don't worry about it, we'll laser it out. i just don't think i want this. i just don't think it's for me. and then he looks at many he and says, dan, what's wrong with you? do you enjoy looking nonsymmetrical? do you get some pleasure from looking different? now, he was my doctor for three years. he did many, many operations on me, but i didn't do everything he suggested. this was the first time he was trying to give me a guilt trip over a treatment. i anyway, i left his office, i went to his deputy, i said what's going on? his deputy said they've done it for two patients, and they needed a third for an academic paper. i was a really good candidate because half the face burned, half not. now here's the thing. it's easy to say this is a bad physician, but he was a wonderful physician. he was my physician for three years. you see this half an eyebrow here? i lost it. it got burned. and he wanted to fix it, and i

couldn't care less about fixing half an eyebrow. i had so many things wrong with me, half an eyebrow didn't bother me. i said you know what? when i go for the next operation on my head, you can do the eyebrow at the same time. i went for an operation, so he couldn't do it at the same time. he had to wait for nine hours for them to finish, and then he starts operating. and you think it's an easy operation, you just take some hair and plant it, no. if you just plant some hair, it would die. so he took a doppler machine, he tracked blood vessels all over my held, he eyeslated a little blood -- isolated a little blood vessel all in microsurgery, redirected it and put it as an eyebrow. really complex, wonderful operation. took him about eight hours. so here's a guy who spent the whole day waiting for the operation to be over and then most of the night giving me half an eyebrow pause he really

cared -- because he really cared about symmetry, and he really cared about me. and he sadly died three years ago. and here's the thing, i can't think of him in anything but the most positive, endearing terms. but nevertheless, at that moment he wanted to tattoo my face because he wanted the paper out. and for me, this is an important lesson because it says it's not about being bad people, it's just about being people. and the moment we have these conflicts of interests and other motivations, a lot of bad behavior can happen. so if you look at wheat and you say -- wall street, and you say it's really easy to point fingers, these are just bad people, let's just replace them with somebody else. no. this is a system that actually has everything in it that will help people rationalize bad behavior. in fact, if you took all the things that's how people rationalize stuff, all of them hope is up on wall street. everybody else is doing it, multiple steps removed from

money, positive economic theory, rationality, i mean, all of those things. and, therefore, we need to think very differently about the system we're creating. you know, we are limited. we have all kind of irrational tendencies. and if we build a system that takes this into account, we will be better off. and if we build systems that ignore our irrationalities and assume that we're perfectly rational, we would have more and more failures like this. >> host: and we've been talking here on booktv with dan ariely, duke professor, author of three books. the most recent is this one, "the honest truth about dishonesty: how we lie to everyone, especially ourselves." thank you, professor. >> guest: my pleasure. >> and now on booktv another interview from booktv's college series. professor eduardo bonilla-silva talked about his book, "racism without racists," in which he argues we do not live in a postracial society. instead, he says we're now living in an age of color blind

racism that manifests itself in many ways, less overt than the racism experienced by past generations of non-white americans. this is about saw minutes. 15 minutes. >> host: and now joining us on booktv on c-span2 is eduardo bonilla-silva. professor silva, what do you type here at -- teach here at duke university? >> guest: sociology. >> host: and you are the chair of the department -- and your most recent week book racism without racists. racism without racists, what does that mean? >> guest: what i'm trying to address in this book is the idea that racism goes beyond the traditional views of those people who believe that racism is just about the klan and the neo-nazis and that we need to

understand that we call participate in racism in one way or another, and there is a new dominant racism out there in which people don't use their ideas of the past, but new ideas, new jargon, new language to defend be the contemporary racial order to. >> host: can you give an example? >> guest: i'm not a racist, but, and after the but people go crazy and say things that they probably believe strongly, but they -- i'm not a racist is like a buffer and allows them to go wild on racial matters because that becomes an excuse. a salvation, yeah? because you can go back to the disclaimer. didn't i tell you that i'm not a racist? didn't i tell you some of my friends are black? therefore, i can say all kinds of anti-black things. i also articulated new frames that have emerged in the post-civil rights era, something

