can be of any race. there are also large numbers of african descendent of immigrants who don't necessarily associate themselves with african-americans, native american americans whom they see as lazy and inferior. so the whole thing is getting mixed up. something like only 46% of current immigrants. i think this is like 2008 identified themselves as white, whereas something like 70% -- 78 -- 76% to 70% of native americans identify themselves as white. so why is getting to be less popular. we'll see. thank you. >> last three questions.

>> okay, couple things. he began by talking about greeks. they were slave owners. romans were slave owners. generally their slaves -- >> not all of them. just to be taught. >> they had slaves. they were conquered and made into slaves likes okay. now we come to this country and you had capitalism at work in terms of southern plantations meaning labor to sell cotton to england, so they bought and sold to >> and want to correct to your little bit because the whole plantation system started with sugar. that's a big difference and it started he for capitalism really got going. >> will collect commerce. >> you can call a commerce, which is different. >> but that brought blacks over to be bought and sold. >> also a lot of white people. >> the majority were black.

>> finally, yes. >> and was a big trade, a circular trade. >> a triangular trade tiered >> in the ships came from north, west africa. >> what is your question, sir? >> my question is if you look at the basis of race or wait and set aside the american experiment -- >> set aside the american experiment? >> set aside the american experiment, which was set aside by peculiar need of commerce, it was not endemic. >> i can't go with you on your s. because the question is, what is the question? i disagree with you. what is the question? >> when you deal in ways, you have to look at where proliferate and the reason why. and in every part of the world is different. so you can just generalize by

using the american experience. >> i certainly can. i'm talking about the united states. >> well, i'm not. you've got to look elsewhere. >> okay, we'll leave that up to you. >> hi, monique mitchell and i think it's very interesting that you more or less mention what i wanted to say. but however, i'm going to start with a history of white people. i was expecting more universal type of situation and i do realize with here the people and you are the author that we are back to the same subject black and white in the united states. it just happens that i do come and he mentioned false. few actually, six or seven

months ago i was asked was sera raised because i was dealing a question by phone from the washington hospital. and the man was the questioner and he said collocation of course. and i said yes, caucasian. and he said no, no, black. auntie said black? and i said yes because i'm a descendent of lucy most likely. so i am black. [laughter] a >> that most, definitely. >> so what i want to say to you is please give us a book next time, which gives us an episode of the universal black and white world. thank you. >> merci beaucoup.

>> hello. just another angle. i used to live in the u.k. and if you want to discuss how characterization really gets taken to the extreme. and for a certain number teeple and that is people of color. so if you are black, you have basically a whole laundry list. are you black african country black caribbean, are you black mix? if a black mix, and where you mixed with? and then there's black other, which i am because i'm american, black americans living there. but when you look at the english wife, it's basically just one-way category. and the question is, what will it take and where will it come desirable for white people to ask would describe themselves to the same degree that other

races, quote races are asked to describe themselves. or is there a fear that every loss of power because one statement i heard you comment on is that there were not any way people until they came to america and that's while the italians, english, themselves united. in this very fear, a loss of power if -- >> okay, anderson the question. i think the fear of loss of power is already underfoot or in the air or whatever. without tampering any further with the categories. i think categories tend to lag the hind the powerful, the power arrangements. so for instance, as nations become richer, they will also become more beautiful. and as we get all mixed up, the taxonomy will have to somehow catch up to us.

one thing that american historians have found a frustrating over the years is that we have a lot of trouble classifying people according to wealth and income. which i think would be a much more useful way of dealing with the inequiti @@@@@ @@@@

and it's also given on a less frequent basis but it's also offered in u.s. history, will be offered in world history. and sciences is tested. civics is testeds. there are all different subjects that are part of naep. it's expensive but it give us a very good snapshot of how we're doing, what progress we're making. and progress has been slow. oddly enough, the biggest progress that's been made in reading and math was made before the adoption of no child left behind. >> host: that's interesting. what was it that was done to get those results? >> guest: well, i think there was an emphasis of improving without penalties. i think information itself is a valuable spur to improvement. but i think we may have reached kind of a bottoming-up point

with all of this beating up on people and that's why we've seen so little progress. we don't -- we don't really have -- i mean, to make progress, for instance, in reading you need a lot of knowledge. and there's no emphasis on general knowledge and we have emphasis in knowledge skills and we have children who are trained like parrots and seals to take the state test but then when naep tests the same children they haven't taken test preparation for naep because it doesn't exist and they do poorly. we've seen no improvement in reading up to this point for eighth graders from 1998 to 2007. it's been flat. >> host: so our biggest real problem is, is this achievement gap. the united states has some of the best schools in the world. some of our public schools rival none really. and some of them are among -- has the achievement gap essentially stayed flat, hasn't it?

>> guest: it narrowed somewhat but it's narrowed in the past recently. and i think until we begin to really address the sources of the achievement gap which isn't bad teachers. it's really poverty, then we're not really going to make a lot of progress. i think to the extent we can begin to reduce income inequality and improve the kind of health that's available to people of low income and have fewer people who are lower income we'll see gains in the schools. i've seen this in my studies in new york city many years ago. this was the big predictor of educational achievement was economic growth, economic improvement. >> host: i always found it amusing that when the economy is bad, everybody blames the public schools. in the '90s when the economy was great nobody said thank you, public schools. is the harlem children's school the kind of reform model that you think makes sense? the wrap-around services, the health services, the prenatal

services for parents, the adult education -- is that something to look at? >> guest: i think jeffery canada is doing a great job with harlem children's zone. harlem, unfortunately, has become ground zero for the charter movement. and this is not his fault although he does run two of the charter schools. there will be neighborhoods in harlem where there's no public schools where they have to apply to enter the charter schools. they are replacing public education. and the lowest performing kids are not in those schools. and so it's really -- it's really a problem. but i do think what jeffery canada is doing is the right approach. he's bringing together social services, health services, prenatal care, helping kids and adults in different points in their life span, that's a good thing. >> host: the last title of your book is titled "lessons learned," what is the major things you would want the reader to take away from the book? >> guest: there's no way to turn

around our educational system easily or quickly. and if anybody says they found a miracle school, it doesn't exist. i mean, you may find a charismatic leader somewhere who whatever they're doing you can't clone them. you can't reproduce what they're doing. or a miracle school -- if you look more closely you find out they are skimming the kids and maybe they're getting wonderful results one year and the next year they're not. there are no miracles in education. education is an arduous process that requires willing students, supportive families, well-educated teachers, a strong coherent curriculum and a community that values education. i mean, our kids today are growing up in a society filled with distractions. where they're being entertained endlessly by blinking screens. there was a recent report from the kaiser family foundation that said the average child 8 to 18 spends 7 1/2 hours a day in of a blinking screens. they are not spending them with their teachers. it's with the blinking screens.

there's a lot of competition for children and aside from the problem of poverty, there's just this immense problem we have a very anti-intellectual culture that it should be want, want, want, buy, buy, buy. and not of them sizing sitting and studying reading a book and focusing on their studies. that would be a good thing. but it's all of these things. if we don't recognize that educational achievement is composed of all of those, we'll just continue along the same path we've been on. >> host: well, thank you very much. i could talk for another hour and another hour after that. but our time's up. so thank you. >> guest: thank you. it's been great talking to you. >> host: you too.

>> next, authors mark halperin and john heilman on their group "game change" a look at the 2008 presidential election. this hour-long event also examines the effect of the book on politics and policy in washington. >> we're joined by the authors of "game change." let me begin with you. i heard i think it was you or one of you say that you had a list of things that you thought

would make news in this book. and it's been out there for a little bit now. we've heard many of the pieces in this book. what on that list hasn't made news or what are you surprised at? >> well, a lot of things. when john and i set out to write a book -- we hope people would find to be an interesting book to read. an interesting story to read in the subtitle race of a lifetime. we were going for breaking news because we thought there were things that were uncovered during the campaign. i'll give you one and we have a long list. john will have others. sarah palin was picked by john mccain. people were shocked when it happened. and at the time the mccain campaign said she'd been on the list under consideration for a long time and that she'd received as much background check of the so-called vetting as many people john mccain set. there was skepticism the kind of parade moved out.

this is one case we went back what was the truth. the truth was, that she was brought into the game of consideration for mccain -- as mccain's running mate very late. after their main focus, joe lieberman fell apart as an option. they needed a game-changing pick. lieberman was a game-changing pick of one sort and palin was another. we quote for the first time the vetting report done by a young washington lawyer who was asked on a friday afternoon to get ready and in a space of less than two days looked into sarah palin's background. not by making any phone calls or interviewing anybody but simply doing online searches because they needed to keep it a secret. quoting from that report, looking at the process by which mccain picked a virtual stranger as his running mate is we thought has gotten a lot of attention and it hasn't gotten much. >> i agree with mark. there's a ton of stuff in the book that wouldn't have gotten the kind of attention we hasn't expected.

