>> watch the city's tour of springfield missouri, saturday at noon eastern on c-span2 put tv. and sunday at 2:00 p.m., on american history tv on c-span three. working with our cable affiliates as we explore americ america. >> author julie is next on book tv. she talks about her expenses growing up biracial in america. this program contains language some may find offensive. >> hello everyone. welcome. we are so glad you are here tonight. we just have a couple of reminders, first of all, all the books are downstairs and julie will be doing a signing at the very end so if you could buy your book downstairs and then come up and she can do the signing for you. also, please remember to

silence your cell phone and then, tonight, h we have something special going on. c-span is here reporting. when we do the q&a at the end, if you just raise your'l hand, either angela or i will bring over a microphone for you. we can just get it nice and mildly recorded for the show. i would like to introduce to you guys tonight, julie haynes. she is the best-selling author of how to raise an a adult and she holds a ba from stanford, jd from harvard law. tonight she is here to read from her new book real american. please welcome her. [applause] >> thank you. >> hello everyone. wow. it is so cool to be here in

austin texas. i bring you greetings from your sister region, the san francisco bay area. we think of you often and always. annie, thank you for introducing me and having me too your marvelous store. it's amazing to travel a great distance and come to an iconic bookstore and see friends like lisa who was in my msa program and former students and authors, jessica g leahy, author of the gift of failure, it's so lovely to see the people i know and recognize, my formerr students, but also strangers because when strangers come out to see you, that fills pretty awesome. those of you who have no idea who i am, thank you for coming. while i have the microphone on this book to her with a book on race and finding my voice, i've decided that whenever possible which turns out to be always i'm going to step aside for a few minutes and make an opportunity to give an

opportunity to a younger writer. so, i want to introduce taylor williams. taylor is 1 a 16-year-old junior and she is a writer. she has a couple of homes that she will share with us spread when i put out the call, it is asking a youngal y writer to respond to the prompt of being the other in america which is kind of broadly what my book is about. taylor williams, common share your work with us. thank you. >> i. this is my first poem that i wrote and it's called pretty. i wrote it to basically break down the word pretty and show up for what it really is. my dear, don't let them call you pretty. the word is used to keep you down, keep you contained, keep you hopeless because they know

just how dangerous you are. you see, it's a spiderweb word. it clings to phrases like you are pretty for. you are pretty for a black girl, a white girl, a short girl, a fat girl, a girl with long hair, a girl with short hair, a girl with a crooked smile, a girl with brown eyes. it hangs from terms you were pretty before you cut your hair. you were for pretty before you started wearing those clothes. it attaches to phrases like you are pretty because. you are pretty because you have long blonde hair. itas grips to phrases like you are pretty before. you could be pretty if it weren't for that scar and you could be pretty if you were hit by a car. take the edge of this word, i ask. breakdowns we can all see pre,

like a prejudged notion and a misconception or simple abnormality. if you had fight this biter's venom trying to reach your wings of acuity, if you felt the spring of an ocean grounding you in a web but it feels more like an ocean, ask you to no longer take it quietly and startedce motion. i'm not a victim of this word yoube see because i have never been and never will be pretty. some will be at a loss, pretty is the only word they can see. their sensors are not wired to feel andy for that they have my pity. over the words they cannot begin to hear so they just decide to call me pretty.

thank you, this is my second home. i call it bank. bang. you may have all heard it due to the whites premise. white cotton swabs you have plugged in your ear and you may not have felt this scorching hot bullet as it pierces its way through body and you may not have smelled the stench of the dead body long before it hit and you may not have heard about it on your local news channel because it was more important rather than the air that will no longer be inhaled by a person who was shot while colored.ho you may not hear about it on your national news channel because it was more important toor discuss the skyscraper being built all the way up to the heavens rather than another black man or woman being brought down to the ground.

do not beseech this matter. as if we are dumb enough to believe that every single bullet that was hit by a black man or woman was loaded with not prejudiceit but justice but as if we are dumb enough to believe a bullet accidentally fired, as if mothers and fathers of black sons and daughters don't have to tell their children to bite their tongue so they d don't bite the bullet. because, the silence of one black voice in the face of humanity is better than the silence of a memorial service. because if you do not choose to acknowledge cge the that an entire race is being killed because of the color of the skin, then do not stand in the way of those were trying to protect their kin. in this, this is not just a bullet thing. little brown boys a little brown girls look to be seen because they know the only time they see themselves on the big screen is when there hiked up in the most ghetto extreme.

