>> welcome to cambridge forum. tonight we'll be discussing reimagining equality with iowa three that hill, professor of social policy, law and women's studies at brandeis university. i'm trisha rose, 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 homes and our national home are linked to understandings of achievement, opportunity and equality. ..

the youngest of 13 children anita hill grew up on a farm in rural oklahoma. after receiving a j.d. from yale university in 1980 she worked in private practice and for the federal government in washington d.c.. hill is the author of numerous articles on international commerce, commercial law, bankruptcy and civil-rights. turbo details her experience as a witness in clarence thomas's supreme court confirmation hearing. earliest book "reimagining equality" is the basis of our

present discussion. please join me in welcoming to the cambridge forum anita hill. [applause] >> thank you. thank you. thank you. [applause] thank you. thank you. good evening. i can at say thank you enough. i am so thrilled to be here. thank you for the gracious introduction. thank all of you for coming out tonight in this lovely weather. where do i start saying thank you? i could say all night. i have some friends here. i have to start with meet the press but i will end by saying thank you to my 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 two or three years and really working hard to try to get together. as professor rose mentioned to you, starting out this work with the story of my family. my ancestral family. in seven chapters, bring to modern-day issues and conflicts in what i call a crisis of home. this is the launch date for the book. so this is the first time i have given this talk and i guess i am a little anxious about it because this product is really

something -- "reimagining equality" is something that is very near to me. it is part memoir but 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. so i will begin. we often refer to the united states as a nation of immigrants. what does that mean? what it means to me is as such, as a nation of immigrants we are a population of seekers and descendants of seekers, people in search of homes and. for decade in our early history

we measured american progress in terms of movement and expansion. even today we gauge advancement for the american dream by one's ability to seek out and secure a new, often bigger and presumably better home in at different location from 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 oklahoma. i even felt cheated out of ancestral participation in the pivotal movement towards progress that so many african-americans experience.

known as the great migration. it was known for me as the great migration in part not just because there were a lot of people moving from north to south to north to west, but because of the great anticipation and expectation that came out of that movement. however, in researching "reimagining equality," i learned that my family story involved movement as well. in doing so, doing the research and understanding my own relationship with home as well as my misery 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 the quality for me and my 12 siblings.

for those of you who are interested in research, and i hope some of you are doing your family history and i am sure every one of you has a family story to tell about home, i will just say that i began a story, chronicling of my family story with a family legend. that was the start. as many -- when you are an academic, family legends are not necessarily need to be 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 stories i did

interviews with family members, i had conversations and read historians work and surge through historic documents from a variety of sources and for those of you -- younger than i am. that is a lot of you. i use new technologies. so let's start with the family legend where i began. family legend had it that my grandparents left arkansas and left behind a large working farm. the first question i asked myself, how we got from arkansas to oklahoma and to understand the movement of my family, how did my grandparents have a large farm in arkansas? my grandfather in fact, henry elliott, william henry elliott

was born in 1864. he was born a slave. i wanted to know how this child who was born a slave could ultimately come upon atoning a large farm in arkansas given the time that he grew up in. but what i found when i researched historical records was in fact there were 80 acres that william henry elliott and my grandmother homestead did the did it in 1895 and through the bureau of land management i was able to find documentation of this. so indeed the legend had true to it. although in looking at this documentation i will tell you i was thrilled to discover i never knew my grandparents.

to find this documentation of their lives and their existence in the government record was so compelling. i felt as though i was probably looking at a document that had been tucked away since 1895 and no one had paid attention to it. for me it was like discovery. a discovery of part of my past. i will say this. 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's name mentioned. she was not on the deed of ida crooks elliott. the name did not appear and indeed. the only way she was referred to

was in an applicant question. is the applicant married? and the answer was yes. there was also a referral, information documented said that the elliotts took possession of the property in 1895 and a month later had built on the property a two room cabin where he and his unnamed wife, my grandmother, lived with their seven children. it does seem a little cramped but indeed it was, i am sure, better than the slave cabins in which he spent the first ten years of his life. acre by acre, the elliotts plowed and planted and cleared the land which was covered with

