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[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] >> now live from chicago author michael eric dyso discusses most recent book, tears we cannot stop, sermon to white america. continues live on book tv on c-span2.

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[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] okay. welcome, everyone.

to the 33rd annual "chicago tribune" printers row lit fest. we'll get going here. i'd can like to give a thank you to all the sponsors. today's program is being broadcast live on c-span's booktv. we'll have have time at the endf the presentation for audience questions. we ask you to line up at the microphones on the right. please join me in welcoming ore into veer, jennifer white, co-host of wbez's morning shift and host of the wbez documentary podcast, making open practice oprah. [applause] >> good afternoon, everyone.

thank you for joining us. michael eric dyson wears a number of hats. at georgetown university he is a professor of sociology, contributing opinion writer to the "new york times" and a contributing editor of both the news public and espn's the unfee feeted web site. also an ordained baptist minister, which informs the shape of this newest book, this 19th, "tears we cannot stop: a sermon to white america. "me in walking dr. michael eric dyson. [applause] >> thank you. let's start with why you chose to shape this book as a sermon. >> first of all i want to thank miss white for this extraordinary engagement and to the book festival, i love this book festival. i've been here before, and just love coming back to chicago and hanging out.

shoutout to c-span, whatever. so, i like to say that the sermon chose me to keep in a religious theme and a vain. i've been struggling with my editor and agent, and the book wasn't going as swimmingly as either -- any of us wanted. i had written an op-ed for "the new york times" in the immediate aftermath of the deaths of mr. castile and mr. sperling i had enough and said we have to do something about this. based upon the outpouring this book was generated. at least the idea for it, the concept of it. and yet the execution of it was a bit more difficult. one thing to write an up ad, another thing to write a book. so i wrote about 60 single space pages, maybe 120. double space, and who is

counting but, lord. in then they were like, yeah, not really. i was like, for real? like, that many pages? so, i had to start again. if you're going to be a serious writer you have to take your ego out of it. dr. johnson said the greatest writer is the one able and willing to strike his or her most cherished word. sentences are different pages or even more powerful, and painful. so, i began at the beginning, so to speak, and then a lot of cussing and -- >> host: more a minister. >> guest: yes, ma'am. don't nobody cuss like ministers. yes. we have an anointment of cursing. a gift of obscenity. so, -- most by discussion out of me. and back and forth and back and forth. one night i went to bed and it struck me in the middle of the

night -- i hate to be dramatic but a true story. woke up with a start and said, go back to what you started with. just preach to america. now, i know that has a bad meaning. people hear, stop preaching to me. and as a preacher for over 38 years i get it. i'm not one of those preachers who believes in thundering down in terms from the highly elevated chair of authority. i believe in getting in with the masses and trenches, with people and trying to figure the stuff out. so, i said, though, but that's my vocation, that's my bread and butter. that's what i've been for so long. and it started to flow. sat down and wrote what you see at the beginning of the book, and in one form, and from there on i knew that i had tapped into what for me was the most salient dimensions of race cast in a

sermon because i'm speaking to white brothers and sisters, and speaking directly to white brothers and sisters. some black people, why you talking to white folks? speak to yourself do your own thing. i got plenty of books. i hate to toe be like jay-z. read my old albums. but i wanted right directly to white brothers and sisters because i felt that the times were sufficiently charged and emotionally laden with such complicated analysis and lack of analysis about race that i wanted to open my heart and i had to deliver some tough messages, and i had to do it, i felt, in a framework where the sermon itself acknowledged the love at the heart of the address, but acknowledged the necessity for some tough love as a means to deliver that message. >> host: i want you to talk about the space that existed between the people who are

likely to read this book and the people who you think need to read this book. >> guest: ha-ha. well, as an author i have to say they're one in the same. you know, you can never -- that's a good question. but 19 books in and then with the edited books i'll say 20. people will read your book that you never think would, should, could, would be inclined to, and the ones you think might -- excuse me -- might read it, sometimes might skip on it. so it's always a mystery as to how that works. now, with a book that's directed toward white america, obviously, i want white america to read and it i'm hoping that black people and indigenous people and native people and people of every ethnicity will hook in with it, too. so they know that even though

