they should make personal models of those to make it easier to carry around. no, i found that i did not need physical protection. the and i was on a television show when it came out, and the interviewer said, some reviewers said that you were in touch, can't remember who they said, your feminine self or your sense of itself, or something like that. and i said i read that review, and all i can think of is i hope none of my high school pals read that. i will never hear the end of it. but they were nice responses to the book of which i thought was going to be about alice, and it turned out sort of accidentally to be about marriage and couples.

>> i'm just about finished with the coming trilogy, which i have never read before. and i realize a lot of the writing was about 30 years ago. and my question is, how's your appetite? >> it's holding up. the. >> great. and did you ever think or need to do any research at a fat farm? because for someone who is having three or four breakfasts and then maybe having a couple lunches, seemed like he might at some point have needed some physical therapy. >> right. know, the thing about those books is that they're not exactly collection. i mean, i rewrote everything. but a lot of the raw material was from pieces from either "the new yorker" or some, magazine or something. so when you read them all together it seems like i do nothing but eat.

>> exactly spent four think about eating. in fact, i mean, i like to eat, but gives a false impression in people, people used to call me up and say, where should we eat somewhere? you know, what's the best french restaurant in chicago. i have no idea. so i think, i think that when you push them all together, i see more gluttonous. although i'm not saying i'm not a gluttonous adult spent i'm glad to hear you still have a great appetite. >> thank you. >> in a similar vein, what places do you like around the city that are sort of like out of the way? and i'm taking notes. >> nancy and i decided that would be the last question.

well, i like a lot of places but i live in the village. i used to live in the village. my house is still in the same place but i'm told i live in the west village now. the real estate people have decided it's the west village. i usually describe the village as a place where people from the suburbs, on a saturday night to test their car alarms. [laughter] so i find i eat around my house, or in chinatown. and when i see something about a restaurant in that column in the times, that says what's opening or something, i sort of read from the bottom up. and if it's a east 64th street or west 78th, i quit reading. i think a lot of people in new york are that way. well, thank you. >> thank you very much. [applause]

>> for more information about calvin trillin visit thenation.com and search his name. >> and now on booktv, anita hill examines housing issues in the united states. ms. hill, a social policy, law, and women's studies professor at brandeis university, profiles several african-american women and reports on their attempts to secure housing against numerous obstacles, including racial and gender discrimination. this is a little over an hour and 15 minutes. >> welcome to cambridge forum. tonight we'll be discussing reimagining equality with anita hill, professor of social policy, law, and women's studies at brandeis university. i'm tricia, brown university professor and i will be your moderator. in her new and amazing memoir,

"reimagining equality: stories of gender, race, and finding home," anita hill takes the idea of home and explores how our family home at our national home are linked to understand it's an achievement, and equality. she takes us on a journey that begins with her own family story and ends with her current mortgage meltdown. along the way we visit homes across america and meet some extraordinary african-american women from -- how have these women experienced homes in america? how successful have the movement for racial and gender equality been in eliminating barriers to opportunity? at how is the current economic crisis affecting america's commitment to equality? what challenges does anita hill c. i had? the interest of 13 children anita hill grew up on a farm in

rural oklahoma. after receiving her jd from you university in 1980, she worked in private practice and for the federal government in washington, d.c. she is the author of members professional articles on international commerce, commercial law, bankruptcy and civil rights. her book, "speaking truth to power," details her experience as a witness and clarence thomas' supreme court confirmation hearing. her latest book, "reimagining equality" is the basis for our present discussion. please join me in welcoming to the cambridge forum anita hill. [applause] >> wilthank you. good evening, and i cannot say thank you enough.

i am just so thrilled to be here. thank you, professor, for the gracious introduction. thank all of you for coming out tonight in this lovely weather. gosh, where do i start saying thank you? i can stand all night here. i have some friends here, of course, i have to start with them, but i will also and with the saying thank you to my brandeis colleagues for coming out tonight to support me, and to hear me talk about this work that i have been mumbling about for the past, oh, two or three years, and really what working hard to try to get together. as professor rose mentioned to you, starting out this work with the story of my family, and my ancestral family.

and i come in a few chapters, bring us to modern-day issues and conflicts in what i call a crisis of home. this is the launch date for the book, and so this is the first time i have given this talk. and i guess i'm a little anxious about it. because this product is really something, and reimagining equality is something very near to me. it is part memoir but it is not entirely memoir. it shares with you not only my family story but the stories of a number of women, past and present, and it attempts to bring us into a future conversation that will, i hope, impact generations to come.