oak and pine trees and five years within the five years of the homesteading period they had killed and farmed one quarter of the entire parcel. they planted an orchard and as one observer noted avon and parter. one of the finest had ever seen with fruit trees. i know crooks elliott film the yard with flowers. so this was the farm that henry elliott owned, that he and i the crooks elliott occupied. and this was the farm that allowed my grandfather henry to go from being property to a running property in about 50 years. where does the technology come in? through google earth i was able

to get a bird's eye view of the property. i looked at it and today it is once again overgrown. with the oak and plans that were there when my grandparents found it. the trees hide its past. its past form and even perhaps the past pain that my grandparents experience there. so how did the family end up leaving the farm? it seems like kind of an idyllic situation and in fact 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. that is the legend that said that henry elliott left arkansas

with his family after he was threatened with a lynching. i heard the 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 was interesting because he was in his 80s when he told the story but told 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 so excited about being able to ride a train. this was the first time he had ever been on a train. but he also said today 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 family legend has it there was a lynching threat. was is likely? how was i to really document the thread? i couldn't be there but what i could document was the fear of racial violence that existed in little river county, arkansas, when my grandparents lived there. i was able to do that through historians, one of whom, richard buffalo, did a chronicleing of the number of lynchings and the names of the lynching victims in arkansas, county by county, year by year and there are quite a few in the area which my grandparents lived. and the story of the lynching threat is likely given that it has endured all these years, given the fact that my uncle saw my grandfather cried 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. are also discovered other factors that shaped henry and ida at elliot's right to retain their law and keep the law they shaped to make their home. i discovered one side of that agreement my grandfather henry elliott had signed with former slaveholders. debt agreements that recently there so that he could raise other crops to stay on the farm. these agreements are actually written and in the records in little river county. if you read them it is amazing. they were so 1-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 crop prices in the early 1900s were spiraling down. particularly in, in which my grandfather grew. i learned of a hardship my grandparents experienced in three of their 14 children died before they reach the age of 8 years old. indeed as i said number of factors shake their ability to make a home in little river county, violence, official indifference to it, or even worse supporting of it. and availability of credit or any kind of resourcess, financial resources to help them

earn a living. failing agricultural economy and no other alternative for uneducated farmers particularly if they were black. and female. so ultimately henry and ida elliott lost their home and believe to the reader to decide exactly how all of these factors came into play. but what they did was what americans do. they moved. they moved west. to oklahoma. to search for a better life if not for themselves but their children and soon to be born grandchildren. as i pieced together my grandparents's story it sounded very eagerly 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. heartbreak that i read in stories in papers in the newspapers today in 2008 and throughout the last two years really remind me so much of what took place in the early part of the 20th century. 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 much as 65% of the equity, 65% of

wealth among asian-americans and african-americans and hispanic americans has been lost in the last few years. much of that has been tied to loss in the value of their homes. and "reimagining equality" by examine the link between credit practices and failing economies of my grandparents' time. i take you through the era of the out right and hostile segregation, through an era of red lineing and throughout which women were confined to secondary roles inside and outside the home. i look at restricted covenants and the role they played in shaping communities and even today, they echo and shadow over communities and urban areas and

i bring you to today, reverse redlining and targeting of women and people of color for sub prime and high fee loans that record in the height of the sub prime lending debacle. in doing so i explore a number of ways we learn about equality and think about equality. i look at what and popular culture. one of the things i look at -- sometimes people can really relate to this story. when i talk about how role that the home has played in our thinking about what achievement is and when people finally made it. remember the sitcom the jeffersons?

how many of the remember the theme song to the jeffersons? how could you forget it? moving up to the east side, to and the locks apartment in the sky. that showed you made it. george jefferson and louise jefferson as african-american couple had made it and what did they do? moved up and not only did they move up but didn't have to have been is burning on the girl anymore or french fries. 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. i look at popular culture and i look at literature to help illustrate not only the role that it plays but the home place in our thinking about equality but also our shared desire, the desire we all have to find a

home, whether we think of it as a place or a state of being. and one play that is pivotal in my growing up and understanding of the significance of home and the relationship it plays in the role of the quality is a raisin in the sun. i discuss the play because in many ways it is a timeless play. it has been staged and restage since it debuteded in 1959. had an anniversary two or three years ago and across the country there were 200 different stageings of a raisin in the sun. i will briefly say it is the story of an african-american family who have come to money and been living in cramped

