touchstone, the very incidence of the cherokee people would be destroyed. but however faithful he defended these meaningful commitments to the land, they paid far less attention if they had remained in the east. force today run -- forced to -- [inaudible] cherokees would soon lose their distinctive image in a white-dominated society. finish in that sense, the treaty part was calling attention to race and the need for a completely independent cherokee nation. thus, remaining in their homeland where cherokees would soon be inundated by a racist white wood would, as he put it, fasten the manacles of the

people's future. led inevitably toward becoming extinct or emerged in another race. may god preserve us from such a destiny. it was, of course, the tenacity of the treaty party that shaped the destiny of the cherokee nation in the struggle of removal. boudinot and ridge had no way of knowing that it would lead to a trail of tears. what they did know was settlers were invading their country, evicting people from their home, stealing property and violently attacking anyone who resisted. removal offered an alternative to these, but it also produced the misery and death of the trail of tears which would linger for generations. as we have seen, they paid the ultimate price for their choice to remove x that choice was a fervently held vision that in the end the moral as well as physical condition of their

people mattered. ross lost the battle over -- [inaudible] but his unflinching commitment still remains a powerful legacy of this twining moment in the cher -- defining moment in the cherokee past. for the nation at large, the trail of tears offered a delaware stating commentary -- devastating commentary. by the 1830s only white americans, especially in the south, could lay claim to citizenship and racial entitlement. property-owning, well educated men and women of good character no longer constituted sufficient proof of worthiness for participation in the public realm. one had to be white. in dealing with both african-americans and native americans, andrew jackson and southern supporters practiced a form of southern exclusion that hinged on the belief of inferiority of all nonwhites. most northern whites either rooked the other way -- looked

the other way or agreed with their brethren. boudinot and ridges -- [inaudible] as the trail of tears tragically demonstrates, race remained a key social divide in public life making much of america a white man's country. thank you. [applause] i'll be glad to take questions and hear commentary, whatever you'd like. by all means, yes. [audio difficulty] >> in the review, the paper written by rob knew fed, in the end he says that jackson after the battle of -- [inaudible] adopted a 1-year-old boy, an indian boy who was found on his dead mother's body. and then it states -- so, first, he adopts the boy, then it states that he took him to his

estate and be confined him there, and then it says he died of infection, and he mourned his loss. now, was andrew jackson -- how did he feel about this child? >> that's a -- i use that same anecdote to make that point. i think it's most persuasive -- [inaudible] [audio difficulty] this was his adopted son who he, it is fair to say that he protected him and treated him kindly. and i think if you look at the way he was treated in the house, it was exactly like a pet. a loved and honored pet, but a pet nonetheless. and tourists would come by and look at him. it probably suggests not to get too psychoanalytic here, but jackson had some mixed feelings, he considered the indian people not bad or evil, but they needed

somebody to watch over them which of course, is what he did to the entire indian peoples in the country. so, actually, i use that to make my larger point about jackson, the paternalism that all -- [inaudible] the way he treated that little boy. as kindly as his interest might have been, he kept talking about, oh, if you go out west, white culture, people of white culture won't be around you. you'll be able to practice your own tribal ways leaving aside the fact we want your land because it's worth a lot of money, and -- [audio difficulty] we've got settlers who are going to make some big bucks off it, get out. so there's a lot of mixed messages, most of them leading to a paternalistic point of view. that is a very interesting story about jackson's adoption of this little boy, but it was an adoption that did not mean for a minute that he had decided the

indian people were equals of whites. at least in my vow. yeah. >> boudinot and john ross both married white women. >> uh-huh. >> what happened to them once their husbands were assassinateed? >> his first wife, boudinot's wife died about a year before they went on the trail of tears. he remarried another white missionary, and she went on and pushed for his revenge, revenge on her husband's death. so harriet had died the year before. nancy ridge went on out -- excuse me, sarah ridge went on out to oklahoma, work inside a family general store, kept a pretty low profile, moved over to arkansas and privately grieved what happened. there were a lot of retribution activities on both sides after this because you might be

surprised to learn that john ross did not make a big effort to have these people arrested who had -- [inaudible] it's kind of interesting, historians quarrel with the second word of my book, assassins. no, those weren't assassins, those were executioners. they were there to execute the law, you sell land without tribal approval, then you deserve to be execute. and that was tribal law, but that was kind of a blood revenge they were supposed the to put behind them, so i made the decision this was an assassination, not an execution. the very language you use to talk about this can sometimes get caught up in a lot of historians' arguments. wait a minute, is it true they deserved to die? and by the letter of the clan involved, yes. uh-huh. >> there seems to be a sense that with the rise of casinos