and so i'll begin. we are often referred to, or we refer to the united states as a nation of immigrants. so, what does that mean? what it means to me is that as such, as a nation of immigrants, we are a population of seekers, and the sentencing of seekers. people in search of homes. for decades in our early history we measured american progress in terms of movement and expansion. and even today we teach advancement towards the american dream by one's ability to seek out and secure a new, often bigger, and presumably better home in a different location where they are now. growing up in a stable community

in rural oklahoma, with my 12 siblings on a farm, i felt not so much like a seeker as a subtler. i felt very settled in rural oklahoma. i even felt cheated out of ancestral participation in the pivotal movement towards progress that so many african-americans experienced, known as the great migration. it was known for me as a great migration in part, not just because there were a lot of people moving from south to north to west, but because of the great anticipation and the great expectation that came out of the movement. however, in researching "reimagining equality" i learned

that my family story involve movement as well. in doing so and in doing the research and understanding my own relationship as well as my history, i came to appreciate not only the role that movement played, but also the role that those years of being settled on the farm in oklahoma played in terms of the achievement of equality for me and my 12 siblings. now, for those of you who are interested in research, and i hope some of you are doing your family history, and i'm sure everyone of you has a family story to tell about home, i'll just say that i begin the story, the chronicling of my family's story, with a family legend.

that was the start. and as many people, you know, when you're an academic, family legends are not necessarily to be sort of taken on their face. you have to have hard documentation to go along with them. and so as i was filling out the family legend of the story, i did interviews with family members. i had conversations and read historians work. i search through historic documents from a variety of sources. and for those of you, and i'll say, well, younger than i am, that's a lot of you, i used new technology. so let's start with the family legend, which is where i began.

family legend had it that my grandparents left arkansas and left behind a large working farm. and so the first question i asked myself, to question where, how we got from arkansas to oklahoma, and to understand the movement of my family was how did my grandparents get a large farm in arkansas. my grandfather, in fact, henry eliot, william henry l. it was born in 1864, so he was born a slave. and i wanted to know how this child was born a slave could ultimately, upon owning a large farm in arkansas, given the times that he grew up in. but what i found, when i researched the historical records was, in fact there were

80 acres that william henry eliot and my grandmother, homesteaded in 1895, and through the bureau of land management i was able to find the documentation of this homesteading. so indeed, the legend had truth to it. although, in looking at this documentation i will tell you, i was thrilled to discover this documentation. i never knew my grandparents, and to find this documentation of their lives and their existence, to me, in a government record, was so compelling and i felt as though i was probably looking at a document that had been tucked away since 1895, and no one had ever paid attention to. and for me, it was like discovering, a discovery of a part of my past. i will say this, but i also discovered about that

documentation, the deed itself had a number of entries, quite a bit of information. i will share some of it with you, but nowhere in that documentation was my grandmother name mentioned. she was not on the deed. .. >> where he, his unnamed wife --

my grandmother -- lived with their seven children. now, it does seem a little cramped. [laughter] but, indeed, it was, i am sure, better than the slave cabin in which he spent the first ten years of his life. acre by acre the elliots plowed and planted and cleared the land which was cover with the oak and pine trees. and five year, within the five years of the homesteading period they had tilled and farmed one-quarter of the entire parcel. they planted an orchard, and as one observer noted, a fine orchard, one of the fine e that he'd ever -- finest that he'd ever seen with fruit trees. and ida crooks elliot filled the yard with flowers. so this was the farm that henry

elliot owned, that he and ida occupied, ask this was the farm -- and this was the farm that allowed my are -- my grandfather, henry, to go from being property to owning rot in about 50 years. now, where does the technology come in? i said i use technology. through google earth i was able to get a bird's eye view of the property. and i looked at it, and today it is once again overgrown with the oak and pine that was there when my grandparents found it. um, the trees hide its past; its past farm and even, perhaps, the past indiana that my grandparents -- past pain that my grandparents experienced

there. so how did the family end up leafing this farm? -- leaving this farm? it seems like an idyllic situation and perhaps it was in so many ways. it was such a great achievement that even generations later my family members talk about it with great pride. but there is the other side of the story. and that is the legend that said that henry elliot left arkansas with his family after he was threaten with the a lynching. and i heard this story through the eyes of my uncle george, my mother's brother, who was born in 1909. he was one of my primary sources and, really, it was interesting because he was in his 80s when he told me the story, but he tells me the story of his family's journey to oklahoma through the eyes of a child. he said, the day they got on the

train he was just so excited about being able to ride a train. this was the first time that he'd ever been on a train. but he also said the day that they left their farm was the first time he'd ever seen his father cry. nevertheless, they did leave, um, and they left because as a family legend has it there was a lynching threat. now, was this likely? well, how was i to really document the threat? i couldn't be there. but what i could document was the atmosphere of racial violence that existed in little river county, arkansas. when my grandparents lived there. and i was able to do that through historians, one of whom -- richard buckle -- who actually did a chronicling of

