally protested the entire assignment in frustration, blurting out this is silly!

we know you wouldn't lie to us. this was the teachable moment. i responded i may not willingly and the lie to you and i may love you dearly but i may still pass on lies to you because i don't know any better. this exercise challenge one fundamental rule of classrooms. when we ask students to listen to lectures and take notes, we basically require that they remember or record nuggets of truth. here, i was asking my students to listen and take notes on not get supplies. no wonder this girl was upset. that particular class session was fascinating to me, mainly because with hindsight i now see it as a way of practicing anti racist resistance. it was scary for these 6 graders to confront the idea that truth and lies are not fixed ideas and so-called facts reflect a point of view of whoever has the power to decide them, but it was also

freeding because the students began to practice thinking about themselves as part of this process of sorting ideas into categories of truth and lies. this exercise also had a bonus of practicing, incorporating multiple points of view, the benchmark of democratic learning communities. in the lie-detector exercise, in each individual had an opportunity to vote by raising his or her hand and expressing his or her opinion. the skills of countersurveillance to practice such a lie detector may not be publicly named. i could and did say to the students that certain so-called fact about lincoln would be on a standardized test. if they wanted to pass, they needed to give the right answers but i could also say to them that they were free to disbelief, to listen to every word from every teacher including me as a potential

loss. each of us can bring skills of critical thinking to any situation. schools operate by identifying truth, packaging and hiring people to discipline kids to accept it. often, teachers want to catalyze distance by replacing their own more truthful version of the truth while leaving processes intact. they want to change the content of education, cultural domain, without changing the disciplinary practices to uphold their own power. practicing resistance in the disciplinary domain requires disrupting the everyday assumptions that up hold disciplinary power. for example, instead of replacing one truth with another, disrupting disciplinary power might mean teaching kids to listen for lies instead of truth. i really like that particular exercise. when you begin to think about all the ways in which -- you can see the invented nature of the

theory in that exercise. if you had a room full of people listening for lies instead of listening for a truth and who had a set of strategic skills to take that on, if you are at teacher who is encouraging kids to do that as opposed to shutting them down, all you have to do is study hard and you will do well when you tell this to kids in high school who is looking you in the face saying wait a minute, you need to tell me more than that. if we really begin to critically engage the questions or social issues that confront us today, we need that talent of youth who can think for our free to imagine and envision new democratic possibilities. and the remainder of the book, i go on to have a chapter about african-american youth and their significant placement in contemporary pop culture. and i argue i really do develop

an argument about the me and its modification of black culture and its modification of young black bodies and the placement of the black youth is a benchmark example of those particular relations. i finish of the book trying not to finish this place of doom, the discipline of june. i finish with the words of zora neale her stint has a restaurant in eaton ville opening tomorrow, speaking about her legacy. but i kid -- she was a feisty woman who basically march to her own drum. i attach her to a notion of pragmatism which i talked about in my other work but it really seems to resonate here. the notion of being in a place of not being so pragmatic that all you think about is how to get from one day to the next, you feel your actions are not

part of anything bigger. those are very often the kinds of lies that many uyouth live, very small lives. the tension between pragmatism, everyday life, coming up with strategies that work like lie-detector is in situations that might be quite desperate, and keeping a vision of where we go. to me, democracy is such a vision, not a finished product, and we are in a country that argues one size says we know what democracy is at the other side is ruining it, i don't sing so, we are missing the point. democracy is a concept of a democratic community that recognizes difference, that recognizes different points of

view. the context of collective action is the essence of democracy. no one can microbemanage what that looks like. we need a public that encounters another kind of education, that opened its mind to this possibility, and eclipse it with pragmatic skills to move forward. that education is going to have to focus on youth who will be the leaders of tomorrow. not the way we treat youth now but all youth. i would like to pause. that give you a flavor for this particular book. thank you. [applause] >> we have about half an hour

for q&a. after that half-hour, this will take place in the bookstore. >> i did not pay them to do that. these are my unruly students. we are trying to get them to be more lie-detector is. obviously getting out of control, we might have to rain that in the bear on a good half for the moment. >> why is that always the first

one? >> listening to your book, you are a professor. i am curious. >> to my teacher i was just another anonymous black girl.

