are departed, all are denigrated, we are back where they were. >> that will have to be the last word in our two hour conversation with author and professor imani perry. thank you for your time. >> thank you so much peter. >> if you missed any of this program it's re-airing tonight at 10:00 p.m. but also right now. up next, it's booktv monthly in-depth program with author and princeton university professor imani perry. her book on race and african american history include "prophets of the hood", "may we forever stand", and the recently published "breathe: a letter to my sons". >> professor imani perry, what is the structure of your newest book "breathe: a letter to my sons"?

>> there are three sections, fear, fly, and fortune. it's an epistolary work. it's a series of letters to my sons but of course it's also a letter to the larger world. both about the reality of the terror and anxiety and worry of being a parent to black children come in particularly black boys at this moment. it's also filled with my desire for them to lead a life of beauty and joy. and excellence. and self regard. much of which i think one finds the lessons for an extraordinary tradition we have to draw from. >> where did you come up with the idea to write your sons a letter? >> i actually have written them letters privately for years but

my editor at beacon press, set is this something you'd be interested in doing. initially i think what we both had in mind was something that was probably ãba story for them and the world. it became something more sober. i reached into the archives that i had in my mind of the works that for me did that and try to have a conversation both with the past and the present.

>> it reads as if it flowed out of you. it's probably not the case but read that way. >> thank you. it certainly the book that came out most quickly. i wrote most of it one of your own in japan where i was working for the summer. it's also the cases the conversation to the book of the conversations we had all the time. to craft those conversations to craft that that message took time but there is something that just flowed forth. and the emotional energy i think of this task which is kinda breathless and beautiful

and exciting. >> ready to come up with the title? >> it's so interesting because as many people guest, there is a reference there to eric gardner's statement, i can't breathe. but there's also a reference ã ãthe city i was born in rmbirmingham alabama had the worst air quality in the nation in the year i was born. i was thinking about the prevalence of asthma. an environmental racism. in the way it makes it very hard to breathe actually. was thinking about the kind of holding one's breath and moments of deep anxiety around the threat of a violent moments of racial injustice. also in part because connected to my first book which was on

hip-hop, i came in age and an art form that's largely about ã ãthe extraordinary skill of wrappers that often goes unnoticed as to say all those words requires the management of the breath. i want them to breathe in a sense of having taken in what they need to survive and flourish. navigating the difficult moments, which it means to get out 16 bars with barely catching her breath. it was a powerful metaphor for me. >> fear, fly, fortune, what do they need? >> that structure comes both from richard wright's native

son and tallahassee there is a modification that i will talk about. the fear is in some ways self-evident. the ravages of racism whether that be the kind of in the harrowing incidents we been seeing on video for several years but been throughout american history of the killing of unarmed black people often by police officers. without any process without any just cause. for the most minor of infection. or none at tiall. but the fear at large. the ways in which inequality can delimit your opportunities but also getting your head.

those kinds of fears are without question ever present and part of the task of parenting for me is to attempt to navigate around those fears with the recognition that tomorrow it really isn't promised. so you have to attempt to navigate but you also cannot be completely overwhelmed by the fear otherwise you won't live. you have to deal with the reality the tragedy and disaster are possible. add fly is in some ways an indication of toni morrison and flight, for native son is the moment when the protagonist ãb is running away from the law because he's committed and murdered edits prompted by his

terror. of being lynched essentially. i thought about flight and the sense of e actually taking flig in life. an extension of the idea of not being defied by the fear but how to take flight. emits a direct reference to tony morris song of solomon. in the idea of flying if you give up the stuff that weighs you down as she says. and in fortune for me was a way of talking about the abundance that they have that's not about the material fortune. it's not about inheritance in the way that we tend to describe it as riches. but actually the fortune of a tradition of an ancestry of resilience of incredible beauty. of creativity even in the face of constraint so i talk about

everything from our ancestors to thelonious monk and his mastery, the repetition of a single composition over and over which really function as a way of thinking about, how do we navigate this? we have this set of notes which we could say as a metaphor for life and navigating the terms over and over again. that's sort of the foundation of the structure. >> what we know about freeman and esa? >> this is a hard question to answer because sometimes they tell me different things to tell the world what i'm talking about this book. in some ways the most important part is that they are fully and absolutely human in all of its complexity. i say it that way because so

often i think black children in particular are granted that recognition. i could talk about how they are distinctive i can talk about freeman is composes extraordinary music and he is an amazingly gifted artist. both really good friends. all of these things. i sometimes have to hesitate because these things are true about them but i don't want it to sound as though i'm making them exceptional. because i really do believe that all children are really a special. in many children who don't have parents who can draw attention to their gifts are often made to feel as though their children are inadequate.

