[inaudible] [inaudible] [inaudible] [inaudible] >> book tv takes hundreds of other programs throughout the program all year long. here's a look at some of the events will be covering this week. on monday, monday, brady karl's host of npr weekend edition recalls how different presidents died and how they are remembered. then on tuesday, in washington

produced university history professor randy roberts examines the relationship between malcolm x and mohamed ali. on wednesday just blocks from the capital we'll be taking a tour of the folgers shakespeare library in anticipation of the 400th anniversary of the death of williams shakespeare. on friday we are back at politics and prose bookstore for signs journalist report on the spread of infectious diseases around the world over the past 50 years. that is a look at some of the author programs look to be as programming covering this week. many of of the events are open to the public. but for them to air in the near future on book tv on c-span2. >> now, new jersey senator cory booker discusses civic involvement and recounts experiences that shaped his

political thinking. he discusses his book, united, united with robert george of the new york post. >> host: senator booker, united, here we are in the middle of the more divisive presidential election years ever on both sides and you brought the book called united. why the title, why now? spee2? >> guest: first well, it is great to be here. it's great to be on the tv screen. i appreciate you being here and not making me feel in any way folic lead challenge. >> host: i shaved just yesterday. >> guest: make me feel good so i appreciate that. i ran for this office crisscrossed the state of new jersey and heard from people time and again, the lament that

our country was divided and there's so much gridlock in washington. the lament about the lines that were dividing our country and weakening it. i really wanted to speak to that because so much my personal personal experience growing up in an african-american family, tending black church, but also living in an all-white town i have been crisscrossing lines a lot. working in inner cities, going to sanford, yell, it showed me as a cross the divide how united we are. some of the leaders i had come in many coming from immunities like new york taught me the lessons of the urgency of breaking down these divide, or helping people rising conscious and understand the type that divide us our stronger than the ties that divide us. >> host: the book is like

cinematic in terms of zeroing in on interesting people and interesting moments in your life. tell us about virginia jones. >> host: she is a remarkable so that is revered in new york, even yesterday people were talking about her. for me i got my phd because of people like her. east harlem, but i decided to jump into newark coming out of law school and tried to find the most difficult street i could find and i moved in a place that was full of drug violence and and i move onto the street and my first reaction was, i was robbed my first moment there. there's an old saying when you come to all the let you know when you are about to step into

the dark space one of two things is going to happen, either you will find solid ground or the universe will give you people who will teach you how to fly. i met this woman who is tough and profoundly wise. she broke me down and rebuilt me. the first moment i had with her i went to talk with her, i'm cory booker out from yale law school and she just did not seem to care at all. with my arrogance i was you don't want my help? >> host: she had to lecture you. >> guest: she had to bless me and it did not feel like it was forthcoming. i remember this moment where she was frustrated with me and she took me to the middle of martin luther king boulevard and said what you see around you? and i described the crackhouse and a projects in a neighborhood and she said you can help me and she walked away and discussed. i ran after her and grabbed her

and said what? and she said you need to understand that the world use the outside of you is a reflection of what you have inside. if you see darkness and despair that's all there's going to be but if you're one of the stubborn people, every time you open your eyes you see hope impossibilities in love, you see the face of god then you can be someone who helps me. and then she just walked and i thought okay grasshopper that's a lesson. eventually i went back and i became correct now not -- i saw the problems i was victimized by crime but i went back now with humility and a willingness to surrender preconceived notions, surrender my agenda and plug into her and learn from her, she had me doing work in the beginning and i became like an apprentice to her and what was amazing to me is this woman showed a love and a grits and a capacity to care that i did not

fully appreciate until i was writing this book but her son was murdered in this building, and yet she still stayed there and she was leading. i traced the arc in the book and she never gave up. when i get emotional now is that eventually we became partners in taking on something that got convicted in federal court. the buildings spiral out of control because the city comes in and it was being run by a political opponent, chuck james. at the end of this writing this book think and i had a story to tell but i wanted to go back and interview and track down everybody who may have been around in the 90s who could tell me what they observed because i know what i remembered

safe and drug dealers, i went back to guys who are dealing drugs forgive me because there are much more than the worst things that they have done. so i find my coming out of prison, other tenant leaders, this is is what i found out about her it was very moving to me and she made me feel like i had to work really hard to earn her trust but one i heard from a leader and she said you got the story wrong, when you left one of your first meetings she turned to me and said that is my son. that so moved me. then when i'm interviewing the guys were dealing drugs one of them said at one point, he intervened and alleged that they decided i was a threat and they were going to shoot me. just a warning shot in the leg is that he put it. but they started tell me stories about how ms. jones.

