reconsidering american ideologies of racial justice is the subtitle. the author is georgetown law professor gary peller. professor, what is your theme and your goal in this? ..

>> today looking at the african-american community it should decide for itself but conservative leaders or action programs that -- have gotten perceived program so it seems we are in a crisis with no way for word. i set out to diagnose how we got here from the ideological place. what set of concepts and ideas and assumptions about race and justice in america that has led us to this stalemate and deadlock. so with my analysis of the roots from the ideological point of view could be fined

in the 1960's but not the conventional confrontation that people look to but the story of racial justice describes the 1950's and '60's as a confrontation between advocates and opponents of white supremacy, segregation and those of integration and enlightenment that it is just the arbour jury fact of individuals but the critical focus we know who won that confrontation with the liberals and progressives won out but there was another of how exactly racial justice should be understood. and that part of the confrontation has been neglected of conventional

understanding with racial and my image and that within the community of advocates between those who advocated integration as a way to understand first is those who advocate what i call black nationalism the thought of malcolm x stoically carmichael various formations of the black panther party and in my argument what happened was a wide spectrum of the might and culture was through a

lens that is of black nationalism as equal to white supremacy as if the advocates were just like the white segregationist and that equation was based on the idea what was in common was the racist idea that it made a difference not just the arbitrary characteristic of skin color. so with this lends all the rational ways to think become equated so to be nondiscriminatory that serves to equate the situation of women, sexual minorities, in the group is similar with respect they have also been discriminated against.

in that vision is the integrationist fission rooted in people's thinking for wrong thing but they make a mistake and prejudging based on skin color that achieves a social for based on the idea is rather than apply equal treatment as employers discriminate and that is institutional with jim crow practices until the 1950's or 60's. but when it is not understood as another form of racism is of those

assumptions and the first and most important from my perspective is contesting the idea the neutrality is a real possibility so the very idea of racism is from the black nationalist prospective the consist of the distribution of power and prestige and wealth then this social form rather than imagining in nonexistent way to retreat everyone equal regardless of race has been understood as a mass subordination of one group to another.

the solution is not equal treatment by reparation. then from the institutional form a of its individualized consciousness based racism the black nation nazis one nation colonizing another they were conceptualize to form the internal quality in the united states administered by the external occupying force. what i think it is appealing about the black nationalist position is the starting point assumption that race really does matter. i think it is a false assumption far what is

apologetic to understand racism in a in a superficial way us more of our society. so the black nationalist position in the difference of nationality to have us separate history from white americans and north america. they have a particular history much is subordination but have a greater community worth preserving that basically

imagines the black community should cease to exist with integration of but in the words as called a painless genocide as mainstream to into majority white institutions. added that is it in a nutshell, they embrace the division of justice that has the amount so with legal education teaching at the university of virginia school of law until the late 1960's never say die through the state of virginia when i got there in the early '80s it was formally integrated with no racial exclusion but it was understood to take

down the white own the science to allow black students to matriculate with the assumption that everything else that would remain the same as that supremacy ideology is consistent with justice and the rule of law of of racial apartheid of america as if those institutional practices only involvement is the fact of the exclusion as opposed to into the texture or the of four rate of that institution. the debate over affirmative action is the controversy of a race in the talking heads

culture of american discourse. but affirmative action race conscious decision making back from the perspective if you did not prefer based on race and making decisions on objective basis that is fair to everyone. when i say integration is apologetic mirroring the critique of society, of what i've read is practices like the admission criteria went unchallenged because it was assumed the fact that american applicants with these kinds of standardized tests that is because they become less prepared.

that is the unfortunate consequences of our past. as opposed to the critical examination whether the ls 80 should be used as admission criteria if it has a disproportionate impact. the justification has been neutrally tested it does correlate with performance of the first year. but this is the manner that i am arguing the integration has not worked to defend to keep from kentucky -- critique because the practice of the first year of law school were developed in the era of apartheid that they would justify a separate but equal as legal and consistent with the province of equal protection of the law. to use the first year of law

school as the correlation or the base to judge the accuracy seems to dispute a very narrow vision than the real justification that is the complete circle to justify racial segregation that means their radical transformation before it should be used you justify if richard criteria. so that is an example of the basic limitations of integrationist ideology. >> host: professor you laid out the problem in your book "critical race consciousness" to lay out a solution?