owned by native americans justice is being served a little bit, that the tribes are getting back what was taken from them. how much truth is there in that and, in fact, do the tribes control the casino operation, or are they being controlled? >> they mostly control it. and it is a source of huge income to a lot of nations. so much so that that effects decisions they make about who belongs in their, who are true members of their nation. you have to be a certain blood quantum. and if you can't prove it, you don't have a right to a payoff as far as the proceeds to casinos, and that makes a pretty interesting political problem. how do you define a member of, say, the cherokee tribe, whatever, the crete nation. i think it's a sign of -- since

it was -- [inaudible] my personal opinion i'm not a scholar of the subject of casino ownership and all the rest, i'm really an early historian, but that doesn't strike me as -- [inaudible] i don't know if it's intentional, but, you know -- they had this opportunity, but it doesn't seem like, it's so far from the closeness to nature and people who worked the land and imbalance, and now to be working casinos seems like a weird, you know, 20th century payoff for degradation they've suffered. >> is there any sense that the 1% is getting the casino payoff and the 99% are still looking for some place to occupy? [laughter] >> well, i think the cherokees know -- they should have a protest called occupy america because they were the ones here first, you know? but they've long since been viewed as forgotten people.

not really part of the conversation about race when you think about it. it came up in the news, the cherokees did recently, their tribal chief got in this issue of disend rolling the citizens of african slaves. 10% of the -- [audio difficulty] and a good part of the republican leadership, i think, of cherokee people, we want to narrow our membership. these are not really part of the cherokee nation, so they proceeded to disenroll them when which caused a big furor. chad smith lost in the most recent election. historically speaking, it is really perverse to eliminate the citizens as no longer members of

the cherokee nation. nobody, including the cherokees, are immune to the struggle over what is race and what does it mean to us today. it's constantly fought over even by the cherokees. >> i believe in the eastern band the cherokee -- i don't know if this for certain, but i believe the quantum is only one-eighth, so you can be seven-eighths white just like john ross and be considered an indian. so it's kind of like why should the one-eighth get benefits due the seven-eighths damage done by their ancestors? >> well, they want to try to balance between being as inclusive as they can for tribal membership and also keep the -- [inaudible] off the list. and there's all kinds of people -- [inaudible] [audio difficulty] finish very difficult to prove certification and all the rest, cottage industry to figure that

out. [audio difficulty] because it does lead to financial payoffs, it's not just a walk around say, hey, i've got a card that says i'm a cherokee, i get so much every year from the casino. sometimes i think it's -- [inaudible] yeah. >> since tribal lands in the united states are their own separate nation from the american nation and, you know, when state and federal governments communicate with tribal governments, it has to be government-to-government basis. so since it's two governments communicating together, are citizens of the tribal lands, are they all, are they all americans per se? or are they citizens of the tribal nation? do they have american rights and, also, native rights? how does their citizenship work? >> they are american citizens, but they are also members of their nation, and, therefore -- [inaudible]

that's who they deal with, the federal government. people who are a sovereign nation, this is one of the things the trail of tears that ross was desperately pleading for but was never going to happen and that is let us stay here as an independent, sovereign nation which we are, and we'll somehow get along, we'll just honor our tribal laws and independence and sovereignty. well, they weren't about to do that because they were going to take over their land, and how disrespectful can you be -- [inaudible] but, no, that's why the cherokees like all other indian nations deal with the federal government. >> i think the american indians didn't become u.s. citizens until about 1920. >> yeah, it was in the 20th century. yeah. there are u.s. citizens who also are members of an independent nation. >> speaking of the sovereign nation issue, did they try to get passports or -- [inaudible] the citizenship of their tribe

or what'd they do for the boundaries of the united states? >> i think it's a u.s. passport. >> they're like dual citizens. >> yeah, a dual citizenship. in terms of travel, you know that -- >> yeah, but can they get a cherokee passport if they don't want to -- >> not if you want to travel internationally. you couldn't go to the tsa and say i'm a member of the cherokee nation. you have to have a u.s. passport, and they would have one -- >> yeah, but do any foreign nations recognize the cherokee nation as a sovereign tribe or a sovereign nation, or is it just conceived within the boundaries of -- >> if they do recognize it -- [inaudible] no indian nation is making independent deals with the government of germany, let's say. >> right. [inaudible conversations] >> it's become now an internal understanding and way of operation within the united states to honor the fact that, okay, the bad news is we're on