>> host: this is when you had moved in to the projects. >> guest: she was telling these guys leave him alone and that she is aware that again got me very emotional here in and she was calling me family from the beginning. so this is a woman who really shaped me in some profound ways. not only because of the things she said and her character which is really businesslike, she's a rough justice, but because of her symbol and her example. my lowest moments in those years i had elevators that didn't work roach infestations, all the hardships that for me as a young man were difficult for seniors, children were really threatening. what i found out and what i saw within her was an american

character that is the best of who we are. in many ways her elegy to hold united this community has profound lessons for all of us. >> host: family is a recurring theme through this book, in fact you start with when you learned that your ancestry having gone on henry louis gates program and it goes back to a slave master james who goes back to days of the pilgrims. then flashing forward you talk about how one of your grandfathers was raised by a single mother, your father was raised by single mother. at that point they had the feelings of growing up as a pastor, you having grown up with

two parents, there seems to be a theme of trying to identify the familial links of blood and non- blood. >> guest: right. i saw the chapter i hate henry louis gates because what he did to me was in his roots and partnering with john lewis is like partnering with superman. so is this really comical, humbling connection with this amazing hero. then this odyssey of finding out that i could trace my lineage back to the earliest americans come into this country, that i'm directly descended from a white confederate soldier, direct descendent of men who fought in wars moving indiana native americans off his lands but at the same time i'm a descendent

of slaveowners and slaves. this unbelievable tapestry that he revealed to me made me understand our connection including introducing me to my mom's first cousin who never knew they were related to a black family because that was a time in the south when you had a lot of lost. >> host: you had white cousins. >> guest: so that expanded my view of family right there to know that i could be walking past folks and as louis gates said there's not a black person in this country unless they came in the flipside is there's many whites have black branches and their family that they don't know about. so that expended my idea family but the leap in the discovery was that we are is america a

spiritual family much more than we know, we are all tied to each other and influencing each other every single day beyond our imagination. the common way that people give up their powers not realizing we have in the first place that we have power to touch and connect and influence that we don't know. so the story ends with my family now fighting a court case or legal efforts to move into a white town and as my father called it, it's one thing and i dedicate the book to the people of this town but yet my parents had to rely on courageous white folks at the house and council. but i had listening to the stories growing up and i'm a reporter so i want to find the people there and interviewed them so i found this lawyer and i asked him, why did you back in the 60s get involved and he said i remember the day and i

said you remember the actual day? and he said monday because the day before was a sunday and it was blood he sunday and i watched the bridge, john lewis and others on this bridge and i came and i said we need to go to alabama and they were struggling lawyers just starting out and realize they cannot afford to solicit what could they do right here right now to help out this great movement for civil rights. so they found the spare housing council and later they were given the file of my parents. so i'm not related to john lewis that i know of, not the whites of the black cement bridge. christians, jews, others. but their actions sent ripples out that almost immediately change the course of my family. these are the ties in this country. my father was a growing up he would say to a single mom who eventually cannot take care of

them that he broke that cycle of poverty which i show in the book because of the conspiracy of love. because all these people understood they can't sell all the problems and all the outcomes but they would never allow their inability to do everything to undermine their determination to do something in this moment. in fact they understand the biggest thing you could do any day is offer that small act of kindness. that community of kindness and love broke the cycle of poverty. watched my father into the middle class we set all the time i'm a hard worker, i made sacrifices to get where you but i only debt to all of these people who did that. so that is how we are related in this country. we have a myth of rugged individualism. an idea of self-reliance. i really respect those ideals but that's not what got us to the moon or map the human

genome. it was our ability to recognize a common destiny that we need each other. even the framers, you read the declaration of independence, there is a spirit of interdependence when they say we pledge to each other our lives, our fortune, our sacred honor. its recognition that if were going to be successful as a country we need each other. we may not be blood brothers but we are brothers of cause and spirit. >> host: it's a interesting story that goes in here, as i said you date your lineage and your great-grandfather is james from the pilgrim era in your father is ended up taking them by james who running a funeral

