i'm really excited as you can see. i'm going to ask you some questions. you could have written so many different books. why this one? >> guest: i've done this one

for a magazine i work for and i thought this could be a book and i was tasked with finding a than in 2007 and many of which these stories didn't make the local news and i thought this could be a book so when i got the opportunity to pursue it as a book, i did and it's one of the things people don't understand. i'm not sure that i fully understood it and yet by the time i finished the book i did ihadbeen in that country for 20

years. i assumed it was going to live here, and i have skin in the game. >> host: i've lived abroad also and i get questions about all kinds of things coming into the project what was your sense of the american culture? >> guest: i had assumed mass shootings get the most attenti attention. i hadn't given enough thought to the aggregate number around the

country for those that would be killed in this way. and so the disparate nature of the shootings. they are finding acceptance in all these things are. as. it's the understanding of where you are.

>> host: we have a lot of reports on crime. it was trying to figure out what is it about these environments, so can you talk about the context that you found? >> guest: ten children were shot down that day. i was trying to litigate like they were walking from east -- >> host: it wasn't the -- >> guest: in these cases sometimes a broader theme but what else is going on and who

else can i talk to us or to give a couple of examples, a young man it was assumed he thought it was someone else. so then you look at where and where he lived and where his mother lived. this is where he grew up and next-door is a factory. you start looking at the statistics and see the painful effects of the industrialization

and in that context it becomes an occupation that one might get into. you read freakonomics and they compare it to mcdonald's. so to say not to excuse anything but this is what was going on around at that time and place. so every young person in the buck there are those broader things one can say, not to excuse or explain but just to describe these do not generally fall out and die.

there are a set of circumstances that made them possible. >> host: and that is one of the myths about the inner city that he also found similar circumstances where there was access. >> guest: there was only the onone told in a rural area about an a couple in suburbs or small towns and basically nobody is immune to this. bubut there's thethere's the sew income areas that's where things like this happen and for a young

person it doesn't challenge your understanding of the way america works. you speak to the journalist and it's not so surprising someone would get shot in that area so it becomes not news. the phrase when dog bites man that'manthat's not news it's onn bites dog. so you have to ask who owns these dogs and why do they keep biting the same people and what can we do about them so the report said you become desensitized to it. but it's their children at risk. >> host: i'm going to read a little bit from the samuel chapter because this caught my eye. you said t said the indifference

towards violence left a byproduct of neglect that an unconscious mission or from the dead weight of power and privilege that makes it invisible. that is a pretty big finger that you are pointing. >> guest: i'm talking mostly about the media and if you are in the media is overwhelmingly white and wealthy and therefore isn't likely to live in areas like this, then it's not that you think i don't care about these people that you just think you don't know anybody that's been shot. it's not happening to you in your neighborhood, it's

happening over there and so the privilege of things, all the things that kind of clueless to make you who you are. that leaves you thinking this is something that happens to people like that and after a while the people like that are in the way some americans understand they are a different species but in the chapter one of the first comments after his death samuel was walking down the road and shot dead in dallas which is kind of a poor latino area with

a reputation for being violent. then you kind of the situation. they drink cocoa that night and played uno an in the note and tt thing he did his cheetah that you -- cheated at uno. he was going to his grandmothers and it wasn't that his mother didn't know where he was. he was a sweet kid who didn't really know anybody in the area.

the first place somebody goes as there must be a reason why that kid was shot in i'm going to say that it was the parent. >> host: that brings me to one of the things in the book i is o challenge the respectability politics into the notion that things like this shouldn't happen and of course that we expect it to happen to people in other places and that is one of the themes that comes out a lot when you talk to the young activists, the facts we do need to talk about why it is dismissed and some of the violence that goes on. i want to read another piece that captured. you write in the kenneth mills chapter that shouldn't happen to people like this and then you say because of sandy hook it

began to transform people, the elevation of the victim has a significant bearing on the lives of so many ongoing violence, black, brown and poor. can you explain how you came to that realization? >> guest: he was the oldest person to be shocked that they and four or five months later the protesters come and i'm trying to find his folks and i think maybe there was a press

conference. now a quarter is black and half of become victims. there'there is nobody there from indianapolis. there is a lady from a wealthy suburb. you kind of think who are you protecting them from coming and i think that to have a sense of urgency and relevance those are the working class communities and also places where they are more likely to be criminalized

and they don't use any more anys and that's why they are likely to use so the fact that someone has a criminal record isn't actually a statistic or natural indicator. you have to move, i think the narrative that says this shouldn't happen to kids like this to this shouldn't happen to kids, period. and having an understanding of why some kids end up in the places they do, schools, infrastructure and lack of daycare and so forth.