one of them is kind of a macrostory which is in the wake of the campaign, one wisdom that was propounded by the obama administration from the time obama got into the race to the very end that the question of race, his race, is something they didn't think about. they didn't talk about it internally during the campaign. it wasind of a nonissue. that was one of the things they said over and over again after his election. and throughout the book "game change", you know, we talk about how much they were, in fact, obsessed with race. as a political factor. we talk about how in the fall campaign against mccain they produced ad after ad after ad in expectation -- internally produced fake ads that they thought the kind of ads the mccain campaign would have. i think that's interesting and i'll do -- >> and before you do, real

quick, let me show the viewers that part of the book where you talk about that. you say while the >> right, and i'll just stay with that because you stay with it. i think it's fascinating. i mean, they produced dozens upon dozens upon spots and to look at those ads to respond to them and deal with the problem. the question of when would obama's alleged connections to muslimism -- which would that become something that the mccain campaign started pushing out? now they didn't and the book accurately reports that's true. we have a great anecdote in the book where they tried at one point the obama campaign to produce an ad to answer questions about his race, his

alleged muslimism and lack of patriotim in one ad and obama when he reads the script of this ridiculous ad, and he just says, guys, this is too much. i can't actually say this. this is just kind of a silly ad. i would two other things and i'll say them quickly. one, we have what i think is a very, very strong chapter in the book in the financial crisis which has incredible reporting, i believe, about what happened in the white house meeting where george bush and john mccain. it's hardly been mentioned in the coverage. it shows how unprepared mccain was and well prepared obama was. our republican aide says in the meeting as he listened obama take over the meeting effectively, if you closed your eyes you would have believed this was the president of the united states and not george bush and john mccain. we have a very interesting story about david geffen and maureen o'dowd and a column she wrote in

the early portion of the nomination fight and how this came to bring and how this famous mogul and this "new york times" columnist how they dealt one of the first severe blows to the notion of clinton's inevidentibility. >> there's a back story. she was trying to write that story before she finally got him to agree to do it. >> she was. as john says it's an interesting story of two not only prominent people by iconic people. the most prominent "new york times" columnist really of our time -- or right now i would say in many ways and david geffen this incredibly influential figure and part of dreamworks with steven spielberg and david katzenberg. they raised a lot of money but he like so many prominent liberals including in hollywood

had turned against the clintons. he was unhappy of clinton's choice of pardons at the end of his second term. granting a pardon david geffen wanted for. so geffen had turned on the clintons and felt that they were -- they were if not actually corrupt they were kind of morally bankrupt. he loved obama. he saw him speak at the democratic convention in 2004. he reached out to him. started a relationship with him. and when maureen dowd heard david geffen speak and get a question about the clintons and about hillary's chances, david geffen was very tough on hillary. and maureen in the audience was struck not just by how tough david geffen was in his -- talking about the clinton's morality and the audience seemed very enthusiastic about the notion of criticism of hillary clinton.

so over the course of a long period of time, as you suggested, maureen is lobbying david geffen to take what he said at that event, amplify it to her in an interview. and by coincidence, she's out in california on the night before david geffen is going to host a major fundraiser for barack obama, she convinces him to do the interview. >> and what year is this? >> this is 2007. this is a critical period because barack obama has gotten in the race. he's clearly created a lot of excitement. and in communities that are vitally important if you're trying to become the democratic nominee for president, hollywood, new york, liberal circles where you're trying -- hillary was trying to sort of not let obama rise up as a major competitor to her, so for david geffen to agree to host this fundraiser we report in the book was a big blow to the clintons. they were desperate to try to overshadow that because it showed that their hollywood support so key in the democratic party would not be monolithic.

and again, maureen convinces geffen to do the interview. the next night her column goes on the web. both barack obama and maureen dowd are at david geffen's house. he prints the article and shows it to him saying this thing might cause some trouble. and obama said trouble for whom because it wasn't going to cause any trouble for obama and as it plays out as we report in the book it was even worse for the clintons than they thought. this was the first time a lot of the issues of bill clinton's personal life, of the question clintonses were old politics. whether they were too loose with the truth was laid out. and the one-two punch of it being laid out by david geffen this pillar of the hollywood establishment was devastating for the public in the clintons and privately to them because all it represented. >> i'm going to turn it over to

our viewers because many will have questions. >> caller: i saw you all on another show. and you were talking about that bill and hillary were upset during the iowa caucuses. that the obama campaign had cheated. from what i read and what i heard was that the reason they were so upset is because the obama campaign bussed lots of young people with the help of acorn. they took over the caucuses and then they locked out the hillary voters. >> heilemann? >> the caller is exactly right about what the clintons background. that is to the letter what we report in the book is that hillary had been worried about this possibility for a while. she had been concerned that the caucuses were too loose and there was some chance that because obama was the home state senator from illinois that this could happen. we reported in the book how on

the night of the iowa caucuses when hillary has come in third, she and the president former president clinton are in their hotel suite and they're -- as angry as their aides have ever seen them about what happened. they thought they would finish first or maybe a close second she finishes in a far off third and they're incredibly upset and former president clinton starts going on all these people, 239,000 people had shown up. that was double the amount of people that had shown up the previous iowa caucus in 2004. it was incomprehensible to him that that many people had showed up and he was sure this cheating had occurred. and he clung to that notion for long after. in fact, we report in the book that five days later around the time of the new hampshire primary he's suggesting to hillary she raise this question in a debate and say that this -- that the caucuses -- the outcome of the caucuses should be invalidated because obama has done this thing. president clinton was suggesting

should hire lawyers and challenge the results of the iowa caucuses. i think, you know -- we cannot know with any certainty whether that charge is true but i would say that we spoke to many of the clintons' iowa staff people who have long experience in iowa politics. people who are very loyal to the clintons. none of them are the charges are remotely true. as upset as the clintons were, they were looking for some excuse for her performance there. and all of them think the people who know the iowa caucuses best, all of them believe it's just a false charge. >> an email on the independent loin. -- line. amy, good morning. amy, i'm going to remind you to turn that television down, all right? i'm going to move on and put you on hold, amy and move to mount clemens, michigan. ellen on the republican line. good morning. >> caller: hello, how are you? >> doing well. >> caller: i would say i have not read the book.

but these two fellows being so closely connected to the campaign and everybody who was involved and all the candidates, i want to know why it is that the most important pieces of all these people, clintons, obama, mccain -- how everything was fielded. and the most important aspects never came out. and the democrats were protected down to every minuscule little whatever -- the most important things came out. but when it came to mccain and sarah palin, how they attacked her and went after her for clothes and her eating habits. but yet when it comes to not even reporting on any of the policies or beliefs or agenda -- stuff that obama was going to go for, which he is doing now -- not having his thesis coming out, any of his background and how they were saying he's so smart and intelligent and sarah

palin is so unqualified when she had been elected. you know, starting in the school system, whatever, municipal mayor to governor. and she's so stupid and irresponsible, you know, but she had held all these offices. >> amy, i think we got your point. mark halperin? >> well, greta, we knew that one of the challenges of writing a book about politics in this day and age a lot of our political discourse through the media and in politics directly has become very partisan. and we were trying to write a book, and we hope we did, it's not partisan. i'm confident we did but there was stuff in here that was not reported not just as aheut the there was a lot not reported by the republicans. we're heartened by the fact the book has received praise from people on the left and the right. sean hannity said some very nice things about the book and so did ed schultz. and the extent that it has won in this realm is that we reported everything that we could find that we thought was

germane without fear of or favor. and with an eye towards history and illuminating what happened. not covering things up. there has been a concern, i'll just say quickly that, you know, why wasn't this stuff reported in real time? you know, people aren't going to be forthcoming the way they were with us in the heat of the campaign. they're too busy. and there's too much at stake. we went to people right after the nomination fights and right after the general election when their memories were fresh but they were will to cooperate. they understood the importance of this. it's important to remember that if you don't have the time, long interviews able to sit down, sift through the stuff and piece it together. the realities of daily journalism particularly these days with the internet and cable is there's no way to do that in daily journalism. you've got to do it as more of a historical work. >> have you both heard from your sources that you talked to from this book and gotten some reaction from your sources without obviously specifics of who they are?