i'm addressing white brothers and sisters they want to check it out but a they want to see how i'm addressing white brothers and sisters and the stuff they might want to say. i've played that role for 22 years. the black guy that they bring in to the corporation and say, let him say it. he ain't got work here. and after he leave wes can go, ain't he crazy? but he did have a point on point seven and i'd like to bring that up. i'm the point seven guy. so, i knew that this was going to be a difficult sell in many ways but i didn't want white brothers and sisters just to think i'm trying to talk to donald trump supporters. i 0 would love to talk to them because i think they got hood winked. right? this guy in office now, ain't your friend. he is not the friend of working class or middle class white people but showing the friend of

the white working clause brews and sisters who voted enmasse for him and then he put in billionaires of every ethnicity and general kerr, equal opportunity in his low -- obliviousness and he ain't their friend. want to speak to them but i also wanted to speak to white brothers and sisters who thought they didn't need to hear it. i've gotten so many letters, thankfully, because die get letters -- i do get e-mails. and mostly they are full of epithet-laden discourse from many white brothers and sisters. i've got son used to the word nigger i say could you at least call me professor nigger. that's all i'm asking. right now all i want is a dr. nigger and i will be satisfied because y'all are off the chain. but many white people reading that -- i tack about any book, it's a very painful thing and i

just left bill maher's show. so i'm saying, i know about the n-word and its use, and what that might mean. so, a lot of white people reading that said i want to sent you some love. i read what you said. i think the book is extremely important. you're speaking are for me. that's new won for me. well, maybe if i'm talking about ten tennyson, or the average white band. maybe white brothers and sisters-0 or the temptations, stuff they like. i'm used to that. in terms of special racial dynamic that argues about the way in which race has been constructed, especially around notions of white innocence and white privilege, i had to go there and many white brothers and sisters have been extremely receptive. so i would love for some of the donald trump folk to read it, but i think that the nondonald trump folk need to read it. think the hillary people need to read it.

not a hillary booster from day one this time around. i think that white brothers and tours of every stripe, origin, ethnicity, race, as they understand themselves, nations, and class, should engage with these ideas, and i'm just gratified that so far, a lot of them have. >> host: let's talk about how you're defining whiteness. that term gets thrown around quite a bit. you're definding it in a specific way. >> guest: uh-huh. yes, ma'am. i say in the book that the white brothers and sisters there are no such thing as whiteness, though so many white people exist. so, like, what? so what i mean by whiteness is not simply, look, we're looking at the audience and would say predominantly white audience, right? thank you for coming. and we say, that's common sense, of course we know what we mean -- it's like the supreme

court justice. i white not know what it is but i know it when i seed it. i don't know how to define white folk but i know them when i see them eye. suggest whiteness is a defense mechanism against an awareness of the complicated conversion of multiple strands of american identity. let me unpack that. there's no such thing as an american in the singular, that all of us have the potential and possibility, if we are citizens to define what means white whiteness this coequal with the beginnings of whiteness in america and seems to be linked. so what i'm trying to do is ask about whiteness. whiteness is a construct. it's a fiction. it's a myth. it's pre jessica, people here from eastern european countries from lithuania or irish or italian or polish. we turn the river green here in

chicago. i lived here twice and taught at the greatest most beautiful downtown in america in chicago. and -- amen. and some of the most vibrant black communities in this country, egg nick communities as well -- ethnic communities as well. the thing is to the ethnicities -- people will say i'm not white i'm italian and irish and polish, but in america in the crucible of race, thoseth is in advertise are pulverize -- ethnicities are pull veryized in the whiteness. james ball win taj but it as a fiction, racial identity. all of them are fictions and use they're useful or destructive fixes the. the ways in which we try to grapple with the world around us. we're not born with a sense of what it means to be white encoded in our genes. there's no dna genetically speaking that that's transmittible, predated on biological determinism and the

destiny in your jeans, or lee jeans or whatever oneow chose to wear today but it is something we make of that is race in society. race is the byproduct of the attempt to exercise a certain kind after providence, power, control, self-definition, over against others others and in reo one's self, asserting either one's inherent inferiority or most likely superiority. so whiteness is not just something folk are born with. it's a cultural construction, psychologically defined reality. it's a politically charged idea. it's a myth and a fiction that has undergirded by underpinned by real political and empirically verifiable power and i want to ask people to think about what that might mean as they think about race. many white brothers and sisters don't think of themselves as white or possessing a race in

the same way that black people and brown people and others do right and when the welcome race we think black people or african-american -- -- we don't think white. just like men, when we think gender, we don't think men or women, it's the feminist movement. it's going strong. we don't think, oh, you are -- your masculinity is a construction of gender, and often our uncon -- unconsciousness about miss christianity renders is toxic. when might brothers and sisters are not acted, talked, encouraged to think about themselves is a raced, as tony morrison will say, possessing a race. i want to throw that on the table in this book. >> host: it seems like we're at a time when being unconscious of race has become increasingly popular. don't see color itch don't see race. want to quote your book here.