>> what about they think about the fact that you wrote a letter to them exposing them to the world? thus far they are okay with it but i also they also understand that might change over time. because my sons are 13 and 16. they are in a pretty intense stage of development each of them. i did give them veto power over the content in the book so i allowed them to say if there were stories they didn't want in the book if there were details that i hope maybe they let me tell later in life but maybe not.

who in our intimate domestic life i am not a public figure. that part of the day to day of our lives really isn't on display. that's the most important piece for them is the relationship. >> from your book you write that racism is in every step and breath we take. >> it really is. when you actually start to deconstruct it in a detailed fashion and you see everything from households are constructed cobalt frequently the street cleaning operations take place, who can be aware, what opportunities exist, who has bank accounts, who doesn't commit walking along the street whose body elicits a clutching

of the purse. we are there bookstores in which communities? what do the schools look like? it is so pervasive. it's part of what makes an uncomfortable conversations about race are for so many people. we cannot function as a decent society without talking about it because we are in the thick of it all the time. >> imani perry, on friday we sent out a tweet promoting your appearance here on sunday and in the tweet we put the words "our white people irredeemable, asks imani perry at princeton

university" you took a little issue with that. >> i did. >> i want to read from "breathe: a letter to my sons" what prompted that question. we will put it on the screen as well. we will give you a chance to talk about this a little bit. here is a confession, recently i have wondered if white people are irredeemable. again, i have to issue a caveat for the sensitive, no i do not mean individuals, individuals are the precious bulwark against total desperation. and then we find the persistence of possibility. of course a single person can be someone's hell but a single person can be a have been too boyfriend. but i worry that white frpeople are irredeemable and it scares me. what would the complete dissembling of the kingdom of identity look like? how would the visceral pulse under cracked open surface. given those two paragraphs.

>> without the larger context often sentences like that trigger a dispenser this step becomes impossible to gauge. this is the difficulty of social media all the time. the second sentence that it's caveat is important because people here when you say i wonder if white people irredeemable, they hear all white people. they hear white people as individuals as opposed to whiteness as an identity that clung to. so that when i go on to the second paragraph where and what, what if i took this unidentity apart those people

would not have a different history or body. but it would be a better relationship to identity. i think what would potentially have as a consequence a more humane relationship to each other. when i went into later in the first paragraph when i'm saying a person an individual can be a habit not talking about individuals and individual can be a heaven certainly both someone raised by a white man or as someone who thinks of so many figures like john brown or howard dan or bob's owner who i think are some of the most precious people in the world it's important to me to not

have a formulation that removes them from my sense of the struggle that i'm engaged in. >> one more question about breathe before we move on to some of your other books. mothering black boys in america is a special calling. >> yeah the sentence that my mother said to me. i think about it in a number of different iways. one of course is that there is of course all the risks. people talk about incessantly, in some ways that are difficult i think and maybe not necessarily helpful about the challenges that black boys face in this world whether mass incarceration or inequality and schooling org high school

graduation rates of college attendance rates or unemployment. i think about it differently, i think about it, all those things are true but i think about the simultaneity of wanting to raise my children who are identified as black boys that in a way that doesn't delimit their imaginations their sense of possibilities it allows them to understand the facts of racial inequality. that keeps them from from thinking that they are superior o to people because they are relatively privileged. these are also the other people generally. and also that keeps them away from seeking patriarchy or dominance in this society that values those things highly. so that even though those things are more e elusive for black men to attain as a society that values that and part of the task is also

raising them, for me, to not value that but to value their characters and their sensitivity and their complexity. and other people around them irrespective of what walk of life they come from. all of that is a special calling because the lessons about what it means to be a man across the board often times impaling things that are not so good and then in the lessons of what blackness is is often times not so good unless you counter both of those ofthings. with a story that i think is more accurate but also much more loving and gives a much greater capacity to be fully human. >> in the last 19 minutes, everything we talked about are these the types of things that you teach or in part at princeton? >> not really, which is interesting. in some ways this is a departure for me. it is the spirit with which i teach. certainly i teach the work of toni morrison and i taught the work of richard wright but i

tend to teach much more fact driven and material driven as opposed to the kind of emotional register but i do think of teaching itself as a calling. it's important to bring to that one's sense of values and humanity and justice and love to the students even though we are supposed to be somewhat dispassionate. >> how does one get a phd and a jd from harvard at the same time? >> unwisely. [laughter] when i was, i graduated from college i was 21 years old i was just completely in love with the life of the

mind and i didn't want to choose and i want to do everything and i said i will apply to both graduate school law school i did two years of graduate school it's with my orals and did my first year of law school it was sort of a frenzied pace but it was beautiful and i amazing. i loved it. i learned so much and every day i was being nurtured by all of these generations of people who came before me. and help me understand the world. we want to play a little bit of music and video this is from 1999. [singing]

