1,000 hands because it is a community celebration to''. we partner with columbia university, the schomburg center, even with supporters like 18 mobile supporting us for the mobile access to reading and developing from the internet. many communities in many distinct communities, and together to support books and writing and where do we go from here. of the black book review it is our answer to those publications that historic plea in the past did not review books of people of color. not of intention but i always turn to the index and the book to see what folks

like me is the most times they are not to. i said why isn't that exist? it is now the online publication and you can see what is current or upcoming and no way to see what is hot and what is not before you buy your voice felt that the schomburg center the author events. what is it? >> for research in black culture is probably the most preeminent research center for black culture in america. . .

we're pleased to be a partner. >> we are so pleased, peter. >> host: we're going to let max go because he has to introduce the first panel of the day. so i want to let you know, if you happen to be the in the area. we eave a booktv crew, we're passing out booktv book bags. come and stop by and say hi and grab a bag and a booktv pen. live all-day coverage begins right now with the fir panel of the day, and it is on science and health. this is live coverage on booktv.

[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] >> good afternoon and welcome to the 15th annual harlem book fair. thank you. [applause] >> my name is max rodriguez, the founder of the book fair, and i can't tell you how pleased i am that you all had supported the book fair in the way you have, through your advocacy for books, through reading books, through reading authors, by allow thing harlem book fair and other black review to be a resource for you

in your reading. in your walk through life as you use books to figure out how we get from here to there. this event would not be possible without the support from the schomburg center for research and black culture, and also from columbia university, who is a new partner with the book fair, and i'm so very happy about that. we have certainly worked hard to have columbia university embrace the harlem book fair as a possibility, as a conversation. so, really makes me happy and validates us in a very different way. and along with that, also the corporate community hears the voice. t-mobile is supporting the book fair this year. and they understand the shift in how information is delivered.

so they understand mobile. they understand access. they understand books. they understand reading. they understand access to information. so, we're very happy to have t-mobile also join us today. i'd like to introduce first, clarice? clarice from the schomburg center. [applause] >> hello. good afternoon. thank you for coming. it's my pleasure. i'm clarice, the programs manager for the schomburg center. it's my pleasure to young today to the schomburg center for research in black culture, for those who may not know we're run of the four research libraries of the new york public library and our mission is to collect, preserve, and share the wonderful history and culture of people of african-americanan

desscent. our collection holds items across the different divisions so use the schomburg as your resource to learn about hour wonderful history and culture. i want to say congratulations to max rodriguez for reaching such an important and wonderful landmark. 15 year very good. let's give him a round of applause. [applause] >> and also i like to thank on behalf of the schomburg sneer. c-span booktv for continuing the tradition of coming here and actually bringing the harlem book fair to a national audience. thank you, c-span, booktv. [applause] >> and lastly, thank you, and welcome, to our newest partner, columbia university school of arts. hopely we get to work all year

around with other events. so we're happy today to celebrate books. black authors, black scholars, and most of all, happy to host in this wonderful space these engaging and one of a kind conversations. so, now, please let's have marsha give a few words. thank you and enjoy the day. [applause] >> good morning. it's so exciting for columbia university school of the arts to be a partner in this amazing project, that max, i'm sure, has a glimmer in his eye 15 years ago couldn't have imagined how much it had green and the impact it would have. it is indeed also an amazing opportunity for us to partner with the schomburg and with literacy partners and c-span, in being a part of a conversation around books.

columbia university school of the arts has four divisions. film, theater, visual arts, and writing, both in fiction and nonfiction. so, it's extremely right for us to be part of a project that engages people around ideas and around books, and the important books that talk about the very cutting edge issues that are happening of our time and particularly to say that columbia university can engage in that conversation around books, particularly also focusing on the issues important to the african-american. many of you may not think about columbia university in that way, given its history, having been here since 1754, before number city is even a city, and columbia -- and the united states is a country before the declarations of independence and the constitution are written, but we are indeed a university around these ideas.

and it's a lovely part of being an associate dean where you can say i have an amazing staff who help to make and curate these programs, and i have to say that rich blunt, our associate director in the school of the arts for outreach and education, has been working tirelessly in terms of curating these panels you will hear today. so i also want to give him a round of applause, too. [applause] >> it is also indeed, i think, timely for us all to be here, given so many issues that are happening today. many are also talking about our president stepping forward, and talking about the issues of race, and its impact in context. i think that you will find wisconsin with each of the panels today we're going to put all of this in context. i'm extremely excited to be part of this, and max, i applaud you again for 15 years of a wonderful, wonderful event. thank you.

[applause] >> thank you so much, marcia. i'd like to introduce terry hayes, vice president and general manager, t-mobile northeast region. [applause] >> thank you, max. we really want to thank max and the harlem book fair for letting us be part of this great event. this community has been very good to us. adopting our service. and it's great to be able to be part of something and give back a little bit. we believe that we can be a real catalyst, real help, when it comes to getting books out. given the explosion in smartphones and the mobile internet. we feel we can be a great contributor to helping expand books in the community. so we want to congratulate max on his 15 years, and thank you all for letting us be part of

this great event. thank you. [applause] >> so, our first panel, our first panel is titled mythologies of race, science, and health. before i introduce our moderator, i also want to acknowledge rich blunt, who worked tirelessly in pulling the panels together, discussing and coming up with the idea, what are the conversations that we're going to present? what are the conversations that impact us as a community and we should discuss to see if we can find a way in or a way out. so again, thank you so much, rich. our moderator for our first panel, mythology, the race science and haves if professor sheldon krimsky. the author of genetic justice, dna data banking criminal

investigations, and civil liberties. he is a professor of humanities and social sciences. he says here at wftf university. so you have me there. okay? tufts. >> oh, that's tufts. you know how these academics write. tufts university. and visiting professor at brooklyn college. please welcome professor sheldon krimsky. [applause] >> it's a real pleasure to be moderating this distinguished panel, and my job is to simply put fortha question of conversation so we can get started very quickly. first of all, let me introduce the panel members. to my immediate right is alondra nelson. who has written: body and soul. the black panther party and the fight against medical discrimination. to -- [applause]