you say, a world without color is a world without racial debt. >> guest: if you don't city color you don't have to be responsible for what color has done and what advantages you might reap from that. if we talk about men. i don't see any gender. we're all the same, jiminy cricket it. yeah, that's why all the presidents have been women. right? as my uncle would say, so, you know, to not see is for me not to own into ms. klain identity, masculine part tracky, scared when a real woman shows up. my god. just want to grab things.

just want to grab things. i'm sorry, that was low. how about grab something from the common sense of humanity. i don't see it -- i don't see class. we're all the same. eyeful a multibillionaire, you make 5,000 a year with five anymore your house. we're all the same i don't see class. you see how ridiculous that is. i don't see race. i know many white brothers and sisters think it's good and i get it. it's hard to be white out here. in the day and age when whiteness is is being challenged. it was greet be white will wally and beaver and cleaver -- hey -- father new best, the unanimity of whiteness was not challenged but we didn't speak about it. not articulated as publicly. so great to be white when you didn't know you were white.

do we act like we know color? many white people thing i don't see you, mike. you're not -- you're olive colored to me. one white person told me once. olive? okay. i'll try that again. no laws against of live -- of live people no segregation against olive people. if you see my race then you have to badge even unwilling and ins a vert tent complicity with a structure that is dynamically disadvantaged some and blissfully benefited others. so, some white miami don't want to see -- people don't want to see race but a they don't want to get caught up in racial definitions bass they ruined to america and i want to get to an objectivity beyond the give and take of race. it's a good intention but a bad consequence. then some just want to own up to

it. they don't want to see race but always have a sixth sense operating. i see white people. right? you got the bruce willis going on. who doesn't even know that he is dead. hope i don't give the movieway so people haven't seen -- if you hasn't seep the movie by now, shame on you. like bruce willis, who doesn't even know he is dead, and the young white kid who is alive, brother joel, has to dead whisper him, literally ghost whisper him, and let him know that no, indeed, you are not with the living. and many of us are like that little kid. we got remind white folk, no, there's color. i see color. and you're part of it. so, avoidance of color, the avoidance of race, the complication of debt, mean is

have to own up to my privilege. i know there's some white brothers and sisters say i'm a poor white person, ain't got no privilege. and i say in the book and elsewhere, one of the greatest privileges of being white is encountering -- somebody let the man in. someone knocking at the door. somebody ringing the bell. do me a favor, open the door and let him in. or her. or them, or the children, whoever it is. he really wants to see me. i'm trying to see dyson. he has to buy five books now. i'm just sorry. all right? thank you, bro. thank you, bro. thank you. let my man in. thank you, sir. my man. my man. you ain't even staying? you ain't even staying? oh, my god, put him out. put him out. okay. so i will say this.

-- i'm not saying that an inadvertent display of white privilege. not saying that at all. i'm not saying that. bang down or doors and then don't even leave no offering. so, the thing is, for many white brothers and stairs you ebb country police person and live to tell about is you ain't got to be rich or famous, and in many instances you're white and that interaction tells on the limits of race in america and the privileges that some people have. so, yeah, wanted to talk about it in that way, and force us to open our minds to at least think about it. >> host: i want you to talk about the impact, the structure of whiteness, has on how black people perceive one another. >> guest: yeah. that's a -- woo. that's psycho analytic right there, man.