reservation that is you made us get to, the better news is we're still an independent, sovereign nation because we were with here first, and we are a sovereign nation. standoff, it's what we paid them. >> speaking of terminology, i wonder if you have some either philosophical, um, hunches or guidelines with that word "patriot "because it's used for so many different groups and peoples, and it means so many different things. and certainly in the case of the people who were here first, it would seem to have a very important meaning. i'm just wondering how we can learn to understand how to use that word. >> well, part of what i wanted to do here was broaden the meaning. not to the point of confusion, but broaden the meaning of what patriotism meant. it's not just something we decided is white anglo-saxon protestant on july the 4th. patriotism means love of people and the land and sometimes the

fissures created between those two things. i think it's entirely appropriate to use it here so that people will understand, wait a minute, they have a right to think of themselves as good or bad patriots because i'm sure most white americans at this time felt that it would be crazy to think of patriotic americans unless they became red citizens of the u.s. republic which most of them were not intent on doing. but the word doesn't have america written on it, it's just patriotism. it means love of country and love of your own people, your own culture. and i think it's perfect appropriate, and i hope people will see that as an instructive part of the book and a useful way of making a distinction they hadn't thought of before. usually the story's played out in terms of andrew jackson bad guy all his life, southern supporters, and then his poor, helpless, basically passive indians taken out west. there's a whole lot of turmoil

going on, and the cherokees were active participants. not wanting this, but they tried to deal with it and fighted literally -- fought literally tooth and nail to try to figure out the best way to handle it. yeah. >> thank you. >> what do you see in the future, say 55 years from now w the cherokee people? >> they're very resilient. they're going to adapt. i'm one-eighth cherokee myself -- although i'm not getting casino proceeds -- [laughter] >> yet. >> they are one of the most adaptable nations ever, and they have gone through a lot. and even the eastern band and the western band see themself as a united people divided only by land. and i fully expect -- there's 70,000 in the cherokee nation in northeast oklahoma but 300,000 worldwide that lay claim to it and have some documentation to prove it. so they're going to -- they are survivors if nothing else. i have no doubt that they're

going to remain an active part of the american scene. whether or not we come around to treating them equally -- [inaudible] well, thank all of you for coming tonight on such a rainy evening. i appreciate it, and if you get a chance to answer questions and talk about a summit you don't hear a lot about -- subject you don't hear a lot about. >> thank you. [applause] >> for more information visit the author's web site, dan gelblakesmith.com. >> you've written a book about the obamas, i think i like most people find it on the whole a very admiring book. the administration has, i guess, disagreed. they've come out with some comments about you. what's, a, what's it like to be in the middle of a political fire fight, we're not used to being in the middle of it and, you know, what do you make of what's happening? >> well, it is a little strange because, um, the book -- you

know, i've been covering the obamas for five years for "the new york times", and it really started with a series we do at the paper called "the long run." and it's about trying to capture the lives of the candidates, and especially because candidates are so restricted now, so hard to get access to them. one of the ways we learn about them is through their biographies. we delve deeply into their pasts and their characters, and we really look at the whole perp. and so this book -- person. and so this book n a way, is an outgrowth of those stories which i've been doing for years and years. and so the goal of this book was to really write about what i would call the big change. when i started covering barack and michelle obama, they really were barack and michelle. and the extraordinary thing that i was watching happen was watching these two regular people become president and first lady of the united states, and what i was seeing is that it wasn't a process that happened

on inauguration day when somebody takes an oath, but it's a huge learning curve made all the more dramatic in the obama story because of their freshness to national political life and also because of the fact that they're the first african-american president and first lady. so we really see a couple of things happening in this book. we see two people learning to take their partnership which used to be this private thing and turn it into a white house partnership. we see michelle obama have a really tough landing initially in the white house, and then actually turn it around. and then the third thing the book is really about is the most fascinating thing that i find about barack obama which is his struggle with politics. i just, you know, after all these years i still can't get over the fact that the top politician in the country has a really complicated relationship with the business that he's in. so anyway, i worked on this week for two years, and i published it. white house cooperated. you know, i've been working with

all these folks for years. lots of people in the obama inner or circle gave me interviewses, they knew exactly what they were getting into. i mean, i never misrepresent what i was doing. and also i fact checked the book with an assistant before publication. and we published an interpret in the "times" on saturday, and then a really, i guess two really interesting things happened. um, the first thing is that people started discussing the book without having read the book, and that's never really happened to me before because as a newspaper reporter, everybody just reads your work in the newspaper. and the other thing is that, um, the white house did start pushing back in some really interesting ways. they haven't really challenged the reporting in the book, like i haven't gotten a phone call from david axlerod saying you got it all on and, in fact, a lot of his on-the-record quotes are in the book. but something really surprised me yesterday which is that

