most recent. that's "in depth" today. this program will re-air at midnight. david brooks, next month. >> 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, 15. .. opportunity, and

equality. she takes us on a journey that begins with her own family's story and ends with the current mortgage meltdown. along the way, we visit homes across america and meet some extraordinary african-american women from playwright lorraine hans berry to jeanette booker. how have these women experienced home in america? have successful have the movements for racial and gender equality have been in eliminating barriers to opportunity? and how is the current economic crisis affecting america's commitment to equality. what challenges does anita hill

see ahead? the youngest of 13 children, anita hill grew up on a farm in rural oklahoma. after receiving her j.d. from yale university, she worked for private practice and for the federal government in washington, dc. hill is the author of numerous professional articles on international commerce, commercial law, bankruptcy and civil rights. her book, "speaking to truth po power" is regarding clarence thomas's hearing. her latest book "reemerging power." please join me to the cambridge forum, anita hill. [applause] >> thank you.

thank you. thank you. and good evening. i cannot say thank you enough. i get to thrilled to be here. thank you, professor rose, for the gracious introduction. i thank all of you for coming out tonight in this lovely weather. [laughter] >> gosh, where do i start saying thank you? i could say it all night here. i have some friends here, of course, i have to start with the lincoln press but i will also end with 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 working hard to try to get together as professor rose mentioned to you, i'm starting out this work with the

story of my family. and my ancestral family. and they bring us to modern day issues and conflicts in what i call a crisis of home. this is the launch day for the book. and so this is the first time i've given this talk. and -- i guess i'm a little anxious about it because this product is really something -- "reimagining quality" is something very near to me. it is part memoir, but it is not entirely memoir. it shares with you not only my family's story but story 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've referred 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 descendents of seekers. people in search of home. for decades in our early history we measured american progress in terms of movement and expansion. and even today we engage advancement to the american dream by one's ability to speak 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 settler. i felt very settled in rural oklahoma. and 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 the great migration in part not just because there are a lot of people moving from south to north to west, but because of the great anticipation and the great expectations that came out

of movement. however, in researching "reimagining equality" i learned my family's story required movement as well. in doing so, and doing the research and understanding my own relationship with home, as well as my history, i came to appreciate not only the role that movement played but also the role that those years of big 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 every one of you has a family story to tell about home, i'll

just say that i began this story of the chronicling of my family's story with a family legend. that was the start. and as many of the 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 feeling out the family legends and stories, i did interviews with family members. i had conversations and read historians' work. i searched through historic documents from a variety of sources and for those of you, who are 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 the 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 a arkansas? my grandfather is, in fact, william henry elliott was born in 1864. he was born a slave. and i wanted to know how this child who was born a slave could ultimately come 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 were, in fact, it there was 80 acres to william henry elliott and my grandmother ida crooks elliott homesteaded in 1885 and 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 that i was thrilled to discover this documentation. it was -- 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 that no one had any attention to and for me it was like a

discovery -- a discovery of part of my past. i will say this, that i also discovered that the deed itself had a number of entries, had quite a bit of information that i'll share with you, but nowhere in that documentation was my grandmother's name mentioned. it was not on the deed. ida crooks elliott's name did not appear on the deed. the only way she was referred to was in an applicant question. it was, is the applicant married? and the answer was yes. there was also a referral of the information in the document that said the elliotts took possession of the property in 1895 and a month later he had

built on the property a two-room cabin where he and his unnamed wife, my grandmother, ida crooks elliott, lived with their seven children. so it does seem a little cramped. but indeed it was, i am sure, better than the slave cabin in which he spent the first 10 years of his life. acre by acre, the elliotts plowed and planted. and cleared the l.a.p.d. which was covered with oak and pine years. within the five years of the homesteading period they had tilled and farmed one quarter of the entire parcel. they planted an orchard as one said was as fine with fruit trees and ida crooks elliott

filled the yard with flowers. so this was a farm that henry elliott owned, that he and ida crooks elliott occupied. and this was the farm that allowed my grandmother, henry, to go from being property to owning property in 50 years. now, where does the technology come in? i said i used 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. the trees hide the past, the