that's jung and sigmund freud. it hurts sometimes when white folk make us think that one of us is better than the other or white privilege -- not individual white brothers like y'all but white culture. see seduction of michiganology another what is beautiful, thinner nose, thinner lips, the shape of things to come. i mean, ashley graham is a beautiful woman but there's a whole lot of black women who look just like her that ain't got no love. aim glad she has love. know i just want to articulate in the bona fide expression here today as the predicate of our interchange. whole lot of black women ain't got that kind of love. big hips, big lips, you know, big boned, as they say na many communities. black women who -- or thin. when sis cicly had he big lips

and were demonized and julia roberts has them and they're gorgeous. they're both gorgeous but why is it that our own self-definition is predicated upon seeing ourselves through a different culture. dubois says it's a strange thing to see yourself through the lens of a dominant people, of a majority culture that teaches you how to see yourself, that distorts the perception you have of yourself so no matter how beautiful you are -- y'all remember the munsters? eddie, eddie. remember that? that's my man. rest in peace, adam west who just died today. oh, my god. 88 years old. batman? poor out some liquor for that brother right now. i got power -- pour out some -- yeah. kapoo. boy wonder we must now get to

the work we're doing. are you sure, batman? yes. he was black because he was cool. very zany, very camp where, with the black mask on. we wear the marx, too. we know what it means. he was signifying on this blackness and you don't know. batman, rest in peace, adam west. i'm just making that up. but -- where was it. >> host: talk can -- talking about the way the to sunny was talking bat specific instance. munster is. thank you. eddie. so i talked d what happens when you get old and tell stories about adam west. talked about the munsters, i think it was marilyn, the one who was the blonde haired, blue-eyed and was seen as ugly, and everybody was like, poor girl. poor girl. that was kind of radical for the 1960s so be signifying the fact that to be blond haired and

blueeyed was to by the carrier of an infearity train of brut use. it was campy and understood it but imagine that for real, you can be beautiful and articulate and expressive and intelligent and yet you're seep as somehow, god bless you, inferriero and not up to d inferior and not tough snuff. the hatred of self, the disrespect of self, the disregard for self, and the inability to appreciate the fisichellaty of our uniqueness and the wonder of who we are as a people. and i'm not saying all of the interaction with whiteness and black this is all about that and whiteness and my minority tradition but the cost and the price we pay for not appreciating who we are as people in our own unique beauty is something that tells on us,

and the hatred we have for each other as black people -- i don't know if white people are aware there's big argument about white, bright, almost white, and browner bream and black people. my daddy crazy blue black. almost purple black. saw the hell he got and that was just from black people, much less in the dominant white world. some people -- don't marry no dark person because your kid going to be dark. that's self-hatred. that horrible note of gracelessness. that hurts and harms the infrastructure of the psyche or at least reveals its damage. so, for me when i think about the structure of whiteness and what it does to black people and how we view ourselves, or it leaves us to seek after the stanfords of a dominant culture to want to be accepted according to what the dominant white culture says and the like, and

it has the dill tearous consequences every. >> telecast about the whiteness has on perceived otherness. beyond race, when we talk about sexual identity, talk about religion, expand it out a little bit. well, i think i know what you mean. it's real a really powerful question. if whiteness is set as a standard, an unchallengeable standard, implicit one, one that can be empirically verifiable. it's the best. do you think is steve king the congressman no other culture has done anything. we've done everything. slow down with that, brother. but he thinks he has proof and is going to tell you. not going to say, hey, africanss

and -- there's no comparative anthropology no understand offering the derivative anthropology of human identity, the african basis. not a narrow way along the spectrum of nationalism or universal conceptions of human identity, just as a fact of the science that we say is the predicate for everything we do, that is good, then there's a lot of bigotry and a lot of prejudice and racism and ignorance out there. but a lot of people think of whiteness in that way. the manifest superior position authority and identity. think about that in regard to other others. think about it in terms of how gender operates or sexual orientation or class operates. right? so, both as a kind of definable analogy that in the same way that whiteness is seen as the unchallengeable predicate of our existence, the beginning point

of how we think about race, maybe heterosexism operates in the same way. thank you. people people who are heterosexual unchon shoesly think that's the norm, and everybody else, since you're a minority and it's three percent, five percent, ten percent, you're against nature because nature didn't hook us up for you to protect calculate because now you got to argentina that procreation is the reason for sexualness, and the ability of the species to perpetuate itself will be lost. but then they don't even get into the complicated configurations that make sex much more than the perpetuation of the species, and the potential for intimate si, for change, for power and the like. which is why we don't have serious theory about race which is not about motivated sexual identity but about the exercise