>> to her right is samuel roberts, who has written: infectious fear, politics, disease, and the health effects of segregation. [applause] >> to his right is jonathan metzl who has written, how schizophrenia became a black disease. and last but not least, to his right, harriet washington, whose book, deadly monopoly, the shocking corporate takeover of life itself and the consequencessor your middle east and our medical -- your health and medical future. so i'm going to start the conversation among us by first asking, what mythologies did we all learn from writing our books that we would want to share with

the audience today, and discuss amongst themselves. i'm going to start with three myths that i learned from writing "genetic justice." which was really about forensic dna. when you watch all these crime programs on tv, dna rules, it seems. so these are the three myths that i learned. first of all, myth number one, that dna profiles are like fingerprints. not true. very different. michigan number two -- myth number two is that dna evidence is infallible. also not true. it's not infallible for prosecutions, and it's not infallible for exoneration. myth number three. collecting dna profiles is

race-neutral. that's also a great myth. so, let me turn now to alondra and maybe you can tell us what some of the myths were that you discovered in your work, "body and soul." >> good afternoon, everyone. good afternoon, harlem. thank you for that introduction, sheldon. i guess mine are more three truth than three myths. i began my body and soul with the sentence: health is politics by other means. which means to suggest when we're talking about issues of health and science, that we can be talking about test tubes and laboratory benches and advance scientific research, but we're also talking about contests over challenges to resources, over healthcare access, access to scientific information, health education and the like. so that's one truism. the second is that the civil rights tradition, the black

freedom tradition, the black protest tradition, was always a health activist tradition and a health politics tradition. so we can think back to marcus garvey, the organization which had a cadre of nurses and fanny lou who talked on the stoop when she was advocating for civil rights about being sick sick and tired of being sick and tired, and gave us the poignant euphemism mississippi. appendectomy, sterilized involuntarily. and lastly, i want to offer for you that the black panther party was a health social movement. the black panther party is a rorschach test for how we think about black politics in the last half of the 20th century in particular, but we don't appreciate they were deeply engaged and involved in issues of health activism, health

equality and access to medical care services in the united states. and in particular, is a discuss in my book, they were engaged in giving people information to and access to services that were undermentioned. that we didn't know enough about. that the services were underutilized or not providing enough, such as sickle cell aanyone ya and a network healthcare clinics, and notably, given harriet's prior book that you know, medical apartheid, the black panther party was engaged in protecting black communities from overexposure to the bad forces of medical experimentation. so i write about one instance of this. i hope other scholars will carry this forward but the black panther party participated in a struggle to stop the university of california to introduce

medical protocols and medical research that would have disproportionately affected black and brown boys in california. so they provided great services and ways to respond to how black communities communities were underserved and also protected black communities in the way the which we were overexposed to the worst harms of medical research. >> thank you. samuel, what about your findings? >> thank you very much. good afternoon, everyone. i, similar to alondra, found some truths as well as some myths in my work. i focus as a historian on the late 19th to 20th century, which is the era of jim crow and also the era of the birth of modern public health in the united states. and in doing so i found that for many black communities, which were increasingly urbanized communities there was one particular disease that claimed the most lives. one cause of death, which above most others claimed black lives

and that was tuberculosis, and this is a disease, contrary to the myth of racial predisposition, was actually one of living conditions in poverty. so in many ways we find at the very birth of public health in the united states this mythology that, well, black people are dying from tuberculosis because they are racially predisposed. when in fact this was a way of mask something of the quite often impoverished and just plain terrible conditions in which black people were forced to live. this is a -- residential segregation and exclusion from many jobs. that was the first truth. the first myth i found is one of the kind of race neutrality of public health. the way you mentioned about the myth of race neutrality in dna

genetics. we think of health as being a rational science, and in fact at the very birth we find racial assumptions which worked quite often to the detriment of the people it was supposed to serve. and then finally, the second truth is that much like alondra has mentioned in her study, there has always been a black health activism, and the question is, where do we look for it? if we always think about the men, usually white men in white coats and hospitals, as being the locus of health, of knowledge production, we may not find african-americans in the early 20th century there in fact we find clubs, ymca, ywca, churches, masonic orders, engaged in their community and environmental health in particular. thank you. >> jonathan, what about your 90s. >> again, thank you so much.

it's really a true honor for me to be here today. i work on race and mental health. i'm trained as a psychiatrist and look at the kind of historical trends about racial disparates in the diagnosis of different kinds of mental illness and the research i did for the book and continue to do looks particularly at race-based misdiagnosis or overdiagnosis of schizophrenia in black men. people might know this but starting in about the 1960s there were a series of research fining that found out of the blue that all of a sudden, people discovered that this illness of schizophrenia was being overdiagnosed in black men at rates of anywhere from four, five, six, even seven times more than any other group. and to my surprise in researching the book i found that actually this wasn't always the case. even though there's a long history of the relationship between race and sanity going

back to time when we haas had diagnoses about slaves who ran away must be crazy and dropping -- but schizophrenia was a largely white diagnosis in the united states. through the 1950s. and all of a sudden in the 1960s, kind of seemingly out of nowhere, there was this disproportionate overdiagnosis that continued into the present day in which african-american men are dramatically more likely to be diagnosed, and this is something that is actually at odds with genetic science, the way we think about the biology of mental illness, because according to biology or genetics as we know it, schizophrenia is an illness that shouldn't have any race or gender imbalance because it's something that should happen at the level supposedly beneath the level of race. it's according to biologists, it should occur in 1% of the world's population, regardless of who they are or where they

live. so my research looks at the question why in the 1960s did this start to happen. and also look very specifically at a hospital called the iona state hospital for the criminally instain in -- insane in michigan, it was largely a white hospital in the 1960s, and then in the '60s and '70s increasing numbers of african-american men who had participated in black power protests, and been members of the nation of islam and other kind of groups, or had participated in some way in different riots like detroit riots. somehow made their way to the hospital and they were diagnosed with mental illness. and so, that's not a huge surprise when we think about the ways that politics and the diagnosis of mental illness have gone together in this country but the main myth is look at, one i have already suggested, is that this increased rate of

schizophrenia was somehow the result of something to do with biology or genetics. of course a lot of people were arguing about it at the time. but what i found was that it was almost entirely a social phenomenon that was linked to a series of changes and the two i'll just put forward. there was a lot of anxiety about the political moment and people were linking political protests at the time to insanty, -- insanty, and the second was the diagnosis of schizophrenia changed in 1968 and the official diagnosis all of a sudden said, anger, hostility, and projection, which means blaming other people for your problems. so in a way it made it very easy for doctors to see black men who were protesting as enemy illness because of these criteria. so that would be myth number one, biology. myth number two, that this

modify diagnosis happened because these doctors were disproportionately racist. and what i found during a lot of interviews was that some of the doctors were pretty well intentioned and some were not, and so really it was the structure that they were in, the structure of the diagnosis. they were all uses the diagnosis and it was a structural issue. and so the third myth is really how we deal with race-based misdiagnosis in psychiatry or mental health. our approach is to make the clinician more sensitive to racial or ethnic issues. but i show in any work that racist assumptions are imbedded in the structure of healthcare systems and i argue we need to teach the medical system to be what i call structurally competent rather than teaching individual doctors to be culturally competent or culturally sensitive. >> thank you.