that is a good thing, can i feel your hair, all that goes away. i have low expectations for my public school expectation other than getting a quality technical education which it gave me. i am grateful to the philadelphia public school but make no mistake, there are wounds that along with that and scars that along with that. i never had those illusions that the institutions that train me were set up for me. they still aren't. each step of my career i encounter yet a new terrain. i am now the president of the american sociological association. i have to be on my vest behavior. this is difficult but not a forever kind of difficult. but each area, each, new terrain, it is like you are constantly getting people use to the idea of your being there. she wasn't really used to the idea and would have been happy

to ignore me had she not been encouraged to find a black girl to talk about what the flag means to me. >> i want to thank you for this book and all the books you have written over the years but my comment is about 7 many cameras finding themselves, because passing it through, i think that in many ways you were very helpful to me. my best white friends came from catholic schools. many parents now, that is the

safest school for their children. that is a different situation, a reality that we show many of our kids, education is dependent upon there is a code and they're very safety is dependent upon there zip code -- there interested in placing them someplace. >> you did read the book yet did you? because one of the first places to practice resistance is to create a safe place. and make the distinction between save space and free space. a lot of people think about this particular issue. i this agree with parents that

say safety is important, but i would disagree with the notion that you don't you quit kids to think about what they are dealing with. what often happens with institutions like catholic schools, parents will say i just want you to listen to the teachers and do what they tell you to do, that is all i want you to do. in some ways it prepares the kids for the kind of creative thinking that is needed for them to be successful. the world that we need would be full of people who are problem solvers, who are critical thinkers, who are imaginative, who are innovative. that is the kind of education that kids are getting, they're getting that in small classrooms with lots of money poured into them. in many ways, i go old school. when i went to school i did not go unequipped. it was not catholic school but it was similar in terms of discipline, my parents i very

happy at passed a test to get in, that kind of thing. but i did not go on in for about what that education and. so i went equipped, i would call it a political education that helped me think about the meaning of what i was getting. i was told be quiet, don't rock the boat, those kinds of things but at the same, was told when the doors of opportunity open, you can say what you want. you take what you need and leave the rest behind. you don't have to believe everything. my parents send out what some would perceive as a mixed message because we assumed that kids can only think about one thing at a time. if we are honest with them, they are so relieved. if you say to kids your teachers stock, they say wow! but that is the teacher you have a you have to learn asuck, they! but that is the teacher you have a you have to learn as much as

you can. parents can do a lot. i have examples in here of things parents have gone that were shared with me, i taught at another institution, a lot of returning students. they were not just imagining these issues, they were there issues. a student of mine came in, her 15-year-old daughter. her 15-year-old daughter got pregnant, she lived in public housing, she had seven kids, she was upset about this, then she realized her daughter had a friend who was pregnant so she invited a friend to the house and she had another friend who was pregnant, she invited another friend over and what began to happen was in her living room she created a safe space for those girls to talk about their experiences and to think collectively how their individual experiences were linked together and that was really important and that was

not in school, you see. there are all kinds of space is where we can be innovative to create safe spaces for kids that may supplement the school that they are in if not transform the schools that they are in. a young high-school student when i was presenting this material raise their hand, he was a community active student, people said what is the one thing high school students really need? everybody had a different answer, all the grown-ups, she stood up and said we need space. we need space to meet. we need a place to be. there is no place for us to go. and that was a very powerful statement for people in that room. the notion of save spaces and spaces to be free to begin to think what you need to think does not have to be confined to school. .. this