the number of lynchings and the names of the lynch victims in "arkansas: county by county, year by year." and there were quite a few in the area which my grand participants lived. -- grandparents lived. so the story of the lynching threat is likely given the fact that it has endured all of these years, given the fact that my uncle saw my grandfather cry when he had to leave. i put all of those things together and say i can't say with absolute certainty that this happened, but i can tell you that there's a great likelihood of it. but i also discovered some other factors that shaped henry and ida elliot's ability to keep the home that they had obtained by right of law, to keep the home that they had shaped to make their own. i discovered one-sided debt agreement that my grandfather

had signed with former slave holders, debt agreements that were there simply so that he could raise the crops to stay on the farm. these agreements, actually, are written and in the records in little river county. and if you read them, it's amazing. there were so one-sided that mortgage holders actually had the right the decide and determine what the interest rate on the loans would be. i also learned that there were, the crop prices during the early 1900s were spiraling down, particularly in cotton which my grandfather grew. i learned of a hard hardship that my grandparents

experienced, three of their 14 children died before they reached the age of eight years old. indeed, as i say, a number of factors shaped their ability to make a home in little river county. violence and be official indifference to it or even worse, sub borning of it, unavailability of credit or any kind of resources, financial resources to help them earn a living. a failing agricultural economy and no other alternatives for uneducated farmers, particularly if they were black and female. so, ultimately, henry and ida elliot lost their home, and i leave to the reader to decide exactly how all of these factors came into play. but what they did was what americans do.

they moved. the elliot, they moved west to oklahoma to search for a better life if not for themselves, for their children and soon-to-be-born grandchildren. as i pieced together my grandparents' story, it sounded very eerily similar to some of the stories i read about today. the lack of credit or bad credit, if you will, the loss of economic resources, the loss of homes, the heartbreak that i read in stories, in papers, in the newspapers today in 2008 and, you know, throughout the last few years really remind me so much of what took place in the early part of the 20th century. and as well there are racial elements to the stories that are

printed today as we learn about the devastation in communities of color, the losses that african-americans, asian-americans and hispanic-americans are suffering at the end of this recession. as many, as much as 65% of the equity and, excuse me, 65% of the wealth among asian-americans and african-american and hispanic-americans has been lost in the last few years. and much of that has been tied to loss in the values of their homes. in reimagining equality, i explore the practices of the failing economies in my grandparents' time. i take you through the era of outright ands hostile

segregation, through an era of red lining and throughout which women were confined to second tear role -- secondary roles inned and outside the home. i looked at restrictive covenants and the role they played in shaping communities and even today, how they echo and shadow over communities in urban areas. and i bring you to today, reverse red lining and targeting of women and people of color for subprime and high-fee loans this occurred -- that occurred in the height of the subprime lending debacle. in doing so, i explore a number of ways that we learn about equality and think about equality. i look at law, i look at popular

culture. one of the things that i look at and sometimes people really can relate to this story, when i talk about how the role that the home has played in our thinking about, um, what achievement is and when people have finally made it. remember the sitcom "the jeffersons"? how many of you remember the theme song to "the jeffersons"? [laughter] how could you forget it? so moving up to the east side to a deluxe apartment in the sky. now, that showed that you had made it, but george jefferson and louise jefferson, this african-american couple, had made it. and what did they do? move up. and not only did they move up, but they department have to have -- they didn't have to have beans burning on the grill anymore or fish frying.

they had bought into a new way of life because they were now able to relocate and prove to the world that they had made it. so i look at popular culture, and i look at literature to help really illustrate not only the role that it plays, but that the home plays in our thinking about equality, but also our shared desire, the desire that we all have to find a home whether it's -- we think of it as that place or a state of being. and one thing i think really is pivotal or at least my growing up and understanding of the cig any can of home and the relationship it played in the role of equality is lorraine hasn't bury's, "a raise sin in the sun." and i discuss the play because it is such, in many ways, a

timeless play. it's been staged and restaged since it debuted, i think, this this -- in 1959, countless times. it had an anniversary maybe two or three years ago, and across the country there were 200 different stagings of a raisin in the sun. and for those of you who don't know it, briefly, it's the story of an african-american family who have come on to money, they have been live anything cramped quarters -- living in cramped quarters in a tenement apartment in chicago, and they, the mother who lives in the apartment with her two adult children and a daughter-in-law and a grandson wants to use that money to buy a home in the suburbs. and she decides she's going to make, buy a home in the suburbs of chicago. well, the suburb is a segregateed suburb, and she

meeted with resistance in her effort to -- she meets with resistance in her effort to buy this home. and, of course, at the end of the play we have a somewhat happy if not cautious conclusion where, ultimately, the family moved into the suburb, and the neighborhood is integrated. but i think even though the white neighbors' resistance is prominent in the play, the play is illuminating in a number of ways. it's illuminating not only about the desire of african-americans, but the desires of all americans. and so in "reimagining equality" i write: a raisin in the sun not only illuminates the black person finding a place in the nation, but also how it