harriet, i just wanted to say a word before you get your chance. and that is, in our constitution, the one right that is listed in it, not the bill of rights but in the constitution, is the right to take out a patent. amazingly enough, that was built in by thomas jefferson. and your book, "deadly monopoly" questions some of that patenting, so tell us what you found. >> hello, harlem. very happy to be here. and excellent question. i would don't point out that thomas jefferson was not actually a fan of patents he didn't like them very minute. he didn't really want patents to be issued. he bowed to pressure but james madison and others. and the patenting of entities that we typically don't think of as patentable, especially things

like parts of our body, especially things like medications, that we need to live, has always been hotly contested, but the people who had issues with it tended not to be people in power. they tended not to be corporations who are going to profit from them. so, although there was always that tension, gradually through the laws, this friendliness towards patents by people who are going to profit from them, triumphed, and now we have a medical system that used the patent as commonplace, something that is expected. i'm not sure if i addressed your question fully but i think there is a tension there and i also think that as we were discussing earlier in the green room, we have some recent good news in that the patent on breast cancer genes that were held by myriad have been struck down. that's a move in the right direction. the mythology, though, that i

want to address is the mythology that -- well, two, actually. there's the myth that pharmaceutical companies like to promulgate as a rational for doing things like patenting, patenting genes and patenting medication which they then charge you and me an outrageous, unaffordable price for. their rational is we invested a huge amount of time and money and interest in dealing these medication so is we have a right, in fact we have a need to charge you a lot of money to cover the costs, without our investment you wouldn't have medications for h.i.v. disease, you wouldn't have medications to for tuberculosis, sickle cell aanyone ya. all the thing that threaten our health. so you need to pay us this money so we can continue providing them. that's a myth. the truth is, the reality is, it's not corporations who are investing the money, it's the federal government. where does the federal government debt the money?

from your tax dollars. so you're paying for the medications twice. paying for them to be developed with governmental money and then paying outrageous money for medication you need to stay alive or stay healthy. set another myth is something that i hear very frequently. sometimes you hear about research being done in developing countries, nigeria, brazil, cuba. thailand, and often there is a complaint that the ethics have not been adhered to properly. people are not on the -- are not being tested. under the equal informed consent. they don't know what is being done to them. they have not been given enough information to agree. they've been given agents without their knowledge. so informed consent, other abuses that surfaced, and one frequent response by the company

is that, well, you have to understand, we're testing these drugs for leprosy in brazil and perhaps we cut a fewth that corners but there's a high rate of leprosy in brazil. they need these drugs. that's a myth there is a great need for these drugs but these countries do not benefit. in fact, michael kramer at harvard did a study and he found that within a 20-year span -- 24-year span, that of the 12,033 drugs invented by pharmaceutical companies, only 14 were for use in developing world. and of those 14, five of those drugs were for animals, not people. others of the drugs were not developed by the pharmaceutical companies inch the end, four drugs, four drugs, out of 12,033 were devised for the use of people in developing worlds, and yet one third of all clinical trials are being conducted in

the developing world because it's cheaper. so that's a very important myth. the rational for the high prices, the rationale for bypassing the people in the developing world, and condemning them to poor health doesn't hold water. it's a myth. i want to back up to another myth. first of all, one might say the entire book, medical apartheid, is addressing the myth and that is a myth used to change the law in this country about medical research. it's a very prevalent myth. that african-americans have been underrepresented in medical research. and if i say this is a myth, people will quickly produce dat to show me i'm wrong. the problemes many of the african-americans who have been used in medical research do not show up in the data. the research has been done without notations being done. it's been done without their knowledge. it's been done in a shadowy secret way, and it's also not

niecely therapeutic, a great deal of nontherapeutic, harmel, stigmatizing research has been conducted in the country without being fully documented or fully acknowledged. so that this myth that we are somehow underrepresented is only true if you're looking at therapeutic research and that leads to the conundrum. not really an easy set of consents to keep in mine, but we have to remember two things in my opinion and that is that we do need to be participating in research. but we have to do so with vinal -- vigilance. we have to dosiveso mindfully and with all the appreciations intact. which brings know my final myth and that's the myth of informed consent. most of us quite rationally believe that should we choose to participate in medical research we are guaranteed informed

constant sent, and i don't mean simply those researcher asks your permission. that's part of it. but asks your permission -- informed consent also entails maintaining information about the study. so you have to be told everything that you need to know to make an informed decision, what will be studied. that consent is ongoing. when new information emerges, if they find out, for example, that red haired people don't fare well with the drug, they have to tell you that so you have to get this constant information. the reality is informed consent is under assault in this country. it is diminishing very quickly in my opinion, and, again, very occult, shadowy way. it's not something that gets a lot of attention. but the law was rewritten twice in 1990 and 1996 the federal code of regulation was written to permit people in this country

to be conscripted into medical research without their consent. not only the law but also custom. medical culture, has become the more and more friendly to the idea of conducting research without asking people's permission sometimes, or without giving them the full benefit of informed consent. so it's a myth we can afford come place sense si -- come place sense si, and something i think we should be actively seeking to redress. elim holes in informed content. informed consent is more than a philosophical abstraction. african-americans with our history of research, vulnerable, informed consent is a necessity. >> is everybody on the panel want to raise a question for any other panel member? any thoughts you have amongst yourselves? >> i just want to respond to

harriet just by saying that i think one of the places to look for how black communities can think about responding and being more active citizens and participants in clinical research studies to is think back to the legacy of the black freedom struggle which feels like an uncomfortable or not a place that we look typically, but part of what is so important if we can get beyond the deem moonization of the black panther party, is the way they were centrally engaged in conversations about medical research. they were looking at protocols. going through protocols for research center at ucla, and particularly interested in the ways in which they might disproportionalitily harm black communities. one of the responses to the insights you raise in your book is certainly to be more vigilant but a way to be more vigilant is to take agency and sit at the table and take agency and understanding and finding

information about research studies taking place in your community, including those here in harlem, taking place by columbia university. >> after i do a body of research, there's something that i bring to my own personal life, usually. just a higher understanding of how i'm going to interact with the world. did any of you come to some personal -- i don't know -- epiphanies how you're going to interact with the healthcare system, the medical system, or with any of those -- or the scientific system, from your research? i'll give you one example, and this is from research i've done in the past on conflict of interest in the drug interest -- industry. if i go to a physician and this