contrary to g believe, not all of us want to be overhyped trapped queens. we want to be valued and valedictorians and ceo. we strive to thrive, not just survival. we want doctor by our name, not dead on arrival. there's a body on the ground with a bullet to the head and i wonder how many more will have to be bled. hush, bang is not seen nor heard and that is why i use these words. you can see it,n especially in the youth today. there's a fight in their eyes and it burns with the pain of the lies that have been fed to them like a pride because they have the most unfortunate demise of being born with the gift that is wise. what will you do? every bank starts with the spark. will you be the spark that ignites us all or will you be the hush that lets us fall? consider yourself educated more than your history class

will ever allow. thank you. [applause] >> thank you. give her round of applause. [applause]e] can you imagine the joy i have going around this country getting to meet young people like taylor. you just knocked around the park. thank you so much. i have a gift for you which is a signed copy of my book and a token of my respect for you as a writer and an i artist. i believe in you. there you go. >> thank you. [applause] okay, so i wrote this book, i'm 49, i'm going to be 50 this month and i tend to tell people these days that i came to live out loud and i finally can. it took me this long to inhabit a self i could locate and love in america and upon

arrival i began to write it all down and i wrote this book. most books, all books, probably, certainly works of fiction, many nonfiction books have an art. those of us who have studied writing and teach writing know that we are supposed to grab the reader, hold onto them, bring them on a journey that has some suspense or conflict and reach them to this point and then there's a climax and we resolve it. my book has more of a picks. soas if the standard arc of the book is a letter a, this has a v. the nine parts of it are, it begins like this, an american childhood is becoming the other, desperate to belong, self loathing, emerging, declaring, black lives matter, onward. and so tonight, i'm just to try to read from across the book and give you some glimpses of where i am in

almost every one of those sections and then as annie said, we will take questions at the end. okay. so this is a reading from real american. it begins like this. in the lead up to the 2008 presidential election, a persona stepped to the forefront of public consciousness. that of the real american. these real americans found a voice in their candidates, grew in number, became a mob who raised slogans, signs, fists, and arms, who long to make america great, normal, regular, white again. these newly emboldened real americans issue angry orders to the rest off us. if you don't like it, go back to where you came from. there is no back to where i came from. you stole my homeland fromd me. i don't even know where it is,

literally. i came from sylvie. i am the untalented, unpaid, unrepentant damages of one of americans founding crimes but i came from people who endured the genocide of slavery, reconstruction and jim crow, who began to find a place where onlyec quite recently, midstride stored affecting a more perfect union of liberty and justice for all, i and sylvie's great, great great granddaughter. sylvie was a slave who worked on the plantation in the late 1700s in charleston south carolina. the harbor town through which close to one and two african slaves entered america over the centuries. sylvie bore three children by her master joshua even, by which i mean he raped her. there is no consent in

slavery. i come from people who survived what america did to them. when the amorphous mob talked about the needs of real americans, they don't picture people like me, but is anyone more product of america than those of us formed by america in an angry war with herself? the contradiction of being less than in a nation who is forming documents speak of liberty and justice for all plagued me for much of my young adult life. i am so american it hurts. this is the section in american childhood, i'm just try to give you a glimpse of what my early childhood was like. a year later we moved to virginia, a planned community located just outside washington d.c. boasting a sort of utopian commitment to racial and social economic diversityy. president jimmy carter had

appointed daddy to be his assistant surgeon general with responsibility for running the health services administration and the department of health education and welfare. it was 1977. on a school field trip to our nations capital with my fifth-grade classmates i felt a swell of admiration for america and a surge off pride to be american as i stared up at the white washington monument, heard my voice echo as i walked around lincoln and his chair, traced my fingers over the bronze plaques. we walked back to our bus and a gagglele of them and for a few moments were caught in the jumble of people in their great trenchcoats trying to hurry down sidewalks to and from the jobeds.. i steps to the side so they could pass. important people worked in the city. i knew my daddy was once them. back at home in reston, i had black friends, indian friends, and jewish friends as well as white friends. there was even another black family on myla street for the very first time in my life