>> of course this is jesse norman singing at the rosa parks congressional gold-medal ceremony in 1999. what is that song? that song is lift every voice and sing. the song that was known as the neo-national anthem and the black national anthem after the 1970s. it is a song that i described as black america's most precious song. just that clip of rosa parks who of course is a alabama woman and jesse norman who was recently departed incredibly moving. >> you've written a biography. >> of the song. yes. >> may we forever stand is the name of the book. james weldon johnson and john rosemont johnson.

>> they are the author and composer they were brothers who were born in jacksonville florida renaissance man and of course back in the day they were called the race men people who thought every achievement that they had as being in service of the race. ãbbecame the first secretary-general of the naacp. the first black man admitted to the bar and for the really extraordinary but one of the signature accomplishments of both of their lives was a composition of the song. >> they were first generation born in the 1870s. >> yes. their mother's family hadn't been enslaved with bahamian and their father's family had been enslaved in virginia but of that generation that emerged from slavery with all these hopes and dreams and

aspirations that were so quickly dashed with the end of free construction. >> what was the reception in 1900s when the song was ao written. >> what was extraordinary is that the song caught on like wildfire united states did not have a national anthem at this moment. ãbleft florida and moved up to new york to work on ãb alias songwriters import because they had been a terrible fire. they actually work there in florida as the song caught on. it caught on across schoolchildren passed it on.

black club women circulated it. they reprinted it began to be printed in the back of omhymnal. it was sort of an anthem of the communities making. they did not describe it as an anthem. they did not intend it necessarily as an anthem but black communities throughout the south said this is our anthem. >> if we had continued playing the video we would have seen then president clinton. >> yes. who knows all three verses. it's one of his distinctions i think he may be the only. [singing] president who ever knew all three verses of lift >> from your book "may we forever stand", hip-hop uttered its farewell to the black national anthem. where you going there? >> one of the things, i talk about this in my first book is there is something that happens in the 70s and 80s which is a

transformation both of some norms in black social and political life that have to do with the kind of civic engagement and associational life. and it's also being connected to the industrialization and there is a piece where i quote the reverend joseph lowery sometimes on this where he says he said, may he rest in peace, black people are the moral conscience of the nation. hip-hop is a refusal of that position. it is bold, it's not formal, it's profane and insistent and unwilling to perform a particular kind of ãas a reveling in outlaw.which is a commonplace in american culture. but it's a different kind of public presence for

african-americans. so that departure i think was significant but what i also talk about in the book is the song keeps coming back. there been various moments where we've seen it seemed like it was going to teeter out completely. it keeps coming back. even though the kind of institutions, the kind of communities in which it was song on a weekly or daily basis don't exist in the same way in black communities. >> what did you learn about the song in researching this book? >> i will say the biggest surprise, so much of what i read about is about how it was ensconced in institutional life.in various kinds of organizations. it was so exciting to see the graduation program like dressmakers academy where they sing the song or every day when dizzy gillespie talks about ãb singing the song on the porch

of the school looking out on cotton fields. but what surprised me and was so beautiful was how many educators used it as a tool. i encountered all these curriculum in which there are vocabulary lessons that the song becomes the basis of, there are history lessons, there are plays, pantomimes in school so it really has so many functions and to see the way that the teacher so many black teachers segregated schools and underfunded schools took seriously the task of preparing young people not just for the future but to become warriors for justice was so moving. >> you s share your views on th in the book and i want to read that very quickly. you write "i like many other people find singing "lift every

voice and sing alongside other people of conscience to be one bulwark against a pessimism that threatens to descend at every turn when i look around the room and see so many close mouth eyes focused on the page, nervous gestures i'm reminded not to be deceived about the moment in which we live grasping somewhat randomly into traditions and their archives and yet in desperate need of rebuilding tradition or building a new. >> right. one of the things that emerged for me as part of the book and i talk a lot in the early chapters about associational life. taking this from alexis de tocqueville to talk about americans love to join groups. americans created club for everything that was so robust. the black americans associational life was very explicitly political in the context of jim crow.

