pentagon, i was lucky enough to be there when a colleague of mine, technical sergeant joe delauria, he got a silver star for his actions in afghanistan. he was clearing a landing zone, there was a marine that had been hurt. they called in the medevac helicopter comes in, he's trying to clear the area to make sure the helicopter's not going to land on an ied. he steps on one. he lost both legs and his left arm, okay? so when i say i am lucky and i had an average experience, you know, joe was my reference. i don't want to speak for joe. he might tell you that he was lucky. he had good people that put three tourniquets on him and got him through it okay. we have a memorial down in the the -- down in florida where all the eod techs go to school. everybody that died in the line

of duty since world war ii, essentially, since the school opened. so we put more names on the memorial last year than we have put on since 1945. and all told since 9/11, it's 120. now, 120, you know, that number might feel low compared to the thousands that we have lost overall, and in a decade of war or and as jake mentioned, you know, what do the numbers really matter? those are 120 friends, brothers, sisters, fathers, sons, and we're such a small community, that those are 120 people fairly important to me. so that's the grief you try to process and the fear, and your own fear of death, and all those kind of things. and i don't have a good answer about what was resolved there, it took me an entire book to try and figure that out. and i'm not sure i did by the end of it.

so in my book i tried to weave those two threads. i wove the thread of the war and the thread of coming home, and i kind of weave them at the same time because it all felt like it was happening at the same time. so i'm going to -- if i didn't want use up too much of my time, i'm just going to read from the beginning of my book to maybe give you a sense of kind of how it feels. what i learned is that running helped me, and for the reasons that you'll understand as i read. the first thing you should know about me is that i'm crazy. i haven't always been until that one day, the day i went crazy, i was fine, or i thought i was. not anymore. my crazy is a feeling, it's the worst, most intolerable feeling i've ever had, and it never goes away. when you're crazy, you make a list of people you have told, the people who have come out to. my list is small; one best friend but not another, jimbo and john and greg, but not the

other guys on the team. your wife, but not your mother. those that you think will get it, will understand. and now i'm telling you that i'm crazy, and i don't know why. the second thing you should know about me is that i don't know how to fix it or control it or endure from one moment to the next. the crazy is winning. so i run. i run every day, sometimes twice a day out the front door of my peaceful suburban home past sticky black scenes of sewage and motor oil and bloody swamps of trash and debris, ankle deep filling the roads and sidewalks. i run through dust clouds blown in off the desert or kicked up by the rotor wash. i run past the screaming women that never shut up. don't shut up now. i should have made them shut up when i had the chance. i run as fast as i can as long as i can. my feet hitting the pavement in a tour rouse rhythm all along the river near my home.

i run in the hottest part of the day, the full afternoon blaze. the heat of the black asphalt and the summer sunrising through my shoes and into my feet. i speed up, but the crazy feeling is still winning. sweat pours down my flushed eyes, in my face. all this is chalk white skin and brown-dried blood from head to toe. kermit's skin was blue after they finally found him and put him in the box. did jeff have any skin left to show his mother? i run every day along the river stretching to my left, occasionally veiled by low trees swaying in the sunshine and the light breeze off the water. my left knee started aching 5 miles ago. my teeth are rotting out of my head. my left eye twitches. the detonation rains concrete chunks on my head, peppers the armored truck with molten steel. i reach for my rifle. i run down the road outside my home to the drone of humvee

diesel engines and in the purple sunrise over a flat desert. the crazy in my chest is full to bursting, but the protest of my overworked lungs and heart tamps it down. the run makes the rest of the body scream louder, one din to cover another. the foot sits in a box because, why not? where else would you put it? i run, and i don't want to stop. the adrenaline has been building all day, and it finally has a release. the boilover flows. fidgety legs and sweating arms pump and swing. when i stop, the crazy feeling refloods my swollen heart, lungs, ribs. i speed up again. my head swims and swirls. helicopter and dust fade. i put my rifle down, shrug off my vest. sweat wipes clean ricky's head and jeff and kermit and, and -- my knee is screaming louder than the women. my ragged breath shakes my

chest. i run and run and run, and the is tries to pound out of my head what once was. thank you. [applause] >> i suppose now would be the time for questions if anybody has one. the microphone's there in the middle, and people should just line up or whatever. >> a question for the two veterans. in the last year or so, we've heard about the antics of general mcchrystal and general allen while they're commanding 60 or 70,000 of our troops, writing with their girlfriends or saying discouraging remarks about the president, that sort of thing. how do you react to those stories? >> do you want to go first? >> did everybody hear the question?

the question was was our reaction to the most recent scandals involving high-level military commanders, and i've got to say from my level, i never, i was never touched by the politics of almost anything except for the fact that i was sent to the war which was the by-product of politics. you know, the soldier is a tool of the state and is made to be betrayed. that's kind of the deal. even if you walk into that news unwittingly, that's what you're going to discover. and i don't know that policy was directly affected on the ground by these actions, so i guess i'm of split opinions. as a veteran, i don't see how it affected the war. as a voter, well, it's all just a little embarrassing. >> i think the only thing i'd add to that, um, or i guess i

should reinforce the idea that the policy just has so little to do with the time when you're there. you know, my war was so small. it was the 30 guys, it was the city of kirkuk, it was getting everybody home safe. you know, we didn't sit around the fire at night and talk about which president was disappointing us or which general was disappointing us. general petraeus was one of the commanders when i was there, and he was, he was beloved, you know? at the time. so i just, i feel almost, i feel so disconnected from the question almost because what i did and why we did it was never based on a speech from washington or somebody's affair or not, it was, it was love of the man next to you. and it's a cliche that guys jump out of the trench and run forward because of the guy to their left and their right, but just because it's the cliche doesn't keep it from being true. so it, yeah, questions like that

we -- i focused on the small, small part i could do something about. >> and i'd echo that. the war is as small as the war is for you when you're there. it's not how did you get there, it's there you are for almost every troop. and, you know, a general expressing opinion is maybe something we could use more of. what that opinion is, is something we can't gauge. if someone is hiding something, such a large thing, what else are they hiding? how much, how much of everything is ever true? because it's on a level of such high discussion where the effect is you've got to diffuse the bomb, and i've got to keep 150 marines from being dead that day. and does he notice? does anyone really notice? it comes down to the worry over detachment and if they're living the surreality of a sort.

how much, how much of the war is real to anyone not actively engaged in it on the ground. >> and if i could just weigh in as -- i'm not a veteran, um, but i see myself as something of an advocate for the veterans of this one outpost. and just because he's sitting right here, i wanted to read this passage. if you keep general petraeus' high jinx in mind, this is what first lieutenant dave roller was going through in afghanistan at one point in 2007. up at the mountain on observation post war height, dave was getting used to a lifestyle even one more spartan than at combat outpost keating. hygiene had had become a relative term. he had yet to use any shampoo and was still on his first bar of soap. the troops bathe inside a mountain stream. he rotated his socks, shirts and uniforms on a monthly basis.