past farm and even perhaps the past pain that my grandparents experienced there. so how did the family end up leaving this farm? it seems like really impuquite idyllic place. and 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 elliott left arkansas with his family after he was threatened with 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 he really -- it was -- it was interesting because he was in his 80s when he told me this 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 out train he was just so excited about being able to ride a train. this is the first time he had ever been on a train. but he also says the day that they left their farm was the first time he had ever seen his father cry. nevertheless, they did leave. and they left because as a family legend it has was a lynching threat. well, was this likely? well, how was i really to 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 actually did a chronicling of the number of lynchings and the name of the lynch victims in arkansas, county by county, year by year. and there were quite a few in the area which my 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 elliott'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. debt agreements that were there simply so that he could raise the crop 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. they were so one-sided that mortgage holders actually had the right to 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 hardship that my grandparents experienced as 3 of their 14 children died before they reached the age of 8 years old. indeed, as i say a number of factors shaped their ability to make a home in little river county, violence and official indifference to it or even worse, supporting 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 elliott 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 elliotts 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 piece 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 a home, the heartbreak that i read in stories in the newspapers today, in 2008 and throughout the last few years. really remind me so much of what

it plays in the early 20th century and as well there are racial elements to the stories that are today as we leper 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 much as 65% of the equity -- excuse me, 65% of the wealth among asian-americans and african-americans and hispanic americans has been lost in the last few years. and much of that has been tied to the loss in the value of their homes. in "reimagining equality" i link between credit practices in the failing economies of my

grandparents' time. i take you through the era of outright and hostile segregations, through an era of red lining and throughout which women were consigned to secondary roles inside and outside the home. i look at restricted covenants and the role they played in shaping community and even today 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 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, of one of the things that i look at -- sometimes people really can relate to this story. when i talk about how the role that the home has played in our thinking about 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." how could you forget it. so moving to the east side to a deluxe apartment in the sky. that made it but george jefferson and louise jefferson this african-american couple had made it and what did they do? they move and not only did they

move up, but they didn't have to have beans burning on the grill anymore or fish frying. they had bought into a few 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 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 play that i think really is similar to my growing up and my understanding of the significance of home and the relationship that it played in the role of equality is lorraine

hansberry's "a raisin in the sun." and i discuss a play because it's a timeless play. it's been staged and restaged since it debuted i think in 1959, countless times. i think 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. it's an african-american family who had come in to money and they have been living in cramp quarters in a tenement in chicago. and the mother who lives in the apartment we are 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 a suburb in chicago. well, the suburb is a segregated suburb and she meets with resistance in her effort to buy this home. and, of course, in the end of the play, we have a somewhat happy if not cautious conclusion where ultimately the family moves in to the suburb and the neighborhood is integrated. but i think even though the neighbor's resistance is prominent in the play, it's illuminating in a number of ways. it's illuminating not only about the desires of african-americans and of all america. so in "reimagining quality" a raisin in the sun illustrates about how home became a

repository of black america's dream of finding a place in the nation but also how it symbolizes all americans' desire to belong. it is a story of race and gender and a universal experience of believing in a dream. hansberry is a cautiousary tale is a dream deferred does not just dry up like a raisin in the sun but as langston hughes poem suggests, just close. moreover, the consequences offerd dream are not always immediate. they can extend decades into the future with consequences for generation to come. for over fifty years the audience had focused with african-americans clashes into the home and the ability to see

into the future of conflicts inside the home is just as compelling. hans berry shows us of the relationship of the problem outside and those conflicts inside. >> in the year sense her play, i have to come fully appreciate how the two work together to enhance or to impede our chances at real equality. and so i look at hansberry'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 clash -- unless we can resolve that clash within the home --