>> we have. as mark says, we both -- we talked to a lot of people from the book as mark cited the figures. most of these people we have. one of the other of us or we had long relationships in politics. we have been covering politics for close to 20 years each. and the relationships that we have with those sources was the basis on which the book was built. if we hadn't had such strong relationships with our sources i don't think we could have -- we could have done what we did. and we've been heartened also by their response which has been uniformly positive. many people have sent many notes of congratulations about the book. i think again as far as we can tell from what we've heard and we haven't heard from everybody but we've heard from an awful lot of people that people feel as though we've gotten the story right and we think both fair, accurate and good for history in the sense that we captured things about the campaign and how these people lived through the campaign, how it changed them and how their strengths and weakness affected the way in

which they waged the campaign that are important for people who are going to be looking back at this campaign for many years to come to understand what actually happened. >> we'll go back to georgia and apple on the independent line, good morning. >> hi. sorry about that. you know, i am an independent. i used to be a democrat. and when this past election with barack obama came around, i ended up dropping the party completely. what i was really looking for at the time was a candidate that would really represent the country well. and i know -- i know for a fact that -- the fact that the media was there boosting obama up like the way they did bush, which they actually did do, seems to be the game plan for me whoever the media chooses to be the next president is going to be the ne president. and it's very unfortunate

because i did listen to barack obama a few times. about some of the speeches that he said about changing things in washington. but yet he was a supporter of mayor richard daly, which as far as i'm concerned being from illinois, was one of the biggest crooks in politics. now if he couldn't even beat the chicago politics, what makes him think he could change anything in washington. and he hasn't. >> john heilemann? >> you know, the role of the media in presidential elections is obviously huge. i mean, i think one of the things that's most interesting in reporting on this campaign is the fact -- is the fact that all the campaigns feel as though the media was biased against them. they all feel as though that as the caller says they look at the power of the media and they feel the media plays this outsized role in some way it's unfair to them. >> even president obama's campaign felt that way? >> president obama's campaign --

whenever it was confronted with -- i mean, i think mark and i would agree that president obama got very favorable coverage in the course of the campaign. it's not disputable. they felt on the questions of things like reverend wright like they were subbed as tough as media scrutiny as any president in history. things like the rezko relationship, things like that. that those were not germane. they were constantly, you know, felt that the media was focused on trivialities and things that were nonstories rather than focusing on what the candidate wanted to say about healthcare policy or economic policy. so i think it's a perennial complaint. as far as i can see, the media is kind of an equal opportunity in the kind of rigors they put these candidates through. the media chooses sides. but it's a topic i think that's

not going to go away for that reason. because as our media and our political culture get more partisan these complaints will escalate. >> let's go to the democratic line darrell from danville, new jersey. go ahead. >> good morning, john, good morning mark and greta. >> good morning. >> i've even you guys on other shows and one thing that's fascinating to me is the country seems to be in this sort of like state of cognitive feeling. president obama is unqualified to be president and john mccain is the long time politician with experience. one of the things you guys have said this morning to me the -- the reverse is true. barack obama seems to be -- i mean, hope and change and all that. but he seems to be a very savvy politician. a brilliant strategic thinker. and very well prepared,

understands the issues and all the buzz right now is about sarah palin who mostly speaks -- her vocabulary is monosalabic and i haven't heard her say anything of substance of public policy from the time you started running up until now. i'm just -- are you amazed that the country is so enamored with sarah palin. who lacks intellectual curiosity. she lacks depth. and she's mostly vacuous and vapid. >> mark halperin? >> i'm a big fan of the mono salabic. with all the respect to that caller and many other callers on c-span. he sees the world in a very particular way and there's millions of americans whose it his way but there are millions of americans who think barack obama was a fraud as a candidate and is a horrible president and sarah palin is our salvation. i think part of what we tried to

do in writing "game change" was to rise above what has become the dominant feature of our political discourse which is again in a lot of political books and cable television and the web is to say, i have a point of view about the world. i hate the democrats or i hate the republicans and everything i say or write is going to be geared towards re-enforcing that point in trying to spread it. we said we want to write a book with the real story of what happened in this incredibly exciting campaign with bigger than life characters. and not make it a partisan book. and again, as i said before, we've had very positive feedback that we're heartened by people on the left and the right who said to us, i may disagree with, you know, barack obama's policies but i was -- i was glad to be able to read how he really experienced the campaign. get insight what he's really like. same with sarah palin. and that's the kind of book we set out to write. we didn't write it for the reason i'm about to say as a potential benefit but i hope it has that benefit. which is we do both think that our country's discourse has become too partisan.

that it's not good for governance and politics and not good for the future of the country. and we hope that people will think about politics in a different way. more about the drama and about -- and trying to drain it from the pure partisanship that dominates a lot of your calls and a lot of our discourse. >> on the mccain strategy approach to his campaign, you both write wherever mccain was >> it's a very early part of the book where we write about -- early part of the book in terms of the republican race. it's talking about how mccain in the early planning phases of his campaign you have an operation that was -- all the people around him looked back at his 2000 campaign when he ran this renegade outsider campaign. and they said we lost. we got crushed by the bush

machine in 2000. we don't want to run that campaign again. our candidate is perfectly positioned to be the front runner for this race. and we should build a campaign that's like that. we should build on the bush model. we should have a big campaign. we should raise a ton of money and have a huge operation across the country and we should be formidable and scare everybody else away. the problem with that is that mccain was totally psychologically ill-suited to that kind of campaign. and as his organization built itself in that way, his attitude was well, why do i need all this. he didn't want to make fundraising calls. he didn't want to get in the races as early as we want him in the race. we have scenes with his top strategists saying to him, you know, we are the front runner. we have to can't a like the front runner. we can't act like the kind of person that you are most naturally which is to be this sort of maverick to use his favorite terms, that kind of candidate. and the mismatch between the kind of operation they aspire to build for him and the kind of thing that mccain was actually personally comfortable with doing created what turned out to be an emulation for his campaign.

his campaign over the course of 2007 within the first six months the campaign is broke. the campaign is lagging in the polls. he's miserable. he's firing all of his top staff. the meltdown which nearly killed him, politically not personally is very much about that mismatch. where mccain is strongest in the book is once he gets rid of all these people. you see him emerge from that in some ways when everyone in politics looked at mccain well, he's dead now. they're all writing him off. mccain was happier in that situation. he was more comfortable driving around the country in basically a metaphorically speaking a beat-up old car and carrying his own bags and flying by the seat of his pants. i would say when you come back around to the general election again when you don't have that choice and you can't run that campaign it comes back to bite him again. mccain thinks of him happily as a guerrilla campaign and throughout the fall campaign the mismatch between him and obama in terms of organization, in terms of finance, in terms of

muscular strength across the country actually ends up being a huge crippling disadvantage among many other disadvantages he faced. and that's a big problem. it goes to the core of one of the things that the book is about. is, you know, this is why in some sense the personal, the stuff about the high human drama of the campaign actually matters enormously because it tells you a lot about mccain's political fortunes. you can't understand them without understanding his psychology and how he looked at the art and combat of politics. and it's in all of that that you can see exactly what unspooled for him during the campaign. >> greta, can i say one thing. >> yeah. >> we've been honored and pleased the amount of attention the book has gotten. and we've done some other interviews before this one. this is literally the first time beef had a chance to discuss this topic. and an extraordinarily important part of the 2008 campaign. so for people who are who have seen stuff about the campaign and think, well, i know everything in the book already. we love the quote -- the thing

you read about the mccain and the sheeth of the airplane tickets. again i would just say there's a lot more stories we won't get to talk today but some people have the impression they've learned everything that's in the book. we think there's more in the book the people would be interested in. >> kansas city missouri, nancy from the republican line. >> yes. when president obama ran he was more to the center of the democratic party. and that's what i voted for. i voted for obama because i thought he was more to the center of the democratic party, not to the left. he has since become more left than center. and that has made me very disheartened. i have turned from democrat to republican. i'm going to start voting republican. i'm going to vote more for the people who have my values and my

type of ideas about this country and how it should be run are in line. because i think our country is out of lack. we are spending too much. the deficit is too high. there's too many people unemployed. and i think obama is not concentrating on what the real problems are in this country. he's concentrating on his ideas. >> mark halperin? >> what was the name of that caller? >> nancy on the republican line in kansas city. >> i would call that caller nancy aka david axlerod's worst nightmare. this is the kind of voter, someone who voted for barack obama who white house political advisors like david axlerod now have to be really about to say, not just for the midterm elections and for the president's potential re-election but for having political support in the country to pass his agenda in the short term, he has done the thing that is most dangerous for any politician. he has lost control for a long segment of the population of his public image, how he is being perceived.

the reality is as we've shown in the book during the campaign he was very skillful as what george bush successfully did. which in a sense all things of all people. liberals could see someone who would come in the white house and enact a liberal agenda. healthcare is a great example. what is moved through congress is very similar. there's some policy differences that are not insignificant. but the thrust of it, the expense of it, the scope of it is very similar to what he ran on so people shouldn't be surprised on a range of issues that he is more liberal. at the same time, one of the gifts barack obama has had since he entered public life is the ability to speak as a unifying figure. to give the people the sense that he wants to work across the aisle and solve problems in a bipartisan way. that as it's turned out partly by choice partly by circumstances with the economic crisis in particular has led to governing in a more partisan way than i thought he would do and that i thought he intended. the result in part has been to alienate callers like that, callers like that, citizens like

that and part of the challenge he faces now is to finish this healthcare bill that's been defined as a very liberal thing rightly or not. and move on to an agenda that addresses jobs and deficit reduction in particular at the same time. the state of the union, the budget are going to be opportunities the white house, hopes, to win back callers like that. >> and we found out yesterday from the white house that the state of the union will be wednesday january 27th, next week. tampa, steve on the independent line, good morning. >> caller: yeah, good morning. thanks very much for taking my call. i just wanted to say to you the host and i don't know your name i apologize. you took a call earlier from someone who was challenging your bias and actually suggested you should be fired. and i'm just wondering it might make a great thing for c-span to do. do an empirical study of the length of calls on which line they come in just for informational purposes. that would be great. >> okay. >> but to go more to the point. i have not read the book. but i think the campaign -- we've become so divisive in this country.