surprises all americans' desire to belong. it is a story of race and gender and be a universal experience of believe anything a dream -- believing in a dream. hansbury's is a cautionary tale. a dream deferred doesn't just dry up like a raisin in the sun, but instead could just explode. moreover, the consequences of deferred dreams are not always immediate. they can extend decades into the future with consequences of generations to come. for over 50 years, audiences have focused on african-americans' clashes with the world outside their homes. her ability to see into the future of conflicts inside the home is just as compelling. hansbury advises us of the

relationship between the problem outside and those conflicts inside. in the years since her play, i have come to fully appreciate how the two work together to enhance or to impede our chances at real equality. and so i look at hansbury's play, and i see not only the tension that she is raising, the tension between african-americans and white americans, but also it foretells of the tensions between women and men and how equality will be defined. what she signals is that that clash,ing unless we can resolve that clash within the home, unless we can resolve issues of gender equality, we will never be able to fully resolve the issues of racial equality.

and so we've moved forward beyond the clash that ha, this sbury outlines -- hansbury outlines. we moved through the '60s. we saw people of color, women of all colors make strides in the 1970s and the 1980s. yet we also saw rising materialism, increased violence in inner cities, resistance to civil rights gains and cultural backlash against women. we saw the suburbs were expanding, and we also saw that the blueprint for the average american home was growing as well. inside the whole changes were

occurring as women of all races became part of the paid labor force. there are and so there were a mixture of factors from -- some gains and some losses. and there were also laws and policies that were, some were enforced and some were neglected. and if i could fast forward, what i would simply say is that all of those things came together to create almost the formula for the housing crisis. and in "reimagining equality" i take you through to show you how all of those factors contributed to where we are now. but equality even though it was

beginning to be realized, in many respects the housing crisis came along and hit us hard. it hit communities of color so much so that cities like baltimore, maryland, memphis, tennessee, the state of illinois are suing wells fargo bank for the devastation they allege that bank visited upon communities throughout their locations. [applause] it was no accident that the foreclosure crisis occurred. indeed, i suggest health care ans -- hansbury forecasted the factors leading up to it even though she department, of course, forecast the foreclosure crisis. none of us could have. so in "reimagining equality" i do draw upon hansbury's vision

and her wisdom, and i look at the lives of contemporary african-american women who are like the millions of americans who are uncertain about their place, their home for themselves and for their children. look -- i look at their desires as universal desires. but i also look at them because their race and gender make their struggles unique. they are not simply looking for ownership. they are looking for a semblance of equality and authority, and that is being threatened by the foreclosure crisis and the housing market collapse. and i hope i'll share some of those stories with you as we go into our discussion.

but i also want to say that i don't just leave you with the stories. i do tell you how it happened, and i offer ideas for how we, one, can prevent it happening again and, two, how we can make sure that what is happening now does not set back generations to come. and so i propose a number of ideas for how in the wake of the foreclosure crisis we can overcome the ravages of neglect and deliberate abusive practices. we can assure that the dream of finding homes continues for these women and for their children and all of the children in america. and so i will close with a little bit of my vision for what

that america will be and what the dream ought to be in the future. now, since the first african-american in our history now occupies the white house -- [applause] or calls the white house his home, it is fitting that i will begin with barack obama. in terms of this vision. barack obama, whose fervent search for home brought him to the presidency, must seize the moment of crisis to end large our concept of -- to enlarge our concept of home for all americans, but especially for the next generation. i would call, though, upon all leaders, all the nation's leaders -- political and social -- i would call upon all of you as well to take up this cause. americans are in need of a 21st century vision of our country, not a vision of movement, but one of place.

not one of tolerance, but one of belonging. not simply of rights, but also of community, a community of equals. this new vision will lead to an inclusive american democracy that stays alive and remains real for everyone. and if you'll allow me one indulgence, a personal indulgence, i started talking this talk with a talk about my mother's family. and much of this book is inspired by my mother. and on october 16th, 2011, i will celebrate the 100th birthday of my mother. [applause] now, she is not alive to celebrate with me. [laughter] nevertheless, i will celebrate. the place where i live with its

long, snowy winters -- that would be here -- [laughter] is not likely what she contemplated 35 year ago when he set me off with two set of luggage. and i tell that story in the book. but it is my home, and each day i honor her by working to live up to her dream that a i will find a more just -- that i will find a more just america than the one she grew up in, and that as she did, i leave that america better than how i found it. thank you. [applause] >> well, thank you. you're listening to cambridge forum as we continue our discussion of making a home this america, finding opportunity ask achievement and overcoming the racial, gender and economic barriers of our society with anita hill.