of lethal power from one gender to another. [applause] or even from win that general -- from within that gender. how resident row sexism is the -- heterosex allism is the -- the irony is that some people who are minority, vis-a-vis the white versus others dominance, purchase a little bit of the white authority, right? by becoming a heterosexist so that homophobia is a way of becoming american. right? because now, hey, they close me out because of my color but i can get back in because i'll identify with them when it comes to sexuality. so it always amazes me to see black christians who have been victims of hyperaggressive forms of bigotry and racism, turn

around and be homophobic as a way unconsciously to purchase a kind of acceptance of the dominant culture and as a legitimate expression of their theological belief. so now you say, wait, you have been a victim of white supremacy and now turn around and perpetuate a legacy of heterosexism and doing it without any sense of irony, right? having been an ordained minister for 38 years, go to these churches and i'm like, man, you know, you got black people who are christian out here. who are gay and lesbian, transgender, bisexual, transpeople. don't want to engage in the very thing used against it by look the same book used to legitimatize our sub bore nation. that poock said you are savage, slave, not conscious, that's the book?

you going to use to justify that these people ore here are just not all right or women who are victims of rabid forms of sexism, joining in with white supremacists logic against other people of color. or other women. so the same gender, they ain't your same his or ethnicity and yet the power of the white supremacist logic trumps the punitive solidarity that can be generated by identifying as a gender. so, whiteness metastasizes across the body of american and western ideas, and not just there, bill the way. to really provide, i think, an inglorious met afear for how dominance works and how people in the dominant culture or the dominant race or the dominant

gender or the dominant sexual oren attention must always pay attention or the class must pay attention to how the seduction of unanimity, one voice, one vision, one way of seeing things has to be shattered by the fact there are real existing human beings who don't fit any any stereotype or category you have and they deserve the same recognition and respect as anybody else. [applause] i don't know it that's what you were asking. >> host: that is exactly what i was asking. want to talk about accountability and what it looks like. who gets to be the arbiter of accountability when it comes to abuses of white privilege? i think we had a shared

experience this week with bill maher. using the n-word on his show, and you went on last night to talk to him, had a very thoughtful conversation, and then he sat down with ice cube and had another thoughtful conversation. what was fascinating to me about the difference in your conversations was that he -- it felt comfortable for him when he was speaking with you, if you were engaged one another, clearly very familiar with one another. he was very uncomfortable when ice cube started to speak to him and then when bill tried to redirect the conversation, ice cube says i wasn't done talking about this. and there was this sudden shift in the power dynamic where bill was not able to control his apology narrative, if you will,and in your become you call it messup, dressup, and fess up.

it's the -- >> guest: right. >> host: i want you to talk about what accountability looks like. >> guest: wow. that's a brilliant detroit-based question. aren't you from detroit? >> host: i am. >> guest: yes, ma'am. so aim. oh my god. amazing. but you done cast me in the part of the sellout here. i'm joking. i'm joking. you made him comfortable. ice cube got on his ass. but that's to a degree that's true, right? because you have to accept your role. last night lebron and them went off and they won. sometimes you got to play point guard. sometimes you have to play center, sometimes you have to distribute, and i knew my role last night. you talk about a power dynamic that was more subtle i was interviewing bill on his own show. so i'm absorbing the microphone to challenge him but obviously he is a friend of mine and obviously i love the man, and

so -- but at the same time you can't get no pass because you my friend and i love you. right? it's more difficult. you got to still speak truth to power. even if you know you have an ally who has messed up. so, my role there was to engage him as a friend but with friendly fire. and to subject him to a hopefully rigorous critique in the 15 minutes we had -- usually you only have eight minutes but he gave said minutes which was a remarkable thing in itself. right? using white privilege to unmask white privilege is an interesting thing, too. i'm just here to report the news. i'm not trying to make it. and, and, by giving me the microphone and allowing me to interview him and put him on the shot seat there was a shift in the dynamic as well. that you so brilliantly talk about when it came to cube because cube's jack move was explicit. break it off, smooth, ain't no

telling when i'm down for a jack move. you use, door f with me the police going to have to come get me because that's i'm going out. huge. cube. just because i'm from the cpt -- all right. that's my man. that's my man. so, mine as a scholar intellectual thinker, is to deploy terms, analysis, insight, to unsettle and to challenge the dominance, the sheen of being okay and puncture it in ways that made him a bit uncomfortable you saw the pushback but not nearly as clearly as and as evidently as when ice cube sat down. we had a different role. as an intellectual, thinking about these issues with him, trying to ask him to become reflectty. i'm engaging in a conversation, minute like this book. to engage in a confidence with white america.