unless we can resolve of issues of gender equality, we will never be able to fully resolve the issues of racial equality. and so we move forward, beyond the clashes that hansberry outlines. we move to -- through the '60s. we saw people of color, women of all color make strides in the 1970s and the 1980s. yet, we also saw rising materialism, increased violence in the inner cities, resistance to civil rights gangs 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 home, changes were occurring as women of all races became part of the paid labor force. and so there were a mixture of factors, some gains, and some losses. and there were also laws in policies that 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 subprime lending crisis. and in "reimagining equality" i

show all those factors that 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 that they alleged bad banks visited upon communities throughout their locations. [applause] >> it was no accident that the foreclosure crisis occurred. indeed, i hansberry forecasted leading up to it, although she

didn't, of course, forecast a foreclosure crisis, of course, none of us could have. so i do draw upon the wisdom of her vision. 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. i look at their desires as universal desires. and 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 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 happens. and i offer ideas for how we, one, can prevent it from 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 home 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, or call the white house home, it is fitting that i will begin with barack obama. barack obama who serve and search for home brought him to the presidency must seize the moment of crisis to enlarge our concept for home of 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 right but also of community, a community of equals. this new vision will lead to an includesive 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 of 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.

irma hill, she is not to celebrate her birthday. it's not likely what she contemplated 35 years ago when she sent me off with two sets of luggage and i tell that story in the book. but it is my home. and each day i honor her by working up to her dream that i will find a more just america than the one she grew up in and that that as she did, i will leave that america than how i found it. thank you. mra[applause] >> thank you. you're listening to cambridge forum. as we continue our discussion of

making a home in america, finding opportunity and achievement and overcoming the racial gender and economic barriers of our society with anita hill. so i want to open up, up here, to sort of think a little bit through what professor hill couldn't get to. it's a marvelous book. and 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 are made between them. it's a very rich format. it's clearly quite intentional. can you speak a little bit what you had in mind. >> i wanted to start with how peop

people, how they learn about inequality or we learn inequality through a number of devices. we learn through history. we learn through laws, how we think about equality is shaped by how we feel about the law, how we think about race. but we also learn about equality through bob culture and literature. raisins in the son is a story about what are the end games 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 culture that depict women in unfavorable ways. i wanted to 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 they have heard throughout their lives. >> so it works really very well. on page 112, yes, i'm academic. you say the persistent devaluation of those things black and those things female undermines our communities and our country culturally and economically. and i was struck throughout the book by this desire to make real

and personal and emotionally connecting the stories of individual black women of a variety of class positions. and i wondered if you could, speak how we could move to tolerance for real belonging towards race and gender. it strikes me this motion of home is how we can share this space in more meaningful connected ways. >> the word "empathy" -- we've heard it. we've heard it bandied about politically, particularly, it comes to the supreme court nominati nomination -- [laughter] >> but in some ways it's about sympathy but it's really about more. it's about not only understanding how these individuals feel, but also how -- what they feel and what happens to them relates to us. when we say okay, look,

african-american communities in baltimore and are devastated and we try to isolate that, you know, we're not only -- you know, we feel bad for people. we're showing empathy but that's not enough. what we have to understand is the devastation of those communities hurts 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 resulted 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 crimes ourselves. so in addition to empathy that i want you to get from these stories, i also want you to understand our connectiveness.

and that the fate of individuals that we don't know and, you know, may not even read about in the newspaper really matter in our lives. there's a reason that the state of illinois is suing wells fargo 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 a friend or a daughter who will feel the impact of this crisis that really was just --

just started out as african-american women, latinos were targeted for toxic loans. and so that's really what i wanted to do. i want you to feel empathy but i also want us to feel how connected we are on 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. >> i was profoundly struck by the degree to which this is a gendered crisis. that women were not only specifically targeted but single mothers of all racial backgrounds and substantially of black and brown and that there's been very little discussion and how much of the expectation this would be solved by some sort of

two-parent household in a traditional way. i'm wondering if you can speak to that for the audience because it's an extremely difficult issue on the book. >> first of all, the idea of the two-parent family, nuclear family is changing for everyone. the rates among adults who have never been married have yes, over the past 50 years and they seem to be continually increasing. and the 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 always a perfect storm. it was -- what happened was that women on their own were gaining greater economic footing and in addition to their economic gains there were social gains so that more women on their own were buying homes. the statistics were in about 2005 and 2006 and 1 in every 6 of the new home buyers for single women buying homes of their own and that was the era in which subprime lending escalated and so it just created a perfectly bad storm or an impact on those women not only their social gains but their economic gains.