the platoon had run out of forks and spoons, so it was common to see soldiers sticking any spoons they found into their pockets for future use. there were no longer any women permanently stationed at the outposts with plans scratched for a provincial reconstruction team in the area, the mp unit was not replaced. the first platoon troops literally had not seen a woman in months. it was an odd sensation for the americans as if men were the only ones left on the planet. wherever this one -- whenever this one particular female apache pilot flew in the area, soldiers would crowd around the radio just to hear her voice. they were all convinced she was gorgeous. that's what dave roller and his guys are going through. a few years later only general petraeus can say what he was going through with his biographer that he brought with him to kabul, but i'm embarrassed on, as somebody who knows some of these guys that

anybody would be living that kind of life wile our troops are -- while our troops are enduring what they're enduring? i mean, that's not even about bullets. that's just about life. so i'm embarrassed, and i'm outraged. [applause] >> i'd like to ask the warriors the question of whether your books have been welcomed by the military and are used in the service as helping those who have returned, um, traumatized from posttraumatic stress disorder really work through some of what they are feeling and going through which i could be very valuable. and also i think it's fantastic that those of us who have not

had access to your experience are really being brought in because it may help the nation be more thoughtful about entering wars in the too much. in the future. >> i'll go quick. um, my biggest worry when i wrote the book is what would my brothers in arms think about it. and, you know, i didn't want sweat "the new york times" book review too much or some of the others or which festival i'd be invited to, whatever else. but if that all went perfectly and if my bros said you shouldn't have written it, you did something wrong, you're taking advantage, whatever the case may be, if that's the reaction i got, i'd want to find every copy and burn it. fortunately, it has been the exact opposite. and the reaction that i've gotten is, um, other eo o d techs telling me they bought a copy -- actually, they don't tell me they bought the copy,

their father will tell me that their son bought it and gave it to them and said this explains me, you know? and having that kind of reaction is not why i wrote it. like i said, i wrote it to explain it to myself. but if my experience helped inform somebody else's, that is the most amazing compliment. so i count myself very fortunate that the reaction has been far more than i deserve. >> you know, my book -- like i said, it's really not, it's not war memoir pure. but it is about the journey that the child takes towards endangerment, you know? war being the most dramatic outcome of that for the most part. and what i've found is a number of mothers especially, some fathers and wives of veterans whether they, you know, they've been combat veterans or simply,

you know, they served in the military at some point in their lives, this informs something that those people haven't been able to yet articulate to them, which i think is really interesting that, i mean, we're all different children, you know? there's a similar inclination. some of us have native urges which, in by case, took me from being a studio art major to being an infantry officer in the marine corps to war, to the hbo series "wired" as an actor, to writing poetry and crafting a book which tried to describe our place in the universe. and war is part of that story. but it's really, it's really this succession of choices that we all make and how it becomes who we are. so i've had a few marines i've served with read this, and i'm

always excited to see what they said because really it's a very visual book. and it's far more a portrait of my perspective than it is of family or anything else. the people in my family are rarely mentioned because it's all about what i see. and i try to, i try to let the reader watch the world with my eyes and, hopefully, the things that i'm talking about become the things that they know when i talk about water, it's their river. when i talk about the woods, it's the one that they know. and that's what makes this book talk to the bigger things, that it also speaks to those military experiences which are direct. i'm always interested because my marines patrolled the same roads i did. but i was looking at different things. and their story of the same walk would be fascinating to me. because we all, we all cue on what fascinates us from our baggage. so strange answer to your very

important question. [laughter] but for some people it does kind of explain that untested child's unearned confidence in being fascinated by uncertainty. and what sometimes that quest leads to. >> if i could just interject one note which is because t not the nature of a -- it's not the nature of a soldier or a marine to complain or to state anything publicly that could get them in trouble with people who used to be their bosses, we have a public health crisis on our hands with post traumatic stress disorder in this country. and it needs to be acknowledged by our leaders. there is a huge backlog at the veterans hospital, hospitals throughout the country. these are, generally speaking, the people at the va are good people trying to do the best they can with not such great salaries. i know because by mom used to work at the va in philadelphia.

but we have a huge crisis. we have about two million people who served in iraq and afghanistan, according to a rand study, what was it, 25% of ptsd? something like that. >> and those are the ones who acknowledge they have ptsd. a small percentage of them seek treatment, that treatment is often not good or effective. >> a lot of it's medicinal. >> a lot of it is medicinal, and this is a problem that isn't going away. these are people that are walking our streets and need help. and we have those problems because we sent them to war. and so i just want to say that i touch on this a little bit in the book. one of the survivors of the attack, ed falconer jr., has horrible ptsd and, ultimately, overdoses and dies less than a year after the attack. he was in treatment at the va, and two days after his overdose, the veterans hospital called his dad to let him know that his son was late for his appointment. there needs to be -- somebody

needs to do something. and i know there's a lot of talk about this during election years. i hope it doesn't stop. >> and that backlog's actually, it's only about 50 years old because we never, we never acknowledged that for vietnam. and the loss has been not just exponential, but incredible. what we should have learned from the veterans of vietnam were what the veterans of vietnam told us, you know? this is going to be bad, in this whole thing. and talking to veterans from that war, particularly mostly because they're the ones that i had access to, most of of the world war ii veterans were not in my life. because they would ask on that particular subject, you know, they would ask so how are you, you know? how's the war with you, is what they were asking me. how are you? i'd say, well, i'm fine. that's not what they were asking. how is the war with you? and if i said i'm fine, they

said, great. well, give it 20 years. what do you mean? [laughter] you know? it doesn't go anywhere. it's much like, you know, this book is about, you know, childhood doesn't leave us. we cover it up with consequence and experience and time, but we carry it all on that comet trail that is us, our history. so it's all there. when it chooses to reveal itself, when it chooses to find a way back to you is the great unknown. that's the concern almost every veteran has. and that little piece i wrote, i think, for them, for the daily beast, i talk about a little bit of that where, you know, these things wait. and sometimes you need a sense of larger context to realize how you've been really affected, you know? you can hold yourself together for an awful long time. people are tough. then we have a wonderful ability to repress. it's one of our greatest gifts,