physician is going to offer me a drug, i'm not going to take it right away. i'm going to -- the first thing i'm going to say is, has this been approved for this use by the food and drug administration, by the fda? doctors have the power to give you a drug that has not been approved for that use. they have that kind of power. and if that is one thing i've learned from my research, it's how to talk to a doctor about the drugs they're planning to give me. did any of you reach any insights about your own personal life? >> well, i'll give the flipside. i'm in the unique position i'm also -- i'm practicing as a doctor, and i have this funny life where half of my life i'm a practitioner, and the other half of my life i'm being a sociologist, cultural critic, where i basically tear apart

everything i stand for on all the other days, saying it's imbued with all these problems, and it's funny because i have had some moments of kind of overlap where i try to, like -- probably my own skits frienda, trying to keep my two parts separate but there have been moments where themes from my research have actually come into the clinical practice. one was when i was doing my first book, prozac on the couch, book about white femininity it in and stereo types of white women in drug ads, and i was -- i probably spent two or three months writing this critique. there was a big prozac ad campaign and it basu playing with her kids again just like normal. and sue had a wetting ring, all happy, playing with her kids. and i said do you have to be a white married woman to be memory healthy? and then a woman came into into my office carrying this ad and

saying, hey, doc, this is me, i'm sue and i want to be normal. at that moment i had two possible answers. one would have when malpractice answer and that would be you're suffering from a socially constructed position and we need to change society rather than treat the individual, or something like that. and i think that would have been the wrong answer. instead what i realized was that racial and gender stereotypes shape her expectations about the drug i was maybe going to prescribe, maybe not, and they all shaped my -- the way i was listening to them. but the right answer that that moment was not to say, yes or no, but prozac or some drug, but it's instead to say what does normal mean to you? what do you think -- how do you think it's going to change your life, and to see through my own lens, race and gender and culture and class to say if you study culture, it gives you

better insight into the complex symbols, symbols of power, that pharmaceuticals and the medical establishment become. >> in answer, i might dish don't have a personal anecdote but what i found in my research, and thinking about the politics of health, is the importance of us speaking with each other, amongst ourselves, in communities, at dinner tables, wherever you may be, about health and health politics, and i say that because quite often we invest in -- no offense to the physician to my right -- we invest so much authority with medicine, and if you read medical studies or look at medical journals you find out there are debates to the lay public may be represented instead of consensus. they disagree amongst each other. the scientist sometimes go out

on these things, and quite often things are represented to us that are just plain wrong. it's really important that we talk to each other, that we find information, and think about health, not just on the individual terms that medicine often will have us do, which is to say, in the case of mental health, it may be an issue of your own problematic self-adjustment or you could be misdiagnosed, or in the sense of, there's genetically something wrong with you, and by the way, here's a nice little medicine i can give you for a hefty price to fix that. we need to think about how our personal health is a part of our communal health and our community life as well and those are things we don't discuss. particularly mental health. i would say. that's probably one of the new -- the upcoming frontiers for black health, how we think about mental health too. many of our mentally ill are now part of the prison system, and for reasons that are -- ought to

be thought of as public health and medical reasons. we have thousands of people suffering in prisons prisons wht to be getting clinical care. >> any other -- i would just echo what sam say. part of what changed to for me has been an increased interest in local health clinics and i'm particularly interested in the work that organizations are doing, which looking at aku purpose tour, wholistic health care, think about the place of health in the community and as a community issue, and bringing people in, both for wholistic medicine and also often for a revel to other forms of medicine. so, i think carrying forward a tradition that in public health is maybe the social method sin extra -- medicine but thinking about not only as an individual

issue but thinking about issues we might call social health. so to be healthy is to live in a healthy community, and a society when you don't suffer microaggressions every day you don't fear for your live from going to 7-eleven, where you can be -- feel safe in your community and in your home and at your schools. all part of what it means to be truly healthy, and i think community health, community-based health organizations play a large role in making this a possibility. >> has the public health establishment incorporated violence in the public health framework? i can ask samuel that. is that now a part of public health? >> it is. there are schools here in the united states which are looking at violence as a problem of public health. johns hopkins is one. columbia university is starting

to look at that, as well. i don't think at this point it is yet part of a kind of mainstream public health. and that's for a number of reasons. in a lot of ways we don't think of an epidemiology of violence the way we might. and i'm not saying that's the way we ought to or the way we have to. there are certain things about violence we should think about. there are ways in which social structures will aid and abet violence and we can think about that in epidemiological terms. but those are not the only terms, so if it sounds like i'm couching my answer, i am. there are ways in which public health can intervene and ways in which maybe it is not appropriate. another frontier for public health, particularly urgent, and demanding at the very moment is the problem of the mass incarceration and prisons. there we have a problem which

is -- it's a solution which causes more problems than it ever solves. many people who enter the system for petty crimes, or quite often no crime at all, will find themselves burdened with medical and mchealth issues they had not had prior to entering the system. and that goes down to the communities as well. so for public health, those are two of our more urgent issues. but i also have the the caveat that public health is not always appropriate. i'm very aware of the hirsh that the guy with the hammer thinks everything is a nail and i don't think public health should always think that everything is a public health problem but we have much to contribute. >> jonathan? >> sam is doing amazing work. interdisciplinary work and addressing these requests of violence and mass incarceration are best served when we have strong coalitions between

historians and medical community and public health so it's fantastic that this is the kind of stuff you're doing. i'm writing partially now about race and guns, and the question of gun control, and i would say this question of violence is unbelievably clique -- complicated. try going out in the world and saying gun violence is a public health issue and all of a sudden there are huge established industries and whole states that will come down on you for -- look at the debate about guns, for example. it's a very racialized conversation that even calling it a public health conversation puts you at odds with many other ten george -- ten nets of public health. >> i wouldn't point out in boston, which had a very, very serious probable live with adolescent violence, in 1992 and

1993 the was a thriving public health epidemiology of violence going on. wrote a brilliant book about violence, deadly consequences, and the work of people like felton earl, who had a project going on in chicago in which he looked at the social dynamics and found some really interesting things. i mean, even things like the fact that he told me that in chicago, there are no just -- there are no middle class black neighborhoods. and i found that fascinating. he said you can find white neighbors that are middle class but in sidewalk it tends to be either/or. so there are all these things look like they would be worth examination, buts it's the thing that worked best in boston is when a bunch of -- a group of organizations, including the harvard school of public health, including a group of ministers, including social work

organizations, and the schools, formed that coalition and during the year in which that coalition was active there was not one fatility among adolescents in boston. not one. so that synergy is important and also extremely important to know that initiatives like harvard's happen and i don't know what happened it to. i left harvard not long after that. i wrote an article about it for he hard verdict public health review, expected great things and then didn't hear anything more. but the fact is that it has been seen as a public health initiative, and my question is, needs to be seen more widely that way. the other thing is that when we talk about violence, i find it really interesting we're only addressing half the issue. we are talking about violence among black people. what about white on black violence? alvin, some sometime ago, post lated that violent racism, such as when encountered in the south by civil rights workers, he