and that is a story that is not often told. it will have, i believe, as a profound economic on the devastation of communities of color. our individual wealth as single women have 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. one more question and then invite questions from the audience. i want to return where you closed briefly to this question about obama as a leader on these issues as well as a symbolic leader on these issues. i'm struck by -- i couldn't agree with you more it would be fabulous if he were to pick up a vision and quote your own book at some point, that would be nice. >> that would be nice.

>> i'm sure beacon would like that too. [laughter] >> but i guess i want to sort of be hopeful but with some caution which is to say 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 that can be said in the public sphere and the moment you say it, it's as if the conversation comes to a grinding halt. now, the right wing is an easy scapegoat but there's a liberal middle that's uncomfortable with that kind of language and i'm wondering how could obama, even if he had the goal which we don't know but assuming to take this up and this vision of home and belonging to move from tolerance to buy in to move to structural change. how possible is that in this climate and in what ways can you imagine us to create a climate

that would in a sense herald vision more formally. >> professor rose make a very compelling point. and if i were not a optimist i might back up and go home. and i believe in change and if you look at what has happened -- fink about what's happened in my family life in the last 100 years, fink about what has happened in my lifetime as the beneficiary of brown versus board of education, as a beneficiary of so many laws and efforts to achieve gender equality, i'd 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 an american dream by putting it on the market and saying that the only way you can achieve it is to buy a bigger house than your parents had and certainly your grandparents had. the link to the american dream and the home is what i would hope to disrupt. what i would see is the american dream is the ability for everyone regardless of where one lives to have access to all of the opportunities that this country has to offer. that for me is the american dream and it should not determine where we live. we do not give enough thought

and enough conversation about how where one lives determin determines -- where one goes to school and that quality of the education and how is one 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 them how i think it can be done. but he can't, if the political system is too tight or too tough for him to lead that, then we have to lead that conversation. [applause] >> and we can do it.

and if i would just get personal a little bit, i said i wasn't necessarily going to go out to meet us, but i believe in 1991, personal conversation, public outcry, public engagement led to change for women in the workplace. [applause] >> it happens 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. we raised them by talking in our songs with our mothers, with our daughters, in some instances with our spouses about what our lives and experiences were like. [applause] >> 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. and i believe if we do it our very wise president will follow. [applause] >> you're listening to anita hill on her new book "reimagining equality: stories of gender raised and finding home" now let's take some questions from the audience. please forward as pat illuminated and i've been instructed to say please limit yourself to one succinct well phrased question. it's cambridge. i think that's possible. to allow as many people as possible to think and make these

line of questions. >> remember you're supposed to have your best side and also behind you. >> i'm from michigan. and in the city of detroit, there's great poverty, great privilege. post-vast resources with 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 in with educational equality. even if you say redistribute money at a statewide level which would be more fair, redistributing that at a local level how do you do that with people who don't want their house values raised. there's a lot of people who would like to see change but their own interests are affected and they hesitate? >> well, i think people have to understand their own interests are already being impacted.

that, 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 got to retrain our thoughts. and in many of those people in those very nice communities are suffering now. and so we have to ask now, 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 ask for in the home summit is 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

wholistic 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 it really makes them structural and long-lasting changes. [applause] >> hi, anita, nice to see you. >> thank you. >> i'm a interfaith minister and i'm also a disability commissioner. i want to thank you for the succinct way you're putting in how we need to really heal our communities together and we can't leave anyone out of that process either. and i 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 really been brought in. and i wondered if you could

comment a little bit on that and how we can bring this into a full circle to really bring in 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 lot of old 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 some changes or putting in a ramp and an elevator and then we walked away. 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 individuals 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 the values of individuals, wherever they are. and i talked primarily about race and gender because that is my experience. 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 still think some of the principles apply and i would say, though, that we got 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 disabilitie disabilities. >> good evening. i'm having a few thoughts swirling around in my head. >> good. >> you actually made me think of something and i guess i'm saying this in the spirit of the 99% but the work i've done is about creating awareness about the dangers of herbicides and pesticides because i actually got pesticide poisoning from neighbors use of pesticides.