with a daughter named amanda. amanda was a few years under the me but we can both sunset was very important to our parents that would become friends and we did become friends, genuinely, telling each other our secrets, playing board games and sequestering ourselves behind locked doors to review the girly magazines are fathers thought they kept well hidden. i felt the mix wonder and on as we paused through page spreads of creamy white skin. over the years i did extremely wellin school, was a student government representative, sold girl scout cookies and tied a sic thick yellow red into the tree that stood at our curb in honor of the american hostages in iran. i adore daddy. he was 50 when i was born and my childhood coincided with the heyday of his career which began against all odds which began with the segregated hatred of the jim crow south.

i was the product of his second marriage to my mother and i knew from the way his eyes twinkled whenever he looked at me that he loved me no matter what. he gave me a variety of nicknames, old sport, knucklehead, which sounds crude to my grown ears, but then, smoke spoken in the butter of his baritone, it felt like melted love. he never had to call for me twice but i came running everything the time. when i was little and skinned my knee he would pull me up onto his lap, kiss me and ask with all seriousness how i was going to become ms. america without a scar. i didn't know then that node block woman had been crowned ms. america and no black woman would be crowned ms. america until 1983. instead, i heard in daddy's words that i was pitiful, perhaps the most beautiful girl he had everr seen. we all called him daddy, even my mother. he was formidable, commanding,

gruff, loving and funny. i hung onto his every word whether it was baby, bring me my cigarettes or a well-placed retort to the news recited by the anchorman onn tv. daddy was the protagonist, the lead. daddy was the son. beauty pageants were my thing. i wanted to be something more like president. by the end of my junior year in high school, by which time we were back in wisconsin, i had been elected vice president of my class for the third year in aow row and in the fall of my senior year, the student council elected me president of that governing body in an all-white high school. i was selected for roger girls state, statewide program for kids interested in policy and politics held the summer after graduation and was elected senator there.

i went on to be one of four presidents of my class at stanford university and one of four elected class leaders of my graduating class at harvard law school.ck the i was on track to live the american dream through hard work, big dreams and a bit of luck to become whomever i wanted. mine was in many ways a very american childhood, and, with money and influence that came from my father's professional success, it was also a childhood of materialri comfort that set me up for a privileged life. this section is now becoming the other. daddy never liked the fourth of july. i can understand it because i haven't adored the parades, songs and flags in the neighborhood barbecues and the explosion of firecrackers and the smart looks on everyone's faces that ean w revealed the ie understanding that our country was better and by extension we the people were better than the rest of the world. tas my mother was the one to informed me of my daddy's opinion of the fourth and she did so in a whispered sideways glance kind of way with no explanation as to why he felt

it. i understood from the way she said that it had something to do with daddy's past, his experiences, his blackness. her silent why the stove pain too painful to discuss whenever asked. i didn't think it related to the america i was inhabiting anyway. didn't think i was black and the way he was, thought america was beyond all that. i was wrong. looking back over the years of even my earliest childhood, the clues were everywhere. back in new york, a community i lived in when i was two through seven, i had begun to sense that something might be wrong with people with dark skin. a lacked the language to describe it and the intellect to describe it but i felt the chill in my bones, the heat of it surging up the back of my neck when i was out and about with daddy. daddy was 6-foot twonn and lean

within the tightly coiled afro he kept supple and skin that was dark and crinkly like the top layer of a brownie.ly on those occasional weekend days when he wasn't traveling or busy at the desk in his den, he would take me with him on an errand and every now and then to an event in manhattan. holding his hand, walking down the local street or bustling city sidewalk, i noticed that some strangers stared at him with eyes that steams like a cauldron, as if they could brand him like an animal with their steering focus if he dared to look them in the eye. : : small brown eyes to know what was going on. but he gripped my hand tighter, kept his eyes focused straight ahead purse his lips and kept walking. when i walked down the sail streets with my white mother, nobody steamed at her that way. the glances she got as a white woman holding tiny hand of a small brown child were far more subtle. it took a lot longer for me to dissurgeon and pity and disdain