michelle obama went on tv, and she said i'm really tired of depictions of myself as an angry black woman. and she also protested portrayals of her fighting directly with rahm emanuel. so that was kind of fascinating to me because the book definitely does not portray her in any stereotypical way. and, also, i am very clear to mention that the clashes between her and emanuel were really philosophical in nature. i mean, maybe i shouldn't undercut my own reporting and talk about their differences in approach to political life, but that's really what they were. now, she did acknowledge that she didn't read the book, so i have to imagine that she's responding maybe to the coverage of the book instead of to the book itself, but part of the reason i'm really excite bed to be here tonight is to talk about the actual thing with you and with all of you. >> now, let's go to that political thing because that is one of the themes running

through the book. it reminded me of when theodore roosevelt went into politics, everyone around him said that's beneath people like us. is that sort of the attitude -- what are the qualms about politics the obamas have? >> part of the reason i think their qualms are important and not to just be dismissed is that they're similar to the qualms that a lot of us have about politics, right? i mean, we all see what's wrong with the political system, what's ugly about it, you know, whether it can really address social needs, um, and what not. but, you know, this is one of the many things about obama that was such a big asset in the campaign but ends up being somewhat inhibiting in the presidency. time and time again in my reporting, sometimes in very simple ways and sometimes in very complicated ways, i found that he had kind of trouble acting like a politician, like a small story in the book is about the first super bowl party in the white house. and, you know, he's kind to

everybody. he greets everybody. but he doesn't want to work the room. he's got this kind of principled objection, right? he doesn't want to be the guy who's spending the entire super bowl schmoozing. and he has this idea that he wants to still hang on to a normal life in the presidency, and, you know, in my reporting i just watch that idea get tested again and again and again. >> now, there's another story in the book where they, he insists on having dinner every night at 6:30 which means he can't schmooze with other washington power brokers, and that's sort of an admirable side of not wanting to be captured by the job. is that kind of a constant theme? >> yeah. not only wanting -- certainly wanting to preserve a domestic life. part of the dram is barack obama gets to washington, and not only does he have not so much managerial or executive or national security or economic experience, but he's also never

lived in the same house as his family full time. and be the house they're going to live in for the first time is the white house which is not in any way, shape or form like a normal life. but, you know, i think the 6:30 rule -- and, by the way, he's obviously willing to miss dinner with his family for important situations, and he's willing to miss it two nights a week -- i just find in my reporting that the obamas are constantly seeking ways to kind of limit and protect themselves from political life. >> right. so why, why do you think he ran? if he's am bilent about -- ambivalent about politics? >> i think it was a rushed decision, and i think it was of a hard decision. you know, his aides say that, you know, the summer of 2006 he was still really dismissive of it, and it was only, um, you know, they began to sort of test the waters then. but when you think about it, their decision making process only went from maybe the summer

of 2006 through the fall, and what people kept telling him was, you know, your time is now, right? if you miss this win toe of -- window of opportunity, you may never get it again. and part of the drama of the situation is michelle obama is initially very opposed in part because of the family issues, but in part because she thinks she's worried about attacks from the clintons and with standing attacks, and she thinks a couple of years may benefit him. and what her chief of staff said to me is that the decision just really weighed on her. and, you know, i find her is situation at that time so dramatic because the way people describe it is she really did feel her husband would be an exceptional president, and yet she really wasn't sure it was the best thing for her family. so how do you choose between what you think might be good for the country and what might be good for you? >> right. and, you know, mitch daniels didn't run for president because his wife had veto power.

do you think they had those same kind of discussions, arguments back and forth? >> well, yeah. the president and first lady have talked about it. and also, you know, the physical white house is almost a character in this book. you know, i spend a lot of time describing what it's actually like to live there and what the structure is like and all the restrictions that come with that life. and i will admit that that is fun to report on and be read and that there is a little bit of, you know, exploratory pleasure in getting inside the house. but i think there are also two very substantive things about it, and this, to me, is the sort of meaty argument of the book which is that the confinement and isolation of the presidency has two really important effects on our system. one is that it really limits the number of people who are willing to run for office along with all the other factors that do, but, you know, the number of people who are willing to, a, go through a presidential cam pay and then live -- campaign and

then live this incredibly restricted life is pretty, it is pretty small. and then the other thing is, you know, we consistently see these presidents get cut off in the white house, and they all say it's not going to happen to them, and it happens to all of them. >> now, michelle obama is one of the first -- well, she's certainly the youngest person to have served as first lady since the sexual revolution. did she, because of just what generation she's from, have a more difficult time than other first ladies being second fiddle, if that's the right word? >> well, it's funny because she's such a pupil of hillary clinton's in that way, right? you can -- in my reporting i found again and again that she and kind of everybody else in the white house had one eye on the hillary clinton situation, and also the attacks she went through in the 2008 campaign were really pretty painful for her and everybody around her to be, you know, that new to public life and to watch herself