people would belong to like 10 or 12 different separate different organizations and have commitments to them over a lifetime. we don't live that way anymore, across the board, not just ymbuccaneers, that's americans general. but that is precisely what was necessary 'sto wage certainly civil rights revolution and its necessary to actually solve social problems you have to have a sense of being a member of the fabric of the community who are working together where there is mutual dependence and trust. so there is a way in which, and very emotional and maybe sentimental at moments about lift every voice and sing but what was most important about it was that was a tool for creating an emotional bond in the service of community. so that the community itself is ultimately what was most important. more important then whether we think that particular song is a kind of ritual and commitments that made it so powerful was that that's what i think we

need 202-748-8200 if you leave in eastern and central time zone. 202-748-8201 for those of you in the mountain and pacific time zones. if you can't get through on the phone lines and would prefer to send a text you can send a text message to this number 202-748-8003. you can also contact us via social media just remember

@booktv remember facebook and twitter and her email address is ãb imani perry is the author of five books, six books. >> it's okay. >> prophets of the hood was her first politics and poetics and hip-hop which came out in 2004. more beautiful and more terrible the reembrace and transcendence of racial inequality in the u.s. as the "may we forever stand" history of the black national anthem and looking for lorraine, the radiant and radical life of lorraine hansberry also came out in 2018. that's three books in 2018. and "breathe: a letter to my sons" which we talked about is her most recent which just came out this year.

i want to go to your first book you mentioned a couple times, "prophets of the hood", will get to the title in a minute but can you draw a direct line from langston hughes to biggie smalls? >> absolutely. in so many ways both of them took the beauty of vernacular language and crafted it and then made decisions to tell stories that were pointed that often had a political content and resonated deeply pleasurable to listen to to engage with. they are different kinds of political subjects, langston hughes is very overtly and activist and organizer but the relationship to black language both in the u.s. and throughout the diaspora and the desire to understand that as a foundation for the production of art

absolutely directly connected. >> part of what i talk about in the book is of course the process by which he became the most popular form of music he had an audience that it be expanded beyond its initial core audience. produced a great deal of wealth. but there's something i talked about also something prophetic about it because there was from the very beginning and exposition and elucidation of what postindustrial life in urban centers in the united states was like. and all of its complexity. it's not just this encomium to

the hood, hip-hop is not. it's an exposition of it. it's an exploration of it. >> imani perry, use the term mc, what is that mean? >> is the word for a rapper it's more organic to hip-hop. it initially comes from master of ceremonies which is a pretty common place. in other spell it emcee to make it frenetic. the idea that there is a relationship between the rapper and the dj and subsequently the producer. mcr rapper it's an internal to hip-hop way of describing the role. i was interested in what made nmc good.

just not just a reflection of the moment in history or condition in certain communities but what did the art consist of? the mc became ?really important because i was doing kind of a literary analysis of mcn. >> from your book "prophets of the hood", "prophets of the hood", the historic construction of blackness and opposition to whiteness in which blackness is demonize has become part of the art form consciousness.ar>> hip-hop has changed a great deal since 2004. there are still ways that describe it in present and meaningful ways. there's a very overt play with the imagery of black people as

dogs. the idea of dog life the criminalization of black people the sense of very long history of american stereotyping of black people as both criminality and access and gangsterism and violence and hip-hop has engaged that satirically. critically. >> we're hit let's hear from our viewers as we continue to talk about your books charlie is in roslyn heights new york, hi charlie, you are book tv. >> hi everybody. i'm a progressive liberal. i don't support black

nationalist, that's just as bad as white nationalism. it's feeding fascism in our country, it's feeding trumps base. there's good and bad in all groups, but people are just people, they are not inferior, nationalism is just as wrong as white nationalism. i can understand why miss perry is supporting black nationalism. >> imani perry. >> i'm not a black nationalist. i'm far left. nationalism takes on many different faces. there are certainly conservative rams of black nationalism. that politically or actually quite aligned in many ways to political conservatism. if we take an organization likei the nation of islam which is politically white conservative although advocates black k nationalism and then diversion of black nationalism that you'd see in our organization like onthe black panther party or th

ãbwhich are about revolutionary socialism which dominic with the third world politics anti-colonialism the single term doesn't actually mean much without the larger context. i will say, i disagree with the caller that they are equivalent because certainly people trying to find a way of developing a sense of control and autonomy over communities that they live in after long history of colonialism and enslavement and denomination is not the same as celebrating the history of colonialism.

but that's not a designation that i would subscribe to.>> you say you are far left, what does that mean? >> i identify as leboth someone who believes in democracy and socialist because i believe i'm against economic exploitation. i believe everybody should have access to safe environments, clean water, good schools a living wage.