you know, with two parties. i'm a big fan we should have multiple parties. but i think hillary clinton has just shown herself to be a gratious loser, obviously, in the campaign but also what a hard-working woman. i mean, you look at her and she just is just sort of nose to the grindstone. i'm the secretary of state. and i'm going to do the best job i can possibly do for our country. regardless of party. but i think during the campaign obama was such a wonderful speaker -- it such a wonderful speaker. that he was able to carry the election without a lot of substance. i'm a supporter of his but same time you got to govern not just be elected. >> john heilemann, the background on hillary clinton during the campaign. >> well, you know we saw fansfully in the beginning book that the hillary and the obama story is a love story. and one of the things that mark and i were surprised to learn was just how much of a fan

hillary clinton was of barack obama's before either one of them got in the race. we report in the book about her hosting -- when he ran for senate in 2004 her hosting fundraisers for him in chicago and at her home. bill clinton appearing at a fundraiser for him in 2004. her talking very admirely about him. saying there's a superstar in chicago. he was the kind of candidate she and her husband had always wanted to support in the democratic party. this very intelligent african-american candidate whom she thought as the future of the party. when obama comes to washington he seeks her out and seeks her counsel and he's a superstar because of his speech at the democratic convention in 2004. and they have like a bond. where she sees as a potential mentoree. and he gave a picture of his daughters which she displayed until she left the senate. obviously a huge amount of conflict bitterness unfolded when they ended up head-to-head

in the democratic nomination fight but in the end after all her bitterness over how the race turned out and all of her anger which is documented in the book in a lot of vivid detail, the extraordinary series of events that lead her to eventually accept the job of secretary of state. they have this rather incredible coming together in this late night phone call after he's offered her the job. she has turned it down. she has decided she doesn't want the job. everyone in her life is trying to get her to take her job. her husband thinks it would be great for her. rahm emanuel the white house chief of staff, joe biden, she finally decides i'm not going to take the job and she tells him finally that she's not going to take the job and they have this incredible late night phone call where the two of them -- where she kind of tells him why she doesn't want the job. he accepts that those are all good reasons for her not to want the job. she burdened with her debt. she's tired. she wants to go home. she thinks her husband would be a difficult distraction if he

takes the job. i understand that. the economic crisis will consume my job. i need someone who's fully competent whose hand i don't have to cold. your country needs you and i need you to be a success as a president. and after everything that's happened between them in this kind of epic arc of their relationship, it's an extraordinary moment. because when the moment she kind of admits that her husband can be a problem, something she's never done throughout the campaign. every time bill clinton has done anything that's politically detrimental to her and she defends him. to her closest allies she never takes any other side that she's totally loyal to her husband. now she's saying something not disloyal but she's admitting to obama this vulnerability she sees. -- in her husband. obama who's the self-contained and does not express need. and he's the guy turns that

admits in some way that he needs her to be a success. and they have this bond the first seeds of like a relationship of trust where they can feel like they can work together. he tells her that he wants her to sleep on it and not to say no. and she wakes up the next morning and decides she's going to take the job. and i think the caller is exactly right. i think her performance this year -- the first year of his term as secretary of state has demonstrated all of the things that are best about hillary clinton. she's been, i think, an incredibly valuable advisor to him. she's worked incredibly, incredibly hard representing america and around the world. and by all indications from mark's reporting and my reporting and from reporting a lot of people, their relationship is any solid. they are on extremely good terms. it speaks incredibly well her patriotism and her devotion of the country and put past pain and past bitterness aside for a higher calling. >> warren, pennsylvania, frankie, for the democrats. >> caller: i have a very simple

question i would like to ask the two gentlemen. what kind of impact do you think this will have on people running against and people who want to work for them when it seems like if you write a book like this, i don't understand why these people talk to you and say some of the things they say about the candidates. i think it would be -- it would be hard to get anybody to work for you again. and it would be so hard for the candidates -- they have to be so careful what they should say and do in private. and just the question as, i guess, what kind of an impact do you think the book will have? thank you. >> mark halperin, before you write that howard kurtz wrote cler >> i just want to add that to her comments. >> sour. -- sure. there's a lot there.

let me try to address them. on the long interviews and many interviews we were doing with the book. we were dealing not with strangers. we were dealing with very positive, strong working relationships with over decades. and so in that process, we explained to them in great detail what we were doing. we explained to them the kind of book it was. we explained to them the terms in which we were speaking. history is important. one of the things we learned much at times to our panic as time passes people's memories get worse. campaigns don't write a lot down. so there's oral history here. if we hadn't stepped in and done these interviews i think a lot of it would have been lost. people have said, howie kurtz piece and others talk about the notion we relied on people with axes to grind. i have to tell you, john may feel differently. i can't remember more than five interviews at most in which the people we were interviewing clearly were trying to spin the story.

were clearly trying to reflect a point of view. they were in almost every instance purely cooperating with us and telling the story because they knew we were writing what we hope was a serious history of an important moment in american history. that process yielded a lot of stories that we were able to over time in taking our time emergency together. -- merge together. there's not a single, quote-unquote, controversial story line in the book in which we based on people exclusively with people who could have been said who has an ax to grind. we always went to supporters. people more sympathetic to a candidate and a spouse and said this is what we've been told by others and what do you think? there were almost no instances where the merging of those accounts from, quote-unquote, two sides required judgment on our part. the stories lined up. >> greta, i would add one more thing. the quote -- there's an unusual consistency between barack obama's public image and the private reality. i think that's actually true.

and i think one of the things that the book demonstrates is that -- i mean, in some cases there's a wide divergence between public image and private reality that the story of john edwards and elizabeth edwards is the most dramatic example in the book where the gap between what the public saw and what they wanted the public to see and how they actually were in private was -- is yawning. it's a gap. obama, his public reality and the private reality was the narrowest. it's part of the reason he turned out to be a strong candidate and the reason why he won. they spent very little time in the obama campaign having to manage the problem of here's what we're trying to tell the public but here's what's really going on. for all these other campaigns there was enormous amounts of time and effort that was devoted by the staff to try to kind of bridge that gap. and massage those differences. the obama campaign was able to focus to a larger extent on getting done what it needed to get done because it was not as

large a gap. now that said, you know we show when i talked before about the race example we show plenty of examples where the obama public image was not what was really going on behind the scenes and we laid that bare. but i do think it's important and it's an important reason why he was successful in the campaign compared to his rivals because, in fact, the gap was narrowering. >> greta, if i could say, another thing that's been said about the book we don't have very much about barack obama or we don't show anything about barack obama that's less flattering. again i'd urge others to read the book or interested in that. there's a number of moments in the campaign where the campaign behind the scenes was in crisis. where there was questions about whether their strategy was working. in one prominent distance you see barack obama again saying we're staying the course. we chose this strategy. we chose the tactics to back it up. this is the right thing. we're all reaffirming that. there's another instance later in the book where he decides he's not getting enough advice from a broader circle of people. one of the things we report in this book this group of three

men, david axlerod, robert gibbs and the spokesman who have a stranglehold that get to advice to barack obama and this was a constant tension in the game and other people including mr. obama would say when things were going badly there needs to be a broader circle of advisors. again there's a scene later in the process around the time when it's clear that barack obama will probably beat hillary clinton but is worried he's going to limp into the general election, where he makes a decision to change course. where he expands the circle. he starts a nightly conference call with advisors that is run not by one of the three so-called suits but by anita dunn who's the white house communications director. there's a deeper portion of barack obama. it's not all the flattering. it's the true story of what happened. when people say there isn't much about barack obama or the stuff about barack obama is written by our sources who are the winners and, therefore, it's not as full of portrait as others.

>> on barack obama's strategy, john heilemann, can you talk early on when he decides to bring anita dunn into the fold while he's considering a run. and the strategy that she takes up by running his fund and the speeches that he's giving around the country helping to raise money for other candidates, that exchange there that the strategy that she comes up with for email addresses? >> yeah. this is in the -- early 2006, late 2005 period, you know, barack obama like all politicians in washington had a pac fund and eventually hired anita dunn to run that pac. he was an extraordinarily unusual candidate in this respect. even before obama was elected to national office, when he was still a candidate for the senate in 2004, he was able to raise money for other democratic senators. he was so clear that once he got the nomination that he was going to win by a landslide. he was out doing fundraising events for tom daschle.

and he was this fundraising draw apart from hillary clinton and in some ways by excess of her he could go around to red states, to purple states and blue states and turn out huge crowds. mark and i at the time when we were following this, you know, we knew that obama was traveling around. and we knew that he was raising money but i don't think until we report the book that he had a clear sense. and people like claire mccaskill who would tell these stories that obama coming to campaign for her in 2006 when he would come to st. louis they would have to get an overflow room not only did they have to have the fundraiser for the 2,000, 3,000 people who would pay a lot of money and they would have to get a separate room for 10,000, 12,000 people because everybody loved this guy. his fundraising ability was at the core why the democratic establishment was secretly behind him. that was part of the way he demonstrated to them that he was someone who could be a serious candidate. anita dunn along with david puth

who was initiating a similar strategy for duvall patrick in massachusetts they started how this could be capitalized to build their grassroots army. so when people come to obama events they would ask for email addresses and was that the beginning of building a database for hope fund that eventually became the core database that eventually built into this massive online army that obama exploded in the 2008 campaign and it also became the core of their massive fundraising machine. they used the internet in a totally novel way in 2008. to build this fundraising machine that's unprecedented in the history of american politics. anita dunn and the decisions that were made were the seeds of that development which obviously made obama credible. and indeed gave him a huge advantage going forward against both hillary clinton and john mccain. >> caller: i get a kick out the left how they attack their opponents. they try to call them dumb. if they see a threat.