home he ruins work ethic from them so it's from the slave time pilgrim to pilgrim that is kind of a fascinating, almost a perfect line. >> guest: i've learned in life that there is no such thing as coincidental. there's purpose and everything and i do love that. >> host: one of the segments that jumps out is your visit to greenhaven when you are in law school i think it's your first or second year at law school, we just take a quick passage here. from your interaction interaction with the convicts there is the obvious feeling, there but for the grace of god go i. i can walk out of the

place instead of remain not just because of my own choices but because of the abundantly privileged environment in which i have bled. there is more to my discomfort than that, i was responsible, people were being put into this massive expanding facility in my name and until now i have given it little thought. in criminal cases it is the perfect people versus or the united states versus. i realize now that we are the people and we are the united states. people's liberty taken away, there freedom sees, prisons built and filled again. now i knew i marched right in and saw key part of the whole, the good, the back, the truth, truth, the lies, how system works and how it fails. what i saw here was another theme this balance between individual choices for which we have to face up to but also the idea of a social responsibility. can you speak on that.

>> guest: that is the balance between individual responsibility and the ideals of interdependency. i was told by parents that you have to balance those. you have to know that you are responsible for your actions. you are responsible for how your success or failure. you can't lose that understanding. it has to be part of this understanding that you are also interdependent and the things that you have relied on, the things that you have benefited from our blessings that have been yielded by others. so my parents were relentless. my my father joking with me growing up, i was a 18-year-old-year-old kid with a lot of swagger, as president of my cap class, football player, my mother would look at me and say don't you walk around the house like you hit a triple, you were born on third base. my father would remind me the blessings i was enjoying, anyone

who, anyone who called himself american i don't care what your struggles are, we are better to be born in this country regardless of circumstances than any other place on earth. we are are reaping the harvest of other folks. so the next step in understanding that is the idea of just taking responsibility. when you don't like something in the world i don't care it is mass incarceration or the environmental contamination and not just flint but many towns throughout this country that are facing challenges that plaintiffs facing that are hurting our children right now. i would say that you have a choice to make. you can accept things as they are or take responsibility for changing them. if you know that you are where you are because others took responsibility, even if it did not affect them directly but they took responsibility for civil rights or labor rights, then to be a patriotic american and who swears an oath that we are going to be a country of

liberty and justice than you have to be one of those people who steps up and take responsibility. one of my friends who read the book for me at a glial who has written some books that have challenge me, call me out. he calls out a lot of liberal blacks but he told me there so much a death in this book and there are a lot of stories of tragedy one of the young men that died i talk about his decision led him to his coffin. but our decisions did to and that's one of the more painful chapters to write in what joe specht is one of my favorite. >> host: it's like a father-son issue where the sins of the father on the sun. >> and that's the title of the chapter, father-son. it's really me and my father and his son and his father and we

are bogged and then his eventual murder and adjust to stabilize me at a time when i was just weeks into the mayor's office and suddenly it made me re-examine. >> host: this is a young man who you bonded with in the projects. >> guest: and the part like with hughes my father we are both raised by a single mom or he was -- so i bonded with him and it reminded me of my dad and his charisma, his humor, and god have put it right in front of me and then he started hanging out in the lobby of my building and i started coming home and seeing gains and smelly marijuana.

it would've been in oculus, the marijuana smell is common in my college but we all know we live in america that the justice system and drug war is fought differently in different areas. >> host: he didn't get away from it at stanford, nobody's stopping him from coming home from parties. no one saying who's the guy you're paying part four. they're just not facing the same justice system. blacks and whites use drugs the same amount, no difference. they actually deal drugs the same, some studies show young whites sell young white cell a little more but blacks will be arrested 3.7 times more than someone who is white. shocking disparities in our drug laws which means hassan and his friend did not have a margin of error in the way that my college friends who flaunted drugs did ecstasy, marijuana, you name it, i thought being use.

so i thought there's a crisis i need to help these guys but then we are busy people, were professionals, i'm going to be the mayor of the city and it's my dream job in it so important because i'm going to be an important person i can help people. after doing interventions with the kids i got so busy that i didn't have time to follow through on the mentorships. they were still so gracious and kind to me. i get elected and death threats so they put police officers in my lobbying kids don't hang out where there's cops. i didn't see see the kids and didn't see them until i got sworn in and days into my time as mayor i was responding to shootings. responded to one early on the scene and there's a body covered up and this is a lot of things i regret i didn't ask the names of the boys. human beings on the pavement and i didn't ask the name. i just went went about ministering to

the living. i come home that night and i see the police report read it now and see the kid a son and put it right in front of me is now dead. so i begin that chapter with the dissent of a community into a basement of a funeral home that i likened to descending into the bowels of a boat and i couldn't handle it, i felt felt like i was choking grief and guilt and i really start the story of these men, two fathers, two sons as i sit and i am am weeping in the mayor's office at a time when i'm the most powerful i've been in my life but i feel the worst and i feel like a failure. >> host: that is striking because it's not usually something that politicians on up to.

