institution, white people would say, well, there just aren't any people of color here. i would think about the fact that there's a cafeteria full of black folks and hispanic folks waiting on them. i was like wait a minute. [applause] let's start right there. isn't our academic community everybody, everybody who makes our institutions run smoothly? let's start there. and begin to look differently at the frame. we can talk about why all the people of color are on the bottom. but at least we change our perception of the frame. so partially in thinking of how you heal wounds of separateness in a specific location, you have to have the specifics of that location. i mean i know that part of kelly brown douglas and other people wanting to bring african studies here in a more firmly institutionalized way is to have

that academic base that affirms, you know, our struggle for change. i think that is a feminist. i think the feminist movement has been amazing. one of the places where it's been amazing is in the classroom. think of all the male professors around our nation who are teaching a work by a woman, who 20 years ago would not have considered putting a female on their syllabus. that's an amazing revolution to me. we talk so badly about feminism that we forget what happened for many of us as a consequence. the next feminist political movement for justice in the academy. another question over here. i'm going to hear questions, maybe a couple of questions and answer them together. your name. >> i'm a sixth grade teacher. >> welcome. >> thank you so much. >> we like those sixth grade

teachers because you're doing the hard work. [applause] >> i was privileged enough to see the chuck davis dancers and sweet honey and the rock recently and it brought back to me the importance of healers and healing. i wanted to thank you for being one of those healers, to kind of free up some of those hardened spaces of going day-to-day doing the same thing and sprinkling rain on the desert of status quo. i wanted to say that to you. thank you for being a healer. my question, i'm not quite sure what it is, but it has to do with black people going to other countries as james baldwin did. i'm considering relocating to thailand because i taught english there last year. the idea that for black people to really know how beautiful and powerful they are, they need to be outside of this country for at least a limited time.

so i'm asking you to speak to that and what place black folks deciding to go into exile have for community and for individual. >> i don't think that we have to leave this nation to claim our self-esteem, to claim our power. we may choose to leave to be able to live in a different environment. that's a different question altogether. my people, my people, we have to claim our self-esteem right here. you know, when i was reading all the baldwin stuff, i was thinking about baldwin and i was pained because we all know that baldwin struggled with alcohol addiction his entire life. i thought about the sense of being -- that's why i said in my early part of my talk that he was a troubled spirit. so that what we see that not even leaving and living in exile really allowed him to tend to the moods, the -- the traumatic

wound. one of the things i write so much about in "rock my soul" is post traumatic stress that many black people experience from loss. if you study baldwin, he had an early feeling of loss, early emotional violence. i want to read you a passage where in creating love, psychotherapyist bradshaw highlights the reality that the abused child often enters a transstate, one of hyper vigilance. in such a state, a child may experience panic attacks, overreaction or excessive worrying. he further states, a child with unresolved trauma is frozen in time. when any experience resembling the old trauma occurs, the old trauma is activated. according to bradshaw, abuse survivors learn that relationships are based on power

control, secrecy, shame, isolation and distance. these traits accurately describe the way many black folks, female and male, think about relationships. anger and rage are often the primary emotions that are expressed in intimate relations between black people, thus intensifying and normalizing black on black emotional violence. i read that because i feel that we see in baldwin this incredible intellectual mind that still had soul healing he was not able to accomplish in his lifetime. i think that for black people who seek to live elsewhere, the alidurlnt thing is that you ..r you are. and that we have to make this country a place where our soul healing can occur, whether we change the system of imperialist white supremacy patriarchy or

not. singing that song in church, are you well and whole, are you free? i'm thankful i can be here as a daughter of baldwin, a spiritual daughter who is whole, self loving and who didn't have to go somewhere else to move away from the trauma, the reenactment trauma. i was so struck rereading baldwin. how much he talked about the pain of being a black man in this nation. how much he talked about not being able to get away from the pain of dehumanization and the brutality and how everywhere he turned sometimes it was squeezing him and feeling that whiplash that he talked about. you know, of whiteness. he was able to relieve that pain by living in exile. but he was not made whole. do you hear me?