quarters in a tenement apartment in chicago and 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 is going to buy a home in the suburb of chicago. the suburb is a segregated suburbs and she meets with resistance in her effort to buy this home and in the end of the play we had a somewhat happy if not karsh's conclusion where ultimately the family moves into the suburbs and the neighborhood is integrated. but i think even though the white neighbors's resistance is

prominent in the play of the play is illuminating in a number of ways. it is illuminating of only about the desires of african-americans but the desires of all americans. so in "reimagining equality" i write a raisin in the sun illustrates not only how home became a repository for black americans dream of finding a place in the nation, but also how it symbolizes all americans's desire to be long. it is a story of race and gender and the universal experience of believing in a dream. it is a cautionary tale revealing that a dream deferred doesn't drive up like a raisin in the sun but as the poem suggests could just explode.

moreover the consequences of dreams are not immediate. they can extend decades into the future with consequences for generations to come. for over 50 years the audience focused on african-american clashes with the world outside their home. her ability to see into the future of conflict inside the home is just as compelling. she advises us of the relationship between the bobble outside and the conflicts inside. in the year since her play i have come to appreciate how the two work together to enhance or impede our chances at the quality. so our look at the 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 tension between men, women and men and howard equality will be defined. what she signals is that clash, unless we can resolve that clash with in 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 moved forward beyond the clashes handsbarry outlined, through the 60s. we saw people of color, women of all colors make strides in the 1970s and 1980s.

yes, we also saw are rising materialism, increased violence in inner cities, resistance to civil-rights and cultural backlash against women. we saw the suburbs were expanding and we also saw the heavy blueprint has for the average american home was growing as well. inside the home, changes were occurring and all races became part of the paid labour force. so there were a mixture of factors. some gains and some losses. and there were also laws and policies that some were enforced and somewhere neglected. if i could fast forward, what i

would simply say is all of those things came together to create almost the formula for the sub prime lending crisis. in "reimagining equality," i take you through to show 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 it as 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 from their location. [applause] it was no accident that the foreclosure crisis occurred. indeed, i suggest handsberry forecast the factors leading up to it even though she didn't of course forecast foreclosure crisis. none of us could have. 7 "reimagining equality," i do draw on handsberry's wisdom and 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 or themselves, and for their children. i look at their desires as universal desires but i also

look at them because there -- 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. i hope i will 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 story. i do tell you how it happened and our offer ideas for how we can prevent it happening again and how we can make sure that what is happening now does not set back generations to come.

so i propose a number of ideas for how in the wake of the foreclosure crisis we can overcome the ravages of neglect and deliver it abusive practices. we can assure that the dream of finding homes continues for these women and 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 of to be in the future. since african-american in our history--the white house -- called the white house his home, it is fitting that i will begin with barack obama. in terms of this decision. barack obama whose fervent

search for home brought him to the presidency must seize the moment of crisis to and large our concept of home for all americans but especially for the next generation. i would call 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 the twenty-first 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 =. this new vision will lead to an increase of american democracy that stays alive and remains real for every one. if you will allow me one indulgence of personal indulgence, i started talking this talk with a talk about my

mother's family. much of this book is inspired by my mother and on october 16th, 2011, i will celebrate the 100th anniversary of my mother. [applause] she is not a live to celebrate with me. nevertheless, i will celebrate. the place where i live, that would be here. is not likely what she contemplated 35 years ago when she sent me off with two sets of luggage. 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 i will find a more just america than the one she grew up in and that as she did i believe that america better than i found it.