and they're all for women's rights until sarah palin came along and was attractive. even the left comedians like joy behar and bill mahr they have to get after her all the time and she's had more mana -- management skills than obama. if einstein came back and ran as a republican they would call him dumb. that's how they belittle their opponents. it's really quite funny when you come down it. europe does this or that. well, europe is made up of different countries with their own culture. and switzerland is in europe. they are not part of the e.u. -- >> we'll leave it there. let me take one thing that she said about sarah pal and your coverage of sarah palin in the book. your caller talked about alaska. sarah palin from your reporting was consumed with how she was being perceived in alaska during this election. >> she was.

one of the things -- one of the challenges for us in writing about sarah palin was she never been much involved in national politics as the governor of alaska. very few people in national, political or media life had dealings with sarah palin. so it was unusual because normally the top of the ticket the bottom of the ticket some people in washington know people in journalism circles know. and sarah palin was new. and part of our challenge was to talk to these national operatives in the campaign and other people around sarah palin who are literally amongst the only people we know who have had exposure to her behind the scenes to see what she's like when she's not on tv or giving a speech. they met with sarah palin two of john mccain's advisors -- they'd never met her. she was a stranger to them and they were asked by john mccain to talk to her in arizona before he meets with her. and to talk to her about what this job is going to be like if they offer her the position. one of the things they discuss with her in that meeting late at night on the eve of john

mccain's selection was the importance of her understanding that even though she would remain as a sitting governor of alaska she needed to understand her focus needed to be on the national campaign. that she was basically an appendage of the campaign. that she would probably not get back to alaska unless there was some sort of natural disaster and she needed to be focused not on her home state needs but on the national ticket. and the sprint to the election day. from the point of view of the senior mccain staff she did not live up to that. as you said, she and her husband were consumed with what was an 80% approval rating in alaska slipping to something less than that. they were consumed when todd palin would go back to alaska sarah palin campaigned in the lower 48 he would see an absence of mccain-palin yard signs in alaska. no television advertising because alaska with palin on the ticket was secure for mccain. they spent an inordinate amount of time complaining to the campaign staff that not enough was being done in alaska. sarah palin had a very good relationship with the local media in alaska.

from the palin's point of view as we write in the book the media turned on her. she was not being allowed to talk to those local reporters. like a lot of governors she would give out her phone number, her mobile phone number to reporters who covered her. talked to them on a regular basis and most of that ended when she was put on the national ticket. she saw a dynamic there. that was one of many causes of tension between the palins and the national campaign staff. >> cape coral florida, david on the independent line. >> caller: hi. good morning. >> good morning. >> caller: my political affiliation in florida i'm on my election card. i'm identified as no party affiliation because independents is classify as a party. i always -- when a politician reaches their twelfth engineer that's a maximum served for me and i will not vote for them.

i will not vote for politicians that move into new districts just to run. two examples of clinton into new york. excuse me, if i was a resident in new york i wouldn't have voted foreher because she moved in. in florida, connie mack even though he graduated in fort myers high school, he moved back in the district to run for his father's office and many voters in southwest florida -- they thought they were voting for his father and they were very upset when they realized after the tabulation that they had voted for his son. document evidence, i was extremely upset being a disabled veteran when george w. bush didn't produce his -- >> david, david, let me jump in here because we're running out of these times with these authors. what's your question and your comment. >> caller: this is a question i've recently started asking my friends about voter fraud. here's my question, which of the three largest cities in the u.s. have a reputation, whether it's deserved or not for having

corrupt elections? >> well, i'm not sure our authors can answer that? not sure. >> never be wrong picking cities in maybe louisiana and new jersey. [laughter] >> let me get to some criticism of the book if i can. from howard kurtz's column yesterday. >> he's referring to the quote that came out at first about what harry reid said in private about barack obama. john heilemann, why don't you take that. >> well, i would say -- first of all in our authors note we refer to the notion that we conducted our interview on deep background and then we say in a shorthand way what that meant.

as basically what howie writes in the piece. the authors note is not, however, complete in the sense it does not have a thorough description of all the conversations we had with our sources which we had with every single source at that we talked to. we would talk in great detail about how the interview we were about to conduct would be used in the book. and we would go through -- there was like a speech -- almost like a sad speech. there was no actual script but there might as well be saying this is how the interview is going to go. this is what we can use and can't use and this is how it's going to work. i can say there's no case in which the -- the way that we explain what we're going to do in the end that we didn't live up to that agreement with any source that we talked to for the book. i think it's important that people understand that deep background as many people have written is not a concept that's etched in stone. every journalist in some sense has rules of the road. and the rules of the road that we laid out were rules of the road that we stuck to in every instance.

>> you don't think, you know, on the record -- >> there isn't. you can read journalists nuance describe certain things. let me emphasize a couple of points john made. we didn't violate the agreement with anybody we made who we interviewed for the book and unlike like a lot of exchanges in washington and in journalism generally between reporters and sources where the terms aren't defined but they're assumed there's commonality or whether the terms are defined on the fly. we meticulously and carefully in every exchange we had, every interview we did we went through the projects and the terms we were discussing. >> next phone call, fort lauderdale, florida, melvin on our democrats line. . pass bama is not living up to his campaign promises. but my main point -- you heard a lot of people talk about concern about deficit spending. i don't think they realize that when ronald reagan took office

in 1980, the deficit was $980 billion. one him and george bush sr. left office, it was ordered $5 trillion. clinton left a surplus -- it was $405 trillion. clinton left a surplus, and the deficit was $10.90 trillion when obama took over. @@@@@@@@@ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @

clinton's campaign, the staffers that she had, >> and to the reports that a cut in the newspapers this morning that hillary clinton's staff of new england is helping to run martha coakley's campaign on the ground. >> mark mangino more about this than i do because we have been so busy with this book i know hardly any of the details. i understand the dynamics going on and certainly it is the case that republicans have historically, traditionally and successfully in many cases want to paint the democrats as the spending party. they have been relentless in doing that over the course of the last year. they have been successful i think in having done that. in massachusetts it is going out to the point where you have a situation where martha coakley is not getting the kind of support from the democratic base you would expect. she's having a hard time getting

the number of independent voters that she would need to rss with these questions of taxes, spending and the deficit. i just can't answer that i just don't know. >> one of the most dramatic, human moment in the book, or series of moment is the clinton's attempt to get teddy kennedy to endorse hillary for president over barack obama. and both the frustration and anger that both clintons felt, they felt they had a bond with the kennedy family. they had gone sailing with them. president clinton regulate and privately would tell people how frustrated he was he had done so much for the kennedy family as president and they seem to be drifting towards obama. hillary clinton and bill clinton have incredible political sport in one of the satisfying moment for them on super tuesday was despite the fact that senator kennedy had endorsed barack obama, hillary was able to win massachusetts. some of her operatives had not worked just in massachusetts,

are working for the democratic nominee there. they probably should've been a little sooner and i think most people who are watching the race closely believe their involvement is being done in the last minute very quickly and may be too little, too late. >> pittsburgh, steve on republican line. go ahead. >> caller: can you talk a bit about mitt romney? about his public image and his privates were and also his relationship with john mccain and mike huckabee. thanks. >> in the book we spend for a variety of reasons we did that's been as nearly as much time and the republican race. there is very interesting that you and the book on mitt romney. into the college specific question, i think there is one very striking example of disparity between public image and privately held in the case of romney which is romney's public image if anything was defined as any competent kind of ceo character.

he had run capital. in addition to being the governor of massachusetts, of course. he could run the government as if it were a boardroom. >> captain of industry. >> yes. in fact, what you see throughout our coverage in the book of romney is that his staff was constantly frustrated with the vacuous totally indecisive. he could not decide on things as elemental as picking a campaign slogan. this discussion went on for months. they never came up with a campaign slogan because romney was constantly seeking more advice. he would constantly ask for more and more input. wisconsin a more and more data. the deluge of data he sought kind of paralyzed him from making decisions. for all of the people around him they were stunned i that, that disparity between decisive and indecisivindecisive as they an romney. his relationship with other candidates was warble. we have some quite vivid details in the book just how much john

mccain, mike huckabee, how much all the republican candidates dislike mitt romney. he would not have debates, he would not have his makeup done and the rest of the rooms. there's a very colorful scene in the book that involves all the republican candidates standing at the urinals doing their business before a debate. mocking romney behind his back as a regular get. ronnie lott and overheard him and a hush falls over the group's. >> we are waiting for a briefing on haiti to get underway at the pentagon, and we will watch the. could you also tells the difference between what people saw in rudy giuliani on the campaign trail versus the private? >> another fascinating story. yes this book is about politics in a sense we write about residential candidates and their spouses. but our goal was to write about personalities. we joked all the time we knew we had an interesting set of characters here. when you're writing about a

presidential campaign, rudy giuliani is the seventh most interesting candidate, there's a lot going on. rudy giuliani's image for the country and republican voters was a tough guy, a guy who cleaned up new york city, who stood up to the terrace after 9/11. on the campaign trail who is not a tiger, but a pussycat. his campaign it could never get him for a negative ad. when he was shown the negative ad, and mailings are going out against him he would laugh at them and said those are all silly. in debates when he was challenged by his opponents or by the questioners he would laugh. he never showed a tough and a hunger to win. that is essential in presidential politics. it ran so counter to his image i think some earlier in the program talked about cognitive distance. his inability to define himself and to reinforce his strength in his image of being tough really was a big part of his downfall. the person who knew him best in this whole problem was that john mccain. they had been friends since back

when giuliani was still mayor, and when mccain started to fall, the question is who is going to rise up. mccain was never worried about it and his aides was a white hocrisy said rudy is rudy. by that he meant he knew giuliani well enough to know that things required to get republican nomination which is not inside of in. >> mark halperin and john heilemann authors of "game change." thank you so much.