by choosing to marry my father she crossed the line. by choosing to have me -- in fifth grade in welfare one of my white friends pulled into the gifted and talented >> gifted and g talented group. she was smart but no smarter than i was. w now she was getting a new cool project and puzzles but not me. i mentioned it to my mom who came to me with my teacher a few days later. polanski was not persuaded and now my mom insisted i be tested. they brought ines someone to give me the iq test and mailed the results mom thought i wasn't watching when she read the results and squirreled the letter away in the drawer. i was put in the gifted group soon after it shortly after that mr. polansky announced to the entire class all it takes

to be gifted is to meet with the principal but in the privacy i looked at the letter from the district raw score was 99th percentile and my teacher stood smug the first time i entered a very silent t2 fuck you. >> one day during sophomore year going to her house i found her in the basement rec room watching a movie on her vcr. gone with the wind.sh as she is turning to gaze back to the television screen. wouldn't it be great to lift back then?

>> because i would have been a slave. >> but if you weren't black? but i y am. i don't think of you as black i think of you as normal. so after sophomore year i was on an exchange trip to france with a different school. looking at thehe language lesson i found myself looking at a park where a girl was kicking the gravel out of her shoes she stopped she was doing and looked up at me and spoke. why are you black? decades later there was a

humiliating encounter with a little white french girl but on that day as 15-year-old walking through paris i was just alone with my rudimentary french. why are you black she demanded. because i am lucky i told her. i didn't believe it but i wanted to.o. i hope the words would send the stranger home with big questions maybe even fuck her up a little bit i didn't mind she questioned my right to existut just going through the day without drawing the scrutiny or fascination. i didn't want to give excuses or give a lesson in anthropology but i wanted to shine so fucking to be just like me. and ache like me.

kids?ybody bring their [laughter] they were escaping the world series and did not want to hear the f word. [laughter] now it is senior year. i am president of the student council of the all-white counsel debuting nbc with the show the cosby show the middle daughter looking kind of like me in thise fictional family that resembled mine. i was gluedevin every thursday evening for guidance how to be somebody like me. i turned 17 that november a few weeks after the presidential election that reelected ronald reagan. my best friend made me a locker sign cut from the pages of tiger beat, 17 and other teen magazines. she woke up extra t early to tape it to my locker before my arrival.

we did this for each other herbert they was early ini november i decorated her locker two weeks before. in the central hyatt hallway even with the student voices i could hear my heels clicking i could see the birthday locker sign with five sheetsed of white paper taped to the next in a vertical column shimmering ribbon spiraling into the hall.f i felt a surge of anticipation attention i would get. a friend shouted happy birthday as i made my way down the hall shouting thanks. i admired her creativity all the language and imagery she

had gone to such trouble for me. i open the locker put in my backpack pull out my books i turned and smiled at somebody else saying happy birthday. i went down the main court or toto my first class feeling like i own the place. someone took a thick black marker 217 spelled incorrectly i knew what they meant. in three different spots. immediately my mouth went dry. i found a black marker and crossed out niger then i took it home in the privacy of my home and opened it to the first blank page i pasted it

accordion style to bey completely unfolded to resembled what it looked like on my locker. then i took a pair of scissors like a surgeon excising tumors removed those three iterations of the shameful word and put it in the trash i close the scrapbook containing the recorded history of mytm childhood. talking that college applications among the first apple computer. the first internet domain name was registered. accepted an offer to stanford in april. we were pre-calculus together the hires the highest math offered held during the last period of the day. right after the bell rang his

father walked in and began talking to me in a playful tone. so you got into stanford? i looked at my friend like why is your dad here? then i replied yes. >> what were your sat scores? i responded what were your sat scores? i responded you got into stanford over harris when his scores were higher? our grades were roughly the same but he was not the head of the student body but i stole his spot with my blackness. i told nobody about the locker sign not my parents, the school for my boyfriend or best friend. for more than 20 years the truth of h that day metastasized i was the nigger of my town.

now i'm in college at stanford getting a 2.0 first-quarter for somebody like me black and female middle of nowhere wisconsin doesn't have what it takes to be a stanford. i am in a civil rights class with 200 students. later that spring the professor asked a very tough question which was not unusual but i know exactly what he is getting at and they ached to respond but i have never raised my hand in the class at stanford and still don't dare to do so.s s this is a complicated question. no one else is raising their hand. my fear of being wrong of black and wrong silences me even though i know i have a good idea.