you know? and we're built that way, you know? we're built to be afraid for certain reasons, because it heightens your awareness, it makes you ready to react. that's why you get afraid. you can turn that off too. you can say thanks for the message, i understand. but you can also, um, you know, you can also repress certain things for a certain period of time to survive them. because you're not able to handle them at the time that they occur. grief is like that, you know? and i had that with my parents. the book was borne out of my parents' death. i returned from my second combat tour, my daughter was 1 year old and the day i got home, she didn't know me. within a year, i lost both parents. and i just have had about enough death. i think we kind of have confronted each other, and i wasn't the one that left. shockingly enough. of all the people to go, i was the one that survived. and it was that, um, confronting my parents' death, where i realized my incredible ability

to disbelieve that which is inevitable. um, the child disbelief, the mortality of their parents, you know? it's kind of this thing we're built with. it's from our childhood, but it doesn't leave us. we learn that it's wrong, but we don't always believe it entirely. and it took a while for me to kind of deal with that. and so who knows? who knows these things? i completely agree with jake, and i'm glad you bring visibility to that. because, you know, in your position especially you're dealing with the very people who make that policy. so, um, you know, embrace that in a veteran. you know, ask for his story because his story really is a way of letting some of that, you know, fire out. >> first of all, thank you, all three of you, for being here. this is really one of the fascinating panels that i've heard coming here for the last

three years. i wanted to ask about the decision to become a soldier, about the decision to put yourself in line where somebody else is kind of in charge of what you do and potentially your life, and you've both spoken about the experiences that you had there. i wanted to ask how you, how difficult it was or how easy it was to make that decision to become a soldier, to put yourself in line to go to war. i know that, um, later in the afternoon another former foreign correspondent, chris hedges, will be talking, and he's written a book that gives us meaning. >> he's a genius, by the way. it's very annoying. [laughter] >> so i was hoping you two could mention that, maybe how you made the decision to put, potentially put your life, you know n danger. and for mr. capper, i was hoping you could talk about the fact that we do have this volunteer armed forces, if that makes it

more difficult to relate as a reporter their stories to the american people? >> do you want to start, and then i'll -- >> okay. um, i think it's manager like -- it's something like .5% of this country has served since 9/11. and as we know, many military communities are basically self-contained. so very few people feel part of these wars that we have been waging since 2001 in afghanistan and iraq to say nothing of the larger global war on terror or whatever name it's going by today. um, that disconnect serves no one, it doesn't serve our policymakers, it doesn't serve the troops or their families.

um, i'm not saying that there should be conscription or there should be a war tax or there should be anything, but it's not sustainable the way it is right now. one general in the book who preferred to go on background, not use his name, said that he hoped my book would at least help some people understand why we shouldn't go to war so quickly, what it is that is being sacrificed. because he compared this general -- whose name you'd know if i shared it -- he felt like we were like the romans hiring the legionnaires to fight our wars. that there was this completely separate, um, reporting on the wars while not having served is not a problem because most of what i report on is not groups that i belong to. and it's always been that case. writing this book has helped me have a greater understanding,

um, and not just the difference between a first sergeant and a staff sergeant or sergeant first class or just regular sergeant -- [laughter] but also just what it's like to be a soldier. i will never truly understand that, but i, but i have a much greater understanding of it. but i do think that, um, when our nation goes to war, it -- i think the policymakers do so glibly, but a lot of the debate is glib. a lot of the debate is flippant, and there's no resemblance to the really of these fighting -- real estate of reality of these fighting men and women. when this happened, i had been reporting on stuff, war debate. i had, at that point i had never gone to afghanistan. now i've gone twice. but i had gone to iraq because i did want to understand a little bit of what was going on there. but generally speaking, um, we go to war. it's not that we go to war too quickly, it's we go to war

without, as a nation, without understanding what it means. this little boy is not going to have a father. that woman will never get over what happened. these five incredible young men or women will never be. we think we know it in our hearts, but it doesn't factor into the intellectual decision, i think. >> very well put. i was just going to say that i'd like to echo just a little bit of that in that the separation of the military and the civilian populace is something that i talk about with some veterans' groups, so i think that's a really -- it doesn't -- [inaudible] on the military side if you don't live in texas, north carolina you just don't see people in uniform. that was true for me growing up in buffalo, new york, but i got my rotc scholarship in 1995. that was a very different culture and time.

it's not that long ago, but it, but it's, you know, 9/11 really did change so many things. and i thought i wanted to be an astronaut, you know? i thought i was going to do all these other things. but i went to eod school between the invasions of afghanistan and iraq, and i knew exactly what i was, what i was signing up for. and i wanted to do it anyway. and that would make me the same as young men between the age of 16 and 30 for the last five million years. and it doesn't -- the con scwxes -- consequences just are not there. my wife says that there's this part of the brain that has this self-preservation instinct, and i was born without it. and maybe all of the guys i worked with were kind of the same in that you try to keep yourself safe. you don't want to get shot, you're not looking to get killed, it's just you're willing to put yourself there for reasons that aren't necessarily clear until, until you're there. so the questions that you asked

about what about putting yourself in a position where somebody else decides if you live or die, whatever. those are good questions that i never asked myself, not even remotely. >> and i will echo that. [laughter] the amazing thing is, you know, we don't -- military actually doesn't make wars. you know? we go where you send us, and that's why you have us. we hope that there's nobility in the mission, that somehow we are justified. and when we are found not to be and the movement for ten years still doesn't have -- i don't think anyone thinks that iraq was the right decision to make now or a year after we were there. but we stayed there for ten years. >> i think vice president cheney and secretary rumsfeld probably still think it's -- [laughter] >> well, for some people it was a good idea. >> paul wolfowitz.

>> the truth being i voted and i went to iraq, you know? and there i was. and it no longer, like i said, we were kind of, we were kind of above politics in our, in our hopefulness and below politics in our utility. we weren't actively a part of the mechanism in a way which felt like, you know, this -- we have a hand in our fate. and so when i was there, i went back in 2005 to ramadi. by that point we knew we were wrong. but my marine were being sent. and to not, to not go was intolerable to me. and upon returning from that tour, of course, is when everything went wonderfully in terms of seeing my child but terribly in losing my parents and losing friends throughout that entire tour, that was the tour i was wounded, i left cold at 16 years. you get money after being there

for 20 like for life. but i walked. because i knew that that sense of responsibility was inescapable. i would never be able to not watch a television, see marines go in, and if i were capable, if i were still able, to justify not going with them despite the fact that i had every reason in the world to justify not going with them. you know? i had a wife and a child and no one to help them in my ab especially. -- absence. but the danger is you begin to feel like you are somehow important to it. that somehow your abilities, scarce as they are, make you usefullingful and that to turn y that part of your life is to betray a great, a great expectation. even though the ma reens don't -- marines don't care.