thought that should be a mental health diagnosis. so, how about the mindset of white people who kill black people? considering everything that's happened in the past week, i think that's upper most in my mine, and also a very important part of the equation, i think. >> i want to add that's my reservation with public health, with the best of intentions. certainly someone who is a member of public health and has a certain amount of investment in its mission, i don't want to set myself up as a public health -- it's those assumptions that harriet points us, and rightfully so, we have to be careful of. quite often the immediate -- we don't ever -- very rarely is it invoked except today on the stage. what is going on where there's this really scary white aggression on black youth, for example. so i think that would have to be

part of the question. and certainly part of our answer. >> jonathan, you seem to have some ideas about this. >> looking at gun violence, for example, even the numbers bear out. most gun deaths -- we have 19,000 south dakota -- suicides. we racialize this conversation in the way i think harriet and sam are exactly right in ways that reinforces stereotypes, and it takes us farther and farther away from the hope that we can actually do anything about it. because it just reinforces these big cultural stereotypes. >> is there anyone in the audience who would like to ask the panelist a question? don't be shy. anyone? yes. can we get a microphone or can you step up to the microphone? >> thank you.

>> good afternoon. >> hi use, my question is more kind of to piggy back on what she mentioned in reference to, until we acknowledge the racism, until we acknowledge the attack on the african-american male, you won't be able to resolve it. when are we going to address it? anyone on the panel. >> anyone want to tackle that one? >> i wish i knew. i agree with you. absolutely. >> i think the collaboration you mentioned in boston, where the church, board of ed, and everyone came together and mobilized, that's a start. my question initially was, how best in my community in connecticut and implement something to make a difference to help our youth, because i

think now, if nothing else -- first of all, vacation bible school from ninth grade to 12th grade, and one thing the main theme was, family un -- re union and we talk about that does that encompass, and with that we went back to how people come -- you haven't seen in a long time, you share stories of the past, and one thing that i said to my students was that, you know, one of the words you say now is my nigga is a problem, and although i understand you're trying to change it and take the sting out but the reality is it's still there i so i asked him, how many of you remember 9/11? and most of them remember. then they remember where they were. i said how many of you remember last saturday's verdict and where were you? and they kind of hid. and i said you remember the sting? that's what the holocaust was for the african-americans.

wherever we were at, whether it be at jamaica, america, it was a sting, and now that you understand that, maybe we'll have more of a dialogue. realistically, we start -- stopped having the stories. we become more afraid of them and hopefully open a dialogue to just take time and talk to our children, and listen to them, and start with something simple like saying hello. or even giving a smile. so, i always say, basically on the personal note, that was the -- it's an eye-opener and something we need to continue to try to embrace in our children and our community because it starts with us. thank you. >> thank you very much for those comments. >> i just want to say that i think that synergy i spoke with, having all these organizations, institutions, all have to work together. i think that's key. and perhaps your organization could be the one that starts the

ball rolling, starts the communication. that does have to happen. that's one thing i'm sure. >> as long as you can get them -- give us some support, that would be great. >> if i could just say very quickly, interesting for us because i think one common thread through or work, we look to history, different kinds of history, to find instances of structural oppression, structural violence, structural racism, places where the -- >> and responses to it. >> exactly. and to see where the system seems incredibly slanted in a very violent way against black men, and we don't even need to look to history now. it's almost shocking to me, even as somebody who studies this, how open all this stuff about "stand your ground," just their right now in the present moment. and so -- how to deal with this

as it's happening so blatantly so boldly, not even hidden right now. >> part of -- one other way of saying that is to suggest that these ideas about violence, particularly as their pertain to black men and black people, are foundational to american society. so it's so -- we certainly want to talk about saying hello and talk about the issues that you're talking about your specific community, but i think it's always important to understand that it's not only about what individuals are doing. so certainly helps to say hi and treat each other better but there's a longer trajectory of dehumanization in american society that we see manifest in things like drone violence, and long periods of social isolation or isolation for people who are incarcerated. that we see in recent events this week. that is a longer problem. it's not only a problem for black people, not only a problem

for black men, that's a problem of american society, so to think about the little things we can do, and certainly things we can do in our communitieses and in our interpersonal relationships that can ad -- add to compassion and justice in society and also understanding the structural piece and work only terrains at the same time. >> it's about the human race and we're all in this together. but, again, whenever our president can be disrespected in front of everybody and called a liar and nothing has been done about it, it starts at the top and flows down, so all i'm asking is that we need to acknowledge it as a problem and once we acknowledge it's a problem, then we can start addressing it. thank you. >> thank you very much. next question. >> thank you. i'm very interested in having and continuing the conversation about the mythologies of race and what happens and how it is that we as a community can interact better and have better

conversations with our healthcare professionals. i was wondering if you all had web sites or -- that the public can go to if their family has been diagnosed with something. how do we have access to these clinical trial databases? if you can give us some names of databases', i'm having conversations with family and friends as they tell me they or family members and friends have been diagnosises with things, and it's like where due you go besides going to the internet? where can we as a public -- we can we access this information to do our own research? and be more pro-active in our own healthcare. >> excellent question. there's a great deal of good, reliable health insurance on the internet. the problem is, it's a great deal of the other kind of information on the internet, too, and the question is, how do you separate the wheat from the chafe. i always tell people, research

the diseases you might have. get the information for yourself, but it's critically important to talk to a decision as welch i know it's not easy. there are allotted 15 minutes on average to talk to people before their insurers begin look over their shoulders but you need to simply not research your own condition on the internet unless you have an md or you're an expert. just can't be done. believe me, if it could be done i would be happy to tell everyone, internet. but get information but please do not do that without discussing it with your m.d., i always recommend present it out, say this what i found, tell me what's going on, because otherwise you'll never get accurate, complete information. you've got -- if you don't trust your doctor enough to do that you need a new doctor. >> i can just give you one

clinical trial. the government has a web site, a reputable web site, called www.clinical trials.gov, and you can at least find a list of the ongoing or the started clinical trials in a particular disease category, and then you can take that to your doctor and say, are any of these relevant to me? but those are reputable list of ongoing christian contractual trials that are required to be posted if they are to be approved by the food and drug administration. www.clinical trials.gov. and then put in a disease category they'll list 15 or 20 that are ongoing, and then you can bring that to your physician ...