scanning the room for potential volunteers something in my face must be showing my brain is working overtime. raising his eyebrows signaling i should speak up. well, i begin, i keep on talking. professor stiers never wanted to downplay a moment leans back and starts to nod his head vigorously as i talk. so i keep going. watching that clear evidence that i'm saying good stuff begins to scribble down what i am saying. i am teaching my classmates speaking from a place of grounded knowledge bolstered by the tiny bit of confidence. with a voice pushing through into the clearing. this is the starting line of

my efforts to be better than whites expect a black person can be. a race i will try to win over the next 20 years. we are still in the self-loathing section. no. we are moving to the self loathing section. now i am an administrator at stanford at dean after practicing law now back at the university. august 29, 2005 katrina makes landfall and the levees do not hold as the army knew they would not. in the ninth ward they are hastily scrawled on pieces of cardboard help us.

people plead with their signs sure as the helicopters fly over the government is coming for them but instead the government flies by. over 30,000 residents stream into the superdome whose air-conditioning and refrigeration would fail without restroom supplies they would live for five days at the superdome grows with the stench of food and urine and feces they relocate to the astra to -- astrodome in houston.na they saved the day and lives some evacuees would stay for weeks or months the former first lady of the united states barbara bush takes the two were of the astrodome september 5 when it is

brand-new and she chortles. so many of the people in the arena weres underprivileged anyway so this is working very well for them. most of us black folks are democrats and we believe that our government is an organization that will be there for us when our fellow citizens see to shut us out but in late august 2005 that we live in the gulf coast or have connection learns that the government has no plan that nigger should be grateful she might as well have said. have a hot dog. we gave you a hot dog, dog. be grateful. pledge of allegiance. stand for it. stand.

this is in the section emerging. still at dean@long -- stanford and professional coaches have been brought into work with my boss and his team her name is mary ellen and she is white. when she first starts working with us it's my job to tell her what is wrong with everybody else. literally. [laughter] after nine months of working with her for undergraduate education after nine months of working maryellen has conducted a 360 review and ready to tell me how i am regarded by my colleagues. i trust her enough to listen to the feedback. it is a stereotype of women that tell me not to do any of those things.

she lets me continue. yes i have a tendency to blurt things out when i am moved or frustrated but my frustration is more intended. when i practice law by passion and anger be channeled into useful arguments but in academia is seem to push people away like i have to apologize. why am i this way? to take 20 years of therapy? how about focusing on when you are this way and then decide what you want to do about it. what if anything i want to do about it? she is telling me my power lies to be in charge of my voice. and to begin taking notice of myad behavior i try to pay attention to what i'm feeling

and what triggered that feeling. of mindfulness and self i could sense the motion coming and ask myself what is going on? while the competition keeps going. to see that trigger to be overbooked and the fear i will be judged if not good enough makes me desperate to prove they are wrong and that i can't control anybody else's opinion or behavior. only myself if i work hard but with her guidance that i can accept myself regardless of what others are thinking of me. whether to speak or not or be silent or go off or not rather than let the impulses happen to me.er as coaching begins to impact

me i feel renewed and i begin to emerge into a healthy black self. i when i summon the guts to tell maryellen one of my most painful secret that as a child i hated being black and was afraid of black people. this guts willing partner shame in my psyche looses the muscles in my soul. the relief is astonishingly good. i wake up the l next day no longer feeling the vice grip making me loathe myself and my people. asking me to prove i was good enough despite being black looking in the mirror to allow myself w to see what they might

want to see or not conforming to see my actual self. in paper bag brown milk chocolate in summer and except some tv as the other and are fine with that. but you see my skin and hair to see theh white speech it isn't up to some committee on blackness but it took me 40 years to stop turning this way or that that people of both races would see me. i drive to work shutting the loathing of my black cell lung -- self which prevented me from seeing other black people. looking into the eyes of another and another black person and feeling compassion and admiration or even

desire. discovering their magnificent for the first time i was not this afflicted until i wasn't white americans you are infatuated with the statute -- statue of liberty that did welcome you and your ancestors simultaneously infatuated carving borders between who does and does not belong here. you think your whiteness makes you better than the rest of us your a scapegoat. you want to be treated as an individual? and i will get out of bed