one colonel in, one colonel out. it's great. the machine always repairs itself. it has a lot of platelets. but you have to imagine for a moment that you are unique, that now you bring -- that somehow you bring something to that leadership position or to that capability you have whether you're a lance corporal, sniper, whatever you are, that somehow you've perfected something which is necessary in that machine n that organization. and what you realize in war and what i realize, of course, and what the book addresses is that death is just random. they just pick you. you know? on the day that i read about -- they just picked his vehicle, not mine. it wasn't because my vehicle was scary. it's because they picked his, and now he's dead. and now his family is without a father, and they'll never have that. not like that. not the same. i saw him die.

i saw him leave. i saw the family destroyed. but they didn't. that's my part of his, his disappearance. and my whole book, really, is my absolute abhorrence of disappearance, you know? i want to preserve. i want to save. if it's memories, fine, then memory. if it's stone, then fine, you know? it's why i became a stone mason when i was very young. it took me all these years to look back and realize why? why was i working in stone? war was the same thing and the great betrayer, because, of course, you could see that it doesn't matter. all that train, all those skills you have, it could just be that day, and it's you. um, so a long answer for how in some ways even the fate we choose we don't have a hand in. >> thank you. thank you very much. [applause]

>> we have to take back media. independent media is what will save us. the media are the most powerful institutions on earth, more powerful tan any bomb, more powerful that be any missile. it's an idea that explodes onto the scene. but it doesn't happen when it is contained by that box, that tv screen that we all gaze at for so many hours a week. we need to be able to hear people speaking for themselves outside the box. we can't afford the status quo anymore. from global warring to global warming. >> author, host and executive producer of democracy now, amy goodman taking your calls,

e-mails, facebook comments and tweets "in depth" sunday at noon eastern on booktv on c-span2. >> people always like to ask me how did you, how did you come across this story. people always ask writer withs that. and what happens a lot of times is you find a news story while you're supposed to be working on something else, which can be a little frustrating at times, and that's exactly what happened to me. i was doing a little internet research one day, and just look at this photo. this is the photo i came across. and it was on a department of energy web site. and they had put up a little newsletter for one of the department of energy facilities, and this news leapter was saying -- letterd' was saying, u know, this month in oakridge history, something along those lines. this one i looed because there seemed to be that vanishing point at the end of the room, and i hooked at these machines with these dials and knobs, and also the women just looked so

lovely x they've got the nice posture, and the little 1940s hairdos, and i read the caption, and it said: these young women, many of them high school graduates from rural tennessee, were enriching uranium for the world's first atomic bomb, however, they did not know that at the time. >> this weekend, the lives and work of women in atomic city, oakridge, tennessee. saturday at 11 a.m. eastern on c-span3's american history tv. [inaudible conversations] >> we're looking at a live picture now of the newseum here in washington, washington d.c. we're there for a discussion on race and social mobility and how the media can better cover such issues. panelists include jeff yang and richard prince, a columnist with the maynard institute for

journalism education. you see that the panelists are preparing for the start of the program which leaves a moment to tell you about more programming coming up later in the c-span networks. this afternoon here on c-span2 we'll have live coverage of a hearing looking at high risk insurance pools, a program designed to insure health coverage for americans with pre-existing medical conditions. it was created as part of the 2010 health care law, and it starts in 2014. what happens is health insurance companies can no longer deny coverage for those with pre-existing conditions. witnesses at the hearing will talk about efforts to deal with the issue at the state revel. that's coming up at 1 p.m. eastern. that's live here on c-span2. and on c-span in the noon hour, secretary of defense chuck hagel delivers his first major address on the strategic and fiscal policy issues facing the department of defense. he'll be addressing students at

the national defense university at fort mcnair in washington. the president later today in denver where he continues his call on congress to pass measures to reduce gun violence. we'll be covering that on c-span live at 5. again, we're at the newseum if washington, d.c. for a discussion on race and social mobility and how the media can better cover such issues. you're watching live coverage on c-span2. [inaudible conversations] >> good morning and welcome. thank you all for coming to what i now know is an extraordinarily early start time in washington d.c. [laughter] in new york it's important to start right away so everyone can get to their offices. so we appreciate you coming.

we actually closed rsvps on this event because we had a tiny 100 folks who will still be coming in, but we'll go ahead and start. welcome, i'm sandy samberg. i would like to thank the aclu for making this possible. my main job is to introduce anthony romero from the aclu, he's the executive director. then cindy stivers, our editor-in-chief, will introduce the panel. thanks again for coming. [applause] >> good morning. i'm anthony romero, i'm the national director of the american civil liberties union, and i want to thank stephanie and our colleagues at the columbia journalism review for joining us in this discussion on race, class and social mobility. there seems to be no more prescient issue for our society going forward to look back and to look forward on these core

issues that deal with the heart of american opportunity and democracy. race, class and social mobility are closely tied to many of the things the aclu has stood for in our 93-year history. some of our earliest cases, the scots borrow boys' case in 1931, the loving v. virginia case in which we fought against the laws that outlawed interracial marriage go to heart of what we believe america promises to each and every single one of us, the right to live with equality, the right for opportunity. we believe that economic opportunity is linked closely to issues of race. we see that now in some of our litigation around mortgage subprime lending litigation out of detroit. of we also believe that it's fess to have a vibrant -- it's necessary to have a vibrant debate on these issues, that there are no right or wrong

answers, but the most important thing is to have a vigorous debate on these issues. our current focus at the moment, our top priority, has to do with america's addiction to overincarceration. there's perhaps no greater challenge confronting american democracy than our addiction to criminal reform, criminal justice issues. we believe that it places unnecessary burdens on the families and communities most directly affected by the overincarceration phenomenon, and it affects all of our communities, all of our families, our entire society. we've assembled with you in your packets this morning journalist's guide to criminal justice reform that published wh the cjr as a way to help journalists pore through some of these difficult issues that deal with data, that deal with the questions of rehabilitation. at the end of the day, america believes in redemption, and criminal justice is an important part of how we deal with that promise and that value of

redemption. we need solutions, we need vigorous debate, we need journalists to pore through the stories and the day to make sure they inform the general public and policymakers on the importance of these issues. and so we're delighted to work with such an august organization as the cjr to help bring to light some of these issues and look forward to the commentary of our esteemed panelists. so thank you very much. i turn it now over to cindy. [applause] >> thank you all for coming. we love doing these panels at the newseum. thanks so much for the support of the aclu in order to do this. it was a great package, i think, cover package. it's great to be able to dig into topic, and you get to see live and in person some of the people who provided insights. before we get started, a few little bits of housekeeping for those in the room. if you're trying to get online, you will need to go to an