i call abstract liberalism, yeah? so if i want to oppose all the policies we have enacted to alleviate racial inequality, primitive action, bossing and the like, and i don't want to look racist when i say something like i'm all for equal opportunity, that is why -- [inaudible] reverse racism, yeah? so that statement if you just read it and you're looking for the traditional use of the n-word or things like that, it doesn't appear, yeah? but i contend that it's abstract liberalism because assuming that we already reached parity and the line of equal opportunity is a mistake. we still have systematic disadvantage in terms of the labor market, the housing market, etc. so, again, the person may look nonracial, yet the statement ultimately endorses not doing anything about race inequality. >> host: but what if somebody is

simply opposed to affirmative action ask not because it's a racial issue? >> guest: that is called -- [inaudible] it has nothing to do with race. i don't believe that government should intervene on racial matters. the research on this shows that most of people who are polled -- [inaudible] than if you correlate them with a number of measures, they seem to be highly prejudicial of other matters. so opposing affirmative action itself is not the issue. it is claiming -- so if you say i oppose affirmative action because i oppose all government intervention, and this is not the reason that i examined this in my book, but people who do survey research have documented that the people who oppose that kind of intervention end up saying but i'm all for government intervention in other matters, yeah? so you cannot have it both ways. if you are against government intervention, it should be across across the board. but if you only oppose it on

racial or gender affairs, then we have an issue. >> host: when people disagree with president obama, is it racial? >> guest: not necessarily. i happen to, the last section of the book is a critique of the obama presidency which i see if an exceedingly contradictory way, has pushed forward the racial regime that emerged in this nation in the 1970s. so the class of jim crowe did not -- collapse of jim crow did not mean the -- [inaudible] it just meant a new regime. so going back to your question, so there is a legitimate opposition both the from the left as well as from the right to obama, but a lot of the position is based on the limits of the tea party, the birther moment, etc., that no evidence -- i can't provide all the evidence that let's oppose obama for the right reasons, but don't claim you oppose obama because he's not a legitimate american, yeah?

it clearly shows that is the case, he is an american. >> host: when you say the tea party, do you find the tea party to be racist? >> guest: segments of the tea party definitely have clearly shown their face, but they are in the traditional sense of racism. in this book i address not the 10% of white americans who subscribe to jim crow ideas, who would be more racialized, more open in their racial views. i address regular white folks, yeah? who want to be beyond race but have not done what needs to be done in america to truly go beyond race which is the only way that we can eliminate race from the societies, paying serious attention to race. so, again, seemingly contradictory way to go beyond race we have to go through race. we cannot ignore race inequality, yeah? if a black family earns one-twenty earth of the wealth of -- twentieth of white

families, you cannot complain we're living in a fair society. if a group of people -- [inaudible] they will ultimately end up losing most of the time, yeah? so what we need to do is eliminate this inequality, examine why do we have it and then develop the policies we need to finally go beyond race. but we cannot just say we are already beyond race. we elected a black president and, therefore, we reach racial nirvana because we're not there yet. >> host: so what is a policy solution that you offer? >> guest: at the end, i believe that social movements have been central to alleviate, improve race inequality in this nation. actually, social movements have been central to most of the significant advances of this country in terms of race, class and gender. so i advocate civilized

activists as well as the allies to go back to the civil rights tradition of social mobilization, of demanding things rather than what has happened in this nation the last 30 years which is that all of us have put all of our eggs in the electoral arena. and elections do matter, but elections ultimately will not and have never been the central way for us to advance our policy, the racial concerns. whether it is gender, race or classment we need people to be out -- class. we need people to be out there if we want to achieve race equality. >> host: so professor bonilla-silva, so we're out there in the street, we're protesting. what are we protesting? what do we want to happen? do we want higher taxes for whites? do we want more education, opportunities for african-americans and latinos? i mean, what's -- where are we headed? >> okay. so i'm a professor, so my job