and it makes me think of the greening of the home. why do my property, the person who will maybe use a pesticide has to make a huge mcmansion and have to use lots and lots of resources why is it seeming like and maybe there's a certain group of folks but it sort of comes out that way 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 living in another community. sort of this inequality sense and the notion of home and yet it sort of becomes skewed in terms of some of these issues, how we're destroying our larger homes, the earth by some of the practices that we're doing as americans. and when you go to visit other countries, as they look at us when i talk to them about these issues, are you kidding, that you have these people have these

gated communities with the perfect lawns. and so that notion of home, i'm wondering if you thought about that at all and what you think about it if i raise it for the first time for you? >> of well, i believe that a generation of people have a new understanding about not only the earth of but also about the connections 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 earth. i mean, imagine 10 years ago i didn't recycle and now it's the norm. so we can do that. i mean, talk about well, we can't really change people in that short period of time. 10 years ago, if i had sat here 15 years ago, i don't know about the church 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 -- gated communities, larger houses, more exclusive neighborhoods and really these sort of individual homes that come forth. so whatever i do in my home is my business and doesn't impact anybody else. and i think that's what you're talking about. i really believe that is just not sustainable. we believe that we can just move away from all of these old issues and inequalities and they don't have an impact on us. but if anything proves that we do impacts everyone, the ecology does that. this whole greening of 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 -- currently living in a poor section of town, their ability to find a home and be at a home in america and the ability of an individual who has been living in a gated community -- that those two things are related. if we can do that, then i think we will have made some progress. ..

>> who would have an opportunity to contribute. and so that is isle listic. 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, um, skin color, what we all have to lose is that we are proo moting a culture -- 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 thought of my own situation when you were talking. um, i'm a homeowner. i went to apply for a loan, i add 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 want to get this loan, you need to check off this box. and it was ethnicity. finish and the box he pointed at was with caucasian. and he at no time say that, he just said -- he didn't say that, he just said you need to check off this box. and i had too much pride to check off that box. i checked off african-american, and, of course, i didn't get the loan. so, i mean, i totally related to what you were saying. i was able to refinance later on and get a much better rate, but i just wanted to -- >> thank you. >> well, thank you. >> and i wanted to ask you something, what do you have to say to the people who point to the individual successes such as obama or yourself and say that racism no longer exists and we have arrived? >> wow. [laughter] >> thank you. >> yeah. well, to answer that question, i would, i would really direct them to chapter seven of my book, "reimagining equality."

in that chapter one of the things that i do is i look at the pleadings in these cases in illinois and in 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-upping on day -- hunting on days looking for women, older women, to sell bad loans to, basically. or to take advantage of financially m you had lending officers referring to certain loans as ghetto loans and saying that certain people who live inside certain neighborhoods, typically commitments of color, didn't deserve any better.

and so what it says to me is that the overt sides 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 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 atool yang -- italian-american, so my grandparents came here in 1905, and they came with an idea of seeking something were better. 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 dollars. and 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 or sort of fund that would be created to save of the students so that the students wouldn't be paying these loans, they can't file bankruptcy because there -- 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