thank you. [applause] >> thank you. you are listening to cambridge for a mess we continue our discussion of making a home in america, find an opportunity and achievement and overcoming the racial, gender and economic areas of our society with anita hill. i want to open up up here and think a little for what professor hill couldn't get to. it is a marvelous book. the first thing i want to give you an opportunity to talk more specifically about is how and why you settled on the very interesting hybrid format you settled on has the this series can tell, there is personal story telling and individual storytelling about

african-american women throughout the 20th century but also in depth historical, social, contextual policy analysis and the connections made between them. it is a ridge format. clearly quite intentional. can you speak to what you had in mind? >> i wanted to start with how people really learn and -- how they learn about 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 rights. but we also learn about equality through pop culture. and literature. raisin in the sun really was a story about the results of an integrated society of a quest

for equality, a dream. we learned about it through pop culture like the jeffersons and we learn about inequality through pop culture that depict women in a favorable way. so i wanted to really reach the reader where and how they learn about these topics. but also wanted to offer more and simply storytelling. for me it is important for us to link this behavior in our own understanding to the policies and laws that are in place and so that is why i wanted to come to the reader with a different way of thinking about all of those devices they have heard throughout their lives. >> it works very well. on page 112 -- yes, i am an

academic. [talking over each other] >> you say the persistent devaluation of those things black and those things female undermined our community and our country, culturally and economically. i was struck throughout the book by this desire to make real and personal and and emotionally connecting the stories and individual black women over a variety of class decisions and if you could, speak to how you think we can move from tolerance to real belonging of race and gender because this notion of home is about how we can share this space in more meaningful connected ways. >> the word empathy, we have heard it bandied about politically particularly when it comes to supreme court

nominations. but it really is in some ways about empathy but really about more. it is about not only understanding how these individuals feel, but also called what they feel and what happens to them relates to us. when we say ok, african-american communities in baltimore are devastated and we try to isolate that, we are not only -- we feel bad for people showing empathy but that is not enough. what we have to understand is the devastation of those communities hurt all of us. i talk about it one of the stories the story of marla, the crime in her neighborhood. street crime that ultimately resulted in her son's death. we like to faint if we just stay

out of those neighborhoods, van we will be fine. but in fact we are not fine. we pay for those crimes ourselves. in addition to empathy that i want you to get from these stories are also want you to understand our connectedness and the face of individuals that we don't know and may not even read about in the newspaper really matter in our lives. the reason the state of illinois is suing wells fargo is because simply put because the attorney general of elena oil knew that this was not an isolated neighborhood problem. that these were issues that impact the entire country. the sub prime lending debacle may have started in those

communities but i dare any of you 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 a son or daughter who will feel the impact of this crisis that really was just started out as african-americans, women, latinos were targeted for toxic long. that is what i wanted to do. i wanted to build empathy but also want us to understand how we are all connected in these issues and as you know, because of the crisis an entire financial, global financial system was brought to its knees. we can simply look at these as isolated and related matters. they matter to all of us. >> i was profoundly struck by

the degree to which this is a gender crisis. that women were not only specifically targeted the single mothers of all racial backgrounds, substantially black and brown because of economic circumstances and very little discussion of the gender dimension of this and how much the expectation was solved by some sort of two parent household in a traditional way, wondering if you can speak to that because it is an extremely compelling theme in the book. >> first of all, the idea of the two parent family, nuclear family is changing for everyone. the rate among adults who have never been married increased over the last 50 years and they seemed to be continually increasing. the idea that we're all going to be in two parent family settings

is just no longer the norm necessarily any more. why do we have policies -- what we have our thinking focused on the world's problems are going to be resolved if that happens when that does not seem to be the way things are happening today? that is one thing. we need to start to think what our policy direction will be. but the other is saying is this. almost a perfect storm. what happened was women on their own regaining greater economic footing. in addition to the economic gains there were social gains so that more women on their own were behind homes. statistics were in 2005-2006 that one in every six of the new home buyers were single women buying homes on their own and

not coincidentally, that was the era at which some prime lending escalated. it just created a perfectly bad storm or an impact on those women, not only their social gains but their economic gains. that is a story that is not often told. it will have, i believe, profound impact as the devastation of communities of color. our individual wealth and single women has been set back and the social gains, the idea that we can make on a run has been set back. and that is really dangerous for us. >> let me ask one more question and then invite questions from the audience. i wanted to return to where you

closed briefly to this question about obama as a leader on these issues as well as a symbolic leader on these issues but in particular i am struck -- i could agree with you more. it would be fabulous if he were to take up your vision. >> that would be nice. [talking over each other] [laughter] >> i want to sort of be hopeful but with some caution which isn't to say i am struck by how little addressing structural any quality when it speaks to class or race or gender, how little can be said about that in the public's fear and the moment you say it it is as if the conversation comes to a grinding halt. there is enormous anxiety. the right wing is an easy scapegoat but i believe the argument that there's a little metal that is uncomfortable with