when they feel even if it is not their own faults that they have somehow failed. you show a vulnerability that you don't often see among most politicians. are you at all concerned that people will feel senator booker wears wears his heart on his sleeve on some of these issues? >> guest: no. i don't know how you can see america for who we truly are and not get broken at times. the problem we have in our country is often comes from the fact that we don't want to tell the truth about ourselves and admit to the injustice that still exists. people look at our history and they want to whitewash it and sanitize it of all of that so to

speak. so that does a disservice. it diminishes our humanity as opposed to telling the truth. my parents raised me, we were unflinching in exposing to me the horrors and the negativity that happened in our country and even in our lives. in order to make me a more hopeful person. i go through this in the book that you cannot have great hope unless you are willing to confront great despair. mr. jones taught me that hope in its essence is a response, hope confronts and this conviction that despair will not have the last word. i don't mind telling folks about -- i was talking about this in front of 50 people started making me cry again because as i

was writing the book i was working through the emotion of all of this in my mind. i just feel that this position that i'm trying to be a voice against in the country make us more united. one of the first things you have to do is courageous empathy. really see each other. not building walls around each other so we don't see humanity, see the trials but you have to have courageous empathy. so i'm going to be authentic. and that's a mistake we make in our politics you think to be strong have to be mean or to be tough you have to wear this veneer like you have iron for skin. that's me is not the way i have chosen to leave my life. i think we need more leaders who are willing to show their vulnerability and humanity because it helps more people who are struggling themselves.

one of the things they tweet out all the time i tell people let's be kind to one another because we are more fragile than we let on. when i was first at stanford i started at council crisis counseling center. i was stunned it was almost like someone this lifted a veil that i wasn't able to see because calls would roll and about eating disorders about men and women coming out in what they were enduring being gay. about depression and mental illness, about rape and sexual assaults. and i said all of this going on how can we be about confronting it if we will not admit that it is happening to the degree it is happening. >> you said it's about the importance of seeing people. one of your mentors, frank talks about he says icu corey speak

about frank. >> guest: frank was a great process professor who it merged and took me under his wing. i am where i am today and he was not a flashy guy, i go through this moment in a tenant meeting where i first observe him and i'll get frustrated with him because we are dealing with a real crisis in this building, conditions that are really bad, and we think it's criminal behavior because people are accepting money and not providing services. i'm just trying to get the legal part i want to get testimony but he is going slow in this meeting and going off like ours giving everybody space to talk. so so the next day confront him on this and i said when he gives me this powerful talk about you don't understand that it's not just about healing the building, we have so much trauma in this

country that affects our children and others that we don't address that trauma. people need to be heard they need to have their moment to speak truth to power and authority. it was beautiful it was coincidental that this man who so much about seeing people's humanity, letting their struggles be seen, validating humans and creating bonds between us where we could help each other, his eyesight started to go in my career when onto the mayor's office and so forth and here's this great tenant later who is one of our most celebrated leaders in the sense that he led the longest run strike in the seventies. he's a constant advocate advocate but his eyesight was going. he was getting old so i started taking out to movies even though he couldn't see. some of the more precious moments we had together. on his deathbed we had begun

this rhythm where i knew he was blind and i would come up and say frank it's corey and he would say icu corey. and he would joke i felt like he was a man who saw the truth of me and validated me so on his deathbed on the day i walked in and i know is the last day i saw him i had this moment with him what i had to say goodbye. he could his breath was erratic and very fast. the last of the chapter ends with that powerful moment where all he says to me is i said to him i love you and he forces out very difficult lee, i love you. and then one of the last thing he said to me was i see you.

so i'm a senator. if i cannot recognize humanity of my constituencies, even in tea party, trump loving guy who is struggling with his family making $40000 a year in a state with high taxes. if i can't see him just because i preconceived notions about him immediately and judge him immediately but fail to see his humanity failed to see the bond, i weaken my country because they failed to establish bonds over the lines that divide us. i know there's a time where where we talk about the division in washington but you cannot change something if you are not first willing to change yourself. i thought yesterday i had an interview and people were lashing out making judgment minutes about me. and i thought lead with love.