>> we are all historians here but you find out that if you mobilize in the right way you can find where

things freight around the edge and have an impact. that being said is some of us can be very good just to be weeds with those who ask the right questions over and over again in to ask the right questions is important as well. >> i just want to push back you do want to do is talk to your doctor by one twos is just with the researcher reading groups the information and expertise is diffuse maybe want to talk to a physician but not a personal clinician maybe a neighbor next door to read the people in that neighborhood and also maybe physicians or nurses walking in your community that you know, . so to start a book club surrounded issue that you

are interested hand with the way the studies are in conflict we have to be savvy readers so we care and teach each other so maybe someone can say there was only 40 people but they make the large glaves of powell drugs operates so we was the coalition's because it is that particular kind of expertise but it doesn't have to be your clinician but get together to read a medical journal together. >> we have all lost of local experts if you have cared for an elderly parent you will find that person within

two or three years is about as knowledgeable as any in many ways. >> we do have to gave health information to educate yourself in which case i agree with everything that has been said but the case that was mentioned where you yourself have been told you have an illness and facing the of potential crisis it is a different situation and it is vitally important because only your clinician is responsible for your health. you have to trust that person in this is the only person whose responsibility it is to see where you fall.

you cannot ask other people to do that. that is my opinion. >> what is the effect of the public health? and also to authorize certain things for their food? >> i have to say i am not a scholar of policy except that in dealing with the fda policy, the lender stand

there is a lot of critique from the cases that come before it. i should probably just defer to them. [laughter] the fda is often touted to be the best of the world another country's follows our rules and there are really good people who work there and as a matter of fact especially under democratic administrations they tend to be much better. the collie who i wrote the book with used to work with the aclu in she was hired to be the assistant to the director of the fda in a very good progressive

individual but there is political pressures put on them and that is the problem. because we can't always sort out what those political pressures are. but the fda says we don't have the death informations and yet. is to be pressure from the industry group to save the bay of this chemical the of the profits will go down. so there are some very good people they can't always decide if they have to go up the chain of command and if somebody says no, you can

not restrict them there are organizations out there that are constantly watching the fda, is suing the fda when they feel it is necessary in these public-interest organizations help us and every once in awhile they sued the fda in the courts say you are right to it has not dented enough and that is the way the system seems to be with good people working but the fda makes mistakes when they do they pull the drug off the market sometimes those mistakes are because of lack of information or drug companies don't reveal the information there is sometimes why they get on the market for food

additives get into our food. and they should not be. >> the good questions. >> the fda has changed a great deal from the time when it protected americans. fda did not allow the the death of sending a lot of i did not allow it to go the market in europe there were many children born with a dramatic birth defects -- defects but to date 40% of the money that the fda receives to evaluate new drugs and additives to foods comes from the manufacturers hoveys articles themselves and that is the unacceptable conflict of interest so i of concern to of the economic

pressures on the fda the scene too friendly to the industry aaron to even those who work for the fda those doctors refused to approve the drug if it goes on the market for years, causes a terrible toll with illness and death in cold from the market often by the manufacturer itself because then they can put it back on so i think the fda is a little too compromised. that is my opinion. >> i would make the same point that i think the relationship to industry they should be wary of because there are other nefarious practices.

event and i found out was very conflict over so i was a bad witness but but it was another thing to be wary of it but those with long your track records although there is pressure to get the new drug. >> i agree. i urge someone to -- and everyone to read summer 2011. it is about this issue how difficult it is to trust the medical research because the people do a great job but they cannot catch everything and also partly how the fda

has been less than vigilant to keep the drugs off the market. american scholar 2011. >> with conflict -- informed consent what it means in terms of research to do clinical trial those sitter given sugar pills so should those people be harmed but in the medical field should they be banned?

so what would you recommend? >> i think the last question first is easier they should not be paid and but more strictly controlled that is the other countries do they prevent patents but not as many as we do or the 20 year life in which a company can easily extend up at 70 years by manipulations. we allow them to persist for too long they need to be prodded and controlled and also a safety valve that we don't use for the patents. if a company holds a patent on the medication but it is of too high a price talking

$20,000 per year but if they hold the patent so nobody else can make cover there is a regulation that says the government can step in to say you're not using this correctly we will pay you effie and give it to another company to make it at the affordable price or use it. it can be done and other countries like brazil and thailand to do this we will do for electronics a and tvs but not medication and we need to do that more. with informed consent when you say the sugar pill people -- doctors called of placebo. those studies are not always appropriate should not always be done. if you have a very serious illness and testing a

medications which you hope is better and another exist you cannot give a person the placebo because that means you are not getting any treatment for the elvis. that is wrong with. you can give the standard of care they you are using in what you hope could be done but placebo's kid be used but not as frequently as they used to be used in the past a and informed consent is altogether different when you don't tell someone they are in this study are all the information you should or don't share with them all the risks or the other information which is a serious problem because it is not that that many people are affected so far but the

study that tested artificial blood only had seven or 20 -- 720 people is not a lot of people but what did they find? what they were testing caused more heart attacks and death than the standard of care some people were dying who did not know they were part of medical research and were a part of the steady and even worse the year it ended a new study was started which involves 21,000 people in the u.s.a. and canada. where no one tells them what happens is they are trauma victims so the everyone's goes and sometimes takes them to the hospitals and then sometimes given experimental drugs including those that are parentage

because supplanted golf will make money for someone if it is approved so there is the financial incentives but yet nobody asked their permission of. you do not even have to tell them there in the steady this is a very dangerous precedent through those that do not use informed consent it was bad enough when they could recall the road or a renegade but now it is protected under the odd lot. the trauma victims to have a gunshot wound to it is a broad category of the rationale is we need to do research that they cannot give consent but nobody has tested committee can give

consent i found one and i am not even a researcher so i assure their others. but the research is more important than the people's rights? there are some things you cannot do. if we could only tested of those of our unconscious then we cannot test it right now. with perhaps we are turning hour back but i see it as a big problem. i hope the answer your question. >> getting towards the end because now what people call the of medical clinics to talk to somebody research even before they see the

doctor the relationship between a medical and academic centers to miss some people see researchers well in a time of crisis even before getting treatment so it is important as we move forward because it is now they're getting funded. >> what i have learned is tried to avoid the drugs as much as 2:00 p.m. [laughter] try every other matt did die it or what ever. [applause] [laughter] there are times when you keep and to avoid it like antibiotics but you can ask questions first of all, how long has this been of the market?