anyway to go out to the streets of america to do my work to find true dr love with children who know how to work hard and be kind to others. this is in the section declaring. we the people cannot abide the stories of police of the witnesses on the stand to tell us seeing the blackbody they wereyo terrified. you ought to be terrified for justifiable reason. god gave us the skin that is not a reason for you to be justifiably terrified. we are terrified of you. we continue to try to forgive and live. my son. looking at the faces of trey vaughn, freddie and i see you

my precious son my beautiful black boy so smart and philosophical and bookish grow taller andow muscles with a man's face and who will be this home to discover in pockets of this great country you are clothed -- loads to. you did not ask to be born i gave you a skin of brown and you are exquisite beyond measure. as the lives matter section. almost done. you hiding there behind your draperies across the street acting like zimmerman about a disturbance in your neighborhood. you said there were multiple juveniles who do not live in the area or have permission to

be there which you know because you guard the white experience knowing who belongs at the pool and who does not.la you saw a black man getting into a nice car and called the police whor trailed him with the 25-year-old former student of mine getting a phd in engineering driving his own damn car. who called her dogs to keep america white you want to stand your ground. you think if given a choice any of us was asked to be born black in america? the object of your evidence? in the wake of the zimmerman verdict he described himself 6-foot 2-inch 300-pound black man what can i do?

i have to be somewhere. sometimes i wonder where is god in all of this? that maybe he did give us the choice asking for volunteers who wants to go down there and to learn compassion and the bravest soul to raise their hands. thank you. [applause] i will take your questions,

comments we call this a prose poetryry memoir with the picture i'm trying to paint so if you buy the book you will say that she intended that. and where the rules of syntax are ignored. yes she intended every piece of that. >> so who are your writing influences? >> thank you for that. i didn't have a black mother

but i found a literary one in the african-american poet i read her collection good woman around 2005 or 2007 and they tookok her words that she writes about blackness and womanhood and i thought seal is possible then i am possible. i've also been drawn very recently toos the work of claudia's poetry and i love toni morrison fiction. she has a new book out called the origin of others. lots and lots and lots of

people. >> two-part question. so with that chronological path is it as you continue your life? we make the journey will go like this. no more visa. except section one that begins like this that is more of a summary or rhetorical before b i plunge into the account of my life from childhood on. and let me just say this i am 49 and no longer trying to be what other people don't fear

or loathe or disregard. i can be myself regardless. so there will no doubt be challenges over this life but those are challenges i have well o examined and i'm clear on that. so if it comes then perhaps it isn't about race. >> do you think these problems faced by black youth give you a background that makes you stronger in some way? >> what a lovely question. we are not better people or black supremacist. i know that's not what you meant but is that larger part of black lives matter so can't black lives matter too?

we give the talk to our kids i addressed my son who is 18 and the challenges to teach our sons and daughters to be smart and safe so they can come home to us while simultaneously helping them to grow with self-esteem how do you tell someone that terrible things that happen simply because the color of their skin how do you teach them that simultaneously to love themselves? we should all love ourselves it is hard to love anybody else so there is a dual task but i do think there is strength that comes from struggle and suffering i think about refugees who are vastly

stronger because of what they tend to go through. there is something about surviving i can make a person a lot stronger and can really break a person. so in the aggregate, who knows but i am grateful to be black and to learn what i have about my people and i have a pride in that i try to pass on to my own kids. that gives us a core of strength i mentioned my

great-grandmother and they dedicate the book to sylvie who made me a real. she was even considered a human but of course she was so the pride that i have i do think does strengthen me. thank you. >> basically, thank you. as an american studies major back then, this is my mom from a very white part of dallas

and this is a joy of discovering so many other people at the time i said i majored in black women riders because it was a huge discovery but at that time i rememberhi you just being joyful student because you were a wonderful person to be around but i want him to go there to meet people like you so now i feel calm and balanced after having read theth book and my last thank you is for writingak the book i have a book club i will make them read it i'm happy you are sharing this experience with us now to be incredibly successful as you have been in your entire career you are exposing the fact it has been a struggle

and we need the stories moving forward. >> i want to say this, i do have light skin that is a privilege, i have been educated, upper-middle-class, that's a privilege. but what this book is about what it is also like to be african-american and biracial what we call micro- aggression stop being the victim and all of that i think it is a compilation of those micro- aggression because they try to help people see they can contort and distort that soul and spirit over time we may have emerged stronger but suffer from this tremendous self loathing.