caricatured that way was really, really hard. you know, the twist, i think, to it though is that, you know, what her aides talked about was that the traditional nature of first ladyhood which was so confining at first ends up protecting her a little bit because political life is so difficult that, you know, it's another way of limiting, right? it's another way of saying i don't do policy, i don't have to be part of this kind of discussion, um, you know, i'm not going to get engaged in, you know, these kinds of debates. i think there's something, you know, very protective about the traditionalism of that role. now, of course, she's playing a much more prominent role in the presidential message which is what she wanted in the first place. >> right. there are odd moments, and these are endeering, there are moment -- endearing, there are

moments of toughness but also vulnerability. there's one episode where you describe she's wearing normal shorts to go to the grand canyon, and i guess someone made fun of them, and she wondered if she were letting the team down. how do you sort of weigh the balance of vulnerability and fierceness that sort of alternate in the book? >> that's part of what i think is so fascinating. she, a part of the reason i think -- i mean, let's just banish the phrase angry black woman from the culture, you know, not only from this book, but part of the reason i think that caricature of her is so wrong is that it misses the vulnerability, and it misses the anxiety. that's the words that her aides use, right? they don't call her angry, they call her anxious. the point in my reporting where i found her, um, really fuming was after the scott brown loss, after the scott brown victory.

so scott brown, a republican, wins ted kennedy's senate seat. this has devastating consequences for the president's legislative agenda. it's all in jeopardy now. and, you know, she has two issues with her husband's team. one is that it, you know, she doesn't understand how they could have let this happen. um, you know, how they could have sort of dropped the ball on the race. but the other issue which is so, is more goes to the heart of the role he plays in the presidency is that she's always had this idea that her husband is going to be a transformative president, right? she's never liked politics, and the deal has always been if you're going to go into politics, you know, you, you -- i have this lofty vision of who you're going to be. and the, um, the administration had made these health care deals like the nebraska one that were very unpopular and didn't look that great, and barack obama was

starting to look like a more ordinary politician, and that's really what she was reacting to. and so that's part of why i think the partnership is so interesting. it's not that we're, like, delving into the secrets of their marriage, we're looking at her vision of the presidency and be, um, what she stakes him to and the standards that she has and whether he can meet them. >> you can watch this and other programs op line at book -- online at booktv.org. next, richard thompson ford argues that civil rights laws have been misappropriated by individuals, special interest groups and the political left and right for personal gain. it's about an hour.i [inaudible conversations]am >> good evening, everyone. i'm dan atkinson, i'm the director of arts, humanities ano almosts at the university of california san diego extension, and it's my pleasure to welcome you here for this opening event

in our 2011-2012 series of the revelle forum. as always, i want to begin by thanking the neurosciences institute. they're our very gracious host for this series and provide the use of this beautiful hall to us and to other groups at no fee, so we thank them for that. also want to mention the la jolla lite who provides a printa media sponsorship for the series. and as you've all noticed, tonight we have two film crews here to document the program as is our custom. event for teacher broadcast broadcasts and broadcast and web streaming and tonight we are pleased to welcome a crew from c-span's booktv and they will be filming this for broadcast on c-span. our program tonight will be an intergroup format and will be followed by 15 to 20 minutes for questions from the audience and we will be taking your questions in written form on the index

cards that were passed out as you came in. our interviewer, dr. jennifer bergen will select the questions and read them for mr. ford's response. been at the conclusion of the question and answer period we will have a book signing and the book signing table is here at the foot of the stage to my left. as you have probably noticed mr. ford's book is available for purchase at the entrance of the auditorium. finally please note no video recording, audio recording or photography is permitted during two nights event and please also take a moment to turn off phones and other electronic devices. it is my pleasure now to introduce jennifer bergen who will introduce tonight's speaker. dr. bergen is a visiting scholar at the university of california san diego and she has also taught at the university of san diego and at harvard university where she earned her ph.d. in english and american literature.