he was not made whole. and it is to honor his legacy that many of us are striving to create the conditions right here right now. as a buddhist teacher says, right where we are. where we as black people can recover our souls and be whole. i think we have to go wherever in the world it delights our spirit, but the work of whole making has to be done wherever you are, you know. that was a long-winded thing. i will take a few questions and then we're going to close. i know it's getting time for me to close. i'm mindful of that. come on up, honey bunny. >> i am an educator. i teach sociology. when i teach about issues that you bring up in your books, a lot of students -- a lot of my students who come from privileged backgrounds have a

hard time listening to those kinds of ideas. and when i talk about it, i just can't bring myself to talk about it in a removed fashion because i live in a world that breaks my heart. i don't know how to sometimes deal with my own emotions about the political climate that is going on in the classroom without turning people off. i'm wondering how you challenge your students without alienating them. >> i think that goes back to the challenge of starting where people are. i like to ask students -- in this new book about teaching, i talk about the fact i have worked a lot in the public schools in the last few years and because of these children's books, i do like classrooms that now have 43 and 4 and 5-year-olds. it's starting where people are. we go to students in the places where they live and think and dream. that's what we have to work with.

a lot of times those of us who are progressive educators, we want to jump in and we want students to come where we are. we want them to get it, get it quick and be where we are rather than instead go where they are. that is to say i think what is it about the life you lead that you hold dear. what is important to you? i find this in teaching men about sexism and patriarchy. that a lot of times when you try to tell them what it is, they say in the space of resistance, but if you go into the space of how do you want to be treated, what makes you feel good in life how do you feel when someone is yelling and screaming at you, what do you think about if you think about yourself being raped you know, what do you think about when you think about yourself -- these heterosexual men, what do you think about when you think of having sex in the act.

does that seem cool to you? there's a great essay by karen finley where she does this thing about straight men who want to have sex with women and have anal sex. she says i'm all for it, let's start with me giving you anal sex. let's see how open you are to it. there, again, is that challenge of people where they are. if you think this is maybe painful or dangerous for you, then maybe you have to think about maybe it's painful -- i'm not anti-anal sex, let me say this. anal sex without protection is one of the quickest ways to spread h.i.v. i say this because there have been a lot of epidemics in our nation of h.i.v. among teenagers in certain pockets, in college campuses because of people having unprotected anal sex that males want to have, heterosexual males. you know, that was like throwing

out there that sense of going where people are rather than trying to convince them, you know. rather than saying how do you feel about this in relation to your body? what do you want to have happen to your body? that's what i mean by going to people where they are. your question? >> the nature of my program is the students come out of school to do this program one day a week. they miss about a half day of school. many of the students are seriously deficient in one or more of their subjects. one thing i struggle with is is this the best thing for these students? is it the right thing to take them out of school and miss this time to do these activities? >> i think that if we give care. one of the things i said consistently in the love book and "rock my soul," you can give a child care or love and that

may be the catalyst. one moment of someone believing in you. i can't tell you how many times somebody comes up to me and says i was a little girl that you took the time to speak to in the airport at such and such a place and you, you know, spent that moment with me. i think that part of what i have learned from buddhist practice is that teaching moments happen in so many ways. you may be teaching with the strength of your love of justice. you could be playing ball with somebody who doesn't read very well, but if you are inspiring them to have greater self-esteem you may be empowering them to seize the opportunity to grow when it comes. there again, it's hard for us in the culture of quick change, you know, make everything right right away to be able to think something you are doing, like the work you are doing may have far-reaching consequences. i have so much opportunity to sit and listen to the dalai lama

who lives in exile and have known great holocaust. to see them talk about glory in small things and small revolutions. we are such a nation that wants the splash. we want the big thing. we want the big change. we don't want to enjoy the work you may be doing may be having meaningful consequences. remember in teaching to transgress, i talk about that. sometimes we do work that may not appear rewarding or exactly right at the time we're doing it and then later we find out it has such incredible ripple effects for people in their lives. you know, even that image of the black boy reading. it has had such an incredible effect on lots of black boys, but there was a part of me that didn't want to go against the system to get that image there. the last couple of questions and then i'll close. be quick.

i'm going to take all those questions quickly. i want to hear them all and then i will close. >> good evening. it's been a long time since i was a college student. i'm a physician and my speciality is family practice. you touched on so many things tonight, you know, just starting off with refusing to make peace with mediocrity. the thing that really grabbed me was your mention of your book spiritality in teaching and developing a sense of community. as a primary care physician -- >> you going to be quick with this? >> i often have to teach medical students, young physicians in training and i have a strong belief in care of the soul. the bottom line is i want your book so i can use it in what i do. >> thank you.