infusion 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. um, there are a few programs, there are a few government programs that allow students to get out from under those debts or from which they can get grants. but, you know, those have really beendiminishing over the last few decades, and it is a tragedy. i went to school in an era where we still had pell grants, and so -- because i qualified financially, um, my parents couldn't afford to send me to school, i could get a grant. those are gone. and we -- that has to really be a part of our reinvestment in education. um, again, you know, we've got to have a conversation, though, that includes those kinds of realities of people. 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 the raise sin in the sun. -- raisin in the sun. so while we inherited this instinct to battle issues, 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? because i'm tired of being fodder for other people's movements. i'm tired of my point of view 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. um, 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 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, the department of labor who has actually sat down and 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 are a priority. we can change that. it doesn't -- it's not going to happen overnight. i mean, and some of you are thinking, oh, well, that's impossible. i mean, 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 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 when i talk about jeanette booker who is a hairdresser. we have got to understand and begin to see how we undervalue women. so that's the psychological change that we have to address. but there are policy changes that need to be made as well. and we have to put the right people in place to readdress those policy changes. so that we can change some of the structures in our workplace. there's some legislation, some equal pay legislation that is being proposed now that would help us begin to do that. and, um, i won't embarrass you by asking you to raise your hand if you have called your congressperson to say pass the equal pay act, but if you haven't, please, do. that will be a great start. >> hi, professor hill. it's a great honor to be here and be able to hear what you have to say. >> thank you.

>> and just learn about your new book. and i'm sorry, but i have to go back to history. i just think it's so interesting that you're here speaking to us today when clarence thomas is embroiled in a big controversy with the money that his wife has received from the corporation and the conflict of interest. >> uh-huh. >> and i wondered what you thought about that -- [laughter] and i wondered what you thought about, i also was so curious what was your reaction when she came out and demanded that you apologize. [laughter] >> well -- >> i can't help asking it. >> well, i will just tell you results speak for itself. i didn't apologize. [laughter] [applause] [cheers and applause] but i'm, i will go about your question in a round about way. you said you were going to go to history, and i'll go a little bit to history too. when i testified in 1991, it was really because i cared about the integrity of the court. that was what mattered to me.

the integrity of the individuals who are appointed to a lifetime position on the court, that is what mattered then, that is what matters now, and that hasn't changed. and i will leave the rest for you to figure out. >> do you think he'll be tossed out? [applause] >> i have -- >> you don't know. >> i don't know. i can't speculate about that. but, again, it really -- all of these questions, any of the questions that go to the integrity of the justices on the court are concerns that we all should have. >> absolutely. >> right. thank you. >> thank you. >> so i'm going to close on one more question on your book, and then i hope we'll have a book signing and many of you will purchase this terrific book. i, i was really struck by the separation of the american dream from, as you recently said here, this idea of purchasing a home and moving up and moving up to this notion of home and belonging and sort of an investment in what i partially translated into a public space,

meaning that our personal spaces in our families are also part of communities and part of the nation. and i wonder what happened you thought of the occupy wall street idea -- [cheers and applause] and the idea of sort of wanting to have kitchens and community spaces on wall street. it wasn't just a protest, it's like a neighborhood. >> yeah. >> they're being set up. >> taking over. how things are done, how things look. you know what? the problems that really resonate with me is the fact that just a handful of people are really taking a stand. finish and they're raising their voices. and they're inspiring all of us, i think, differently. i mean, that's, to me, what is so important about what is going on in cities all over the country. um, now, with all of that there is, there are so many efforts. i know there's a journalism class here tonight. part of what i'm not hearing so

much about is the media getting engaged with us. and that is another thing that has to happen. um, i think there are some recipes for their success. it starts with the public and their engagement, the private engagement, private risk taking. but, again, there has to be some momentum that is built up, and the media can help to do that. um, that's really what i'm hoping will happen when we talk about home. i just can't see that we are going to be satisfied with going back to where we were, which is the situation in the early 2000s, the first of the new century, where we were just putting so much at risk in terms of a housing market. we have come to a pointover

crisis -- point of crisis, and for me it's a wake-up call. and if it requires us to go and camp out in front of wells fargo bank or to camp out, um, in front of some other financial institution, so be it. but i don't think that it does. i think what i -- my idea is that we come together, all of us who have an interest in resolving this crisis, and that's everybody in this room. we come together and really start grappling with the issues of how we're going to move forward. and so, you know, i hope you'll read the book with that in mind. i'm hoping that when you read the book, that, one, you'll think differently about the importance of home and that, two, whether you buy the whole idea of a home summit that you