it is a kind of broad societal thing that counts people out and dehumanizes them a. that's already been accounted for. there is a problem once you start saying key was the student then there's the suggestion of the grade you could get that witwould be worthy. they said she was out of 3:00 in the morning how much of an innocent victim was she. then you think with time o whate day would it be appropriate to be shot dead, 11, 12, what is

the curfew. there was a thought that says we should declare gun violence in national health crisis and assign a couple millioasign than dollars, study it, come back with the tangible data into actionable items. talking about the confluence of the characteristics. so isn't that how it would have been? >> guest: he has a map of

where it is taking place and he says it is the same you would have for cholera. he was an epidemiologist. the cd cbc is to do research. the biggest killer of black men under the age of 19, period and the second biggest killer of all kids under the age of 19 after traffic. >> host: 32,000 deaths a year. that's like a city disappearing every time. >> guest: the question then is what should we do about that.

if one doesn't subscribe to know if you want to do something about it thaabout the rest of th on on why this happens to these people. the cdc used to do that and then the nra lobby hard against it saying that it was treating them as a health issue and it's not a health issue and then they don don't. my response to that for the people that don't want to do it,

tell me some other way, some other meaningful way to stop these children from dying. i no longer want to argue about the second amendment because it isn't going to go anywhere but i would argue that the kids because i don't want them running these risks and even if they weren't, it is unacceptab unacceptable. what do you want to do. >> host: that brings me to use saying in your book that they need a better story and the fundamental argument this is the fundamental right so it basically comes down to marketing.

what story would you advise them? >> guest: the gun lobby people here's what they say, i don't understand it, explain it to me. imagine someone breaks into your house what are you going to do come away to call the police and then they have an appeal to the culture, the homestead. it actually finds a home in who americans are and who men are.

after that you are most likely to be told by someone you know. what they should be saying is are you married. they have a kind of narrative that is embedded in the american culture which we can talk about but it finds a home with other product teams. gun control people have a bigger problem because they talk about background checks which is a sensible thing abiding by the second amendment privileges religiously. background checks and waiting

periods. they have to imagine themselves differently. i do think one way that one might do this is to say luck, we are a modern country with a medieval problem. this doesn't happen anywhere else. i do think that might be a powerful message and one that takes seriously as a collective endeavor raising children that there are certain things children need the need space and a decent education and youth

centers. one woman on the south side of chicago who is a physician said of the late appearance in these neighborhoods do is have them in a cocoon, drive them everywhere, drive to school, i've been home, if they are in any afterschool things they drive them there and back. first of all if you have the time and energy and resources to do that, you probably don't live in that area. but secondly, it's taking children's youth away from them in order to keep them alive. so you have someone -- i go through some detail in chapter about drugs and cocaine and

things. when i was young and irresponsible [inaudible] and david cameron, the british feminist or into the now foreign secretary at oxford they would get dressed in bowties and go to the restaurant, they would eat, get very drunk, trashed the restaurant, pay for everything in cash enfold. when you are rich, you can do that. and maybe one of them would spend the night in the cel a cet it's all part of -- yes, these kids don't have that luxury. that could be you dead. you decide to walk your friend home late at night, that could

be you. it's not a question of getting into a bad crowd and maybe you start using marijuana or have a good relationship. the margins are narrow and the risks are great. if you take four or five. if you take four or five it wouldn't be america anymore.

>> host: right now there is a lot of nostalgia. let's talk about you and the mapping of this book and the geography because i knew there were a thousand choices you have to make before you even begin to write this. my challenge was first of all to evoke this space whatever it was

to bring it to life but also to reduce it in some ways to its statistical kind of definition. the range was quite substantial. you can see the stars. that's the only way people know it's in the book and in that area they are all going out and you have these kind of peculiar

courtyards that were built in the oil boom for wealthy people. they had this goes and people would be given a free vcr and then the oil crash comes and they say okay this is just to become low income housing. so they became dominated the poll is still there and i think

it's now kind of a laundry room. so anyway they can to find the history of the amanda -- history of them and mapping. but then also to give a sense of this area of the working-class latino folks a house is worth six times and so this is a big country. and the landscape both physical,

social, demographic, political, economic is very, very diverse. and hopefully that comes through in the book. there's this kind of vast american landscape. >> host: i am an immigrant myself and i'm from the dominican republic -- i know, where are you really from. [laughter] i grew up in new york city in the late '80s. when we moved in at that point it was mostly latinos, but then later it was a lot of mexicans and now gentrified. but a lot of the problems in the 60s and 70s remained.