technically is not to provide the path of how to get to the promised land, but i'm also a person of color and, therefore, i have a stake in improving our positions. do you know the book i offer my personal views of what needs to happen, and when i say that either we do enhance affirmative action, combined with systematic policing of scrum nation not -- discrimination, not only the old-fashioned discrimination, but also new-fashioned discrimination. let me explain. so we're still as a society focused on the overt discrimination, yeah? so when things happen like the murder of trayvon martin, we all arelaterred -- we are alerted that racism has not disappeared. but we don't need the extraordinary event of a trayvon martin or the many trayvon martins of the world to know that this happens. it happens every day in all sort of spheres.

for example, i go to a store, happens to me all the time. and often i'm either ignored because the assumption is that i don't have the money to purchase an item, or i'm viewed as a suspect and, therefore, i'm policed. and i'm being told as we were 50 years ago, get out of the store. now i am politely policed. and they ask me, may i help you? may i help you? may i help you. i no go by the rule of two. the first time they ask me in a nice way, i'm just looking. the second time, yes, i'm trying to steal this item, i was wondering if you could give me some pointers, and the response. >> from the clerk is something like -- i didn't mean it like that. yes, you did. if you didn't mean it like that, your response should have been what are you talking about, yeah? i travel across the nation lecturing, and when i use z this example, many white members of the audience come and tell me

when in my store what we do is this or that. so there are many ways of this new discrimination affecting stores in neighborhoods, yes, like what happened to the professor at harvard when he was in his own house suspected of breaking and entering his own house. a neighbor called, so think about that? and they were probably a regular white person. so a black-looking person going into this house, assumed he was another place. called the plus, the professor then tells them this is my house, here are my ids and ends up being arrested in his own house. so my concern is developing a plan of action to address not only old-fashioned discrimination, but the more killing me softly type of discrimination. if you kill me softly, i'm still dead,? so i don't care the way you kill me, with kisses or with guns, i'm still dead. so we need to develop a plan of action to deal with this new type of discrimination.

>> host: eduardo bonilla-silva, what does the term color blind mean to you? >> guest: well, we ought to remember that martin luther king told us that he wished to live in a society where people are judged by the content of their character and not by the color of their skin. the people who cite that today to ultimately defend not doing much about race inequality forget that after he wrote that, he also said, he talk about america has given us a lank check that i -- a blank check that i brought to the bank, and it came back with insufficient funds. so he was talking about a dream of the future. so like him, i aspire to leave a society where race doesn't matter, where race becomes a benign cultural formation. so i'm black-puerto rican, so i love rice and beans, and i hope to eat rice and beans all my life. but i hope my kids and grandkids are brought up in a society where it doesn't matter.

as a social analyst, i know the only way we can get to that society is not by doing what we do today which is claim that we have a black president, we don't need to do anything even though we have the data within every area of life, economics, politics, et, again, even having a black prime minister, we show inequality -- president. and what we do is say that has nothing to do with race. it has to do with class. it is the title of probably my next book. anything but racism, yeah? so whenever you say data inequality, incarceration rates, poverty rates, unemployment rates, they tell you it's not race. it is not race. it's something else. my answer is, it is race. >> host: your first book was "white supremacy and racism in the post-civil rights era." there are going to be people in the audience listening to you saying you are looking for a problem that doesn't exist. >> guest: well, i tell them what i tell my students. so is the problem offhand or

something like child abuse? we say let's not talk about because more we talk about it, the more we have the problem? we probably wouldn't say that. similarly with race, the idea that by just talking about it then we are problem makers is ridiculous. the problem is there, has been with us for 300 years. and rather than trying to hide it and sweep it under the rug, we need to have it in the open and have on the political side hopefully a national dialogue of this. but i also want to have people pushing for the rights, because this is the way that we have conducted business in this nation since its creation. when america began as a country, it was not like we americans were, went to the british and told them, hello. taxation without representation is still illegal. i am not advocating rebellion, but i'm saying historically people have pushed back to remedy the situations of