so i want to open us up here to sort of think a little bit through what professor hill couldn't get to. it's a marvelous book, and, um, the first thing i wanted to give you an opportunity to talk more specifically about is how and why you settled on the very interesting hybrid format that you settled on. as the listeners can tell, there's personal storytelling, there's individual storytelling about african-american women throughout the 20th century, but there's also in-depth historical, social, contextual policy analysis and the connections that are made between them. i mean, it's a very rich format. it's clearly quite intentional. can you speak a little bit to what you had in mind? >> well, i wanted to, in writing the book i wanted to start with how people really learn and think finish how they learn -- how they learn about inequalities. we learn about inequalities or we learn inequality through a

number of devices. we learn through history. we learn through laws, how we think about equality is sometimes shaped by how we think about the law, how we think about rights. but we also learn about equality through pop culture and literature. hansbury's raisin in the sun really was a story about what are the end game results of an integrated society, of a quest for equality, a dream. we learn about it through pop culture like "the jeffersons," and we learn about inequalities through pop cull chair that -- culture that depict women in unfavorable ways. and so i wanted to really reach the reader where and how they learn about these topics. but i also wanted to offer more than simply storytelling. for me, it's important for us to

link this behavior in our own understanding to the policies and laws that are in place. and so that's why i wanted to come to the readers with a different way of thinking about all of those devices that he was this heard throughout -- that they have heard throughout their lives. >> it works very well. on page 112 -- yes, i'm an academic. >> i'll have to look at page 112. >> i'll fill you in. [laughter] it's okay. you say the persistent devaluation of those things black and those things female undermines our communities and our count culturally -- our country culturally and economically. and i was struck throughout the book by this desire the make real and personal and e mole motionally -- emotionally connecting the stories of a

variety of black women in class positions. and i wanted to the, if you could, speak to how we can move from tolerance to real belonging across race and gender. because it strikes me this notion of home is about how we can share this space in more meaningful, connected ways. >> well, the word "empathy," we've heard it bandied about politically particularly when it comes to the supreme court nomination -- [laughter] but it really is in some ways it's about empathy, but it's really about more. it's about not only understanding how these individuals feel, but also what they feel and what happens to them relates to us. when we say, okay, look, african-american communities in baltimore are devastated, and we try to isolate that, you know,

we're not only not -- you know, we feel bad for people. we're showing empathy, but that's not enough. what we have to understand is that the devastation of those communities hurt all of us. i talk about in one of the stories the story of marla, about the crime in her neighborhood; street crime that ultimately ended in her son's death. and we like to think, okay, well, if we just stay out of those neighborhoods, then we will be fine. but, in fact, we are not fine. we pay for those crime ourselves. so in addition to empathy that i want you to get from these stories, i also want you to understand our connectedness. and that the face of individuals that we don't know and, you know, may not even read about in the newspaper really matter in our lives.

the state -- there's a reason that the state of illinois is suing wells fargo. because -- and that is, simply put, because the attorney general of illinois knew that this was not an isolated neighborhood problem, that these were issues that impacted the entire country. the subprime lending debacle may have started in certain communities, but i dare any of you to find, to say that you don't know someone personally who has been affected by it, that you don't have a neighbor or friend or son or daughter who will feel the impact of this crisis that really was just, just started out as african-americans, women, latino s were targeted for toxic

loans. and so that' really what i want -- that's really what i want us to do. i want us to feel empathy, but i also want us to understand how we're all connected this these issues, and as you know because of the crisis an entire financial, global financial system was brought to its knees. so we can't simply look at these things as isolated, unrelated matters. they matter to all of us. >> right. and i was profoundly struck by the degree to which this is a gender ored crisis -- genders crisis, that women were not only specifically targeted, but single mothers of all racial backgrounds but substantially black and brown because of the economics circumstances, and that there's been very little discussion of the gender dimension of this and how much the expectation was this would be solved by some sort of two-participant household -- two-parent household in a traditional way. i'm wondering if you can speak to that because it's an

extremely compelling theme in the book. >> well, first of all, the idea of the two-parent family, nuclear family, it's changing for everyone. that the race among adults who have never been married -- the rates among adults who have never been married have increased over the last 50 years, and they seem to be continually increasing. so that idea that we're all going to be in these two-parent family settings is just no longer the norm necessarily anymore. so why do we have policies and why do we have our thinking focused on the world and problems are going to be resolved if that happens when that does not seem to be the way things are happening today. so that's one thing. we need to start to shift what our policy direction will be. but the other thing is this. it was almost as though it was a perfect storm. what happened was that women on

their own were gaining greater economic footing, and in addition to to the economic gains there were social gains. so that more women on their own were buying homes. the statistics were in about 2005 and 2006 that one in every six of the new homebuyers were single women buying homes on their own. and, not coincidentally, that was the era in which subprime lending escalated. and so it just created, like, the perfectly bad storm of, for an impact on those women not only their social gains, but their economic gains. and that is a story that is not off told. -- often told. it will have, i believe, as

profound impact as the devastation of communities of color. our individual wealth as single women has been set back, and the social gains, the ideas that we can make it on our own has been set back. and that really is dangerous for us. >> so i'm going to ask one more question now and then invite questions there the audience. but i wanted to return to where you closed briefly to this question about, um, obama as a leader on these issues as well as a symbolic leader on these issues. but in particular i'm struck by, i mean, i couldn't agree with you more it would be fabulous if he were to take up your vision and, perhaps, quote your own book at some point. that would be nice. >> that would be nice. [laughter] >> your beacon would light up. [laughter] but i guess i sort of want to be