cube, like sentiment, and continent -- i know a lot of white people say you're ice cube in here. >> host: a little scripture thrown in should your gangster strip tour. you're a gangster preacher and we know it. stop. it that that effect on people who might thicket but in terms of my intentionality, it was to engage people where they are. meet them where they, like jesus meeting the woman at the well. just give me a drink of water. and then from a drink of water we began to have a discussion about who is the water of life and how people are being either starved or thirsty for something deeper and more profound and, therefore -- i can take it from there. so it's what i try do with a guy who is my friend, an ally, who i nude made an ignorant statement that regular nailed with racial an miss and discourse in america whether he wanted to or. no don't think bill maker is a racist but he used a word with

signification so whenever you intended to or not, a mosquito don't need know homer, just wants wants wants so blood but it can give your malaria. it's not the intent but the consequence stop bill maher didn't anyone hurt black people but you did. this fant you didn't mean to hurt us and you did and that you may not be aware of it because it didn't stop you from speaking it, leaves know get even deeper what that it might mean, and to ask all of us, not just bill maher. it implies a lot for people i want to get the signification of what nat might mean. when ice cube comes along -- die money thing for 15 minutes and become the interviewer and put him on he hot seat, i extended twice at the time. it was supposed to be eight minutes and turns into 16. mine was more subtle subversion,

the kind of bringing the heat with a kiss. ice cube brought a kick and he was like, no, i knew you was going -- one day anyway. that's how it starts. and then ice cube is equally, i think, rigorous in this demand that this is what it means to black people at our gut levels, this what the country has invested in over time and space, and as a result of that we got to tell the truth, and a lot of people ain't trying to hear that it way. are not comfortable with that. uncompromising articulation of the truth. as gangster rapper who has politics in his flow, think about it when eye ibe could be -- the police come straight from a young brother got it bad because i'm brown and not the other color so police think they have the authority to kill a minority. blank that because i paint for a blank blank with a badge and

begun to be beaten only. we can go to toe to toe in the middle of a sale, messing with me because i'm a teenager -- selling narcotics. now, that's politically motivated gangster rap that understands the bruising consequences of police brutality and the inway in which that white supremacy channels itself through state force and state legitimacy, badge and the gun are loungated -- ledge -- ask the family of anymore chicago or detroit or baltimore. so the reality is, is that given all of that, it's very difficult to get to the heart of the matter and to the truth of it and a lot of people don't necessary my want to confront that head on. try to do that any book. last night ice cube gave a condensed version of that, an

unapologetically aggressive assertion of the need to respect black people and to establish those boundaries of what is acceptable and not acceptable, and i think it gave the show an interesting dynamic. and then when youly to in miss simone sanders, the cnn commentator who also ran bernie sanders' aspect of his campaign, then you had three different visions of blackness operating ironically on a guy's show who a week before had talked about being a house nigger and now got three block people dominating his show the next week, and an interesting way. not simply as an extension of an olive branch but a mea culpa but awould in which as you said blackness refused to be sidelined to be subordinate and asserted itself at multiple levels on he show last night. it was remarkable display of

both the variety and diversity of black approach and black sentiment, even though we were all unified in our belief and the different philosophies and methodologies of engagement that can be displayed when black people are offended by or fed up with a particular word, idea, sentiment, passion, or reality. >> host: we have time for just few questions and you can line up at that microphone right there keep your questions pretty brief because we just have a few minutes. >> thank you so much. i went to georgetown university and was really dismayed to learn of its early 1800s selling of slaves to earn -- raise money for the college. that do you think about their handling of that and about perhaps a larger issue of reparations, if only to save our white souls of its original sin from slavery. >> that's'll something you address in the book.