material translate to me because i think the topic relates to college students who are still exploring and growing and going to class and just listening to professors and not necessarily challenging the things that they hear and trying to step beyond the status quo so i think that's one piece but i'm also thinking about material in terms of professional staff that i work with and manage, you know, how do -- how do we engage in kind of routine thinking and not outside of the box thinking. does that make sense? >> it makes absolute sense. >> i would love to hear you from

that perspective from the administrative perspective and engaging professional staff who are in a place to engage students at the university level. >> here's the way i would look at this. i would go back to the whole question of the model that i present here about disciplinary power. and because administrators are in the position to sometimes set policy but they often are administering policies and interpreting policies that have been decided by others. whether they're good or not. administrators are front line people in making it happen. i think it's always been important for those of us who have a bigger picture in mind and it is the picture of social justice -- it's not a question of social justice is a done deal. it's also a principle that's part of this whole democratic possibilities. to think and to commit ourselves to making the institutions where we are -- if we're in an administrative position, how we actually bend those rules so

they might work differently. now, i'm a former administrator so i'll share a little administrative story that may not be a good one -- i shouldn't kiss and tell but i'm going to kiss and tell just a trifle, all right? when i was an administrator at tufts university i worked with african-american students and they all came to me and said, we know our financial aid packets. they're giving us less money than the white students and they knew it kind of individually but they didn't know what to do about it. there was an african-american woman working in the financial aid office who really wanted to help. but she could not violate confidentiality in terms of giving us that information so we could track what those patterns looked like. but what she did say was -- well, i can sort of speak a little bit off the record and what we began to look for were the ways in which the african-american students were getting the same dollar amount of money which is basically what the financial aid office said, oh, our award packets are the same. you just look, there are no racial differences in the award

packets but when we cut in the award packets we found essentially higher loans to african-american students and more scholarship to white students. and this was not because, you know, the school was a nefarious institution. it was a wonderful school. it really was. it was because the person who ran financial aid was kind of a dinosaur and he really did not like the whole idea of giving money to these black students for one reason or another. once we knew what the problem was, she was kind of inside. i was kind of outside. we had a faculty member over here. we were able to begin to work the cracks to come up with what would be the reasonable solution to begin to deal with that problem once we identified it. we could not get this person removed. he had too much seniority. she could not confront him. she would be fired. she would have violated confidentiality but what i could do was to begin to organize people to form a committee, an oversight committee, that would be over that office and create

another level of bureaucracy that would then go through the records of financial aid because we knew that's where the problem was. so instead of shooing the students away and saying you must be wrong at that. look at the data -- the truth here -- i have the truth in front of me. i have the numbers. we listened to the people who claimed victimization. and we looked for patterns. often, there aren't any. you just keep going. but in this case, this was particularly egregious. so i think that administrators who are strategically placed can really look out for bigger issues of justice issues. and think about what are the practices and the policies that we're engaging in where just a little bit of tweaking could go a long way. where just the changing of a simple rule of a qualification for an exam could go a long way in changing many people's lives. and if you're really a good

administrator, your name won't even about on it. they won't even know you did it. the satisfaction is seeing it happen. i have routinely run into in my public speaking career people who come up to me and they want to do what i've done. and they say things like, we just love your analysis of oppression. we just love this. we just love that. how can i get a career like yours? you see, what they really want is they want to take the risks of doing the analysis that puts you at the front of the line. they want to do the oppression book. they want to do the racism article. but they don't want to live with the consequences of perhaps -- that go along with that. they just see the glory. they do not see the consequences. and down the road i will write a book about this. all of the places where i've had decisions to make where i've had to think about the consequences.

one of them is that -- you know, what does the flag mean to me? for example, none of you asked me what i did. so that's kind of interesting, you know, because there were consequences attached to that either way. some of which were invisible to me, didn't know about.h' so we're always making decisions particularly if they are subversive. i just think you get better at it as you get further along. you know, you can kind of anticipate the consequences. can i just share one tiny little story and then we'll sort of move forward with that. i taught eighth grade girls -- the first time i taught -- before i wrote black feminist thought i worked with eighth grade girls. that's actually write taught, african-american girls in roc rocksbury mass. but in order to have my class with these girls, they were kind of rough. and i was a young teacher.