because we have not tested it on enough people yet to know how safe it is but there will always be side effects for almost every drug. try to avoid it. doctors with all good intentions will want to give you something even if it is not necessary. and you have to do decide yourselves what is necessary and how low you want your cholesterol to be. >> my father resurveyed decide -- recently died and

i didn't see any african-americans with it so now i know is there any studies or research or information out there have been the african americans are dying with this disease? we have been going to workshops and conferences there are not that many there. and i have not received much literature on it. so do you know, anything? i want a different perspective than one i have been getting and what to narrow that down to that population hist. >> one thing i do want to say is speaking to the researcher at yale, it is her opinion that many cases

of alzheimer's is misdiagnosed. so it is hard to get a handle precisely how prevalent it is. said that means it is hard to get the data on how many people have it. >> i do think there are related forms of encephalitis. i don't know the racial breakdown that has been studied more globally. >> mad cow disease does not exist in the united states? >> when they diagnosed my

father with mad cow disease i thought to what in the world? are you serious? i did not take it was real. >> i you very sorry for your loss. what are you looking for when you say you wanted permission? -- informations. >> because it is already rare then when i do go on the white -- web site is all white people so is it hitching black people do they catch it? but i want to know is you can find nominee people have cancer or aids you want to know your population does it hit african-americans differently stand caucasians

or chinese does it hit us differently because it is so rare by itself thin on top of that you don't see that many. i can count on my hand how many of us are there. why did my daddy have to get it? how did he get it? is there information out there and how many black people do catch it. i just want to know. >> thank you. of the fact it is not very visible does not mean anything but in fact, you often see language like a very prevalent in this group of people and it may be but i have found out it is more prevalent in african americans. >> and it isn't being

documented? so how many are being misdiagnosed? so are they talking about it or is it even if interest in there research out there? >> also particularly to have access to health care when you talk about this tizzies it sells site you're trying to keep your father with you that could be part of the reason why we don't have the data that is intellectually and emotionally important for you. >> think we have time for one more question.

>> i was listening to your presentation with the schizophrenic diagnosis was primarily the white population than popularized with african-american story saying saying that they genuinely thought were misdiagnosed? this her they do different kind of treatment? and the last part is is it coincidental there were certain kinds that occurred at the same time? thank you. >> very quickly i think that

is a terrific question i don't want people to leave here to think there is no hope for any of us. it is more if you spend a lot of time studying issues about race and ethnicity on the one hand to a there is a genuine need for people to get information doctors want to help people but there are moments where their racial rescission of the system becomes more apparent than others so then what happens with the black male population it is framed around the unless it changes in the way it has to do with biology ball so politics so i argue the reason why

people saw a black man as crazy they were afraid of them there in the streets protesting and this language of insanity became quite literally to incarcerate the black men but not taking seriously the threats and to get back, it was being politicized of the status quo. so we're saying that it is important to get treatment and help and talk to your doctor's but be aware always of the politics of the health care system that can shape those disparities. >> we're at the end of this wonderful conversation and i really appreciate the audience participation because you helped to raise the conversation.

please give a hand to the panelists to five. [applause] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

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>> down from the links to induce auditorium here at the schomburg center you were just watching the panel on science and health and coming up next we will be talking about drugs in society. we'll be taking calls after the presentation here but now we're pleased to be joined by dr. harriet washington one of the panelist on the science and health panel. the jury have callers windup dr. washington there was a lot of politics involved in

this discussion. why is that? >> guest: when it be clarify i am not a doctor. >> host: i apologize. >> guest: it has changed in the safeway and we often find abuses in the medical sphere that parallel those of the political sphere with segregation medically in today's we still struggle with the disparity of the medical system. >> host: as the author of two books the most recent i am sorry "deadly monopolies" she won the 2007 national book critics circle award for her book medical apartheid.

and now it is your turn to talk with harriet washington starting with washington d.c. >> caller. i appreciate what you have done with what they do with other databases and with some of the and other medical institutions with the simplistic idea of paralysis or spinal cord injury they're hesitant to

make a diagnosis and then to have the colleagues to look at this and what could this possibly be? day have comments about that? >> guest: ion negative did you were suffering with the spinal cord injury. those sartorius lead difficult and they're very difficult and life-threatening but it is important to remember a great deal of research and progress is being done.

also with the stem cells but that is not the only thing but also a great deal of work is done and i urge you that if you are part of the team speaker with your own concerns to find out realistically that could be done that is not being done in there wish to the best. >> host: he also brought up nih what about that? >> unfortunately has to do mostly with mental health research by so i don't have expertise in your area but i do know it is a mosaic with very dedicated people they're working very hard

but also there are a few bad apples so in general i think it is suing a very good job but the question that is always a part how would you allocate resources? with a finite amount of money in deciding where that will go is always a political struggle. there are those you may want to associate yourself. >> host: the next call is from new york. >> caller:. >> i have been listening of the conversation that is going space. i am in nursing assistant and i can say that racism

racism, and to with the is states icy a place that i can work the ted is you grow up to take care of your elders. but i tried to get it appealed. [inaudible]

>> host: we got the point. in a regressive fines racism and in the local communities >> guest: yes. sometimes that can work against you. also there is strength in numbers i would urge you to find an organization of people in the area of the expertise if you do not have a black organization than whenever racist because it this is not the first time they having counter the issue for those who have the money the is the employment lawyer but i would strongly urge you to ally yourself with those organizations to get behind you to help find the employee you are entitled to.

>> host: the author of two books one of which won the 2007 national book critics circle award the next call comes from alabama. >> caller: a white male gentile able bodied person from the southeast of might to mental disorders also born as a mild epaulets -- epilepsy and i have also been diagnosed with a book aspergers. >> host: to have a question and? to make even people is more

serious problems with art therapy and music therapy i am concerned what may have been to them with corporate pattern said efforts to repeal obamacare or those i have questions that does obamacare cover mental illness and if so what changes does it make with federal or state government or the for-profit insurance companies are like a nonprofit. >> host: we have to leave it there. >> guest: good question about obamacare. it represents a huge step forward with the treatment of mental illness but in terms of the things that separate people from good

care so one is insurance what i think should be have been done that mandate those who cannot afford to pay for egad it and those who cannot agree steve it and it is a brilliant move and a strange relationship so that is very important. many people with minty -- mental health issues they could not change jobs with obamacare because they could not afford the health insurance and it can be difficult so now this will offer relief so it will be a huge positive for the mental-health issue on that score only. >> host: how did you get into this field? >> i was in premed that then

found this guy was too easily distracted so i became a writer instead a and i have a lot of fun undergoing the training that i had to have with the harvard school of public health and medical school was trading at ephesus to be a good medical writer also grade jobs is science editors was good but real grounding came right after graduation from college with as a lab technician, working in the emergency department because then you see things in the unvarnished way in the people that work there is very open and to show me their own misgivings and what they want to do for patients but couldn't or i

did see some racial imbalance the way people were treated and was the obsession to want to know more so it has been informative to me. >> host: is talking to you harriet washington can the next panel is ready to begin >> with the organization designed to empower people but the signature initiative is the project you're in for a wonderful conversation of two individuals the title is the road to discovery that will be moderated by the professor of journalism e.r.