they are less noticeable now. i want to ask whether you think geography plays such a role that it can ignore the population and maintain some of these violent identifiers, or do the transitions between them gets passed down for example the games in the west coast in chicago and even new york. ivar essentially sometimes born into a gang. >> guest: writing this book transformed my idea of what gang-related means. there is an assumption and a desire to dismiss as many as possible.

while it one could argue on one level that maybe seven of the deaths are gang-related out of the tent and insofar as one or both of the people involved were in again and the person is dead so it is a gang related shooting. but if one is dying and the other isn't and they are messing around that isn't gang-related, that is a murder in which one person is in a gang [inaudible]

i think the cover is red but they are identified with. if his friend was walking down the road and someone shoots at them and they get him is that gang-related? to the extended scenes of the person accused and they shot at someone that looked like they were coming he was wearing redto come is that gang-related? most of it is complicated in the

same way i if just not really thinking about it. a lot of these kids grow up in the same way that if you are in the soviet union you at the end of the communist party if you were in iraq you would be in the toughest party -- baathist party. again it to dominate the block you live and everybody has some kind of relationship to the gang. it could be that you have a completely minimal relationship dot you wear blue socks or whatever it is you have to do just to kind of be like okay, just leave me alone or you definitely don't wear red sox, whatever it may be. it could be that you say i'm against gangs and i'm never going to do anything but then you still have to live there. how are you going to live their?

so it's not like some affiliation. they don't hand out membership cards and then people pay their dues. it doesn't work like that. so to me when i see the term now, i understand it differently. i want to say to people what is the relationship between the murder and the gang and what is the relationship between the victim and the gang because let's say i'm walking down the road and the gang -- somebody shoots me and they say that's gang-related well, you know, how does that relate to me. that's how an awful lot of these are.

they are less likely to be covered by the press and they are more likely to be dismissed by the general public as something that happens to people who do things like that. what i hope comes out in the buck these kids are not that different for the most part from the kind of kids that you know, knowcome online craft, call of duty, xbox, social experimentation, drug experimentation, not mowing the lawn, and the dynasty, twitter, facebook, these are america's

children and if you can dismiss them you dismiss the future. >> host: let's talk about the gang affiliation because it's actually a convenient term that allows adults to codify punishments. so for example in san jose california they have these things called gang enhancements so if you're charged with a crime somehow related they are automatic enhancements which is a very ironic term because it just means additional punishme punishment. so maybe that comes with six months of probation fo probatioe minute they are able to tag onto the related activity becomes a minimum of two or three years into the judge has no ability to listen to sentence because it has been legislated.

what did you find in terms of the abyss between the legal system and the way that it's utilized to send out punishment? >> guest: you can do anything you want, you can say this person was wearing red and that may be about gangs. you don't know. and it's not like a pretend things are. they're watching to see how much red or blue they are wearing and both of them talk about hiding

it for the kids sometimes it's like i'm going to have to wear some red to get through the day so it's not like there isn't something going on. the question is if you're going to try to codify it then you need some rules and as soon as you start, then things are going to fall apart. i is that kid wearing a gang read, are we in a place where wearing red is illegal or holding your fingers in a certain way is a gang sign or sufficient proof to put someone away. the second thing the book doesn't go into this apart from

insofar as the gun related and gang-related dot it's not like if you put them in prison you keep them away from gangs. they have a culture all of their own and actually that would be the way to cement the connection of the relationship, so a lot of these things like criminal justice enhancements and using the second amendment they don't really engage in the issue which is why aren't children joining these organizations. it's not unique to america but

why are they doing it and what could we provide them and what could we do to stop this from happening to really get through the problem. >> host: i want to talk about your methodology because i have some questions like i wonder if i would have made the same choice. the family was clear that they didn't want to talk to you or once you contacting them and you chronicled all that really well so i was able to follow you through but ultimately you decided to write about him and so i thought okay what i have made the same choice.