the question in as much as i write and think about race, it's never raseparate from the larger questions of the distribution of suffering in our society. it's an example of how the society has been organized in a way to distribute suffering an opportunity and wealth unjustly. but i don't want, my objective is not for black people to become those who dominate. that's not, the idea for me is to become free of systems of domination to have a real robust thorough democracy which is only possible if you have a decent quality of life for all people in the society. >> you were born 1972. >> i was. >> what was your childhood like? >> my childhood was in some ways very conventional in some

ways very unconventional. i was born in alabama nine years and a few years from the 16th street bombing to a family of strivers and also very solidly black southern working-class culturally. i was raised by my mother who is an intellectual, like most cerebral person i've ever met in my life. my grandmother who was domestic and worked in the hospital and the most resourceful and without question the most brilliant people i've ever known. set 12 percent college. and my father and my adopted father who was my mother's partner a jewish man from brooklyn was a communist and an activist and early person who worked against mass incarceration. we moved to cambridge massachusetts when i was five and that's when cambridge was bohemian and artistic and

intellectual and all those things. it was also right after the boston crisis in boston. the shadow of the most difficult moment some of the most difficult moments when it games to raise in the country was always on my shoulder. so i was between those places and also chicago my dad moved and always in circles of scholars and intellectuals from all over the world and activists also. i moved around a lot. i was in a lot of different worlds from a very young age. >> were you always in a book as well? >> i was always in a book. i was a voracious reader although something i always mentioned, i also watched a lot of tv. i mentioned that because people think, if your kid is front of screens things are to be terrible.

i love reading i would read all day also loved watching television as a child. it also fed my imagination. >> works here from lloyd in st. louis. >> i'm really impressed with the professor. don't help me, perry. i'm 85 years old, i will be 86 march 23. i was born in ãbwe would sing lift every voice and saying, that would instill a lot of pride. he recalled colored people in those days and went to many many changes but i think about you getting a phd and jdm also an educator and i had a masters degree and edited you i need a

phd in education because i felt i was an excellent educator so i went and pursued a jd starting at 49 years old. >> wonderful.>> as a part of being black and with being black you have to wear many hats. i'm so extremely proud of you. i have a paper i'm going to send you but i need your address at princeton new jersey. terry on the good work sister, i love the song of solomon and all the other good things you said, now i will hang up and listen to you. thank you very very much. >> lloyd, before you hang up, you mentioned some of thyour education credentials, what alhave you done as a career? did you teach all your life? >> i taught middle school i taught math and language arts and then i went to law school and starting at 45 years old. >> did you practice law? >> yes i practice part-time i taught school and taught middle school in the daytime and practice part-time and i did not love the legal profession

but i would never exchange that experience because of the background it gave me. i promote encouraging black males and females to go to law school because this is what we need. i think about the time where you had people like thurgood marshall who went to all black color to whatever you call in the environment that we were raised in years and years ago, thurgood marshall predicts me of course. i think about you mentioned different organizations and the origin of many fraternities and sororities and i won't tell you which one i'm in unless you really want to know. >> i do want to know, mr. lloyd. >> kappa alpha phi. [laughter] >> the red and white. >> also, many of those members are descendents of slaves. first-generation it's amazing what they developed in those

days. i'm gonna let you talk but i'm going to send you t this packag i developed about being anti-affirmative action were the beneficiaries of affirmative action have been who some of the people who have been anti-affirmative action. i go into detail with the paper you said i sent you. >> thank you so much. we will get a response. if he sent it to imani perry at princeton it would get you. >> absolutely. >> i am so appreciative for your words of encouragement. one of the things that has been so profound in my life and i think it's worth mentioning in public frequently is that older black people have offered me the most, generations older than me, the most consistent support and encouragement in a particular appreciation for

both my writing and earlier my educational aspirations. i think they get left out. often times people, which i think the greatest generation for black americans the civil rights generation, are often discounted or diminished particularly by younger activists and i think it's really important to offer appreciation for not just what they did to transform the nation but also what they continue to do to hold together the foundation of all of our work. north may have made the work possible i'm very thankful. >> we are going to play one more piece of music and if you could identify it and talk about it for us. >> okay [singing]