do something different in the way that you act. i had a woman who said i read the book, and what i did was i went and i volunteered in shelters. to help people who were homeless. that may be what you do. but what i would say to you is use your voice, use your talents, use your skills to do something. because a future generation really is depending on you. thank you. [applause] >> thank you very much. [applause] >> you're watching 48 hours of nonfiction authors and books on c-span2's booktv. >> here's a short author interview from c-span's campaign 2012 bus as it travels the country. >> mr. guldbrandsen, you worked in several communities to talk

with people about democracy. tell us about how you decided to do your research and why. >> we were trying to understand the relationship between globalization and democracy. the end of the 20th century in the united states is a period of really dramatic change, dramatic political, economic, social and environmental changes that really changed people's lives in a lot of ways. so what we wanted to understand was what does that mean for local democracy? what does that mean for people's everyday capacity to make a difference in their communities, to participate in the governance of their communities to make things better? and so the seven of us chose, um, five different communities in north carolina that had experienced globalization differently. there were two commitments that we chose -- communities that we chose that are durham county, north carolina, that we characterized as land scapes of consumption. that is, those are the kinds of

communities that the economy is dominated by the consumption of something whether it's medical service or educational services or the environment itself where tourism economy is vital. it can also be communities that are dominated by fire -- fire, what we -- there's an acronym, f.i.r.e., which refers to finance, insurance and real estate. those are all landscapes of consumption. and we also chose two communities that were characterized as landscapes of production, and those are economies that are dominated by manufacturing, agriculture, um, resource-based economies, things like that. and those were halifax county in eastern north carolina and chatham county, north carolina. and then the third economic landscape we looked as was the landscape of the state. and these are communities, maybe state capitals or maybe communities that host a military

base, and the fortunes of those k34u7b9s are really -- communities are really determined by a much broader economic, broader political positions made either in in the state capitol or in washington, d.c. or something like that. so by looking at these five different communities with these three very different kinds of economic, um, bases, we get to see how people's lives are impacted differently by the broad global economic changes of the late 20th century. >> and so you talked with people about political participation, and a lot of people sometimes think about voting. what were you looking for? what does democratic political participation consist of? >> right. so we're anthropologists, we're sociocultural anthropologists, and we're interested in talking to people about what they do. rather than giving too much emphasis on something like voting and saying, well, you know, voting -- participation in

voting is up or down, um, rather than thinking about what people are or are not doing, um, as many other pundits and scholars have done, we went out to talk with people, to sit in their living rooms, to participate in civic organizations, to follow along with nonprofit organizations or community groups or neighborhood watch groups. we sat in all these different environments; reading the newspaper, following people around, just trying to figure out, well, what are people doing? if they're not participating in bowling leagues anymore, what are they doing? if they're not voting so much anymore, are there other creative ways people are working to make their communities better? and, indeed, we found in spite of some pretty dramatic obstacles, obstacles of social inequality, um, obstacles of intense burden on time that families are working more and more. many families have multiple jobs. they're struggling with things

like child care and, um, and in a political system that's becoming more and more confusing to navigate, in spite of all that we found enormous creativity, and people doing really interesting things. >> and how did you conduct your research? did you spend a senate amount of time there? -- significant amount of time there? how did you decide what you were going to do? >> well, in each of our five communities we had site -- [inaudible] who were there full time for more than 12 months. and with pre research and follow-up research for the next months and we've followed up since then. but it was an intense 12 months working more than 40-hour workweeks. you know, whenever public meetings are taking place, whenever a particular controversy happens we interview people in-depth interviews. i remember numerous times when a