i'm going to hear that row and go to that row. >> i was wondering if you could speak to racial guilt. do you understand what i'm saying? because i'm not black, i can't understand the struggles that african-americans have gone through. >> ok. that's a good one. >> i'm a musician. my question is kind of about music. i listen to a lot of hip-hop. a lot of stuff like cool keith, n.w.a. i think i'm this white guy sitting here listening to this stuff. is there more subconscious things going on with that? >> it's warping your spirit. >> that's why i was happy when i discovered dead pres. that's an anecdote to the ma

sopblg any and self hatred that skaoupls the hip-hop scene in this country. >> i won't be able to answer all of these. but at least we get to hear them. >> i'm la tina. grew up in this country. for a long time the black and white mentality helped me find myself but lose myself within it. i want to see how you yourself have been able to both accept it be realistic in it but move beyond it to a universal human level. >> notice how we're getting all the deep, profound questions when there's no time. >> this is probably too broad to go into at the close. i just wanted to know if you could comment on how stereotypes and degradation of certain cultures have been embedded into the persona of minority cultures

where it's the preferred identity. black women prefer straighter hair. >> ok. >> my question is that we're all aware of the fact that the children are our future. i was wondering how do we transcend the racial stereotype when racism is seen everywhere. for example, in disney, the only place in which you see black people is when they are portrayed as animals. >> first of all, i want to say to everyone here at goucher, you must be doing something right because many students have gotten up to boldly and courageously ask their questions. i do this a lot so i know how often students hesitate. so congratulations to all of you who are clearly educating as a practice of freedom because people feel like it's ok to make

their voices heard. some quick sound bite things. i think one of the most vile representations of capitalism and imperialism is harry potter. if the books were written by a white man, people would have been all over the books critiquing sexism. think about the fact that one appears to be smarter than harry but she's an untouchable. she's never going to be able -- one of the truly chosen. think of the politics of who was chosen and who is not. think about the fact that the chosen people and kind of, you know, put harry together with george bush, the chosen people get to kill and do whatever they want to in the name of being good and chosen so that there's a tremendous amount of violence. think about the fact that the incredibly -- the self-hating character looks like tkpwapbdy

from the neck down. within buddhism, think about how you have in that character, the brown character the intersection of animal and human. so we have the disrespect of animals yet again, of that which is deemed not human. it's so deep. i'm not trying -- we talked earlier, the students and i, how we can hold enjoyment of harry potter at the same time to have critical awareness. i throw that out as a text. don't you find it interesting. think about a harry potter book and think if a white man had written them. how critical people would have been. but somehow because they can be thrown out, that this woman has written them, people have not been as critical of the enormous violence in the film. i think it's one thing to read a book where people are being hit and it's another thing to visually see that. i wanted to go back to the whole question that the fact that we're bombarded every day.

hahn teaches us in buddhist practice that we have to be vigilant about what types of images we take into our imagination and people who are watching television all day in this nation are taking in the images of imperialist white supremacy capitalist patriarchy and being affected by it. whether you want to be or not. this is especially poignant when it comes to children. the teaching of violence to boys through mass media. my next two books are about masculinity. i have been very concerned that feminist theory dropped the ball where men were concerned, that we didn't go far enough, that we didn't really offer men liberating visions of masculinity. we see the resurgence of a sreur lent, dangerous patriarchy. it's reminding us that we didn't do our work as feminist

theorists. i'm talk being men and women. it's difficult to imagine beyond the patriarchy. i'm going to close by saying that toni morrison wrote something recently about the fact that she's working with a lot of children who are incredibly smart and they can do anything on the computer but they lack the power to imagine. when i think about, you know, books that have changed my life, i think of "man's search for meaning" and i think about how much he talked about how the imagination helped him survive the holocaust experience. when he talks about the imagination of the face of his wife and the tenderness that they shared. you know how when you have the books that have raised your consciousness and you go back to them -- i go back to that book