that kind of language and i am wondering how could obama even if he had a goal which we don't know but assuming he had a goal to take up this vision of home and belonging to move from tolerance to empathy to structural change, how possible is that in this climate and in what ways can you imagine this creating a climate that would handle your vision more fully? >> professor rose makes a compelling case. were i not an optimist i might just pack up and go home. but i really a person who believes in change. and if you look at what has happened if i think about what happened in my family life in the last 100 years. if i think about what has happened in my lifetime as the beneficiary of brown vs. board

of education and beneficiary of so many laws and efforts to achieve gender equality, i have to be optimistic. 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 is what this is about. that is what this book is about. or whether we are going to continue to price people out of the american dream by putting it on a market and saying that the only way you can achieve it is to buy a bigger house than your parents had and certainly they your grandparents had. if that link between the american dream and a 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. that for me is the american dream and it should not be determined by where we live. we don't give enough thought or have enough conversation about how where one lives determines 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 things like food and transportation to jobs that will pay a living wage. so those are the thing that i think we need to begin to talk about. i hope vice president -- i hope president obama i can rea

imagine -- i tell him how i think it can be done in "reimagining equality". but if he can't, if the political times are too tight and too tough, that we have to lead that conversation. and we can do it. [applause] if i could just get personal. i said i wasn't necessarily going to go back there but i believe in 1991 personal conversations, public outcry, public engagement lead to change for women in the workplace. it happened. [applause] not because our leaders that we must do something about sexual harassment. it happened because we raise our voices. we raise them in quiet ways in

some respects. we raised them by talking in our homes with our mothers, with our daughter is, with in some instances for the first time with our spouses about what our lives and experiences were like. [applause] and that is why i am a believer. i understand the power of public engagement and discourse. that is why i think this conversation can happen. and i believe that if we do it, our very wise president will follow. [applause] >> you are listening to anita hill discussing her new "reimagining equality,"

"reimagining equality: stories of gender, race, and finding home". now let's take some questions from the audience. please come forward and line up at the microphone to the right here and i have been instructed to say please limit yourself to one 6 think, well phrased question. it is cambridge. i think that is possible. to a large many people as costs -- that would be terrific. >> you are supposed to have your best side. >> also behind you. >> professor hill, i am from michigan. in the city of detroit harris great poverty and great privilege. great privilege, public schools have vast resources. in the same geographic area great poverty. my question is with people that would like to >> how do you make that structural change because property values are tied with educational quote quality.

if we redistribute money at the statewide level which would be more fair than distributing at the local level how do you do that when people won't won their house values decreased? wonder if you could say a little about that. some people would like to see change but interests are affected. >> people have to understand their interests are already being impacted. when we don't raise education with educated population throughout that we are all going to be suffering. and so again it is that connection people have to make with the lives of others who may not have the privileges that they have. we have to retrain our thoughts. in many of those people in those very nice communities are suffering now. so we have to ask are they willing to go back to put more money into a system that has put them at risk? so with that what i do ask for

is i don't look at just how do we regulate banks. i look at how do we establish transportation systems. how we decide where jobs will be located. i am really trying to look at this conversation as a holistic conversations so that we can really start to disrupt our thinking, the kind of thinking that this doesn't matter to me and really make some structural and long lasting changes. [applause] >> nice to see you again. hy and reverend alice breath. i'm an interface minister and disability commissioner. i want to thank you 46 and way you are putting how we need to really heal our communities together and we can't leave

anyone out of that process. wanted to add one more element to 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. i wonder if you could comment a little bit on that and how we can bring this into a full circle to really bring in municipalities to see this as a serious issue especially with young women of color who then have this added hurdle to deal with. >> thank you for your question. 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 access regardless of ability was granted to everyone but what we did in some ways was to simply look at physical structures and in doing that we made the changes of putting in a ramp or elevator and then walked away. we didn't really think about all the different ways that people with disabilities are excluded. some of those have to do with our own minds at about how we think of the capabilities of individuals and how do we judge individuals who might have a physical incapacity. that has never taken place. that is where the discussion has