you can advocate your position but lead with love. we need to be celebrating that more because we are where we are because of your rational love and courageous empathy. >> host: that comes a couple of times that you said we need to be more than just tolerance, we need to love. you bring that in a few other times. it is tough enough to even legislate tolerance, it can wait you can't really legislate love, as a leader is a leader bring love into the public debate? >> guest: these laws mean nothing, they're worth nothing if we do not have a spirit of democracy, of love, of connection of spirit.

so i am frustrated, i'm the first person to preach against tolerance i think tolerance is a lazy or cynical state of being that says i'm going to stomach your right to be different because i'm tolerating you. and i'm no better off or worse off because i was just tolerating you anyway. >> guest: we should be using compassion, empathy, love. love recognizes value, love recognizes that we have an interwoven destiny. it recognizes that if you are hope for me because i cannot move this country myself. there's a saying that if you want to go fast go alone but if you want to go far go together.

so he uses a way to distinguish to better americans. patriotism is love of country and love a country necessitates a love of country men and women, fellow citizens. so we are we are going to be a patriotic society we need to work on going above tolerance to be in far more loving to each other. >> host: one of the other people that you learn from maybe in a different way, jason bradley. tell us about jase. >> host: jason his operation could put any movie depiction of drug dealing to shame. so again i am living these buildings i've moved in in my 20s, ice to sit across. >> host: you are sitting

councilman in newark and you've made a conscious decision to move into the project to low income housing in newark. >> guest: i made a promise to miss jones and now i'm living in part of this community and my presence there is disruptive, a drug trade that i had never witnessed before, around-the-clock people. people would lineup it so brash and in the open air, white friends of mine will come visit me they would mistake them for buyers and practically throw drugs through their window. so the guy who is consolidating the drug trade in that building ran an operation when he started detailing it with other guys that was amazing to me. he alleges that he bribed guards , if you make this much in our all pay three times on top of that to help my operation.

he went to the whole operation some of which i detail here, lookouts on the building where you could see a cop car, for miles. so an intricate operation of dealing drugs. behind the veil, he was a guy who is willing in the book when i started trying to trace down people who are dealing drugs like alert what was really going on, get stories that i know in my head but to get their perspective on the stories. he was a chilling guy. he is served his time in prison, he's out, his daughter i saw yesterday, but what he really described to me was a very chilling part of the book. when he started moving out it was taken over by younger drug dealers talked about how he intervened to protect me because

he said i saw how you treated my mother who was an elderly person living in those buildings. so it was interesting was to see their sense of regret, their sense of remorse. when i talk to these guys about how the young ones got sucked in you begin to see that this is for bad decisions but you begin to understand the causal factors of creating an environment where the drug trade was an option for black men. >> host: later in the book you get very passionate about the inequities of drug policy criminal justice system. you refer to it as the american caste system which is far more extensive than we realize. people teeter on the records of

the caste system. people live in a world whether principle is innocent until proven guilty is a fundamental value in a justice system however 36 states legally allow employers to deny jobs to people who are arrested but never convicted of a crime. leaving an innocent person with no recourse in the face of this legal discrimination. that seems to guide you into what some of the issues that you're focusing on now as a senator. >> guest: first about i want to talk about the book the new jim crow and the authors for us exposing the injustice. living in newark, new jersey and seeing how awful the system is

and how it violates are very principles of justice in our country. it's not just in urban, black, latino problem. about one of three american adults now have an arrest record. that is a profound -- we are and incarceration nation. we are resting more people on the planet earth and incarcerating them. 5% of the global population on the in our jails have nighttime the admissions rate. these are people who post are being held what waiting for trial and who are too poor, if you and i got arrested or what have it we pair bailey get out. people are in jail right now for minor crimes because they cannot pay the small fines and fees to get out. often they are most mentally ill. they're addicted, poor, minorities.

as baldwin has said, as as mandela, you want to see the truth of a country, don't look at the halls of washington, go to their prisons and see who they are imprisoning. it is shameful who america criminal justice system feeds on. to the point where they're saying this is a country where you are treated worse if you are poor than if you are rich. i i try to expose them story to tell us about how we are being hurt from the system. also if you read the piece that we are bear responsibility for this and must address the continued injustices in our country if we are ever to be able to truly say that we are are a nation of liberty and justice. >> host: an interesting line going from your first unsuccessful run for mayor in