she is active as an author and editor in a wide variety of genre's end is also a producer of independent films. her latest book titled call and response, the key debates and african-american studies, was co-edited with henry louis gates jr. and published in 2010. please join me now and welcoming dr. bergen. [applause] >> thank you. it is my pleasure to welcome richard thompson to the foreign. he is that george diaz professor of law at stanford law school and is a regular contributor to slate and has printed for numerous newspapers including "the new york times" and "washington post." his first book, racial culture, published in 2005 critiques racial identity politics including multiculturalism while also strongly arguing for racial justice. in his second book, the race

card, published in 2008 in selected as a "new york times" notable book professor ford argues that ubiquitous claims of discrimination or playing the race card are extracting attention away from racial injustice. he concludes that we need to quote began by looking at racial injustice as a social problem to be solved collectively rather than discrete wrongs perpetuated by bad people. this year he has two books coming out. universal rights down to earth which analyzes human rights struggles around the world and argues for the need to shift to the universal principles and engage locally with local institutions, laws and social relationships in order to bring about meaningful change and "right gone wrong" how law corrupts the struggle for equality that we are focusing on today. and which is called a crisp

analysis of our civil rights laws and a prescription for how to move beyond that. i work on african-american history as dan said and sedin recently reviewed the history of african-american debate with henry louis in our book, called and response in from my wrist perspective one of the -- his ability to pull back and look at long-running debate from a fresh vantage point. this is particularly important in our time of polarized politics when so many debates are reduced to little more than alternating talking points. and while he grapples with conservatives and liberal ideas he maintains an eye on the greater social good. he also has a strong business history which comes clear in his discussions of the powerful and important role that civil rights legislation has played in eliminating legal discrimination in america and also in his critique the cases that have moved us away from the historical legislation at the

roots of the laminating group discrimination. many of you have seen the senate review of "right gone wrong" in yesterday's "new york times." jeff rosen writes ford should not -- offers a middle-of-the-road critique of civil rights law. his book is sharp and surprising and caps the discrimination debate at clarifying new light. will you join me in welcoming richard thompson ford. [applause] in "the new york times" review of your last book, the race card, orlando patterson praised her work writing, the end result is a vigorous and long overdue shakeup of the nations failed discourse on race. in this new book, is it

motivated by the ideas being think need needs shaking up? >> in a sense, yes. i want to attack the idea that every social injustice is a civil rights issue and they think since the 1960s in particular there is a very powerful movement almost exclusively in terms of civil rights. the result has been fed a wide range of disparate issues with different causes that are in many ways incommensurable are shoehorned into a single approach, an approach that tends to focus on bias, on discrimination as the central evil, and i think that is bad and another consequence has been an over reliance on courts and legal as an akin is -- mechanism and lack of attention to other forms everything from public

persuasion changing hearts and minds and also the legislative process, the popular branches of government. and so, the result has been a narrowing of imagination about how to think about social injustice and a narrowing of imagination and thinking about potential solutions and those are the kinds of ideas that i do think our ideas that are important and play an important role but have been kind of occupied or crowded out by other ways of thinking. >> how interesting. that ties into something you write about in the race card, something called racism without racist. can you talk about that little bit? >> absolutely. the idea of racism without braces as i see it is most of the social injustices particularly in the area of race

but also many other areas addressed by civil rights type legislation don't involve races or they don't prove bigots and racists and bias animus. instead what we have a problem that is much more complex in nature that are the result of the legacy of past discriminatory practices but perhaps not contemporary racists and bigots cases in which there is bigotry it's very difficult to detect. in some cases it may be unconscious. in cases where their range of other social institution of day-to-day practices that may since the innocent or at least dennison in terms of intent, in terms of the mental state of people engaging in those practices but nevertheless perpetuate injustices and it's this kind of second-generation of racial injustice and social

injustice that we most desperately call for a new approach. >> gives us this is the -- specific example on something we need a different approach to confront. >> the high incarceration rates of african-american men. there is a great deal of data about this. to my mind it is one of the most severe remaining legacies of america's long, sad history of overt racial discrimination and yet, now i don't want to suggest that there are no racist beliefs and no racist prosecutors. there certainly are, but the disparity can't be explained by old-school jim crow digga tree. instead you have a collection of factors including neighborhood segregation such that racial minority groups particularly african-americans are more

likely to reside in neighborhoods where crime rates are high in. they are more likely therefore to get caught up in crime and particularly the king kind of conspicuous crimes that attract police attention. you have the problem of economically deprived neighborhoods, neighborhoods and which in which in some cases be gray market which is already teetering on the edge of criminality is one of the main sources of income for many people so you have a hold, the isolation of the underclass such that they don't have access to job opportunities. they don't have access to good role models. all of these factors that are legacy of past discrimination but for the most part not the result of ongoing bigotry and ongoing overt discrimination. these are resulting in high incarceration rates for young black men so you have a collection of social injustices but the attempt to address them

by trying to find the big it is not going to produce results. >> right. most of it can't be explained by bigotry but some of them can. you are suggesting a two-pronged approach where civil rights laws for court cases that may not apply like racial profiling or corrupt police then for larger issues like for policy or other kinds of solutions? >> yes, i am certainly not suggesting we abandon the civil rights approach. there continue to be instances of overt discrimination and covert discrimination that we can detect and can discover and civil rights laws are important and correcting those forms of discrimination but the attempt to shoehorn in the entire problem into that relatively narrow approach has been unsuccessful and in many cases,