to begin, thinking about the value of individuals. wherever they are. and our talk primarily about race and gender because that is my experience. i have a lot to say about things we need to change in terms of how we value people who may not have physical access to all of the opportunities the country has to offer and so i agree that is not something that i talk about so much in the book but i do think many of the principle still apply. and i would say we have done an adequate job dealing with physical structure but we have not even begun to deal with the psychological barriers that we impose on people with disabilities. [applause] >> good evening. i am having a few thoughts

running around in my head. you have made me think of something in the spirit of the 99%. the work that i have done is about creating -- the dangers of herbicides and pesticides. i got pesticide poisoning from neighbors use of pesticides. it makes me think of the greening of the home. my property, the person using the pesticide as to make this huge mcmansion and use lots of resources. why is its seeming like in america there is a certain group that is not thinking of this but comes out that way that there need to have more and better and bigger and perfect can end up being more important than somebody living next door, somebody living in another community. this inequality sense and the

notion of home and how it has become skewed in terms of these issues, how we are destroying our larger homes, the earth, by the practices we are doing as americans and when you go to visit other countries that they look at this and are you kidding? you people have the gated communities. i am wondering if you thought about that all and what you think about it. >> i believe it generation of people have a new understanding about not only the earth but also the connection that we have with each other. that is what i'm hoping we can get to because we can change. we have already changed in many ways how we think about the earth. imagine ten years ago i to and recycle.

and now is the norm. we can do that. people talk about weekend >> reporter: people in that short period of time. ten years ago if i had sat here 15 years ago, and most public settings people would have been -- we have changed that. weaken change our thinking. i think about the role of this gated community and basically larger houses, more exclusive neighborhoods and the individual homes that came before. whatever i do in my home is my business and doesn't impact anybody else and that is what you are talking about. i really do believe that is not sustainable. we believe we can just move away from all these old issues and inequality and they don't have

an impact on us. if anything proves that we do, impact everyone, the ecology does that. this hole green mr. chair america brings that to our attention and if you would i am hoping we can have something like that when we think about financing and homeowning and even rental properties. if we can think about the connection between a child living in a poor section of town, their ability to find a home and be a home in america and the ability of an individual who has been living in a gated community that those two things are related. ..

>> who would 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 tart to understand -- 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. 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 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. i'm a homeowner, i went to apply 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 be you want to get this loan, you need to check off this box, and it was ethnicity. and the box he pointed at was caucasian. and he didn't say that, he just said if you want to get this loan, 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. >> and i wanted to ask you something, what do you have to say to people who point to the individual successes such as

obama or yourself and say that racism no longer exists, and we have arrived? >> wow. >> thank you. >> well, to answer that question, i would, i would really direct them to chapter seven of my book, "reimagining equality," and in that chapter one of the things i do is i look at the pleadings in these cases in illinois and in maryland and, um, 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 days looking for women, older women

to sell bad loans to, basically. or to take advantage of financially. you had loan, lending officers referring to certain loans as ghetto loans and saying that certain people who lived in certain neighborhoods, typically community bees of color -- communities 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 this 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 italian-american, so that my grandparents came here around 1905, and they came with an idea of seeking something 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 a we're in, there are so many students that are saddled with loans of over 100, 180, $200,000, 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 sort of fund that would be created to save 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. 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 been diminishing over the last few decades, and it is a tragedy. i went to school in if 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. again, you know, we've got to have a conversation, though, that includes those kinds of realities of people's lives. 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 identify it with raise sin in the son -- raisin in the son. so while we inherit this instinct to battle issues, we also inherit a heap of gender junk. [laughter] so how do you suppose 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 credibility on the dollar or close to 80 cents on the dollar that 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 this, um, in the office of 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 concerns are a priority. we can change that. it's not going to happen overnight, i mean, and some of you are thinking, oh, that's impossible that 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 i raise it in a chapter where i talk about antoinette booker, hair dressing. that's a 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. >> 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 you're speaking with 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 wonder what happened 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. >> i will just tell you, results

speak for itself. i didn't apologize. [cheers and applause] i will go about your question in a round about way. you said you were going to go to history, and i'll go 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 appoint today 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. >> 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 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 and our families are also part of communities and part of the nation. and i wondered what 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 wasn't just a protest, it's like a neighborhood being set up. >> how things are done, how things look. you know what? the problem that really resonates with me is the fact that just a handful of people are really taking a stand. and they're raising their voices.