>> imani perry, who wasn't and who is she singing about? >> that was nina simone and she was singing a song she wrote in honor of her dear friend lorraine hansberry who had passed away and she takes a line from a speech that hansberry delivered to young black writers. in which she said that it was a gift to have to be young and gifted and black. it was a song that in fact a certain number of people thought, this might become the next lift every voice and sing

because so incredibly popular and beautiful old to hansberry. >> had nina simone moved overseas by that point in 1969? did she end up in paris? >> she was also in west africa. i don't remember the exact dates but it was four years after lorraine had passed away. >> speaking of lorraine hansberry this is what you write about her she was a black lesbian woman born into the establishment democrat established black middle-class who became ãbleftist married to a man a jewish communist songwriter she cast her lot went to working classes and became wildly famous writer she drank too much, died early of cancer love some wonderful women and yet lived with an unrelenting loneliness she was intoxicated by beauty and enraged by injustice i could tell these stories as gossip but i hope they will unfold in this book as something much more than that.

sounds like an american life in some way. >> absolutely. hansberry although politically she was an internationalist she used to say before she passed away people always talk about going to europe you might want to travel the americas. she thought, she was captivated by the story of the americas. so it's hers is a thoroughly american story between chicago and the village and between between the small but prominent black bourgeoisie and her radical comrades in between her activist community and her lesbian circles in new york. she crossed a lot of boundaries. >> broadway 1959 what happened? >> a raisin in the sun opens it's the first play i a black woman on broadway and it's an

astonishing success. hansberry this this woman, she was 30. she was so young and she had been writing but in many ways she had also wait tables should work at camps. she had been a generous facet it was surprising and also surprising that she wrote this extraordinary place. a raisin in the sun is the most widely produced plato black tray right in the notice states. it has constant revivals, three film versions. and she hadn't yet turned 31 the play went up. she was w29. it was phenomenal. and heard. it was hard for her. >> where did you research this book does she have relatives living.

>> she has her cousin gail hansberry, she has various relatives living we shared tears in her best friend from childhood lives in new york but i actually talk to them after i finish the book her papers are at the schomburg center for research in black culture in harlem. the archivist tease me because they say i moved in because what i would do is i would take my kids to school and then drive to harlem i live in philadelphia. a little bit longer drive. i would stay in a stacks as long as i could in the papers and then drive home to pick up my kids and come back the same day. it's an extraordinary collection. i could use other archives so i could hughes had written.gston i could see james bob dylan's letters to her and back and forth their.

>> who was a friend of hers? >> she's at the crossroads of all these people, james baldwin was a close friend of hers. nina simone, langston hughes was a mentor. >> people forget he died in the 60s. >> as he was that she wrote him an extraordinary obituary. absolutely beautiful that talked about his significance for black people at large. not just as a scholar. the judge will as an important social political force. as she's dying. he dies at 63 she dies in 6 to 5 at the very beginning of the year. something like heartbreakingly poetic about that relationship. >> robert, new york city, hi robert, you're on with professor imani perry.

>> hi imani, how are you? >> i'm fine thank you. i wanted to ask you, if you could elaborate a little more on your concept of black formalism. if indeed that is still resonates at all with our current cultural lengths make state as an african-american community as a person that has worked with ãbhe always fits black people because of formalism. so i just want to hear a little more of your thoughts on that and where we stand. and in philadelphia all that stuff was very large part of the community there that time as well which i had heard stories about.

that's it. >> thank you. thank you robert. >> anything to respond to him? >> black formalism is a term that i use income but "may we forever stand". i use it to distinguish between a concept that has gotten a lot of currency and really important to talk about which is the politics of respectability. which is basically the idea of a tradition of black people performing certain forms of respectability in order to make the membership in this society that is very expectable and therefore we might be embraced. black formalism is extinct because it's not actually to make an argument to the larger society. it was a form of self regard and ritual. black formalism would be rules about how you dress and comport yourself in civic associations or church.

our various types of events. that was particularly potent when the vast majority of black people agricultural laborers. that continued. the question about whether it's sustained not nearly as much of the west was because there's less of that civic culture but we do still have a certain pockets and particularly in the self there is a lot of rules about how to act right. in certain places that are developing externally but about what are the rituals that happen inside the community. >> use another term and i will lose it in all the books i have in front of me. raced people? >> i use that t term. >> raced bodies, sorry. >> what it means is what it means to be registered i

operate as i think many scholars do with the deep knowledge that the race does not reel any biological sense. there is no race genes. that these categories are socially constructed that we create them. so when i wanted to use the term to talk about the way race is ascribed to people as opposed to this idea but it just is. even though the fact that it is ascribed is incredibly powerful in shape so much of our lives is something placed upon us by us as opposed to something that just is. sometimes it's confusing because people say people look differently. we don't have to make a meeting of that necessarily. race is making a meaning not just the different people look