regardless of the trappings of success, i loathe myself and with the country was so excessive who belongs and who doesn't. so despite tremendous opportunities i have been given is eye-opening for people who don't know but it brings me to call and keep her neck the 40 niner in the bay area. people say he should just and up and play but the point is with police brutality even when i am highly accomplished and successful am not immune

from any of this walking down the street somebody harms you on the basis of your skin racism is a hatred that applies to skin color. and doesn't make you immune from that at all. in fact you move into circles where people say awful things i detail somebody coming to a party in palo alto and then comes to the party in blackface. so there's that. >> i saw you walk over with your book people now he is listening to my talk. [laughter] >> hopefully i don't get in trouble. >> you kind of look my son.

>> thank you so much for your words but more than that, even though you describe your life in detail it is my life and mother and father and it is very deeply felt. someone who has done a lot of work for has accomplished a lot y, especially that sense of self loathing existing is a struggle against blackness. so now that you come out of that struggle, how do you set challenges for yourself or to look forward so your life isn't predicated upon a struggle internal or external but a serieses of goals?

>> i am interested in humans and all of us getting a chance to make our way. with the term of helicopter parenting i didn't write that book about parenting but are those your parents? i wrote that because i care about the young people who are over parented and i have written this book because racism robs a human of agency so if you ask me what is your passion? like you been on -- helping humans on their path so they can march forward regardless my goals are around continuing to be useful in the lives of

other humans so that may be somebody else's path could be by the sharing of the lesson i have learned. once i finally came to terms withas the self loathing i thought i was the only person who felt that way. i was so ashamed of my black ancestry when i spoke it out loud it felt like everything begano to flow i came to stanford the next day. i see black people and smiling like every black person got the memo to say smile at julie today. i was able to love this self and love my black brothers and sisters and then to discover

so many of us struggle with these feelings. and that makes us load ourselves to share that and acknowledge i it. i found this tremendous embrace even with the light-skinned person when iha wasck younger biracial made more sense to me but of course the black community has grown much more aware to be accepting of those differences among us so my work continues to be not just with humans but i am deeply interested in the black b experience for example the

museum being built in charlesto charleston. doing a lot of genealogical work and to build a museum on the harbor former mayor has said like it or not this was ellis island they were not voluntarily but which i think is fabulous so to become part of the american narrativee that has been dominated by white voices over 200 years or 300 years i am interested in everyone's story being told and i hope to tell others.

>> thanks for coming. i also went to west point for undergrad and i really appreciate your first book but my other passion is police brutality. >> you mean anti- police brutality? [laughter] >> anti- prison. so i got into that not on purpose but i had a run in with the cop with a bad experience that opened my eyes to the issues that's what other people have been pushing for generatio generation. butru what happened after my run in is that my west point classmates turned against me

some of them publicly. my stanford classmates by a large went quiet. themselves from me. and through this experience, as much as i love stanford, i have come to be quite disappointed in institutions higher education in particular and to give your position as a former dean at stanford in a lotof of ways our universities are not centers for pushing societypr forward to have

extreme disappointment with someone with so much privilege are the least willing to speak out. so this is an easy question for you feel free to expound upon that. >> thank you ford sharing. i'm sorry you went through that with the police and that still matter to you. and fundamentally we have to be right with herself regardless of what others think with those that will love and respect us that will

love and adore us sometimes it is the family or chosen family that the community where we know we can feel safe and heard and believe and supported so i'm sorry that at stanford were not that for you but i hope you will continue to express himself and find community with people who can hear you and believe you and support you. i left stanford five years ago to write a book on helicopter parenting i think on for five years. i had an important role and i cherishedis that the zimmerman verdict came out 2013 i remember experiencing such rage for many of us especially upper middle class we think we

have arrived at a place with a childhood but his murder shattered that allusion. we all expected the verdict different i went out to pour my rage on facebook and one of my former students said thank you for saying that. you are speaking for a lot of us. i said thanks. it is just really now. but i was saying there are limitations working for institutions you're not there to speak our minds but to be representative of the place so i found tremendous freedom in detaching from the institution. that is also a privilege to walk away and i recognize that. universities are really struggling right now think