i looked real young and i was in there with the girls and everything and i thought we were going to talk about black women and they would be happy, you know, i had all that going. and that literally the second class -- one girl stood up, cussed another one out and hurled a chair at her, right? which came remarkably close to me. now, how dedicated are you to this material? but at that point i realized we had to do something different. so i closed the door and i said to them, look, this is a safe space issue by the way. i said, look, in order for us to have this class we have to have some different ground rules here. now, when we go outside this door, you know what kind of school you're in. your school is a prison. and it really was. it was the forerunner of prison. they didn't have a metal detectiver but they had a big guy who would hurt you. they had an assistant principal who would ask you for a pass and would hit you if you didn't have

one. and they knew and they were angry. they were fundamentally angry that they were locked up in this situation. this was quite a while ago. now we have way more kids like this than we used to. and i said to them, listen, here's what we're going to do. we have some rules in this class. you can't hurl chairs. you can say what you think and i can say what i think and this is going to be a space where anything goes but if any of you go to the principal and you tell them what we're doing in here, i'm going to lie. and i'm going to tell him you're lying and who do you think they're going to believe? they're going to believe me. so in order for us to have these particular rules, we all have to collude that we have a certain kind of classroom when they come around and when they leave, we can do what we want to do. kids said, okay. and that's how we really got at some stuff that -- you know, there are consequences obviously for that, potential consequences. but i've always been a big fan of having the kids have my back. my attitude if i have your back,

you better have my back because if i'm not, i'm going. that was really one of my first times, you know, making that explicit certainly so i wouldn't get hurt with this chair but there were consequences to me personally of doing. i don't advocate all teachers do that. but i was willing to take that risk because i thought it was important enough to do it with that particular group of kids. and from that group of kids came all kinds of stories, you know, the kid who got raped on her way to school. the kid -- i mean, it was a space for them. they had not had a space like that before. we created that safe space which became a free space. but it was not easy to do in that environment. [inaudible] >> there's a ground-swell of people what do you do? >> pardon? [inaudible] >> what happened but we call -- many were not gracious of us that it's probably in the book and we would have to read the book. can you help us out? >> it was a very difficult decision and sometimes when

you're looking back on these decision points in your life, i don't know about you but you tend to rewrite history and sometimes make it bigger than it actually was or smaller than it actually was. well, i happen to be a person who has high school friends who are still around. we talk to each other and things but one of my friends said, oh, yeah, you were really upset about that. i asked her, you know, did i talk with you about this. she said you were really upset about that. you egg -- agonized over there. the me then and me now is i agonized over everything. and i agonize less and i tend to make the same decisions. but, you know, i struggle with it. i couldn't do it. i could not do it. now, i'm the first person in my family to attend college to graduate from college. i went to my english teacher and i said i can't make these talk and i can't make the

corrections. i don't think i'm the right one for this talk and she said okay. the next day she found another black girl just like that. there was another one, black girl, can talk and write. you come over here and talk, all right. so a couple days after that i opened the paper and there it was the spread in the paper, all right, about flag day. and they had the dais and they had all the people -- they had a picture and they had the black girl, they had her name. they did not report one thing that she said but what they had in that paper was that picture. and she was kind of smiling. and to this day i wonder, why she was smiling. was it a smile of, i'm so happy i got to be here? is it a smile of, boy, i really -- you know, i worked this situation. what did that smile actually mean? but i'll tell you that stayed with me. i personally made the right choice for me. and i have made many choices like that and have given up things so i could have that space. for me. >> one more question.