with genealogy. >> is this a little bit how did you have three books come out in 2018? >> that was not planned. i never work on a single project at a time because i have a hard time choosing in my mind is moving all over the place. it worked on all them for the seven years between 2008 2011 and 2018 and anticipated they would come out of sequence and a certain point i realized that because of the production schedules of certain point the book is out of your hand was after only come up in the same year, which was pretty overwhelming. but it was also nice to see the fruition of labor. ..... but sometimes i think it kind of looks like it was a parlor trick of some sort i would work on this for a year and then work on that and then a month

at a time and they just emerged at the same time. >> what's the difference between academic and mainstream but in the construct in which you do with it? >> that is such a good question. it's not a hard and fast distinction. certainly academic books tend to focus on a conversation within a field. part of what distinguishes them is that in that conversation within an academic field the conversation becomes somewhat interior. the people who are reading you assume have a certain set of body of knowledge a certain set of books they read. as a scholar have always wanted to write in ways that the require people to have read the same 100 books beforehand. i tried to write in a way that even in the most scholarly of works that invites people in and pointed the footnotes and certain sections.

i also think obviously a trade book or general market book by and large tends towards serving the pleasure of the reader much more directly. i think it's important for all books. i think you want to engage the reader emotionally as well as intellectually. teach them something so that it's about knowing something but also feeling something. for me the development has been, have this foundation is a scholar and then i can consistently also build my craft as a writer. so the books take on slightly different balances but i wouldn't say that i give up the priorities of either genre when i moved between them. >> this is a text, professor

perry, if you have a daughter what letter would you write to your daughter in 2019? ..... >> guest: i've had people say why did you write it for your sons? why, because i have sons. [laughter]nd but i don't think it would be, the book would be much different had it been a letter to my daughter. probably the most significant difference would be that i would write about much more extensively about the way girls and women, in particular black girls and women, are often expected to sacrifice themselves in service of others. and so i probably would have had a different angle on the question of self-regard in that respect. but largely, it would be the

same. that '61-'63 thing is so powerful. and i wrote, actually, an essay in harper's last year of the formulations abouts how it's almost like an os tofied -- ossified city in the way people regard it. images come unusually in january, sometimes in september, but it's a city that has grown and changed and had -- and was even or much more complex than it's given credit for in '61 and '63 in terms of the various politics. people, there were people who believed in armed self-defense, there were people who had rebellions or riots in the streets in birmingham. there were people who turned into becoming black nationalists, the revolutionary socialests, all these sorts of things in this city. and we'vehe had, we had a major transformation with the election of mayor arrington, and he was the mayor of birmingham for, i

guess, 30 years. he's still alive, he's extraordinary, who saved the city from the ravages of deindustrialization. first blackhe mayor of the city, brought in the -- we lost the coal mines. so there's all this history that has intervened, right? and this, in general, an erasure of the urban society in the society is. but also a sense in which these places, and it's similar to angela davis who's a native of birmingham also, right? we see the picture of her with the afro in the 1970s, and she's a living, breathing person who has had a long history of extraordinary scholarly -- , kinf unfree's that place? host: at the same time you talk

about taking your sons to alabama and mississippi and you talk about the fact that in your view those two places are quite unique. >> they are unique and hallowed ground, i mean, so i think we can cherish and embrace history and also acknowledge that life continues to happen in and around it. one of the stories i tell about went to a reunion in mississippi and so there are all these veterans of the movements or current organizers of the beautiful intergenerational event and also at the campus where we gathered it was a reminder that you have this extraordinary history and yet the struggle continues because the prison labor looks like all the organizers in the group

and many of the organizers who were working on voting rights and economic justice than our working on massa kars ration or educational-- there is a continuum, so i guess what i mean is it important to cherish history, but not too treated as if it's something frozen. host: if you can't get through on the phone lines can send a text message to imani perry and here's the number: 202-748-8003 and we will get to as many of those as possible, but right now it's amy in tallahassee and you have been very patient, amy. think you are-- for holding and you're on the air. caller: good morning doctor perry. i enjoy your work. i'm a 50 something-year old, closer to 60, but i am a native floridian

and in florida we get a lot of hick, but i have to tell my florida history a little bit. you started out with the origins of the different voices thing. he gave a nice little summary, but the backdrop to that song or two that point is much deeper. i don't know-- i didn't read your books i don't really know how far you got into this-- host: amy, are you talking about the fact about florida schools and why they chose jacksonville? caller: yes, about that the poem was originally written for the students and johnson was the principle there at the time, so he wasn't gone. guest: but, he moved after that. caller: okay and then booker t. washington, the orange parks

issue and integration of schools and sheets and florida was the best funded among african-american schools at the time in the south, so i just wanted to to to my little florida horn. guest: all of that is in the book, so i think you would appreciate it. host: sounds like she knows her history. johnson, corning california, hello. john, you have to turn down the volume of your tv otherwise you get that delay. can you do that start talking or do we need to move on? john, i apologize. if you could on the air, in turn down the volume otherwise you'll get a delay and hear everything through your phone, or promise. amber in like charles, louisiana. it's your turn. caller: good morning, doctor perry.