about judge georgetown had 200 slaves keep afloat financially and they acknowledge that and to those descendents and nice to see places and spaces with that institution of slavery that was so successful because the workers were not paid. of course money was made. humans were enslaved. watching those institutions come to grips or university with what is free speech? today to contend with difficult issues? and to encounter the speech that you hate and not knowing

what to do. i do believe in safe space and trigger warnings that we could give a heads up to somebody nasty shit is about to be said and a safe space you can go to not be subjected to hateful speech like your dorm also university campus is classrooms and labs with that free exchange of ideas and we have to continue to support that. so they have a lot toio contend with and they are struggling as we are with all of this.

they are big nonprofits and the self-interest with the needs with any single student. >> actually my cousin went to school with you. >> i thought i recognized you. >> yes. we were in calculus together. now we have a multiethnic child and my father is caucasianca so i am curious to know because my experience to

have a white dad as a child that did not affect me until hindsight is 2020 but as an adult i have a different experience to have a white parent.. and how that influence but since i grip with an asian mom and white dad. i feel i can relate dealing with two asian parents it was a little differenta for me because i had a white dad.

but it could be mailed white privilege. >> this book is a journey around a lot of topics including the relationship with myypi white mother's act of loving my father to marry him was truly transgressive. that was illegal in 17 states they were married in west africa before loving versus virginia. my journey to be a black kid has been quite a struggle. she has been gone 22 years so

i could not say any of this to my father decidedim consciousness so now in a place with my mother the made. both of them my father was the assistant attorney general under jimmy carter he chose to raise me in places where they have the biggerto house i knew -- and never knew how to say white boys will be your friends but they will never date you. i cannot find the wherewithal to say then why did you me here? doesn't my adolescence matter? don't i deserve to be loved? so my mother has borne the brunt of this. struggling with a white jewish husband in these two kids.s.

i'm trying to raise my kids in the era of black livesen matter. the black ancestry. in the coalminer ancestry. and to help children have with that experience of ethnicity. that was never offered to me as ae child. but trying to figure out who i was. and to find yourself nodding vigorously in places. to generalize my experiences and also be very specific

because that specificity will help people to relate. one of the joys to write the book is not only black or biracialre to say i had that experience but other people of color. but anybody who was made to feel like the other i don't know what it is like to be you are now. but i am excited and that to be more critical than ever increasingly part of the american narrative.

[inaudible] >> you let me know. let me know if i made some headway. i will and with this. speaking to the choir nobody has dragged you here. something in you wanted to be here. to me how to be an ally of somebody else lacking in agency or hurting. that is radical compassion. and that takes the love to do something with it. to say this happened at school.

it listens to that kid not just loving the heck out of him but asking questions not like are you sure? give the benefit of the doubt. listen and believe this child who doesn't have a voice and is told there experience didn't happen or don't matter. and then to say i believe you then with ever privilege that you have with your identities. sometimes it is class or race so when they go out to the world to say this is my realityy say it is not right and i willll stand up with this person that is radical

compassion. we all deserve that. and we all have that in our capacity b-17. [applause] [inaudible conversations]

b5

>> more than 10000 women the japanese naval codes the japanese army, they were reading signals all over the world coming out of north africa. in those that were called into private interviews with astronomy professors and asked two questions are you engaged to be married and you like foster? a number of them lied. and then what is interesting than reading around while their fiancé was risking their life in the war. the women came to washington and those in listed women as well.

and if they had the aptitude is giant code breaking compounds. in the army was recruiting on its own based upon the strategy to send those handsome army officers recruiting schoolteachers because they wanted women and as a woman in the 40s if you had a great liberal arts degree the only job you could expect was teaching school. they were trying to lure the women to washington to do a marriage to the handsome officer but in fact they were interested in getting out of those hasty engagement they felt pressured into so they packed up the suitcases coming to washington as well. the reason it has been on hold for so long because the women were told they would be shot

if they talked in washington. it was top-secret they had security clearance. so to talk about their work was treason so they were told to sharpen pencils or empty wastebaskets and they were secretaries and that is what they did and continue doing after the war. and because they were women people believed them. . . . .