>> the discussion is less than an hour. >> thanks for joining us this evening. and we welcome nell irvin painter to politics and prose. the history of race and of the invention, contradiction and manipulation of whiteness of the lighter skinned people we called why today is the exploration of professor painter's new book. from the ancient greeks to the 20th century, what has led us to the 2010 census when we confront a given definition and categorization of race and identity. repressor painter has written an entirely accessible and readable myth busting and compelling history of race. she is a leading historian of the united states. she recently retired teaching at princeton university. she is prolific award-winning scholar in books in race

relations including, and we're pleased to welcome her this evening for the "a history of white people," professor nell irvin painter. [applause] >> hello. you are a nice looking group. thanks for coming. did i hear someone of greek? [laughter] >> you all agree. what i would like to do is read to you for about 17 minutes or so from the first part of the book, and then from the back of the book. and then we will talk. okay? i might have entitled this book constructions of white americanamericans from antiquity to the present, because it

explores a concept that lies within the history of events. i have chosen this strategy because race is an idea, not a fact. and its questions demand answers from the consensual rather than the factual realm. american history offers up a large valley of commentary on what it means to be nonwhite. moving eagerly to an alteration in the meaning of race as color. from color to negro to african-american to black to african-american, always associated in the idea of blackness with slavery. but little attention has been paid to history is equally confused and flexible discourses on the white races, and the old slave trade from eastern europe. i use white races in the plural

because for most of the past centuries, when wrigley came down to matters of law, educated americans firmly believed in the existence of more than one european race. it is possible and important to investigate the other side of history without triple lies in the history we already so -- know so well. this is not white versus black. i do not by any means underestimate or eight more the overwhelming black race in america. i am familiar with the truly gigantic literature that explains the meaning importance and honest to god reality of the existence of race when it means black. in comparison with this preoccupation, statutory and biological definitions of white race remained notoriously vague.

believing's of what is not black. this day this does not indicate a lack of interest. quite to the contrary, for another fastest for literature, much less known today, explains the meaning importance am an honest to god reality of the existence of white races. it may seem odd to begin a book on americans in antiquity, a period long before europeans discovered the western hemisphere, and thousands of years before the invention of the concept of race. but given the prevalence of the notion that race is permanent, many believe it possible to trace something recognizable as the white race back more than 2000 years. in addition not a few westerners have attempted to racialized antiquity, making ancient

history into white race history, and classics into a lily white field, complete with pictures of bond agent greeks. transforming the ancients into anglo-saxon ancestors, make classics unwelcome in to african-american classicists. the blonde ancient greek narrative may no longer be taught in schools, but it lives on as a myth to be confronted in these pages. before launching the trip back to ancient times, however, it may be useful to make a few remarks about the role of science, or science of race. i resisted the temptation to place the word science, even ferries and assertions of the most spirit knishes ridiculous kind in quotation marks for the task of deciding what is sound science and what is cultural fantasy would quickly become all consuming.

's better to know the qualifications of yesterday's scientists, than to brand as mere science, the thought that it is not have stood the test of time. i give scholars a refute in their day, pride of place in my pages. no matter that some of their thinking has fallen by the wayside. today we think of race as a matter of biology. on a second that remind us that the meanings of race quickly spill out of merely physical categories. even in so circumscribed places, one book, the meanings of light rays reach into concepts of labor, gender, and glass, and images of personal beauty that seldom appear in analyses of race. workplace a central part and race talk because the people who do the work are likely figured as inherently deserving of the toil, and poverty of labor and status. it is still assumed, wrongly, that slavery anywhere in the

world must rest on a foundation of racial difference. time and again, the better classes have concluded that those people deserve their lot. it must be something within them that puts them at the bottom. in modern times we recognize this kind of reasoning as it relates to black race, but in other times the same logic was applied to people who were white, especially when they were in poverty immigrants seeking work. let me hold for a moment. i'm going to need something to mop my brow because it is very hot in here. thank you. those at the very bottom were slaves. slavery is held to construct concepts of white race into contradictory ways. first, american tradition equal weight whiteness with freedom while consigning blackness to

slavery. the history of unfree white people slumbers in popular forgetfulness, though white slavery, like black slavery, moves people around and make steps human genes on a massive scale. the important demographic role of the various slave trade is all too often overlooked as a historical force. in the second place, the term caucasian as a designation for white people are rich inmates in concepts of beauty related to the white slave trade for eastern europe. and whiteness remains embedded in visions of beauty found in art history and popular culture. today, most americans envision whiteness as racially indivisible, though ethnically divided. this is the scheme and apologists laid out in the mid-20th century. by this reckoning there were only three real races. mongoloid, nick lloyd and.

but cless ethnicities. today, however, biologists and geneticists, not to mention literary critics no longer believe in the physical existence of races. now you tell me if any of his remains on my forehand and little bits of white stuff that stick to you. it's not funny. [laughter] >> it's true. where was i? though they continue to recognize the continuing power of racism, the believe that races exist and some are better than others. it took some two centuries to reach this conclusion. after countless racial themes had spent a countless number of different races even of white races, and attempts at classification produced

frustration. over signed today denies race any standing as objective truth, and the u.s. census faces meltdown, we shall see, many americans cling to raise as the unschooled claim to superstition. so long as racial discrimination remains a fact of life, and statistics can be arranged to support racial difference, the american belief in racism will into her. but confronted with the actual existing american population, its distribution of wealth, power and beauty, the notion of american white mist will continue to evolve as it has since the creation of the american republic. now i think i will reach you the whole book. [laughter] >> chapter one. greeks and scythians.

werther white people in antiquity? certainly some of them so as though categories we use today could be read backwards over the millennia. people with light skin certainly existed well before our own times. but did anyone think they were white, or that the character related to their color? no. for neither the idea of race nor the idea of white people have been invented. and peoples skin color did not carry useful meaning. what mattered was where they lived. were there lands damp or dry? with a prone to end the to us, or soft? could they be seduced by the luxuries of civilized society, or were they warriors through and through? what were their habits of life? rather than as white people, northern europeans were known by their tribal names, scythians and celts and others.

but if one as, say, who were the scythians, the question sets us off down a slippery slope for, over time, and especially earliest time, any search for the ancestors of white americans of course leads back to nonliterate peoples for whom -- who left no document describing themselves. is we must shift their intellectual history, which americans claim as westerners, keeping in mind that long before science dictated the terms of human difference as race. long before racial scientist began to measure heads and concoct racial theory, ancient greeks and romans had their own means of describing the peoples of their world as they knew it more than two millennia ago. and inevitably, the earliest accounts of our store are told from on high by rulers comment at a particular time. for power that fixes the markers

of history. furthermore any attempt to trace of biological ancestry quickly turns into legend. for human beings have multiplied so rapidly by a thousand or more times in some 200 years, and by more than 32000 times in 300 years. evolutionary biologist now reckon that the 67 billion people now living share the same small number of ancestors within two or 3000 years ago. the circumstances make nonsense. of anybody's pretensions to find a pure racial ancestry. know her our notions of western cultural purity any less serious. without a doubt the sophisticated each actions, and persian societies deeply influenced the classical culture of ancient greeks, which some still imagine as the west, pure and unique source.

that story is still to come. for the obsession with purity, racial and cultural, a rose many centuries after the demise of the ancients. now i'm going to read very fast. >> and here we are at chapter 28. the fourth enlargement of american whiteness. agitating in media dominated as america's civil rights and black power movements were, and those movements health gel the idea of one white race as opposed to several. most of the countries weople might have doubted that the of people had much to do with them. they might have thought that they were individuals who had

succeeded by themselves and raise had always meant black people who have not your in fact by the 1960s the whole races of europe discourse had followed completely out of fashion, and the races of europe discourse the part i read you really fast. books such as races of europe, published in 1899 and important for a quarter of a century, books such as his races of europe want a central reading on race were now remained uses. and if you were jewish, calling jews a race would send you straight into the anti-semitic column. reminders that jews and italians had been labeled as racist a generation earlier might have prompted a retort that race was used more loosely in the past. this is true.