we find that is either very difficult, it's difficult to prove discrimination and is controversial whether discrimination is the main cause of the problem even in something like racial profiling. the fact that there is a disparity in the number of people for instance stop by police or arrested by police in terms of race does not in and of itself prove that the police have acted with racially discriminatory bias. it may be that again because crime rates are higher in neighborhoods in minority neighborhoods, the natural focus of the police on high crime neighborhoods has led to some of these disparities and so we need to look to more comprehensive solutions as well, not an exclusion of the civil rights approach but as a supplement. >> you open this new book with a case of the jena six. can you talk about this case and why it has sets up some of these arguments for what is gone ron?

>> the jena six is an example of a case that got a lot of know to write a because it drew attention to a real problem but it turned out not to be a great example of the broader social problem. the broader problem is again the high incarceration rates of young black men, problem in the criminal justice system, racial inequities in disparities. this specific case involves six young black men and a small town in the south who were arrested for an attack, an assault. one in particular was charged initially with attempted murder. obviously gross overreaching on the part of the prosecutor, huge overcharge but that charge was subsequently reduced. he was also tried as an adult in that conviction was reversed on appeal but the surrounding circumstances were such that initially it sounded like the perfect case for an old-school jim crow style racial bigotry. there was a tree that was in the school at jena that was

described as the white tree were only white students could sit and when a student asked whether he could sit under the white tree the next day there was a news hanging from the tree. not the next day but later, there was a news. the racial tensions began to run high and from the outside like a little redneck town that was persecuting the six young men. as it turned out, the facts on closer examination were somewhat more ambiguous. first of all the assault was a real assault. it was six athletes being beat one young man senseless until he was unconscious. and was taken to the hospital. so some criminal prosecution was appropriate. the incidents that were seen as obvious incidences of racial bigotry were on further examination more ambiguous. wasn't clear that the white tree was really restricted to white students. later peoples that in fact all students of all races sat under

the tree. so the point is that as the facts became more ambiguous it looks less and less that the case of justice and more like a complicated case that involved rossi tutorial overzealousness and racial tensions in which all sides bore some plane etc.. >> one of the categories of "right gone wrong" are these confiscated ambiguous stories where people try to fit into a narrow possibly old-fashioned sort of condition of one right side and one wrong side. it's much more complicated than that. >> that's right. but that doesn't mean there is not an injustice. >> absolutely. there other kinds of categories you talk about, for example some of the most contentious issues you discuss have to do with education. can you talk about for example your discussion of accommodations in the public

schools like adhd? >> yes. so the story here is we begin with, because of the way legal analysis often works we operate by analogy so we begin with the case where civil rights type solutions are a relatively good fit and we move through cases where they were pretty bad fit. so in the case of disabilities the case where there is a pretty good fit involve severe disabilities that are conspicuous, things like someone who is in a wheelchair, someone who is legally blind and in those cases it is quite clear throughout american history there has been overt bias and discrimination. people are squeamish -- that they discriminated in a way that is analogous to the types of jim crow style discrimination that people of color face, the types of discrimination that women have faced and workforces and public accommodations.

but we move from that too to in the public schools, if you don't accommodate someone with a disability you are discriminating against them. again you can see if you look at someone who is in a wheelchair, refused to put in a ramp in order to help the person with a wheelchair gain access to the building but you might say maybe the reason he refuses because you are biased against people in wheelchairs and you don't want them around. we move into cases like adhd on the other end of the spectrum, a mild disability that in many cases experts find hard to distinguish from what you might call garden-variety wandering mind. so then, in a milder cases the experts are in agreement about that it can be hard to distinguish. then you have a case where an accommodation, in other words something that might take the form of something like more time

on a timed exam or in in the case of hyperactivity, a community from normal school discipline perhaps in some cases, one-on-one extra tutoring. it may be that will help that student but the question is whether in the context of scarce resources at the same types of intervention would be just as usual for the student with the garden-variety wandering mind, the one that doesn't have a diagnosis whether it is a matter of civil rights to say the one student is entitled to extra resources from a cash-strapped school and the other student is stuck with in some cases quite an adequate education that most kids get. my claim is that we need to look to improving the educational experience for everybody and that may well mean making quite significant changes in the curriculum but looking that is a question of individual rights does not make sense and produces