2002 when your opponent painted you as an outsider who is taking money from republicans and so forth. now, you are in the senate and you are finding common ground with republicans on issues of criminal justice and so forth. so talk about the book. >> guest: that's the power of this issue that i just described we have republicans now who understand that this is a violation of our values. you have christian evangelicals which if you read the bible like i do, life has examples of compassion for prisoners. if your fiscal conservative, the government expansive and like never before. we were building a new prison every few days.

if you are libertarian and believe that liberty of folks government taking people's liberty of flimsy reasons. the last few presidents admitted to crimes that are felonies that people every day in america especially during the height of the drug war for nonviolent drug offenses that were incarcerating people for. so this is a government seizing your liberty. so i don't care what you are, whatever your area, i'm fighting allies. newt gingrich, christian evangelical leaders in our country, mike leads, mike leads, tea party member of the senate ran paul, there is so much agreement the question is why are we not making the change. that is when the battle of my

life that just since the senate but even my final years of newark where every year the gravity and the impact of the problem was donning more and more. >> host: seems there's a few bills and the president behind it now where in a presidential year does that almost make it harder even though they're so much, ground. >> guest: this is my first year as a senator during a presidential year and it seems like everything gets harder at that time. it's the the silly season as many people call it. i was just on the phone speak with one of the great leaders of criminal justice reform along with people like ranking member leahy who has been working on this issue for longtime aware discussing just that. this coalition we have, can we get it across the finish line. what can we be doing to help move it across at a time when

the supreme court battle is about to happen and the like. so i'm getting increasingly impatient because it should not take this long. you still have the house which is making slow but steady progress with some great bipartisan leaders over there. so i'm hoping this is one of the great things that has achieved this legislation that will reverse when were going into the 80. so the policy which is already being shown in the states you have all these things on saving taxpayer dollars, lowering your crime rate and i try demonstrating in the book that this massing incarceration creates more violence and more crime. when used trip away from a person any hope they can provide for the family. they come out of prison for nonviolent drug offense and can't get a job, can't get a business license, can't get loans from banks, pell grant to go to college, can't get food stamps to feed yourself

and others. strip all that away from people in surprise they go back to making bad choices. we all know that rapid attachment to work actually helps people and dramatically lowers your recidivism rate. in fact we had found out in newark who is getting killed, 84% of our murder victims had been arrested before an average of ten times. this is that cycle of incarceration that people get stuck on. and it often ends in tragedy to the point where now for african-americans there's this big story about the disappearance a black man. disappearing overwhelmingly because of death, of murder, and incarceration.

the time is now and the urgency of the moment is upon us. the coalition exists but we have to be doing things in the state federal level to try to turn the ship around. america, the land of the free, the land the land of justice, not just talk about but be about it. >> host: you are the fourth elected african-american in the senate. barack obama was the third and he had a book talking about the intersection of race and his personal journey. how do you say it, you touch upon of all the things the races really are links, biologically going back multi- generations. how are you seeing where we are in terms of race right now in 2016? >> guest: it's a complicated picture. you still still have an

nation with a black president, the first time to elect a black senators ever served together in the senate. two out of 100 are african-americans. we have similar hairstyles, handsome heads. i bump into black fields of companies now so we have seen some progress. black millionaires. but when you look at success, look towards the vulnerable, look towards poverty, test your country that way. when i look at how -- when you use a racial lens you see disparities jump out at you. whether it is black kids with healthcare outcomes, wealth outcome, violence, it is still at constructive months to see

the unfinished business of america that we still have a lot of work to do. it is why black lives that matter to me is a very important stream of protest in our country, it's trying to get people to wake up not defensiveness or being feel like they're accused of something but please pay attention to the fact that we live in a nation where you are black and white, this is is our opinion, this is objective data, that two people arrested for the same crime the african-american on average is going to get a 20% longer sentence for that crime. when you have courageous police officers, the head of the fbi now saying that racial highest is having a negative impact in policing in america. i talked to police leaders were starting to say we need to address less because there's training on this implicit racial bias, including you and i that we need to start training on these issues to reduce the impact it has on our justice