insecure site like some other news site and then log in, and the password is, you ready? it's guest, and then newseum guest is who you are, and the password -- this is the part you need to write down or type -- is syyh1304, and our hashtag be you're a tweeter is cjr diverse. we have programs on the chairs for everybody, so we're not going to take a lot of time to intro individual people, but we will at the end, so we have about an hour of these guys talking, and then we will have time for q&a, and we'll have people running around with mics so, please, have your questions ready. and now i'm going to hand it over to our moderator who i've been keeping an eye on pretty much right out of college -- [laughter] when you showed up to write for us in new york. i don't want to say how many years ago it was. >> a while. >> okay. [laughter] >> thank you, cindy. [applause]

so i, i'm thrilled about this. i was very thrilled when cindy contacted me to do a package in a new format on coverage of race, social mobility and class. and what i mean by a new format is that for this columbia journalism review cover story, we did an online forum using a tool called branch. and so we had a lot of different voices, and some of the folks on this panel, most of the folks on this panel were those voices. as cindy said, we're not going to go through a lot of introductions, but i do want to briefly go down the line. richard prince is a amazing journalist, recently with a career lifetime achieve award from the national association of black journalists. he writes, you know, richard prince's journalisms which is part of the maynard journalism institute, and also it runs on the root.com. gene poll chin sky, chief

operating officer of the -- [inaudible] and senior vice president and executive director of the first amendment center. so, obviously, thrilled. jeff yang is an author of best-selling books, contributor to wnyc and also writes the dow jones with a t column. [laughter] for "the wall street journal" syndicate. and then raquel s paid da is a long time film maker, author, and she's taking a picture of you. [laughter] you've got to read her new book, bird of paradise, because it takes a fascinating look at latino-american identity through everything from family history to dna. and it's an absolutely fascinating look at the diversity within the diversity of america. so thank you all for being with us. and, you know, this package is one where we cover a lot of

territory, but first, gene, i want to turn to you to, like, set the table for us. >> thanks. we thought we'd start with some very, very basic numbers to sort of, again, give us a broad perspective on where things are in society and within journalism. reported recently among newborns, minorities outnumbered whites for the fist time in the nation's history. and we were discussing somewhere between 2043 and 2050 we will have that minority/majority society -- majority/minority society in which no one single racial group is no more than 50%. so we're moving toward a diverse is society in a way this country's never seen. the district of columbia, hawaii, new mexico, and texas already have reached that point where there is no single 50%-plus group. 11% of counties are actually in that already. so we watch the nation change in this dramatic fashion, and it's

occurring, as we said, sometimes outside the headlines. richard has seep that numbers -- has seen that number on few borns reported in some newspapers, not reported in others. while poverty among african-americans has fallen to 27.6%, it's still nearly three times the poverty rate among whites. even in a recession. younger people of color were more likely to be hurt because they had invested in homes, older whites had invested in 401(k)s and sprung back more quickly when the market came up. so we're see an economic disparry even in the recovery period. let's turn to journalism. in the 2012 survey by as and e, which the new one will be coming out at the convention in june -- last year it was in april, but the convention moved by a few months -- total newsroom employment fell by 2.4%, but the loss of employment by minorities

was 5.7%. that is in newspaper newsrooms or print newsrooms and online. now, the report said those losses were stabilizing compared to a four or five-year period both in terms of total loss and in loss of people of color. but we'll wait and see what happens in the 2013 report, because it does seem there's been some additional layoffs in the news, and we'll see how those impact everybody. in radio and it's, the number -- and television, the numbers actually increased in 2012 for those identifying themselves as minority group members. but again, if you take a longer picture over time, the numbers have declined. and we've seen rather high profile changes in who is visible on those networks and programs. radio is among the more positive spots. we see employment there up each year. and i think we can stop right there for the moment.

>> yeah. >> you know, it's an interesting picture of the dynamic and the change even as the country becomes more diverse. you can say for sure that at least in newsrooms across the board those numbers are not keeping up. something we've seen since the census started in the '70s. >> yeah. i mean, this is a great place for us to start, gene. and one of the reasons, for example, that we linked coverage of race and ethnicity with coverage of class and social mobility is because they are so intertwined. and there's been a spate of articles recently that have talked about is journalism just becoming a playground of the elite? if you, if content is not paying as much as it used to and people are making the most -- not necessarily the most money, but a lot of money basically repackaging other people's work which has no, you know, financial value to the original person who wrote it, posted it, etc., how do we keep a diverse newsroom? there is a block right from the start when people are looking

for internships. i, as a relatively young woman with, i hosted a recent college graduate in my house for six months because she had grown up in foster care, she's african-american, and she wanted to be a journalist. and there's no way she could do an unpaid internship. and that was my way of giving back to my own community. and i don't mean the black community, i mean the journalism community. [laughter] buzz the journalism -- because the journalism community deserves diversity, but why aren't we getting it? >> journalists and americans are far more, you know, soon to be extinct group, you know -- [laughter] than any of the other minorities we're talking about. [laughter] >> the numbers certainly -- [laughter] >> it's a really great point because one of the things which traveled really rapidly as a mean around the social media field to which i belong, actually there were two of them. one was a series of postings on different blogs about when you

should actually blog for free. what is the price of content, an era where the value of content hasn't changed, but the willingness to actually pay for it and the supply of it has certainly altered the playing field. the other was a post by an attractive young white female journalist about why she left news which was fascinating to me, because people have been leaving news now for decades. i mean, the organizations that we belong to like nibj, ahaa, the ethnic journalism organizations have now increasingly had to start reshaping memberships and programming to orient around people postjournallist, if you are. not just postracial, but postjournallist, right? and it's becoming a conversation now where it's really only starting to hit home now that young white journalists who are graduated from journalism school can't get jobs. i mean, that sounds a little

harsh, but that really does seem to be where the rubber's hitting the road, if you will. >> it's like documentaries for me. like, i've seen the same thing happen with documentary film making and also the ngo world happening in journalism, where it's only people who can afford to do it for free and be creative artists are the ones who are doing it. when i sat on panels for my last documentary film, i was often the only person of color on the panel, and mostly the films were about the african diaspora. and then you travel and see what's happening in the ngo world, it's always the children of, you know, rich white people and the american ruling class that are having these jobs. and then what happens is you have societies that somehow holistically become dependent on seeing those images and those figures as people in the position of saving. >> yeah. >> so to me, it's a very organic thing that has multiple

repercussions. and, you know, when i was reading some of the articles that you sent and in this being white in philly crap that i was reading as well -- >> how do you really feel? [laughter] >> i feel uninspired. but when i was reading that stuff and everything else and rereading, i kept on doodling, and the only word i kept on writing was gentry, gentrification. and will has to be biological diversity by not only the people being covered, but the people covering. it doesn't matter that there's a latino and a black american or white -- you have to have a socioculture, soap yo political culture within journalists, which you don't see. >> some people argue otherwise. in fact, one of the comments on the article, on the online version of the columbia journalism review article said, well, we cover communities of color, does it really matter? and i think you make a compelling case, yes, it does matter who goes to out and covers. >> it does matter. >> and, you know, i just want to say that raquel and i both have