inequality and unfairness. so we have a civil rights revolution in the '50s and '60s, and maybe the 20th century will bring us another major social protest to finally reach the -- [inaudible] but we're not there yet. >> host: where were you raised? >> guest: i was born in the u.s. and raised in puerto rico, but for the audience, as you probably know, all party' januaries -- puerto ricans whether born in the u.s. as i was or raised in the islands as my brother and sister were are american citizens. >> host: automatically. >> guest: automatically. >> host: since -- >> guest: 1903. >> host: 1903. walk us from puerto rico, being raised in puerto rico to the chair of the sociology department. >> guest: it's a long, long trail. so, again, born in western pennsylvania as you can detect from my western pennsylvania accent -- [laughter] so as a baby, my parents took me

back to the island. i group up there. did my bachelor's degree in sociology in puerto rico and went to, of all places, wisconsin. happens to have the top department of sociology. one of the coldest places in the world. [laughter] so for me as a person raised in in the islands, it was a cultural shock in more than one way. i learn about this phenomenon called the wind chill factor. [laughter] quickly. quickly, yeah? so anyway, so i finish a ph.d. in 1993, and my first job was at university of michigan, ann arbor, then moved to texas a&m, college station. and nine years ago i came here, and now i'm the chair of the department. so interesting. but for those who in the audience i want to also be fair, yeah? this can be read as a success story, as a horatio alger story. it is not that. it has been a struggle to become

the chair of a department. it has been a struggle at every point. and as a person of color if you were to talk to most scholars of hour in the academy -- color in the academy, we all suffer still from stigma. even though i'm the chair of the department doesn't mean i'm beyond race. race affects my transactions every day not only in the department, but outside. outside the university i don't walk with a nine spatial looking black person with a nice west pennsylvania accent. so i navigate the academy as a plaque-looking person with latino accent where many of my colleagues are still, again, thinking that we're beyond race. and when i raise concerns about race inequality in the university, they give me the color blind nonsense. but i voted for obama, so -- i'm like, so what does that have to do with the fact that we have few minority faculty, few minority students, etc., etc.,

etc. >> host: eduardo bonilla-silva. his most recent book, "racism without racists." you're watching booktv on c-span2 from duke university. >> is there a nonfiction author or book you'd like to see featured on booktv? send us an e-mail at booktv@c-span.org or tweet us at twitter.com/booktv. >> we should have finished al-qaeda in 2001. our general who was there -- but more than just a general, i i think all of us. think back. we were attacked on 9/11. 3,000 americans died. more americans than died at pearl harbor. and we had al-qaeda, and we had osama bin laden trapped in some mountains called tora bora. we didn't finish 'em off. and then we let 'em escape over

the other side of the mountain because we said that's pakistani territory. oh, wait. think for a moment. can you imagine during world war ii when we had admiral -- [inaudible] stennis win the battle of midway, he sailed across the international kitline in the pacific -- dateline in the pacific and attacked the japanese. destroyed their fleet. 1942. he went across the international dateline. supposing he'd turned back and said, well, that's the international dateline, and japan has said if we don't cross the international dateline, we'll take this part of the pacific, you take that, and we'll live happily ever after. we get to the mountains in the middle of nowhere, and we allow al-qaeda to escape? makes no sense. our entire country had become more legalistic. of we should have gone and finished it right then. >> this month, booktv's book

club selection is bing west's "the wrong war." read the book and join in the discussion at booktv.org. and live, sunday may 4th, look for our next "in depth" guest, luis j. rodriguez, former gang member turned author and poet. his work includes the award-winning "always running" and his 2011 release, "it calls you back." find booktv every weekend on c-span2. >> megan mcardle argues that the u.s. is unique in its willingness to let its citizens and businesses fail and says that this is what's made the country successful. this hourlong program starts now on booktv. >> thank you, everybody, for coming. welcome to the american enterprise institute. i'm tim carney, i'm a visiting fellow here as well