hopeful but with some caution which is to say that i'm struck by how little addressing the reality of structural inequality when it speaks to class, when it speaks to race, when it speaks to gender, how little can be said about that in the public sphere and that the moment you say it, it's as if conversation comes to a grinding halt. there's enormous anxiety. now, certainly, you know, the right wing is an easy scapegoat, but i'd make the argument that there's a middle that's uncomfortable with that language. how could obama even if he had the goal, which we don't know, but assuming he had the goal to take this up, this kind of vision of home and belonging to move from tolerance to buy-in, to move from empathy to structural change, how possible is that in this climate, and in what ways can you imagine us creating a climate that would, in a sense, house your vision more fully? >> rose makes a very compelling

case, doesn't she? and were i not an optimist, i might just pack up and go home. but i am really a person who believes in change. and if you look at what has happened, if i think about what's happened in my family life in the last 100 year, if i think about what has happened in my lifetime as the beneficiary of brown v. board of education, as a beneficiary of so many laws and efforts to achieve gender equality, i have to be optimistic. now, i understand that it is difficult for president obama to raise this issue. but this is really, to me, a question about whether or not we can continue to believe in the american dream. that's what this is about. that's what this book is about.

or whether we are going to continue to price people out of the american dream by putting it on the market and saying that the only way that you can achieve it is to buy a bigger house than your parents had and certainly than your grandparents had. if that link between the american dream and the bigger home is one that i hope to disrupt. what i would see as the american dream really is the ability for everyone regardless of where one lives to have access to all of the opportunities that this country has to offer. [applause] that, for me, is the american dream. [applause] and it should not be determined by where we live. we don't give enough thought and have enough conversation about how where one lives determines whether one -- where one goes to school and, in many cases, the

quality of that education, how one is represented in congress, and more basically, whether one is going to have access to basic needs like food, transportation to jobs that will pay a living wage. and so those are the things that i think we need to begin to talk about. i hope president obama can lead that talk, and in "reimagining equality," i tell him how i think it can be done. [laughter] but if he can't, if the political times are too tight and too tough for him to lead that, then we have to lead that conversation. [applause] and we can do it. and be if i would just get personal a little bit -- i said i wasn't necessarily going to go back there, but i believe that in 1991 personal conversations,

public outcry, public engagement led to change for women in the workplace. [applause] it happened because, not because our leaders stepped up and said, oh, we must do something about sexual harassment, it happened because we raised our voices. and we raised them in quiet ways in some respects. we raised them by talking in our homes with our mothers, with our daughters, with our, in some seance for the first time, with ourtous into uses about what our lives and experiences were like. >> [inaudible] [applause] >> and that, and that's why i'm a believer. because i understand the power of public engagement and

discourse. and that's why i think this conversation can happen. >> yeah. >> and i believe that if we do it, our very wise president will follow. [laughter] [applause] >> you're listening to anita hill discussing her new book, "reimagining equality: stories of gender, race, and finding home." now let's take some questions from the audience. please, come forward, as pat illuminated, and line up to the microphone to the right here. and and i've been instructed to say, please, limit yourself to one succinct, well-phrased question. [laughter] it's cambridge, i think that's possible, to allow as many people as possible to think. if you could just stand on this side, that would be -- >> remember, you're supposed to have your best side -- >> the best side to the -- andal

behind you, yes. [laughter] >> professor hill, i am from michigan, and in the city of detroit there's great poverty and great privilege. bloomfield hills, michigan, great privilege. public schools have vast resources. in that same geographic area, great poverty. so the question is with people that would like to see change, how do you make that structural change? because property values are tied into educational quality. even if people say let's redistribute money at a statewide level which would be more fair than just at a local level, how do you do that when people won't want their house values to decrease? i think there's a lot of people who would like to see change, but their own interests are affected, and they have to hesitate. >> their interests are already being impacted. you know, when we don't raise an educated population throughout, that we are all going to be suffering. and so, again, it's that

connection that people have to make with the lives of others who may not have the privileges that they have. but i think we've got to retrain our thought. and many of those people in those very nice communities are suffering now. so we have to ask them do we want, are they willing to go back to put more money into a system that has put them at risk? and so with that what i do can for is that i don't look at just how do we regulate banks. i look at how do we establish transportation systems, how do we make decisions about how roads are going to be paved? how do we make decisions about where jobs are going to be located. and so i'm really trying to look at this conversation as a holistic conversation so that we can really start to disrupt, really, our thinking, that kind of thinking about, well, this doesn't matter to me and be