and they're inspiring all of us to think differently. i mean, that's, to me, what is so important about what is going on in many cities all over the country. now, with all of that 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 in it. 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, 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 a 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 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 in front of some other financial institution, so be it. but i don't think that it does. i think 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 ask 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 -- what i did was i went and 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. the next generation really is depending on you. thank you. >> thank you very much. [applause] >> you're watching booktv on

c-span2, 48 hours of nonfiction authors and books every weekend. >> wednesday on booktv online, watch live streaming coverage of the annual national book awards from new york city, red carpet interviews with the nonfiction finalists and the awards ceremony starting at 6 p.m. eastern. >> here's a short author interview from c-span's campaign 2012 bus as it travels the country. >> dr. sarbuck, you have written a few books on archaeology. why is it important for people to learn history through archaeology? >> it's often said that history is written by the victors, and we read about such things as major battles, generals, military campaigns. history talks about those who won. it talks about the famous, it talks about the great events.

archaeology, on the other hand, talks about ordinary people. we dig up the remains of soldiers on average days at their forts, at their military encampments. it's the real lives of real people that archaeology gets at whereas history has traditionally been biased towards the famous people. the important people. well, to an archaeologist, everyone is important. when i dig up military camps, i'm digging up the activities, the things that people were doing 360 day out of the year, not what they did on that one or two days they were fighting during the year. so archaeologists love to say it is everybody's story that we try to tell. >> and you've done, you said how you've done multiple kinds of archaeology. how did you decide to transition to the military archaeology of forts and battlefields?

>> i was originally trained in central mexico. it's fun, it's exciting to dig in other countries, but gradually i started digging historical sites in america, things like early factories. i dug a gun factory many years ago. i've dug glass factories, i've dug mills. but somewhere along the way the national park service asked if i would start working on the saratoga battlefield. i never worked on military sites before. i did know, though, that when you dig up early america, people in general are drawn to certain types of things, and other things maybe they don't find quite as exciting. it was 1985 that i first started digging a battlefield, and i was amazed to find that everybody is fascinated by early military history. and it's not just memorizing facts and memorizing battle strategies. people want to actually go where the action was, they want to

stand where the soldiers stood, they want to stand where the battle was going on, and they want to see and touch the things of the past. a musket ball, a gun flint, a bayonet. people want to physically connect with evidence, with traces there past wars, from past battles. the moment i started digging forts and battlefields, many more people started signing up to dig with me. magazines started requesting articles. television started wanting to do programs on military digs. books, everybody wanted books on digging up forts. i never realized that level of interest exists here in america for all the old military campaigns, all the old forts. and i suddenly realized i never planned to dig a fort in my life, but all of a sudden people cared, people wanted to visit, people wanted to connect with

past soldiers. and for 25 years now i have dug up the remains of america's forts, battlefields and encampments trying to find out the soldiers' lives were really like. >> and there's a lot of interest, you've mentioned, in america with people with forts and battlefields, and in the forward to your book it states that sometimes it'll compromise the material record. what does that mean? >> i'm afraid that battlefields are such famous, popular sites that the moment a battle was over anytime in our past local people would descend to pick up souvenirs. and in no time at all those musketballs, those bullets, those bayonets would be picked up and carried off. also if people lived nearby, if remains of a fort were starting to crumble, were starting to rot, the garrison had left, local citizens, local

townspeople would go there, grab anything they could walk off with whether it's bricks, old fireplaces, timbers and take them off and use them for their own houses. so military sites are are compromised all the time by people wanting souvenirs and wanting things to recycle for their own use. so by the time the archaeologist arrives, there's only a fragment of what was once there at a military site. >> what are some of the things that you've found that you wouldn't, people wouldn't expect that you would find at a fort or a battlefield, and what types of things can tell the most stories? >> i think what people expect us to find would be things like the musketballs and gun flints, gun parts, and that's always interesting. i've seen lots of students get very excited at finding a musketball. but i think the more unexpected things are usually the personal items, things that a soldier