our little devices, and you can join us on twitter at cjrdiverse, that's our hashtag, and we'll be reading some of your material. let's get to philly. you know, this story about being white in philly. i remember when the first wave of kind of browning of america covers starting coming out. it was almost like, you know, the invasion of the body snatcher. [laughter] one day we'll all be sort that brown or something, you know? [laughter] but did you -- you followed this, being white in philly. can you explain a little bit more about -- >> well, the philadelphia magazine wrote with a cover story called "being white in philly," and it was supposedly the ruminations of a white philadelphia resident that riled a lot of the population of philadelphia including the mayor and some of the black residents and black journalists in

philadelphia. it got philadelphia magazine a ton of publicity. [laughter] sales went up. there were at least two forums that were held on the topic, but it raised some of the issues that we're talking about -- >> yeah. >> -- including the fact that the media in philadelphia, particularly print media, were not very diverse, and philadelphia magazine itself had no african-americans on its staff, on its editorial staff. >> yes. >> there was a piece that was written by somebody on the business staff, a black woman on the business staff who said, you know, this is, you know, horse manure what this guy is writing. but it, you know, it raised the issues that we're talking about in terms of, in terms of diversity. let me say one other thing about the previous question, and that is that one of the reasons for this diminishing diversity is a lack of will by the people in power, people who have the power

to hire and fire and the change in the climate. >> yeah. >> of the country. we have the supreme court, for example, about to pull back further on affirmative action. people talking about this is a postracial society and all these things d. -- [laughter] >> sort of diminish the urgency for diversifying our journalistic staffs at the same time that we have the census bureau talking about, you know, the figures that you raise and the fact -- but, apparently, this other threat here about postracial and we'll worry about a it tomorrow and we've got other things to worry about like the bottom line is outweighing, you know, the facts about the way the country's changing. >> and i think that's 180 degrees wrong. you know, we talk about this postracial which is a fiction. but then we also forget, you know, we're talking about an industry that decided that classified ads were forever

their province. who would or try to monetize that finish. [laughter] >> true. >> then came up with the sparkling idea that if you just gave away your con feint for free, late -- content for free on the web, later people would be so in awe they would pay for it. failing to recognize this audience that is increasingly expectant of people who can talk to them in the exact opposite of what that story in the philadelphia magazine was. being irrelevant, being insulting, being shallow, being bad journalism. there's a host of of too lating for that story. -- titles for that story. if we miss this audience factor, and from a free press standpoint, i'm very concerned because that aspect of the media as watchdog, that aspect of the constitutional role goes away along with circulation and presence and old name plates and

what have you. we cannot afford as journal u.s.es to miss this third or opportunity to do the best thing for a free press, and that is to recognize who our audience really is. stop selling to one little slice of it. >> yeah. but people are so risk averse. >> the quote that stood out to me the most, well, there were a couple, but what gets examined about race is generally one-dimensional. looking -- i can't even read my own handwriting. >> neither can i. >> with almost looked at almost exclusively from the perspective of people of color. >> whoa. >> i'll say it again. what gets examined publicly is generally one-dimensional, looked at almost exclusively from the perspective of people of color which you know is not true. >> yeah. that's not only not true, it's a little insane. [laughter] but, you know -- >> good way to put it. >> this is what i mean by the gentry and about gentrification of journalism. you have -- and this has how

many comments does this article have, 6, 7,000? i mean, white, you know, the white establishment, the ruling class have larger platforms to, you know, to get their, i guess, their messages out. look at limbaugh, look at o'reilly and look at all the untruths they speak versus how many people of color do you see having the same kind of platform? >> well, before jeff jumps in, and i know that you want to -- [laughter] no, i mean, this is getting to the heart. i do think in a sort of bizarre world you can see the coverage as it's the difference between -- i think that that quote shows a misperception of the difference between coverage about people of color and coverage led by people of color. that's two completely different things. so when we think of race, everyone has a race x a race is both real and picktive. as you discussed in bird of

paradise, your book, ethnic identities and racial identities, we've been intermingling ever since the neanderthals met homo sapiens, so once you start talking about intermingling of cultures, it's happened for millennia. but some people were perceived not to have a race in america if you were white, and there's books on how the irish became white. like who has different statuses. and so it seems to me that the quote that you raise really brings up this idea of how, how our media industry can sometimes perceive, perceive a racial narrative as coming from a place it doesn't just pause people talk about -- just because people talk about black, brown, asian-american, native american does not mean that coverage is being led by a diverse group of people, but death anyway. ..

that's why we are starting to get cover stories rick the one "being white in philadelphia ." it's not even the first such article to come out of philadelphia. if you remember a few years back, there was a story written forbes contributor, a lot of people who are journalists by self-definition, you know, were placed to the pool of -- which is not a bad thing necessarily. >> next to the free press. [laughter]

>> the guy in particular was an i.t. consultant who predominantly wrote about issues of technology and decided to jump in the conversation on race and class by writing a article called "if i were a poor black while" became one of the most negative in the viral sen pieces to appear under a forbes brand. not written by a forbes staffer. i'm not sure if it was edited bay forbes. because it came under forbes. from a perspective of suburban residence of philadelphia. >> he caught them to go to con and code academy. >> exactly. [laughter] if you don't have -- [inaudible] then you spend a lot of time. you know. [laughter] >> his position there was not dissimilar from that of the author of the, you know, article.

and it came to the conversation about race when the stand point of looking at it objectively from the outside. i think we'll see more of that. the whole notion how do we talk about race when we are not of the race and in the race. we can have greater incentive. we're not actually part of succumb, if you will. that's where both of the articles seemed to land. we can say from the interesting about this. we can see from not having been immersed in it. >> yeah. >> the last thing is i don't think you have to be necessarily of color to write of issues of color. >> i agree. >> the response in other countries for generations and one of the things you're required to is live in the country, learn the language, be a part of the -- [laughter] and even then. >> yes. >> you can't always get it right. >> yeah. i think all of these points are excellent. one thing i want do context

you'llize some of this, again race and class linked. there was an assumption in that piece about what a poor black kid should do that everyone has broadband at home. that's not at all the case. there there's poor broadband penetration particularly in some homes and rural home. it's assumption we bring to the table. part is the period of time where assumptions are being deconstructed. that america is a european-run country is decrurkted. but also that the news media, i mean, i think the very question is the news media an objective authority is being deconstructed in a different way than it has been in the pass. that's always been a question. is the news media objective? we have a prison imof different online outlets, people brogging,