really make some structural and long-last changes. >> which thank you. thank you. [applause] >> hi, anita. nice to see you again. >> thank you. >> i'm reverend ellen -- [inaudible] i'm a minister and disability comissioner. i want to thank you for putting this a succinct way the way we need to heal our commitments together, and we can't leave anyone out of that process either and wanted to add one more element in your discussion, and that is persons with disabilities, children with disabilities who don't have access to the same opportunities, especially coming from communities where the resources have not been really, um, brought in. and i wondered if you could comment a little bit on that and how, um, we can bring this into a full circle to really bring

in, um, the municipalities to really see this as a serious issue, especially with young women of color who then have this added, you know, kind of hurdle to deal with. >> okay. well, thank you for your question. you know, we have, i have often talked about what happened with the laws protecting against disability, discrimination. and in some ways, i think in many ways it was a laudable effort to try to make sure that access regardless of ability was granted to everyone. but what we did in some ways was to simply look at structures, physical structures. and in doing that we sort of made the changes of putting in a ramp or elevator, and then we walked away. we department really think about

all the -- we didn't really think about all the different ways that people with disabilities are excluded. and some of those have to do with our own mindset about how we think of the capabilities of individual and how we judge individuals who might have a physical incapacity. and that has never taken place. i think that's where the discussion has to begin, with our thinking about what the value of individuals are. wherever they are. and i talk primarily about race and gender because that is my experience, but i have a lot to learn about things that we need to change in terms of how we value people who may not have physical access to all the opportunities that the country has to offer. and so that, i agree, is not something that i talk about so much in the book, but i do think

many of the principles still apply. and i would say, though, that we've done an adequate job of dealing with physical structures. but we have not even begun to deal with some of the psychological barriers that we impose on people with disabilities. >> thank you. [applause] >> good evening. um, i'm having a few thought running around in my head -- >> oh, good. >> and you've actually made me think of something. i guess i'm saying some of in this the spirit of the 99%, but the work that i've done is creating awareness about the dangers of pesticides because i actually got pesticide poisoning from neighbors' use of pesticides. >> uh-huh. >> and it makes me think of the greening of the home, the why do my property -- the person who will maybe use the pesticide, has to make this huge

mcmansion, has to use lots and lots of resources -- why is it seeming like in america that there's a certain group of folk, and maybe they're not thinking of this, but it sort of comes out that they, that their need to have more and better and bigger and perfect can end up being as their home can be more important than somebody living next door, somebody live anything another community. sort of the inequalityceps and the notion of home -- sense and the notion of home and yet how it becomes skewed in the terms of some of these issues, how we're destroying our larger home, the earth -- >> uh-huh. >> -- by some of the practice with other doing as americans. and as you go to ore countries, they look at us, are you kidding that you people have these gated communities with the perfect lawns and lot of -- you know what i mean? i'm wondering wondering if you t about that notion of home and what you think about it if i

raids it for the first time for you. >> well, i believe that a generation of people have a new understanding of about not only the earth, but also about the connection that we have with each other. that's what i'm hoping we can get to because we can change -- we've already changed in many ways how we think about the effort. i mean -- about the earth. i mean, imagine, ten year ago i didn't recycle, and now it's the norm. so we can do that, i mean, people talk about, well, we can't really change people in that short period of time. ten year ago if i had sat here saw 15 years ago, i don't know, about the church but in most public settings people would have been smoking cigarettes. and we have changed that. so we can change our thinking. i do talk about the role of this whole gated community. and, basically, what i -- gated communities, larger houses, more

exclusive, if you will, neighborhoods. um, and be really the sort of individual homes. so whatever i do at my home is my be business and doesn't impact anybody else, and i think that's what you're talking about. i really do believe that is just not sustainable. we believe that we can just move away from all of these old issues. and inequalities. and that they tonight have an impact -- they don't have an impact on us. but if anything proves that what we do impacts everyone, the ecology does that. this whole greening america brings that to our attention. and i guess if you would, i'm hoping that we can have something like that when we think about financing and home owning and even rental properties. if we can think about the connection between a child

living, currently live anything a poor section of town, their ability to find a home and be in a home in america and the ability of an individual who has been live anything a gated community -- living in a dated community, that those two things are related. if we can do that, then i think we will have made some progress. it may take a generation for it to happen, but we've got to begin the work now. >> i also might add that the community garden or the home garden or the victory garden as they had back in the depression is just a lovely way to bring that notion of home and be own ownership -- not ownership, but love of the earth -- >> well, one of the things i proposed is a home summit, and in that summit in the best of worlds there would be people from all communities world have an opportunity to contribute. and so that is idealistic, i understand that, so be it.