actually had on their body; buttons, buckles, cuff links, anything of a personal nature. you suddenly see that button and realize a real person was wearing that, and you're connecting with that soldier from the past. i think among the unexpected things we find, though, it's the fancy things. i think we assume everything's sort of standard military issue, everybody's wearing the same thing, fighting with the same weapons. all of a sudden you find something nice, and one fort that comes to mind is fort orange. that's where the city of albany, new york, is today. fort orange was an early dutch fort, and you'd expect on the frontier in the 1600s everything would be simple and crude. well, they have found the fanciest glass vessels, glass bottles, glass bowls from

holland, the nicest things way up there in the frontier. soldiers, people living in forts did not just have crude, simple, out-of-date garbage, if you will. they had nice things. they wanted to bring the best things from home, from the mother country, from europe with them to the frontier of america. where the archaeologists find really nice things, we sort of smile to ourselves and say, those officers, those soldiers, they did okay for themselves. >> and what are you digging now? is there an archaeological dig you're working on right now or that you're going to work on this fall? >> well, i'm doing two things right now. in the summertime i'm digging fort william henry in lake george, new york. fort william henry is the site of the last of the no here cans, so for anyone who's seen the most recent movie with daniel day lewis, that's the fort we're

currently digging in the summer through adirondack community college and through prelim moth state university. -- plymouth state university. however, this fall here on campus, here at plymouth state university, we're digging on campus. universities all across america are doing campus digs these days because it's hard for students to take the whole summer off to go far away to dig something. but during the school year, campus digs looking for the traces of the early university, that's what we love to do. i have students outdoors right now digging, and it's exciting for them. 100 feet from their classroom, they're digging up a storm right now. >> well, thank you so much for your time. >> it's good to be here. >> the c-span campaign 2012 bus visits communities across the country. to follow the bus' travels visit

www.c-span.org/bus. >> saturday and sunday november 19th and 20 booktv brings you live coverage from the miami book fair international in florida. we'll sit down with various authors who will be taking your phone calls live. on the 19th, we'll have james gleek, author of "the information," john avlon and jim razzen berg, author of "jfk, castro, and america's doomed invasion of cuba's bay of pigs." on the 20th, randall kennedy, author of "racial politics and the obama presidency," brooke hauser and several other authors will take your calls live from miami. visit booktv.org for more information on the live coverage of the 2011 miami book fair international. >> when more than 12,000 members of the professional air traffic

controllers' organization, patco, walked off their jobs with the federal aviation administration on august 3, 1981, one shrewd analyst noted that their illegal strike had been in the making almost since the moment that their union was founded in the 1960s. it was the inevitable choice, wrote this journalist, because most of patco's 12-year existence appears to have been preparation for this moment. the controllers had such a long history of militancy before 1981 that it was not surprising in some ways that they became the first union to stage a carefully choreographed and planned nationwide strike against the federal agency. and yet the journalist was puzzled that white collar workers with what this journalist called a keen appreciation for the professionalism of their

calling, that workers like this would strike against the government. newspaper columnist jimmy breslin made a similar observation as he watched patco strikers and their families gather on long island to rally two days after the strike began on august 5, 1981. at precisely the moment when they were about to be fired for defying a deadline set by president ronald reagan to return to work. breslin wrote, at the moment that they were supposed to be fired on order of the president, these members of suburban white america, all these air traffic controllers and their wives and children, became silent. and now their fists shot up into the air in what the surprised columnist called a stokely carmichael salute. the '60s were long gone, breslin mused, but here, he

wrote, quote: 13 years and more later, suburbanite america finally catches up. here were people on long island shooting their fists into the air in protest against the government. >> you can watch this and other programs online at booktv.org. >> next, from the heritage foundation in washington, d.c. john yoo looks at the security changes over the last ten years of the war on terror. this is a little over an hour. >> good afternoon, thank you for joining us here at the heritage foundation. as director of lectures and seminars, it's my privilege to welcome everyone to our louis lehrman auditorium, to welcome those on our web site as well. we would ask everyone in-house to make that last courtesy check that cell phones have been turned off,