but every use of race has always been, whether applied to lie lock, white, yellow, brown, red or yellow. no consensus is ever formed on the number of human races or even on the number of white races. criteria constantly shift according to individual taste and political need. it was clear, however, that in the olden days, the 20th century, in the olden days jim crow had kept the colored races apart from whites and african-americans largely hidden behind segregation that they'll. shortly after the end of the second world war, the end of legalized segregation began to propel black people and to national visibility as never before. concurrently, other changes were soon to deeply alter american sense of the very meaning of race. little note is at the time the

openness of the mid 1960s went beyond the black-white collar line. the immigration and nationality or heartfelt act of 1965 was specially crafted to counter early nordic minded immigration statute. especially in terms of asians. it also allows for wider immigration from the western hemisphere and africa. there in latest seeds of democratic revolution. new immigrants of the post-1965 era overwhelmingly from outside europe were up in being american racial conventions. asians, greatly rising in number, were rapidly being judged to be smarter him and eventually to be richer than nativeborn whites. let t. knows form 13% of the population by 2000, edging out african-americans as the the most numerous minority.

the u.s. census, without fear and scorn the nation's racial makeup, had begun to notice latin americans in the 1940s. by counting up peoples with spanish surnames and hatefully lumping them together as hispanics. though an impossibly crude measurement, it survived until 1977. by that point the federal government needed more precise racial statistics to enforce the civil rights legislation. to this end, the office of management and budget issued statistical policy directive number 15. here was a change worth noting. in the racially charged decades of the early 20th century, governments at all levels have passed laws to separate americans by race. the jim crow's segregation was supposed to be separate but

equal, in practice it worked to discriminate by excluding non-from public institutions, whether from libraries, schools, swimming pools, or the ballot box. the civil rights act of 1964 and the voting rights act of 1965 begin to change all that, so that by the late 20th century the rationales for counting people i raise had morphed into a means of keeping track of civil rights enforcement. statistical policy directive number 15 set the terms for racial and ethnic classification throughout american society, by directing federal agencies, including the u.s. census, to collect data according to four races, black, white, american indian, alaskan native, and asian pacific islander. hawaii and was added later as a concession to protests there and

one ethnic category, hispanic latino which is not racial. elaboration was good for civil rights, but it opened the way to chaos. under these guidelines the hispanic latino classification pretended enormous turmoil. now that there was a non-hispanic white category, but they're not also exist has been quite people? yes, no, and other. faced with a given racial choices on the census of 2000, fully 42.2% of latinos checked some of the race here rather than black or white. throwing nearly 6% of americans into a kind of racial limbo. in addition, the u.s. census in 2000 had to increase a deeper and more personal recognition of multiracial identity. for the first time respondents

were allowed to describe themselves as belonging to one or more of 15 racial identities. as so often in the past, adding confusion, the list of races include nationalities. this expansion now allowed for 126 f. no racial groups, or your peers, 63 races. it did not take much in analytical ability to see that any notion of race was so diluted as to lose much of its punch. and taxonomy was rapidly buckling much further under the weight of interracial sex back. nothing new here. americans disorderly sexual habits have always overflowed need, racial lines and proven

race thinkers great that asians and native americans indians had the highest rate of interracial marriage. but others include african-americans often married and had children with people from outside their racial ethnic group. i 1990, americans families were so heterogeneous that one seventh of whites, one-third of blacks, four fifths of asians and 19-20s of american native indians were closely related to somewhat of a different racial group that that was back in 1990. with some 12% of young people calling themselves multiracial, it is expected that by 205010% of whites and blacks, and more than 50% of latinos, asians and native americans indians will be married to someone outside their racial group. though by 2050 the whole thing may have collapsed. with so many nonwhite and white americans marrying willy-nilly,

barriers between the progeny of european immigrants have largely disappeared. among white people, three out of four marriages have already thrust ethnic boundaries by 1980. a generation later, few white americans have for grandparents from the same country. william ripley had predicted this outcome in 1908, above all they inharmonious, that's his words, the and harmonious mixing of italian men and irish women. [laughter] >> but he now would have been forced to reconsider his prediction that such a racial mix would make americans ugly. we have already seen the lowering of racial boundaries starting in the 1940s, when ethnic began replacing race as applied to the descendents of

european immigrants. that use a racial groups for white people has become more than category to, partly because white people are so mixed up. finally, the near whiteness count for less in the present situation. while the stigma of blackness, once just one drop to curse the white individual, also seems less mortal. back in the 20th century, white people were assumed to be rich, or at least middle-class, as well as more beautiful, powerful and smart. george bush did away with that. [laughter] >> sorry. that is not in the book. to lay. stuff it back in. as citizens and scholars, they said what needed to be known and monopolized the study of other people. with themselves hardly being

marked more scrutinized in return. thinks of frances walker and william ripley, for whom formal education, new england ancestry and useful connection a shirt authority. half a century later the of people of the civil rights era turn the looking glass around, bringing white people under scrutiny. think of malcolm x and james baldwin. today the attractive qualities that saxons, angles saxons, nordics or whites were assumed to monopolized are also to be found elsewhere. after a string of nonwhite mrs. america, jennifer lopez, and beyoncé know, so but as holloway hollywood beauties, vijay singh and tiger woods, and the williams sisters, venus and serena, dominate sports, robert johnson, the founder of b.e.t., bill cosby, have made millions,

oprah winfrey is rich and famous. colin powell and condoleezza rice have been secretaries of state, and alberto gonzales, attorney general. even more to the point of uniting power and beauty, barack obama is president of the united states. first lady michelle obama, whose skin color alone would contend her to ugliness in the 20th century, figures as an icon of beauty and intelligence on the global stage. none of these individuals is white, but being white these days is not what it used to be. [laughter] >> does it is sensible to conclude that the american is undergoing a forced great enlargement. although race may seem overly named, without legal recognition it is less important than in the past. the darker skins who also happen to be rich, say, people from

south asia are african-american or have a hispanic background, and the light of skin from anywhere to our beautiful are now well underway to english and. is this the end of race in america? is this the end of race in america? >> no. >> i think we need -- i think we need democracy here. [laughter] but let's take a vote. if you think yes, put your hand up. 2? three. three. if you think though, put your hand up. the nose have it. >> demand a voice vote. >> a recount, yes, okay. let's not discuss it. we have had our vote.

and we will sign it tomorrow. [laughter] >> is this the end of race in america, we know it is not. at the turn of the 21st century, it was starting to look that way. back 2000, remember that? back in the '90s. in 1997 the american association of physical anthropologists urge the american government to phase out the use of race as a data category and to substitute ethnic categories instead. geneticists studying dna, the constituent material of genes that give instructions to our bodies in response to our surroundings, were also concluding that race, as a biological category, made no sense. the habit of relating human heredity to the environment may be traced back to antiquity, but early 19th century racial thinkers turn the notion of round beaming raise a permanent marker for any superiority, or

injury or do. not until the 1850s to the influence of an environment on hereditary get rescued with charles darwin's on the origin of species. darwin described a world much older than the biblical 5000 years, that hereditary was not fixed, that generation after generation, living things change in response to their surroundings. argument over race in the human genome have subsided of late leaving us with some intriguing data about personal appearance. prevailing racial schemes now rest once again on the concept of skin color, black and white people. but why did recognize the fact that not only are black people actually various shades of brown and yellow, but so, too, are white people, merely somewhat wider and often more pink.

or if they had been in the sun, a lot more red. [laughter] >> hence, the redskins. as they realize in the late 18th century one group's skin color grades saturate into another. there are no cleat demarcated lines. some people who identify as black may have lighter skin than others who identify as white. siblings with the same mother and father can display a range of skin colors. race may be all about pavement, but what makes people's skin light or dark? skin color is a byproduct of two kinds of melanin, red to yellow, and dark brown to black. in reaction to sunlight. and several genes interact to make people light or dark, reddish, brownish, or yellow which. inc. and scholars were are than they knew when they related skin color to climate.

today's colleges concur. sunny climates do make people dark skinned. and cold climates make people light-skinned. how much of which is sort of valid people have in this can and to what degree it is expressed deepened entirely over time on exposure to the sun's ultraviolet, or uv, radiation. melanin those protecting its excessive ultraviolet radiation and allows sufficient uv radiation to enter the body. too much uv radiation causes skin cancer, and can lead to death. and uv radiation is crucial for developing fetuses and strong bones. so where are we now? mapping the human genome elicited a initial proclamations of human candidness across the globe. then raced off described racial differences on our genes. that talk is not disappeared.

but ideally we would realize that human beings short history relates us all to one another. to speak in racial terms, incessant human migration has made us all multiracial. does this mean the human genome or civil rights or desegregation have entered the tyranny of race in america? almost certainly not. the fundamental black-white binary indoors, even though that category of whiteness, or we might say more precisely, the category of non-blackness, effectively expands. as before the black poor remain outside the concept of the american as an alien race of degenerative families. and i should explain that i have a discussion of the concept of alien races, which was applied to immigrants and their children from eastern and southern europe, and degenerate families

with a poor white families, for in voluntary sterilization. a multicultural middle-class may diversify the suburbs and college campuses, but the face of poor, segregated inner citi's remains black. for sometime now, many observers have held that money and interracial sex would solve the race problem. and indeed in some cases they have. nonetheless, poverty in a dark skinned into was as the opposite of whiteness, driven by an age-old social yearning to characterize the poor as a permanently other, and inherently inferior. thank you. [applause] >> and if you can get to the microphone.