>> guest: yes, sir, but god bless you with that el queen -- wow. yes, do address that in the book. talk about george town. proud to be a member of the gorgeoustown factually but not a graduate, and i'm a prefer not proud and nobody there is -- proud of what went on a long time ago. say for the most part because die get hate mail from people who say they're georgetown alums. i want to keep it real and they sound like they're real happy that stuff went on in the 1800s but nobody is happy withthat. the pit president is an extraordinary man. the committee that determine we have to do something -- it's one thing to yap bit. one thing to do something about it. one thing to say we were wrong but your point about reparations is extremely important. this steps to look for the descendents of those enslaved and then offer them the same recognition that people who are alums of the school get.

that's a start, but people who were 272, the basis of your economy, are a little bit more than alums and should get a little more than that. say it to them and not saying anything out of school. of course we have to push further. can you give. the some scholarshipman? can you hook some brothers and sisters up? and give them the wherewithal to go because they were denied the opportunity. not simply the opportunity of schooling that is denied. it's the opportunity of schooling in concert with careers that would allow you to accumulate capital to exercise authority over the dominion of your own life. so, i think it's extremely important, and i talk in the book at the end about individual reparations. you're right, reparations are important because there's a matter after justice and politically necessary, if you will, renegotiations of relations in american society and the state but we know ain't ain't going to happen soon.

what i offered to white brothers and sister is is the possible of doing individual reparations and a lot of people have read this and wrote me and said we took your seriously. here's misindividual reparations. some broken down computers. i got them fixed, took them to local school with black students and their faces hit up and the sent me the pictures. something as simple as that. sending kids to learn how to swim at the y. sending children to camp. paying for their tutors. hooking up your grass man with a little extra dough. or the woman who clean your house with a little extra cash. sounds like near charity but it's the systemic attempt to be deliberate and intentional about no mart how modestly the transference of whatever resource you have, intellectually, spiritually, materially to those beleaguered community you know have been systemly deprived of those opportunities. a lot more to be done but i think reparations is politically

right now some would say unfees able, although i think the logic is iron chat. martin luther king said a nation who has done something special against the anything -- negro, for 400 years must do something special for the negro in that same vein. it is morally compelling and we have to find ways to do that. [applause] >> host: with one more question. >> thank you. i'm a scientist from indiana -- india in this country. in this 21st century with all the advance independent science and knowledge and human achievement i find most of the countries are going -- even the democratic countries going nobody human and mostly fundamental people are coming to power. how is it possible? what is the reason?

>> we have a minute left for you to answer that question. >> guest: it's just messed up. let me say this. the use of science to justify and legitimate the inequal is something that is deeply inscribed in western discourse, western science. thomas jefferson, most scientific of men, when he came to the bible, what did he say? all the stuff you can't prove got to go all the christians who say the founds fathers were christians like you, stop it. the miracles were the first thing do go. smokey robinson stayed on for a while. thank you very much. just tried that out for the first time. here's the opinion. thomas jefferson in his notes on virginia, doubted the reasoning of black people.

our rational capacity. so, didn't-den remember he was part of gulp that said if black people can master greek we know they're smart. along comes phyllis wheatly and you get what happened is her greek ant not whatnot we met. there's always an excuse because the bottom line is science is a hand maiden for bigotry when power re-enforces a narrow conception of who we are. science alone will never win the day. science and concert with morality. so you can be a climate change denier and have power to reinforce your bigotry but we need more than science to prevail. we need morally motivated human beings to trump that ignorance in the most fundamental way. [applause] >> host: the book is "tear wes cannot stop: a sermon to white america."

it's been a pressure. >> guest: thank you so much. greet hang -- great to hang out with you. give it up for miss white. [applause] >> thank you all for coming here today. michael eric dyson will be signing booked outside the auditorium. >> mam wraps up the talk by michael eric dyson. this is live coverage of the printers row litfest in chicago on book tv. we'll continue our coverage, m mark bowden is the next author you're hear from. his most recent book is, a

turning point of the american war in vietnam. [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] >> be tall, dark and handsome. >> you a smart man. >> thank you for your expression. [inaudible conversations] >> thank you for that. god bless you, sir. >> hey, man, thank you, sir. appreciate that. we have to sell books now? sign a few books? >> yes. >> going to gout out -- is -- there is a bathroom? >> yes. >> i don't to think c-span is gg to rest room with me. how are you?

>> thank you, sir. >> oh, man. thank you, my brother. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

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[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] >> booktv tapes hundreds of author programs throwing the country all year along. here's a look at events this week...