but i think that's the way we can start to understand how and why it's important for all of us. >> hi. >> hello. >> um, my question is, um, an observation i was making is if we grant privileges on the basis of something as superficial as skin color, what we all have to lose is that we are promoting a culture of mediocrity, and we are not advancing people based on their skills and what they have to contribute. we are using something superficial to judge people, and i see that in the mortgage crisis too. i saw that in my own situation when you were talking. i'm a homeowner, i went to alie for a loan. i had a subprime mortgage first, 8.9%. i went to apply for a competing mortgage, and the officer who wanted to help me said if you wanted to get this loan, you need to check off this box, and

it was's knitty. and the box -- ethnicity, and the box he pointed at was caucasian. he just said if you want to get this loan, you need to check off this box. i checked off african-american, and, of course, i didn't want get the lope. so i totally related to what you were saying. and i wud able to -- i was able to refinance hater on and get a much better rate. but i just wanted to -- >> thank you. >> what do you have to say to people that point to individual successes such as obama or yourself and say that racism no longer exists, and we have arrived? [laughter] >> well -- >> thank you. >> well, to answer that question, i would really direct them to chapper seven of my book -- chapter seven of my book, "reimagining equality. ". [laughter] but in that chapter one of the things that i do is i look at the pleadings in these cases in

illinois and maryland and in memphis, and i see really what the legacy of racism and gender bias in lending practices has resulted in, that in 2005-2006 you had loan officers according to the complaints, you had loan officers saying that they would go out granny hunting on day looking for women, older women, um, to sell bad loan to, basically. or to take advantage of financially. you had lending officers referring to certain loans as ghetto loans and saying that certain people who lived in certain neighborhoods, typically communities of color, department deserve any -- didn't deserve any better. and so what it says to me is that the overt signs of racism

may not exist for most of us to see, but look behind the curtain just a little bit, and you find that they exist there and that they are really, and in this chase case, i believe, have the capacity to bring down a whole financial system. >> thank you. >> thank you. [applause] >> professor hill, first, my -- i applaud you for being courageous today and in the past. and for standing up because it's so difficult to do that some days. i'm an italian-american, so my grandparents came here around 1905, and they came with an idea of seeking something better. >> uh-huh. >> and made things better. my uncle was the last chief of police in this great city of cambridge. now they have commissioners. but my question is, and i have a concern. in this world that we're in, there are so many students that

are saddled with loans of over $100, $180, $200,000. and be they are, basically, what, working for the man? and they answer to sallie mae, freddie mac and the rest. and my hope as this president -- and i voted for him -- became president that there'd be some magic, some sort of fund that would be created to save the students so that the students won't be paying these loans. they can't file bankruptcy because they're, it's almost impossible to get away from a federally-funded student loan. there's nothing that they could do, and if there was some way that someone came up with some idea to free them of this, these shackles, there'd be such an influence of wealth and spending. that's my comment and your thoughts. i'm sure you've thought about

it. and thank you again. >> well, the cost of education has, as you say, it's skyrocketed. and a lot of times students are, you know, they are saddled with debt. there are a few programs, there are a few government programs that allow students to get out from from understood neither those departments or from which they can get grants, but, you know, those have really beenty finishing the last few days, and i went to school in an era where we still had pell grants because i quaffed financially. my parents couldn't afford to send me to school. i could get a grant. those are gone. and that has to be a part of our reinvestment in education. again, we've got to have a conversation, though, that includes those kinds of realities of people alive. that's not this book, but maybe it's the next one. [laughter] we can get there.

>> hello. >> hello. >> i am one of the grandchildren of the great migration, so let's talk about home. my -- because i do have this amazing inheritance, i always closely identified with hansbury's raisin in the sun. we also inherited a heap of gender junk. [laughter] so how do you propose we go to battle at home with this idea that whatever works for straight, able-bodied black men works for all of us? was i'm tired of being -- because i'm tired of being fodder for other people's movements, of not being heard as a black woman. how do you propose we continue to combat that? >> you know, part of what we have got to think about is who is our representation. who represents us in the nation that is making these policies? i mean, let's just take one

example. we have lived forever with persistent wage gaps for women. um, it was, i guess, before the recession 80 cents on the dollar or close to 80 cents on the dollar women made versus the dollar that men made. now the gap has narrowed, i understand, only because men are making less, not because women are making more. but i don't believe there has ever been an individual who in, um, in the office of the department of labor who is actually -- who has actually sat down ask said every day i'm going to get up, and i'm going to think about this problem of the persistent wage gap between women and men. and i'm going to think about it, and i'm going to work on it until something is done. and i'm going to try different policies, and i'm going to, you know, promote legislation that will help to do that. we haven't had it.

so part of that is representation. and who represents us. and whether or not they think these concerns are a priority. we can change that. it, it's not going to happen overnight. i mean, and some of you are thinking, oh, well, that's impossible, the politics are such today. but, you know, how many of you would have predicted that barack obama could be president? so i think the question that you're raising, i do touch on it in "reimagining equality "when i talk about how we do not value work coming out of the home. and typically, that is the kind of work that women do. or that is done by women. not all women, but it's done by women, like child care, like school teaching. even something like the, i raise it in the chapter where i talk about jeanette booker who was