perverse results and distributive inequities that are hard to defend. >> it's an interesting question because as a parent with children in the public schools, you also want your children's potential to be maximized so from a social justice perspective i can totally see that you would say -- i'm thinking of example say that is more extreme. if you have those premade babies in the hospital that are a million dollars so from an outside perspective you say oh, scarce health care resources, we can put them all -- but if you are the parent, 2 million, 3 million you are in a different sort of position so it seems like i really like you to open up the issue in your book where you make people think about sort of what are these larger moral issues but at the same time they are balancing individuals wanting the best for their children. it's an interesting case. >> i don't believe the parents

of those children for pushing as hard as they can to get every thing for their kids. but the question is a matter of public policy is whether it makes sense to set up a system in which people, one group of people are entitled to a claim on scarce resources and another group of people are not entitled where in many ways the two individuals are similarly situated because of course the kid with the garden-variety wandering mind, they have parents too and those parents want to maximize their kids education but they are stuck with what is left? >> right, right or they're not able to navigate the system as well. city or they are not able to navigate the system as well so then you bring in the inequity that involves the resources, the wealth in the savviness of the parents so drawing on public resources you have a situation which there is an almost built-in bias in favor of the wealthy, the powerful as opposed to those without resources and without sophistication.

>> so interesting. many of the examples you cite in "right gone wrong" are of individuals who are using civil rights laws to get what they see as their own rights or entitlements. you argue, extremists on both the left in the in the end the right have hijacked civil rights for personal advantage. can you talk about some of the more political ones of these issues whether it's something on the left or something on the right? >> beasher although it to say sometimes it can be hard to tell the left in the right apart in some of these debates but not always. so i will give an example and then you can decide whether you think it is the left or the right. so, both in federal law and in state law for cases i'm about to talk about our under state civil rights laws. extremely important in making sure that women have access to the workplace and women have

access on equal footing to public accommodations. places like restaurants and bars and what have you. now these laws have been used by in order to overturn ladies night at local bars and restaurants. of california's one of the states where ladies night is a violation of civil rights laws. it's also chewing many other american states and if that one person overturns a mother's day promotion on the basis that it was sex discrimination they didn't win that suit but the point is that this was a plausible lawsuit to a lot of people because taking an extreme view of the prohibition against sex discrimination rather than look at it according to its purposes and according to a sensible public policy purpose which is to make sure women have equal access to the market and equal access to public institutions. we have taken a kind of abstract view that would also sweep

ladies night under the same prohibition. that doesn't make sense and whether that is left or right i'm not sure. >> that's complicated. >> is complicated. some feminists would argue equality means equality no matter what. >> you could argue that, i really found myself thinking about ladies night he coasts, they know it seems so funny but the funniest thing about it is i was reading through it and i thought wait a minute, if women are getting special treatment there and if it's economic, women are paid less and maybe if we get rid of these kinds of customs maybe that would be a good kind of idea so i'm thinking this and that i'm reading that it's actually been who are suing to get the discounts. so i say oh come on. so i was going back and forth when i was reading howell was playing out in the courts. but that seems like it's a little bit more complicated. it's not a man wanting his

mother's day bag. it could be that these things have a higher price and we don't know how to get rid of women getting paid less. we can talk about that and a direct attempt now about the walmart class-action suit. to lead ladies live for a little bit but it seems like a if we got rid of those kinds of things, the special treatment of women, we could then see what happens. maybe they wouldn't be the sense that they could be paid less because they are going to be treated all the time. >> i have my doubts that cause-and-effect would work in that way. [laughter] but seriously, it's important, if we keep our eye on the appropriate goal, i suspect that we would have better luck both in dealing with the wage gap between men and women while leaving these kind of trivial matters or perverse suits like ladies nights to decide. at least he wouldn't be wasting resources litigating cases that

don't amount to much but at the same time i think it's important to zero in on the fact that when we are talking about social inequity, we in this case are talking about discriminatory treatment against women and the idea that a guy that wants a free drink at ladies night -- >> no, not the man. i am with you there. i was just saying the larger sort of custom. but let's talk about the class-action suit that walmart, that was against walmart, a more direct intent to use the law. this shows how much these issues are in play in that i first received a copy, the preview copy of "right gone wrong" and in it says we will see, so to this open possibility and by the time the actual book came out, it had been dismasted --

dismissed as a class-action lawsuit. >> the walmart case was a very interesting and important piece of litigation. most of the suit involves statistical evidence or for most of the evidence that the plaintiffs presented, the statistical evidence was quite compelling that there was a pattern of discrimination on the basis of sex that walmart such the women were not getting anything close to the number of a promotions one would expect in an even-handed employer to have. walmart drew its managers mainly from its wage, hourly wage employees and although the hourly wage employees were something like, want to say 75% women, by the time you got to upper management the number of female managers was more like 10%. the problem in the walmart litigation