>> guest: i think the solution is a radical turning of the i of our existing gray's help redistribute wealth and power and prestige. i talk about the manner in which the practices are presented as neutral and legitimate and fair to all but it is also not true from other perspectives. i think the situation of african-americans points to other communities in america. it is time to critically questions of sham ideology that distributes wealth and nauseating lee in american society it is time for communities to join other

economic subordinate to the days to overthrow the power. i help critical thought can be some kindling to start a flame to reignite a march 4 justice the likes we have not seen over many decades. >> host: when you were going through school in the '60s and '70s did he seek integration was of good thing? >> i gravimeter georgia i started school with segregated schools i have the typical liberal views that i described. islanders stand will be the people embrace these but i did not have any knowledge access to the alternative way to think about it i

describe it to be articulate with my vision but it goes back to the early bid the teeth century in the african-american community. but i do understand that it looks like integration was on the faculty of my high school by putting african-americans and similar positions of the legitimate authority. so if you go through as a high-school student tuesday they have too much power, it is not necessarily a sign of progress there are a legitimate forms better be exercised by a more dire for

-- a diverse authorities again this is a problem that i describe. and some haitians it is a critique of american institutions with a the paradigm with a the rhetoric never suggesting that as a radical critique that he transformed with the civil-rights movement when they went into the town, the town was not thinking this is some minor revision the southern towns and skidded -- city's new is more than

and the status quo. >> host: gary peller what do you teach? >> guest: contracts boards, a criminal law, a constitutional law, economics, radical legal thought, and several other subjects. >> host: you touched on this but "critical race consciousness" how does this come out with some of? >> guest: the book "critical race consciousness" one of the articulations of the approach to questions that start at the academy and critical race theory starts a movement questioning the protection doctrine questioning of the false claims of neutrality i am

part of a much larger group of scholars embraced with the critical race theory making these kinds of critiques. >> host: another term we have today is multi-cultural. how does that play? >> guest: i think it should be understood as an important refinement to the '60's version of integration that i described it is the individualist that race doesn't matter isn't it is to what i articulate as the nationalist position between people. but the manner in which will biculturalism was institutionalized took its

radical possibilities because it is a decorative you of our identity that we should appreciate each other differently and differences with the uncritical use. sometimes that female genital mutilation and other groups in africa is a tradition that need to be remedied or simply differences to be celebrated. but the multi-cultural list movement for white liberals and progressives allies of racial justice that to a

site that false sense we are free to do as replays it gives the self-contained entity so has then fed into on the part of white liberal sam progressives of the african-american community should take care of itself as a right to integrity would be colonialist to interfere. of the false base of that is in the communities regardless of differences it exists today in north

america is a dialect relationship with the gender relations the courts are heavily influenced by the history of slavery and apartheid and also within the dominant white community with the give-and-take of other communities to establish their differences struggling for survival. >> host: we have been talking with georgetown law professor gary peller "critical race consciousness."

>> host: join the us now is the author of this book on constitutional disobedience from georgetown university is the of law professor, a professor are you saying it is time to throw out the constitution? [laughter] >> first of all, thank you for having me. i think the idea is right almost everybody i know thinks it is wrong my wife, my kids but it is

surprising so many people think it is wrong when you think about it we are talking about a document over 200 years old written at a time when the united states looks nothing like what it looks like today with a republic huddled along the eastern seaboard dependent on slave labor when communications were difficult and troubled was treacherous it was a document written by people who had been the had no compunction about owning the other zero human beings that women had no role to play in public affairs and fought people without property should not vote it is bizarre that we should decide modern public policy

based on what they thought a long time ago. here is another way to make the point as a thought experiment a president or a senator or if you're a supreme court justice or in american citizen and you have a big decision of public policy. i assume you are a responsible person you spent a lot of time thinking about this and talking to other people carefully considering them moral implications after were all done you decide to write