>> okay. may the race go to the here we have a raise. >> i have sort of a preliminary question, please expect no, no. please just ask a question. >> sorry. i'm trying to gather the intended goal or purpose of your book, like what you would like to happen if all so-called why people read and agreed your premise that because when i read works like the encyclopedia of western colonialism, it talks about, and i quote, the colonial powers of the west claim possession to nearly all of american, australia, 99% of polynesia, 90% of african to nearly 50% of asian. or when you read the book we have here in the store, who owns the world? that one talks about the largest

landowner in the world presently is queen elizabeth. who just happens to be white. both of these books still speak to people who classify themselves as white still owned land that was originally theirs, still owned and controlled resources that wasn't originally theirs. so with your book are they just to apologize and give the land and resources back to the rightful owners? because now they understand they were tricked into whiteness? or is this work more just a play on semantics, but the overall world power dynamics will not change? >> these are choices because yes. what is the intended, what is the intended goal or hopeful goal of your book? >> i don't think i can win here. [laughter] >> if those are the only choices on going to have to check the other box. my book is the work of a

historian, not someone who is making policy. not a white? not an advocate, well, i don't know. that's a hard one, too. but let me just say that my goal was not to change the world. so what i would like people to know from reading my book is that this is a concept. it is not something biological and permanent, and inherited, intrinsic. and it hasn't the ideas about it have changed over time. that whiteness has a history. that's what i want. sorry. [inaudible] >> thank you. >> i would like to know if, in your research, that you found any evidence that this crossing of the racial barriers that we are experiencing is leading to

better families? that if the people -- >> another hard >> but, you know, if people have more choice that they can choose better, perhaps, leaving out tiger woods sort of the. he is just one person. but, you know, i was wondering if, you know, having more leeway to choose is producing better parents and, you know, better families as a result. >> that's another hard question. maybe even another trick question. no tricks. okay, and once againto appeal t, beautiful audience. we're going to take another vote. i think you all heard the question as to whether or not more choices produce better families, right? is that a fair paraphrase of your question. everybody understand?

okay. know. does more choice, you can reach out and mary or have sex with more different kinds of people this day, right? does that make it better? wait, wait, wait that i didn't ask you for an essay. [laughter] >> i just want yes or no. so yes is more choice makes it better. know is more choice doesn't necessarily make it better. are you ready? no. this is still yes or no. yes, more choice makes better families. okay. no, it doesn't necessarily. well, this time it's closer. this time i think the no's still have it. and i will bet they will say, as i heard other people say, it makes a difference.

makes it different that it makes it different. okay. >> my question is not difficult. it's simple. this week were filling out the census forms, and so look in on that, it seems to me that the groups are identified generally i geographic location, except for one which implies that there is only one scan code that is really important. and that is why. so why isn't there an effort to not use that at least on -- >> you can be black. you can be black, african-american, negro. you have a lot of choices in the line that. >> is in the other one that i think confuses the use of caucasian, which i don't know if people -- >> i don't think caucasian is in the census down. >> know but in society in general. how many people with those various shades of white were

from the caucus mountains ever? >> zero. >> okay, thank you. >> that's the easy answer and the other part i cannot answer. but i can say that every 10 years since his categories of jobs to take account of what the federal government thinks it needs to count up. so in the middle of -- is turned off in 1790, and there is in my book, the first census categories and there was only one race listed, which was wrought white. and it was i think in five different permutations. and then there were unfree people. who, at that point, were various races. and then in the middle of the 19th century, the census added mulatto. i think only for one senses. bless you. and then in the early 20th

century, for white people they broke why people got into a nativeborn and, and you had to say where your parents, maybe even your grandparents were born. so it has changed over time. if you make a movement, maybe you can get pink, gray, brownish. you know, you can get some more variety. >> a quick statement and a quick question. >> really quick. >> which is just a had a great good fortune of a long friendship with winthrop, and how excited he would have been to hear this talk. so just to say that. as a historian to history. my question is, you know, i take my census form last week, and rode across a, come on guys, you know raised is a social construct. but then i kicked what because i know they have to get these things and they are trying. but my question is how did you take yours and why?

>> minus three straight forward. i ticked black. my has been transformed white because as far as we know he is. [laughter] >> but something interesting has been happening. my book came out on the 15th of this month are consistent i have been talking to people. and here sort of permutations of this question over and over again. and sometimes people are upset. but i only hear that from people who are upset over the white box. because they know that's the one that the census, or somebody, the black helicopters or something, wants them to check. and they are not comfortable with it. and i think, i guess, what's happening is that in the 21st century, white people are more and more becoming aware of themselves as having to raise in addition to just being

individuals. and now seeing how awkward a category meant to include millions and millions and millions of people, really can be, so we're facing a kind of white dilemma, i think, that is going to be really interesting. yes? >> hello and thank you so much for coming. and i said here year to this book. we had, was alachua and had a television show twice, black in america and i was like, would ever ask, you, make the same, white in america? take that apart. and if they do i hope that you are one they consult. my next question was, would you agree or maybe not the question would you agree, but i felt as i watched turmoil time to take place in this country over the past year, it almost looked like an addict, racism was almost

like an addiction, the need for this country to hold on to that separation is like an addict needing to hold onto something. and then the denial of this addiction and the destruction that it doesn't have. how do you feel about that? >> i haven't thought of it that way but that's a real interesting and insightful way of talking about it. anthropologists have spoken people addicted to race as people who believe in witchcraft. in that you can never disprove it. if you point to somebody, you know, you disprove their analysis of something that is based on race, then they have a way of getting around it and holding onto their belief. but i think on for longer than just the last year. and i picked it -- my last book, creating black americans, has a chapter on rap music and hip-hop

culture, you know, which is 35 years old now. speaking of things that have history. and a good bit of the anxiety that comes out there is trying to get black people back in the box. this is what black people are. and a lot of black comedy is based on that. this is what black people are, this is what black people do. and it is kind of fabricated, unitary image, which i think is the kind of commercial and the kind of anxiety that you have picked up in the culture at large. so post segregation i think americans generally are trying to figure out who we are, according to our traditional bases. and the new bases, there's so much more about class, because we are living in a country with

the most profound inequalities of income and wealth. i think just about in our history, certainly in our post-labor history, and the slavery south the disparities were infinite. but since that time, you know, we have really reached very few people who are very rich, and increasing numbers of people who are increasingly black and brown, who are just scraping by. yes to. >> we will take the last four or five. >> thank you so much for coming, and my question i guess, i grew up in d.c. and went to very multiracial public schools and then went away to a college that was a progressive and much wider. and it seemed to be almost a preoccupation among the student body about i guess the concept

of white privilege and trying to be sensitive about white privilege, but almost to the point where it would come to a full circle and we were taught as part of our sensitivity training when we were teaching inner-city schools that science came from white men, and, you know, that doesn't, that was like one student trying to work through that, trying to train the students. but this kind of preoccupation and self-consciousness about whiteness, that was interesting because i wasn't used to it. and i guess i'm wondering, historically what is the appeal and the attraction of this category that kind of has no actual categorical bases? >> it has a teeny-weeny bases but i assume that your question, right? >> with the appeal is. >> the appeal is your people, whoever they are, assuming that you -- let's just make you william bratton for the moment.

you, well educated, new englander, wealthy background, harvard, yell back, columbia, mit and so forth, have a way of explaining why you are beautiful and nice, and they are ugly and poor. sorts out the world. thank you. >> hi. i heard you mentioning the fact that white slavery back in europe a long time ago -- >> not just a long time ago. slavery exist in our world. >> and this white slavery, the words slob and slave is surprisingly similar. >> they are related. >> and i mean, there were sharp differences between different

groups of people in europe but now you go to census form and you see just one box for white. >> it depends, every country does it differently. in france they do not collect by race but are thinking about it. >> i am talking about america right now. the census has one box where if you go back and beginning of the 20 century people coming through ellis island would say europe and you have always undesirable, unruly folks coming. my question is, given that now you see one box for white, made in 100 years we will not see a box at all for raise in the census form. what do you think? >> i think that's very possible because people are just so mixed up. and were having our little mini revolt about checking the white box, certainly. and then the largest immigrant group and now it's like he knows and they are supposedly more

latinos than african-americans. and let the nose can be of any race. there are also large numbers of african descendent, immigrants who don't necessarily associate themselves with african-americans, native african-americans whom they see as lazy and inferior. so the whole thing is getting mixed up. something like only 46% of current immigrants, i think this is like 2008, identify themselves as white, whereas something like 78 -- 76 to 80% of nativeborn americans identify themselves as white. so white is getting to be less popular. [laughter] >> we will see. thank you. >> the last three questions. >> a couple of things that you

began by talking about greeks. romans were slaveowners. generally, they were slaves -- >> not all. just the tip the top. >> they had slaves. whoever they conquer, they made them into slaves. >> yes. >> then we come to this country, and you had capitalism at work in terms of southern plantations needing labor to sell cotton to england. so they -- >> i'm going to correct year here because the whole plantation system started with sugar. that's a big difference, and it started before capitalism really got a hold. >> collett commerce. >> you can call it commerce. õ .