>> guest: i found his grandparents by matching their names to people in the white pages. but america was officially segregated so i will try here. i found the number and called it then and they gave me the father's number and then i made the mistake of calling his father. i should have texted him. of course i caught him offguard and said i would like to talk about your son. this was months after he died but nonetheless, he was wrongfooted and he never called

me back. he never said no just i will call you back later and then never did. i grandparents, when i came to indianapolis for the convention i called them a couple times and they called me and said don't call again. so they didn't say don't do this and second, even if they had, all the things i wrote about were in the public record. the twitter feed, facebook page, arrest warrant and the newspaper clipping. so he's already been written about. and i think the issue for me is do you treat these people with

respect. more tricky, there's another child that one parent does talk to me that they give me the number of the other parent and the other paren pair that leavea message on the phone saying i'm going to get my lawyer and you are writing this book to make money off my child, how dare you. and i'm not even filling in the more colorful language. my feeling was it's public record and one of the parents had spoken to me already. i did the same thing for every parent. i would present them with a request and i would say i know how your child died. i would like to learn how they lived and who they were,

everything you would like to tell me about them. i would give them a copy in 2007 and where possible it copy of my previous book about martin luther king . speech and i would say this is where i am if you would like to talk. then they would give me the other parents number and once again i don't feel entitled to the testimony of the parents but i think that things that are in the public domain already exist.

>> host: you must have had dreams and boxes of documents. what is the process like of making these critical choices for the sake of the story? are >> guest: that was difficult because there are things that you read it embarrassing for the family and things you learn that might be difficult and defend you hav have to way weigh out is important to the story, is it hurtful to the family, how important, how hurtful, what am i going to do with them. for every one where possible if

you thought there was something in a couple of cases i thought there was something that they might be happy about i said i'm going to use this, is that okay with you. otherwise you have to trust that you understand people's dignity and that in a few ways these are vulnerable people. they've lost their child, they are not used to being in the limelight and so you have to proceed with caution. i don't think that i was cavalier with any of their stories, and their feedback i have from the families now is that they are happy with the

treatment. some of them it's just difficult to get a hold of them. but the ones i have, i send them all books and i haven't heard from any yet. if they are not, i will have to deal with that. there is a difference between being inaccurate and being unfair. my mother died quite young and she wouldn't like people to describe their house as being a messy house, but it was coming and that would have been an accurate description. it might have been unfair or in necessary -- unnecessary, but therthatthere are very tricky lo

walk. i hope i've done it sensitive and probably the ways they haven't been there haven't been any complaints yet. >> host: did you ever hear he might accidentally incriminate someone because some of these are false. like the information in the way that you put it together. >> guest: there were a couple of cases where people say they know who did it but the people who did it are not identified were brought to justicorbroughto you have to be very careful

about that. i'm trying to think. they're certainly one i can think of. i think there were two of them that people say they knew who did it but one in particular where the fathers that i've seen that kid and i know he is but they are not going to do anything about it. >> host: i want to ask about what i'm terming and the characters because you talk to a lot of people who were not there when that happened or they are not related to the victims but who somehow were integral to the

morning mac process and the high school counselor for example so the people who were best friends or friends who grew up with a parent, can you talk about that extended network of having attacks to the complex >> guest: it comes with trying to find the families. in a few cases it was from the funeral parlor or counselor or someone posted something on facebook and i would say do you know how i can get in touch with so and so and these kids are not just raised by their parents.

they support the work out there for those who want to sustain them and know them in different ways and even i'm thinking here in chicago who come from these hard to reach communities and groups where people are frankly just not going to open up to a foreign journalist who. but he'but his godmother wantedy story and i could tell there was a connection and i hoped in a

lot of the cases but it doesn't always work out that way but it kind of extended. i know from growing up my mother knew me longest but not necessarily best. i am a parent and i don't think i want to know everything. so then yes you have to look elsewhere. >> host: is there anyone you

had to find a middle ground for? >> guest: even a partial story was correct. they would have this kind of slight and then it was when i spoke to one of the friends it was like a key was in jail for a bit, he was? with but for? when.

i have to decide if i want to pursue this. it didn't seem to be a defining thing. but there's also something unusual to know.

so suspended from school. what for, and it quickly becomes fuzzy and get the sense that after a few conversations from different people, i decide to. i can find a way to get to the bottom of it and pursued it and some of those things i do. i need to know what happened here and other times i will ask that when the same answer comes back, okay that is the first

time i've heard it it i'm going to move on. [laughter] >> host: after having gone through this what do you know now that you didn't know before the? >> guest: three things. first, african-american parents fear of and give to kerry and fear their children might be short. this is particularly low-income communities time and again when you ask do you think this could have been [inaudible]

he says you're not doing your job as a father if you don't think your kid will. they factored that into their parenting. i didn't know that. i am a black parent here. you think i guess i've considered it. the other is to degree to which the debate doesn't touch these people or engage them. it touches their lives but it doesn't engage them so when i ask what it's about it seems to me like traffic.

.. >> >> as the parents for the most part they are very very normal people