periodically in my life and you see him writing about love in a very similar way to james baldwin, the power of love to transform our lives, to heal us. i mean think about martin luther king saying i'm not talking about love as a sentimental force, i'm talking about love as that force that leads us to be on behalf of our survival and connectedness. so i think about the prophetic imagination. i do want to close with baldwin again talking about the prophetic imagination. what we cannot imagine will not come into being. i want to share in closing that i think particularly because as intellectuals and academics, we have been particularly guilty of we love to focus on what is wrong. we love deconstruction. we can talk about what is wrong from sun up to sundown. we have a real problem when it

comes to the imagination of what's useful, positive, what we might use to change things. i found that in writing the new book, i wanted to theorize the positive, what has worked, but i found it was a lot easier to talk about what doesn't work than to actually talk to people about what has worked in your life, to ask my aging, fundamentalist christian parents what have they learned from me, what have i taught them, have they been able to let go their agism in parenting, their disciplining and punishing to receive something from me as a thinker and intellectual. what we cannot imagine cannot come into being. so that in part it's crucial that we identify what is troubling, what is wrong, but it is also even more crucial that

we begin to imagine the worlds that we want to be in, the worlds of peace and happiness and joy, that the dalai lama writes about in "the ethics of a new millennium." thank you for allowing me to celebrate the life and work of james baldwin. [applause] >> visit booktv.org to launch a new the programs use the online. type the author or book title in the search bar on the upper left side of the page and click search.

you can also share anything you see on booktv.org easily by clicking share on the upper left side of the page and selecting the format. book tv streams live on line for 48 hours every weekend with top nonfiction books and authors. booktv.org. >> now visit the battlefield that little bighorn. book tv spoke with local author on the recent visit to montana with the help of our cable partner charter communications. >> i have found this battle to be one of the most remembered in american history. it seems to have one of a handful of battles that even gets to fund history in high school can remember and get right and us something about. even if what they know is incorrect. they know something about it. and even nationally in traveling to other countries, people say montana, all, that is where

custer rose from. that is the beginning of a conversation a lot of times. a surprising conversation. this is a battle with international significance. d. little big horn was june 205th 1976. building four days, weeks and months. and the climactic actions of the battle were a few hours that afternoon. leading up to it was a struggle over land, as most of these indian wars, a land at the base of it. in this case 1868 treaty at fort laramie between the united states government and the lakota nation and recognized the claim to most of western south dakota and additional land in montana and wyoming. and that was fine in 1868, but a

few years later gold was discovered in the black hills and the united states government decided it wanted to renegotiate the treaty by force if necessary. that is what the army was out here doing, trying to compel the indians to come in to the agency's and renegotiate that treaty to concede more of the land. custer attacked, came from the east across over into the valley of little bighorn, had a long ride that day. he was trying to be sure to catch the indians before they found him, discovered him and he was afraid that there would disperse. so he tried -- he was aiming for a surprise attack. he had a problem in that he would have provide -- he would have preferred a dawn attack. it was about 3:00 in the afternoon.

he split his forces into three groups. when attacked, one day it's getting to the south, and custer himself in the largest body of soldiers maintained their position on the ridge. overlooking the indian village. his actions have remained someone of a mystery, and that is part of the ongoing mystique of the battle. but from the indian point of view they met an attack from one direction and then moved to face this potential attack from custer over here on last stand hill with a dramatic conclusion or at least for custer was. after the battle americans cried for revenge. there was a new round of fighting that lasted in fits and

starts for the rest of that summer and into the fall in the winter until finally by the next spring crazy horse and the largest band of lakota went to the reservation. sitting bull took a smaller number of sault with him to canada. so the united states government did, in fact can get its way. the treaty was renegotiated. and the lakota were forced, illegally most people conclude, to concede a large part of the black hills. as a illegally because that is still in the courts to this day under contention about the ownership of the black hills. i think the biggest misconception about the battle of little bighorn is the name usually applied to it, custer's last stand suggesting that custer was fighting a defensive action that day when, in fact, he was attacking a village.

the last stand has been really questioned by recent archaeological evidence and by seriously accounting for the indian narratives of the battle. so that changes the feel of it from custer's last stand to really the last stand of the northern plains indians, the last major victory for northern plains indians. in addition to the myth of the last stand, one of the mets is that custer was overwhelmed by superior numbers. he was surprised and then overwhelmed. of course, there were a lot of warriors here that day. more than he expected, but not that many more than he expected. so the idea that he was overrun by superior numbers is a bit of ayt