system. there is a conversation we need to have a we need to have the courage to have it, and we need to not let it fall into prejudging a defensiveness but get to where we really want to be as a society. where no matter what your background you have a fair shot in equal chance for your hard work, great, and determination to have the kind of outcomes that are the american dream. >> host: you touched upon, as a mayor you work with the police very closely. in the book you talk about the tough jobs they have and the sacrifices they are making. that is going on on the one hand, a course course in a black lives matter issue on the other. there is a divide that is going on right there when you have cops that are often dying in the street trying to protect black lives in many neighborhoods and

then the critique on the other. having seen it from both sides, how do you get those two sides to see one another? >> guest: i don't see those two values as opposed. when i talk to professionals until the please leaders i respect the most they understand they revere their officers, anyone like me who has had to rely on a police department used the levels of courage and bravery every day in america. about police officers who are putting their lives on the line to protect others. i talk about being on the phone with my please director during a hostage situation and talking about what to do. but before i i can even come to the conclusion about what to hand delight

gunshots are going off and i just hear the phone, go, go,. the officers run into a building with gunshots going off, these are men and women with families. i would not be racing into that building into gunfire. but these people are determined to save human lives. that is the kind of courage i encounter. but that's not contrary to the fact that people who have the power to use deadly force that we should want them to be the representatives in every way. if if i was that police officer, trained me so i can be the best representation of the value of this community. so admitting that there is racial bias that i had to learn, and i had to come through it. i learned how to manage complex organization and how important data is. we were able to move at

a time we are reducing reducing our government by 25% lane up one fourth of our workforce, cuttings funding to cities, we had to figure out how to increase efficiency dramatically. were able to do some management but i was not collecting the right data on police accountability. i was making big mistakes in doing so and it wasn't until the end of my career, working in partnership with others to begin to crack for that. as the head of the fbi says we are not collecting the data to even have a constructive conversation about implicit racial violence. if we do not even know and collect the data on police involved shootings, which we know the most a police are wonderful but we are not collecting the data. i sat down with a data data team at the white house who is now doing things because they are not

afraid to look at this problem to understand that police officers are human beings. please officers are under stress. they are traumatized at times and they can do very bad things like all of us because sometimes hurt people, hurt people. what the big data pokes at the white house are starting to see is that by just collecting the right data we can begin to have predictive analytics about when a cop might break. in fact the cop -- remember the pool party and the police officer. >> host: in texas and he started being up on a girl. >> guest: what they found was one of the predictors of police officers doing those bad things is having been involved with suicides. not suicide themselves but going to suicide calls. the guy who had experience with the suicide calls can be

mentally stressful. so imagine that we have the data out there like private sectors are doing, you and i, people collecting big data on us every day that they can predict unless what we might want to buy them when we might want to buy it. buyer ages, habits. the private sector is using that data. why are we using that data in policing to begin to better predict the behavior. they found out that having to suicides within a certain amount of time makes it more likely that you have a negative interaction with someone you pull over or what have you. the data data is more sophisticated the one i'm telling you. for me as a mayor i found out the hard way. now i sponsor legislation to say timeout, we're having all of these dissents, people are yelling back and forth without the facts. so when i have objective data what criticizes you get?

policing we have not created the data guide that we need to help our officers who want to do the right thing to help empower them to do the right thing everyday in our community. >> host: and catch the officers who aren't in the right thing. >> guest: as a mayor you could have 99.99% of your employees be great human beings but that one tenth of 1% is a lot of people. you need to find ways, i anyone who runs a business knows that it's hard to hire people and you want to catch people when they're doing something wrong. >> host: before we finish up, one thing that you know now that you did not know before you started writing this book. >> guest: a lot of things from interviews with other people. you asked one thing.

i think it goes back to interviewing people who let me know things that i do not know at the time. often what it did was reflected to me that we have a capacity for kindness, decency, and love that we do not fully appreciate. it gets back to the ideal, do we use our power every day to create the kind of america that we want, or do we, like i have get caught up in the sedentary where we get so caught up about what we see going on but we don't realize we can get up and do something about it. >> host: i think that's a perfect place to stop. senator booker, thank you very much. united, is the book and it is a great read this. >> guest: thank you, i appreciate you saying that.

>> i was efird words a book tv signature program. >> and makkah. >> ..

tonight it's my pleasure to introduce you to dr. ronald feinman. he specializes in 20th century american history with an emphasis on political and diplomatic history. he has taught courses at florida atlantic and diversity on america in 1900 to 1945, fdr a new deal era. u.s. 1945 to the president and america in the 1960s refinement is also the author of twilight of progressivism, the western republican senators an