shipp and will speak with dr. carl heart so enjoyed the conversation. [applause] >> can everybody hear the? dr. hart, you lay a heavy one on us with the book "high price" i want to raise the issues of what people are curious about start with the title itself in what is the high price and who pays it? >> the key for coming out i need you to be doing something else on this hot day so thank you for joining us. "high price" the title seven

of you may have heard of the publicity around the book and the first tenured african american scientist at columbia and with that is the case one must pay the price is in the book i say the prices too high it is one hell of a toll to take on someone and folks who are coming up subsequently am trying to show people to decrease the price for other people who look like me if they want to become a scientist. when we think about what we're doing in this country. i steadied drugs of abuse by the way on rethink about what we're doing with policy some of you know, unless

you have that under a rock that our drug policy disproportionately affects black men and what i say in terms of policy is the price is too high for our community. and is on drug policy. >> host: that is what i thought you were trying to get us to think about but in many ways you say the black boy pays the highest price as what you call misdirected policy and the target blacks disproportionately from the obsession like cocaine and opiate and marijuana.

bad science and police and media hype? do i have a right? >> i was struck by the passage over my 20 plus years of drug research has taught me many important lessons but perhaps none more important than this. drug effects are predictable as you increase the dose there is more potential for toxic effects so the boy is mint art -- in church with the police are not predictable so why worry that may of the children will be targeted by law enforcement because they fit the description of a drug

user or someone that they're under the influence. too often one ends up dead in the you mentioned trayvon martin. what can you tell us about that? you said you'd prefer to have your son interact with drugs than law-enforcement? >> guest: i should give you background. i have been studying drugs for 23 years now. part of my research today is actually bring people to the laboratory to administer drugs like cocaine and marijuana and methamphetamine to study the effects exactly of what they do and what they don't do and of course, we pass all ethical requirements. as i have pointed out, i have learned many important

lessons. some of those often conflict with what you have been told. one of the things that i try to do is show "the reader" how they have been lied to by a wide range of people including the government and scientist tim law-enforcement about drugs. the thing that i know about drugs is the drug's effects are predictable so we know when the bad effects are more likely and positive effects are more likely. many think of the environment we have created created, and the environment that created the disparity that we treat crack cocaine more harshly we have all said that drugs were

destroying our community. that is all lie. unemployment was out of control before crack cocaine was introduced but we accepted the easy answer indri went with such intensity that law enforcement thought they had licensed to come into the community to do whatever they would to my children or your children or so forth so i try to explain how this happened so when i say i prefer to have my kids interact with drugs as opposed to law enforcement i know how to keep my kids safe with drugs there are many things we know how to do in the quarter to decrease the harm that i explain in the book but i don't know how to keep our kids safe with particular

officers with these young males interacting because of the testosterone and the ego gets out of control been you end up with things like trayvon martin and the kid who was killed in the bronx. so all of this in the name of drugs being so awful i'm here to tell you that the drug czar not the enemy. we know how to do these safe. >> let me pick up on that point and with the communities such as harlem throughout new york city to say it is not the problem is difficult to swallow when we look around and things seem to be associated with the use of drugs so tell me why we should not be so upset.

>> want to major i am clear them not to be reckless you don't get to be my position to be reckless that doesn't happen especially looking like i look. [laughter] [applause] so what i mean when i say that drugs and not the problem, what i mean is let me give you statistics when we think about drugs like cocaine coming 80 and 90 percent of the people who use it including crack cocaine don't have a problem. they go to work, they pay their taxes and are responsible individuals. the same is true for other drugs but you do have a small percentage who have problems and that should be taken seriously but if the vast majority don't have a

problem than that tells you it is not the pharmacology of the drug those other things, we go with there lack of skills, lack of job and a wide range of things we tried to work on in the '60s and '70s seeing is that society has abandoned that is when i tell my personal stories so you can know that i am not perfect, lord knows i sold drugs and i did drugs not as a badge of honor to be proud of but i say this so you know, that i made mistakes and i have done okay in this society. in fact, the guy in the white house has done marijuana and cocaine and the one before him has done mayor one of widely suspected of cocaine and

before him bill clinton did marijuana. >> he did not inhale. >> keyes said he did not inhale. but they are more typical of drug use they and what you have been told them what you think. not to sated people don't have problems because there are those said to me and it is a small percentage in the way we deal with the problem is not the current drug policy because that means too many people in jail. >> host: i want to stay with trayvon martin for a niche because we even know today there are protests over the country. reaction to the verdict of the acquittal and the george zimmerman case one week ago thousands of people are protesting and on the eve

yesterday president obama gave a very emotional speech where he said he could have been trayvon and talk about the difficulties of being a black male in the united states and also had some sense of solution that what you think about what he said to identify the problem that black males have? >> i have to be very careful because there are a lot of people whose support the president that i want to buy this book. [laughter] on the one hand i think the president deserves props to come out and say something

and he must be under tremendous pressure from both sides. so i appreciate the pressures under which he has to deal. on the other hand,, i listened to the speech carefully and he gave evidence of the racial discrimination the two pieces of evidence the disproportionate numbers of brothers and sisters in the criminal-justice system and the disproportionate numbers of people arrested for drugs. if you look around the country and those under eight times more likely to be arrested for marijuana even though their use it more than look at the crack cocaine disparity and we go 85 or 90% of those two are

arrested are black even though they don't use it to so the pieces of evidence that the president gave for racial discrimination and is supported by a plethora of data but yet i newsstand he is not thought this through completely but if there was no comment of drug policy in the proposed solutions but in an "high price" i propose with the country could do with the high numbers of black boys and men if you get a felony the likelihood of getting a job and you are black is very low. slew to deal with this impediment to stop giving

them the blemish and i argue in "high price" we should decriminalized the drug it is not legalization it is still illegal but it is so we do with alcohol i am not proposing that because this decriminalization accusal drugs you are still subjected to the same penalty as before but given that 80% or more of our rest for drug country is in possession i argue with people are caught with possessing drugs they get the equivalent of a traffic violation and not a criminal offense. this isn't new we already doing in some states with marijuana. portugal has decriminalized all drugs since 2001. it works.

i was disappointed at some level there was no comment on drug policy when we know it is the reason why they are caught up in the criminal justice system in the first place. . .

>> i like that. in some ways that seems, we have about 50 minutes before we open up for q&a, but it seemed to get some sort of the attention between the black church and those who socialize american citizens as a primer state of producers, american democrats, very education programs. at the same time there's the broader claim of critiquing the way in which kings rule. so i wonder, all of you are invested and have strong critiques, the limit of black churches, but you all engage