fox news and mississippi >> we're seeing this sort of battle of i would call it fiction versus reality coming up. for example in our world in the area of religion. we had a fictional attitude diverse reasoning use society. so now that we are truly reaching this point and recent study said we're first of all more church than ever. that's part of the diversity. we are seeing more diverse religious group. beare watching the struggling there and the fights going on very sharply. we were saying maybe it's because things have become this approach to reality a little more. we begin to see the intense dpircheses in -- differences in dispute. we also saw, i think within the media, when we talk of news people we talk about the issue of diversity it was

organizational institutional. now with the internet individuals everybody is a reporter. everybody or can be a reporter or journalists by self-definition. that's changing this dynamic in a way that the discussion we're having is never able to be conducted. it's always been how do we change the large powerful institutions and ownership of institutions consolidated. people can reach out from the planet from one desk and computer. will they have the impact? that's still to be seen. we are seeing a different change in the nature of how do we diversify and reach out to other audiences? what do we hear back? i'm dieted to -- excited to hear back from a way we have never been able to from communities before. it's a wonderful ability to hear back if we listen. and that may be . >> and social implead is prompting some of that.

there's an overuse of social media platform by people of color, you know, for example on twitter. i think it's interesting. i want to get to the question of resources. anyone can jump in, raquel, i would love to hear from you. the example about the documentary film world is important. anyone can be a journalists, say they can. the resources still are the -- if you don't have the resources to amplify your voice, you will be drown out. so increasingly i see a lot of journalism funding more like venture capital funding like, you know, the vitaminnestments -- investment in combined, you know, platform meets content or whatever, but how do different groups of color fit in to the role of entrepreneurial journalism world? >> as an extreme example, i think that we talked about this

offline that sometimes in order for you to get funding so you to debuts yourself. you have, like, for example world star hip-hop which is like, to me, viral lynching. done by a black man to black and brown people. he's doing no better than what this man wrote, you know, the article about philadelphia. it's terrible. what happens is he got a what new yorker profile or new york magazine profile. i'm not sure which one. we gets a lot of hypes. you have citizen journalists that are out there, for example, i saw the tea party rallies and a lot of citizensism journalism that i thought was good. people were unguarded. it was one person talking to another. you got feel and see the temperature of what was going on in america. one thing that stood out to me were, you know, people saying shoot them now and ask questions later. ted knew nugent for president.

you see how totally remorseful white people were for barack obama in office the first time. you saw it, you you saw the blow back during the tea party rally. i feel like that stuff we need to see, hard to see, will not get the funding the world star hip-hop will get. >> and for people don't know the site, it's rather demeaning site which using hip-hop which is a wonderful art form as a marketing form. >> it's not really hip-hop. it's not what you see. i saw something not on directly on that site. i don't go to that site. i saw it on the news that the young black man was stripped from the clothing for 28 hours maybe in jersey city and whipped by other black men.

and we complain about jane -- jane go un he makes money off the site. >> yeah. let me just -- that's depressing. [laughter] >> let me point out some positive things i have seen. of the daily news wrote a book called [inaudible] about the history of united states. and repeatedly was turned to a film that not wide spread distribution but it is nonetheless out there and we can hope that it gets wider distribution, and the film praises how the implants -- immigrants came to the united in

the first place. which is something missing from the immigration discussion. about point that is made is that a lot of the reason why these people from the various latin american countries are in the in the united states because are actions the united states has taken in those countries to diminish the quality of life there, and force these folks out of those countries and in to the united states. i raise that one to make two points. number one, there are some documentaries that need people on the other end and the media to pub publishize and make people aware of it. doing something like that requires resources, and it's something you can't get from the proliferation of social media, you know, good reporting requires resources, and as much

as the environment is changing, that's something that the fact remains. the other one i saw recently was on pbs, it was by natural black programming consortium, and they spent a year, i believe in the d.c. high school alternative school. it's called "180 days" or something like that. >> yes. >> and frankly i wasn't i wasn't avid about watching another special about what it was like at the school. this one sucked me in. it took the issue of school reform we have heard so much about out of the theory and the fact and figure proposed but the viewpoint of what is actually going on in the school and what teachers and the students have to deal with. and it gave you a different point of view on that whole issue. in fact what happened -- not

giving anything away now, it already aired. what happened in the documentary, it went for four hours, two separate nights. was that the teachers and students have to deal with the social issues before they get to the school. what's going on in the home, what's going on in the neighborhood? it's a tremendous achievement just to be at the school, and the teachers made that point very clearly. but what happened in the documentary was that after the position of these -- downtown about how you have to score so much on the standardize test. the rug was pulled out from the principal and school before they had a chance to complete the process of getting these kids to the point where they can do well on the exams. so spanning to a year or so in the school's required

resources. so, you know, i have to emphasize again that journalism requires resources. social media is not a substitute for good reporting, and that's just something i want to point out. >> again, and also that documentary got very little attention in the media as well. it requires somebody on the other end in the news tends say hey, it's important. >> right. yeah. i mean, that was a real labor of love for the producers, jackie jones, and, you know, funding is definitely always an issue. the question is how can we hack it? does anyone have any thoughts on how funding perhaps can become more . >> you change the people that more --ed a administer the

funding. >> you can argue the that the same tools and the same technology platforms that are to a certain extent leveling the playing term in terms of who has what are offering the opportunities to change the rule and funding. travel funding is something they are experimenting with. >> the biggest challenge what we're seeing here as with anything, you have to -- [inaudible] the kind of thing that tend are things that have a very ideosinc if you look at the kick starters of the world, for instance, if you are putting out a 3-d printer you get $50,000 tomorrow. if you are trying to get funding for something obscure, it will be much more challenging to get

that. that said, i think that is what we're seeing in some ways as a discomfort zone that is occurring at the transition points between a lot of different things. one is, you know, the notion of the establish of media, you know, to some public and crowd media or citizens media. we're looking at the transition from the use of, you know, center outplatforms to, you know, more level peer-to-peer and two i did directional we are looking at demographic shift between a majority-minority society to one. we are starting to have to think about terms like minority and whether they make sense. all the columnist that say minority outnumber minority. at what point do they no longer become minority. >> i was going strongly with the

word. you're more than . >> exactly. >> the historical term of art. i suppose it will go away some point. >> we'll just have new the plurality. [laughter] i want to say something, there's also a generational gap. like, for example, i was talking about the hip-hop more people have seen than anything we talked about. what is going to happen to pbs if they continue to market the way they are marketing to the new generation of documentary film lovers and new generation of social media kids who, you know, pbs doesn't speak to. doesn't do outreach to. the truth is it's going to be harder for us to make films and make it easier for who want to base their community and spread untruth to create their own productions. >> yeah. i just want to briefly bring up an example from my own career.