>> you don't need to ask a question. [laughter] >> call on somebody else. >> my name is anthony. i'm a doctoral student in maryland and i just wanted to you address, if you could, the role of the media and media literacy in something you didn't have a chance to speak if you could talk about that. >> i'm going to get you for this. i just want to let you know it's not over yet, you know. it's a big topic. it's a big issue. what i argue is that -- i actually present a literacy argument in this particular book and try not to present things as a moral argument. and i would encourage us to see a variety of things through the lens of learning the skills of decoding and understanding what's in front of us and becoming producers of those particular products. i think we're too whetted to text.

i mean, i think we're in a world where we're surrounded by images and kids actually often are pretty good at decoding those images but they don't have the knowledge base to bring to those images that they're actually decoding. so i talk about in this book ways of thinking about filters, how we filter information to see certain things and not see other things. how we're taught to actually see in certain ways in terms of the media or hear in certain ways. i discuss the whole notion of frameworks that we bring to make us aware of the framework that is we bring to the active viewing, to the act of creating that event. in a consumer society, what the media is designed to do is make you a passive consumer. a passive consumer of the music. a passive consumer of the images. it's supposed to deaden you. it's like an anesthetic and if you are a passive consumer in general, you will be a consumer of products as well. it's not designed to make you

active. so what i argue is that media literacy reawakens and equips kids with the tools, with the technological tools to become creators of media themselves. so years ago when i started teaching this is what we did with kids. we sent them out with cameras. we sent them out with tape-recorders. they were interviewing all kinds of people but now the technology is so amazing that can be used. and the techniques that we as teachers can use to actually teach media literacy. there are projects all over the place on this now. so i would argue -- i would suggest that we get in front of the wave. this is a very general answer 'cause it's a big theme in the book. but i would encourage us to get in front of the wave on this. and to put down our sticks where we're scratching in the dirt, all right, or our chalk where we're scratching on the board. and begin to think about doing things differently. even though i don't teach that way right now myself, but that is how i'm used to teaching until i got here, so one caveat

there. >> thank you very much. >> thank you. [applause] >> patricia hill collins is the former wilson elkins professor of sociology at the university of maryland. and is currently a distinguished university professor. she's author of several books including fighting words, black sexual politics and from black power to hip hop. ms. collins' articles have been published in the nation, news day and the "new york times." for more information on the author, visit bsos.umd.edu.

>> donald critchlow, author of the conservative ascendency. are conservatives still in the ascendency? >> they're not in the ascendency. you've probably heard about this. i think this is the worst time for conservatives at least since watergate and i think it may be compared to the republicans in the -- in the new deal. so they're in very tough straits right now. >> so as a conservative, what's your proscription to get out of that rut? >> well, one thing i discuss in the conservative ascendency is the fortunes of conservatives and the republican party. and what we learn is that every

time the left and the progressives primarily within the democratic party counted out the conservatives, they always come roaring back often through the misfortune of democrats. i don't think conservatives should give up hope. they might -- they still may >> when you hear the term "modern conservative movement," what do you think and who do you think of? >> well, i think it's a movement that's really quite diverse within its own grouping and i think there are a number of tensions within the conservative movement and within conservatives with social conservatives and free market conservatives and i also think that there's tensions within

purists among the conservatives and people who are active within the republican party. who want to understand that they -- that conservatives, in order to win elections, need to be pragmatic and compromise on certain issues and in principled ways. >> who do you think is the voice of the conservative movement today? >> well, i think -- i think i was suggesting that right now there isn't a voice and i think it shows some of the problems within the republican party that rush limbaugh now has become the voice. of course, that was strategy by obama, the obama administration to focus on rush limbaugh, who while he has many fans, also many people who don't like rush limbaugh. so i think right now there's a

fight within the republican party to find its leadership. i think it will be very decisive and an important election for republicans in 2010. i don't think they can regain control of congress. but if they lose badly in the 2010, we're going to see a push within the republican party to turn more moderate. >> the conservative ascendency came out in 2007. >> uh-huh. >> and now you have a new book out and it's cowritten with nancy mclean, the american conservative movement, 1945 to the present. first of all, why did you start in 1945. >> well, i think modern conservatism really emerges then. there have been conservatives before the second world war but it's primarily a modern movement. so that's why we began in 1945. >> but why?