lot of the people you want to interview, they're busy, right? so you follow them along and say, okay, you don't have time for an interview with me, but do you mind if i take this road trip with you? and they're driving from place to place, and you sort of talk to them along the way to understand their lives and the things that are important to them. we meticulously documented public meetings and followed public debate about different things. so we got a really sort of on-the-ground look at the ways people participate in local governance. >> and what did you learn about the ways that media effects how people think about democracy? you guys wrote a little bit about how categories, some people are apathetic, some people are angry. does that have an effect on people's participation? >> it does. it does have an effect on people's participation. i think when we interviewed people about their -- we did a number of lifetime participation in local politics interviews

with people. is and we found certain themes that people feel guilty about not participating more than they do. they're sometimes afraid of participating. and that adds to additional feeling of, you know, that there are obstacles of participation. but more importantly, i think that we fundamentally, we've taken our eye off the ball, and we're striking out when it comes to understanding american politics. and where key decisions are made, how they're made and how people are participating. by focusing on as many, as many pundits do or as many scholars do or, um, in the media in general, i think that we just -- the whole conversation is just off. it just, it just doesn't match up with people's lives that we're, um, you know, perhaps we're using outdated terms. perhaps we're reflecting on,

perhaps we're missing the boat because society has changed in our way of understanding, it hasn't kept pace. but i think what our book has done has allowed us to see new forms that nonprofit organizations have become increasingly important to governance at the local and regional and federal level. and people's participation in -- [inaudible] organizations in a variety of ways needs to be understood as part of american democracy. we need to look at the ways that people are carving out new spaces for themselves. rather than looking back at what people did to participate in local politics 50 years ago and say, you know, this is, you know, something participation in this old form is increasing or decreasing, we need to ask the question, oh, what are people doing today, and how does that matter, and what are the opportunities and obstacles that exist that people are finding in

the work they're actually doing? >> and have you seen that? have you seen -- do you think since you've done your research and your book has come out that we are on the path to getting people more meaningfully involved in political participation? >> yes, but it's mixed. it's mixed because, um, many new opportunities have developed for direct civic engagement, and it's really and oftentimes it can be very meaningful civic engagement. i like to think about, although we don't necessarily write about this in the book, i like to think in the way of so many different aspects of democracy, citizens are often responding to the actions of others. so if you have, if you're voting, you're responding to the candidates that you're presented with. if you're writing a letter to a political leader, then you're responding to something that they have done or something that's happened. or if you take up in protest, then you're responding to something that has you excited.

but when you form a nonprofit organization or a community group, you're -- it's a uniquely proactive space where you have the capacity to create a mission statement and create a whole organization. and increasingly it didn't exist before, and that's a new space in american democracy that wasn't so relevant in the middle of the 20th century, but it's important now. the challenge is that that's really complicated. now, when you take an increasingly complicated political system that we have in the united states and you recognize that it takes enormous business acumen, it takes enormous political literacy, it takes an enormous amount of time to be fully engaged in this, then it starts to raise red flags. and consider, also, that many scholars, many people have reported that there is a growing divide between rich and poor in the united states. we have a shrinking middle

class, and this is fairly well documented shift in american demographic. environment. but what we've looked at is the way that that social and economic inequality that exists in the united states impacts and sort of contributes to the broad political divide and that there's a parallel story to be told alongside this growing trend and the growing divide between rich and poor. we also have a growing divide in civic engagement, and that's a real threat to civic democracy that we need to pay attention to. >> and you work on a college campus, so as a professor do you see more involvement by students who are in college compared to the people you were working with in north carolina? is this a good time to get people involved? do they need to get involved earlier? >> i think so, but what i see is

with students that i see is they're finding new ways to get engaged, and they're redefining what it means to be politically active. social media is a part of that, um, there's sort of the tried and true kinds of forms of activism that we like to see students involved in, with, but there are a lot of other forms that are emerging, too, and i think we're just starting to understand what all that means. but i work off campus as well. i spend a large chunk of my time working off campus with people in a regional community, economic development and environmental issues. i work with a lot of nonprofit organizations and community groups and government agencies, and i see an enormous amount of creativity. and also an enormous amount of change. in the ten years or so that, um, since i did my primary research in durham, north carolina,