i love to talk to people from all backgrounds. when i saw all, i mean, i met clans people in a parking lot during a blizzard so, you know,ly go to great lengths to have some interesting discussions. but i -- i think it's important one of the resource issues for me as a reporter, who loves field reporting, getting the money to do field reporting is so hard. like i did an independent radio documentary project with wnyc, i went to a tea party rally and talked to people. i actually, you know, i stay in touch with so. people i met. i think also what happens is when the money dries up for field reporting, we become disconnected from each other. because, you know, groups can hate groups but an individual can hate individuals. once you start breaking down who is an individual is. i found even common ground with the clans people. i don't mean about race. they loved their family.

they cared for the family. they thought that being an active racist was a way to talk care of their family. getting in the field understands the motivation that enable people to think the actions are right. all of us think we are doing the right thing. most people don't think they doing the wrong thing. part of our job is unearth human nature. it's hard at this time. i want to think about if we're moving ahead, gene, the table america is becoming more diverse, the media less so. what kind of iceberg does present? how do we steer around it instead of crashing in to it? >> i think there's a neck and neck race with the institutions that have resources and this really addressing generational gender race issues. at some point this mass media that has provided resources that has funded so many different ways the kinds of journalism we

admire either wakes up to this new reality of the audience, or it will fade away. i don't know what -- [inaudible] we do see that nothing right now sort of individually on the web has the institutional power to do what a lot of organizations can do when they're willing to do it. we're so much in the transition zone, i don't know where it will come out. i have to constantly remind myself the web is what fifteen years old? it's a teenager at this point. it doesn't know where it's going. it's still finding its own way. i worry in term of the free press ability to watchdog government. so often just as example, there's the argument that well, yes, local newspapers and others who used to cover institutions are gone. there's a blogger and that. the blogger is interested in street paving in the a neighborhood. when the street paved or goes away as an issue the person goes away. there isn't the institutional

memory. there isn't the continuity there. along with the other challenges is the idea of continuity. the at least is an institutional memory of what become before to improve on, to build from, i don't know where we've going with that. we have become this sort of, you know, more interested in lindsay lohan's latest something or other. what kind of resources that? >> i'm sorry. -- i go nuts. why? >> it's like -- [inaudible conversations] >> -- i hate to slam, you know, someone for doing their job. it was taylor swift piece in "vanity favor" was drivel. taylor swift is upset people talk about the love life even though she was talking about all the time. it's like that's a lesson learned. we'll never do it again. the story itself was intent l. >> i guess my feeling is that --

i know we are in the new -- concerns as a result in kind of the archiveial belly of the beast when it comes to cherishing of the collective memory and the institutional status. i think one thing we have to be aware of a lot of the collective news unconscious is not as healthy -- as not of good as what it is supposed to have been doing as we have hoped. right. one of the things we see is that because of the desire to put these standards in place, because of the privileging, if you will, of the ways we covered news in the past, a lot of standards that reflect was concern to be good journalism, active journalism, or fair journalism come out a world

where the news judgment is made in a different kind of social economy. i think you still see that. the kind of classic, you know, rap, if you will on american journalism is the pursuit of balance. we actually lose that. >> right. we overemphasize the points that are . >> right. and false -- indeed. the notion as you get left, right, or, you know, other kinds of partisan conversations around different topics. the more extreme one or the ore side the more likely you to have the middle balance shift in a way. when you talk about race especially think becomes even more so. the person who is an accurate to speak from the perspective of race is very complicated as we're talking about because of you are a certain race you are expected to be an expert on being that race. even those that are journalists and write from editorial

position find ourself in that circumstance of being required to speak for "the race" a little bit too frequently. it's one of those con conundrum -- if you do, then you find yourself being in that small set of people that will required to carry that whenever grow. >> yeah. i want to switch to something we got on our twitter feed. again that's hash i can't tell if it's a -- probably both. [laughter] okay! thank you. so basically the move away which you wrote about, richard, you can lead us off here. the move away from using illegal immigrant. it was a huge fight brought up

by ethnic journalisms. tell us about the shift in news room policy that you tracked on that? >> yeah. yesterday the associated press announced the style book entry on term immigration. and the reason why the associated press put out a report because that's considered the style, the style used by the majority of news rooms in the united states because it's easier than creating your own style book and it's ready available and everybody uses it in the associated press. they decided would no longer use the term illegal immigrant or illegal alien or any illegal as a noun. and they would consider these people people people first and you talk about people in the country illegally and use terms such as that.

this is as -- as i said it's been a fight that has been going on since the 1980s, and represents in the language, you know, language is political, and that is why it was interesting to see the ap spobdzing to -- responding to, you know, after all of this time to what these groups have been saying. we saw the same thing going on the "politico" with pro-life and pro-choice, and affirmative action versus racial preferences, and same-sex marriage versus gay marriage, you know. these are people on a more advocate for all of those causes fight within the media for their turn to be the preferred term so that, you know, it makes people, you know. so for the associated press to decide that being illegal is not

the first thing you should know about someone. you are a human being first is an achievement. >> isn't that crazy that's an achievement in 2013? [laughter] i'm sitting here listening i'm trying to think of something cool and profound to the statement, but especially because i'm latino therefore i represent every latino in america. [laughter] >> yeah. i cannot find something profound to say to that. i think it's ridiculous we are having this conversation. but that brings me to a point i want to get to that, you know, i think, jeff, your point about having to represent your race. gosh knows question go on and on about that. what do you think is going to happen? i'm going to start with you as we going surface the identity within the group, you know, like for example, i'm half african and half black-american even my

ethnicity all of our ethnicity is mixed. my is mixed in a way that traditional. there's a lot of writing about the mixture within the african community like african-caribbean. give us a perspective from your book what you learned from the latino community and the dominican republic and broaden it out to you see latinos changing. >> a lot of stuff i couldn't get placed elsewhere in the mainstream media. people don't want to talk about it or they can't wrap their heads around the idea that the pete try dish, if you will in the new world was in the dominican republic. the essence of being an american. you should try to be latino. you should try to emulate as much as you can. first the european settlement the successful one in the new world was in the colony that exists today in the colonial zone in the dominican republic.

the they came in and the american india indigenous american, slave trade jumped off as well. and the things happen there had that began who we are today. yet you come here and you are illegal or made to feel like you're not part of the so-called american dream. i think i think needs to be debunked. maybe that's separate panel. exactly. but to me at the end of the day it's a holistic thick. -- thing. i see with starting with ethnic studies and en"fantasy." when you learn about history and your people are primitive or they're salve sages and orange -- savage the european came here with freedom loving and loving that freedom and keep on, you know, you have children that you see in the statistics drop out of school become disinterested in school, feel like they are invisible to society, then you have now journalists pt