what happened in 1945? >> i think primarily emergence of the communist issue and the civil war and it gave the conservatism movement impetus and there was a coming together of intellectual forces, a number of european immigrants as well as people such as intellectuals such as william buckley who gave an intellectual coherence and that was combined with large grassroots anticommunist movement. and those two forces came together that will revitalize the conservative movement and eventually would gain power within the republican party. >> your first book is on phyllis

schlafly. >> that book came out in 2005. she's still a force within the republican party. and within the conservative movement. she reflects social conservative voice within the conservative movement and around issues such as abortion and gay rights and those -- those issues that appeal to primarily traditional catholics and evangelical christians and mormons as well as traditional jews. >> there's a couple of books now on the market regarding the reagan legacy. >> uh-huh. >> and perhaps a reinterpretation of the reagan legacy. is ronald reagan's legacy on the decline? >> well, not among

conservatives. i think he's riding as high as franklin roosevelt did in 1948 or after his death. i think ronald reagan's presidency has always been a contested one among historians. there was a -- the picture of ronald reagan is a man not very smart, sleepwalking through history, was challenged by historians, some very good ones. and we learn that ronald reagan was very well read and also had principles, strong ideological principles and that he was in control of his administration. he wasn't a detailed man. but was able to articulate basic model, low taxes stimulating the economy and confronting the soviet union which had undergone

a massive arms buildup. >> in your view, did george w. bush contribute to the decline of the american conservative movement? >> well, there's a strong sentiment that he did within conservatives. i do think that the war in iraq, while george bush thought it was a principled action really caused a great consternation of long areas of the right and i also think the republicans having gained control of congress in 2004 and being spend-thrifts really helped cause a reaction as well. but it's easy to forget that bush won a pretty decisive victory in 2004 so the

downturn -- the downslide in the fortunes of the republican party were pretty quick and pretty severe as you look at 2006 -- the midterm elections in 2006 and the last election with 2008, presidential election. >> speaking with you here at the organization of american historians' annual gathering. as a conservative, are you in the minority as a historian? >> oh, i think in a very decided minority. i think even to call it a minority is exaggerates the number of conservatives here at this meeting. i should tell you that i started off on the left and i got my union card, my ph.d. at the university of california, so once i was ameliorated into the union they kind of expelled me now. i'm maybe some day i would like

to but i'm here. >> do you feel a reaction to you? >> no. i think people respect me. i think a lot of -- a number of historians wonder how centric i am to being a conservative in this day and age. and especially within the historical profession. >> why did you start on the left and now you are on the right? >> well, that change was kind of a long change. it was very -- in fact, i think it's difficult for historians to declare themselves republican or conservative during a general milieu of people that are on the left, usually on the left are the democratic party. so i remember i was in poland for the year on a teaching program in 19 -- the election of

1988 was occurring. i went to vote at the embassy and we had my -- they gave us ballots and i was filling them out next to my wife who was a strong democrat at that point. and i said i think i'm going to vote for george h.w. bush, and she said, well, if you do, i'm going to go back and tell everybody at the university of notre dame, where i was a professor there, that i voted republican. i ended up -- i won't tell you how i voted so i don't want to get in trouble with my wife, but anyway, that was -- i think there were a number of things that were changing in how i viewed the world. and i think being in poland in 1989 was a major turning point for me having lived under a socialist system at that point.

>> you've written three books. do you have another one working right now? >> yes, i do. >> on? >> it's a book on when hollywood was right. how the hollywood right changed the republican party. .. >> we've been talking with donald critchlow who's a professor at the st. louis university. the author of three books. the american conservative movement 1945 to the present cowritten with nancy mckellan. ..