guest: thank you. caller: thinking about your research and black men and women in history, my question is in the 21st century health gathering sources-- [inaudible] host: another thing, if you use a cell phone please talk into it clearly and don't use your speaker because sometimes baguettes garbled-- sometimes baguettes garbled. did you understand her question? guest: i think the question is how the 21st century changes and technology will affect research in the creation of archives and i to get a great question. it's not one that has-- we haven't completely explored it, you know those of us that think about it, but certainly is there is a couple of different potentially challenging forces and one is both the quantity

and the fungibility of materials and by that, i mean, so we take for example exponentially more photos that we did in previous generations. we have constant communication. a lot of that is not printed. when we lose a device we may lose all of that, so it's not as though when you have letters that you keep it a folder or letters-- so the archives are both too big and too small or at least to vulnerable fighting this is a real question. what it suggests is that people-- we had to increasingly be deliberate about what we preserve and probably should be preserving a great deal more in physical form and not just in digital form because as platforms change it's unclear how many translations are going to be possible. host: historians 30, 40, 50 years from now will have more trouble with archives.

guest: guests, and weeding through them and collecting them in making decisions about what goes into an archive, what accounts. also, i will say this, sometimes things that look like they include everything are deceptive. so, for example, if you ever google something you know happened and you can't find it on google, you are reminded even with incredible abundance not everything is there and so that is also a question for historians because if you think you have a full archive you in fact may not. host: next call from new york city. hello. caller: hello, good afternoon. great great program. i guess i have a two-part-- doctor perry, i want you to speak to a boy seems to be or some of us stunned by it, but at present moment with a

lie has become normalized and incitement of division and even violence has also become normalized the, so i would like you to speak to the patriarchal aspects of it and also you mentioned about the identity of whiteness, your projection of since it's not based on biology, it's a social construct how we might go beyond what the future might hold in terms of the very identity of whiteness and i will listen over the air, can i, peter? host: yes, do you have a follow-up you want to make? caller: that is it. host: i promise if you hang up your phone now and turn on your tv you will hear the entirety of your answer, but if you feel more comfortable staying on the

line we will leave you on the line. she is gone. she has not. caller: thank you for that question. guest: series of questions which i thought provoking a meme me say this come i certainly is an individual could not answer the question of how we get past the way, the idea of what whiteness means hinges upon exclusion and notion of a superiority and that notions of greater depth of humanity, but i do think that there is a huge body of work that we need to present pursue and grapple with and one of the challenges it and i think this is similar to the question of patriarchy, one of the challenges is we spend our entire lives being taught to value certain things and it to think in a particular way and as

americans, one piece of that is we invest deeply and mythologies of the nation. we invest deeply in the idea we are as individuals in a set and that's what makes you virtuous and that combination is really difficult if we are trying to address inequality because the immediate response, the fact of inequality becomes defensiveness because you have to be innocent be virtuous as opposed to what i think the truth is which is grappling with issues makes you virtuous, challenging oneself. the mythology of what it -- of the history makes it very hard to confront the ugliness of the past and even the mythology of our personal history, you know. so, i think certainly a piece of it is those of

us who take this work as our life's work has to tell the story with greater truth, with more robustness, sensitivity and grace, but when it doesn't lean toward myth, but leans towards the notion that history serves as. the reason we draw certain aspects out of our histories because we want to build the good society and so to do that we have to think about how to tell history in a way that is honest about the failings and is also honest about the heroes that have led us towards values that are more inclusive and decent and beautiful. i don't have all the answers, but i do think that's without question a part of it. host: and in her book, more beautiful and more terrible imani perry writes that racial inequality is a national

cultural-- [inaudible] guest: it was really important in that book for me too say that -- one is that we are not just living with the impact of the past, but we certainly are so when you look at something like the wealth gap you see that the impact of 20th century policies that created wealth gap the reality is when-- and for that book i researched so many fields, neuroscience, media studies, literature, social psychology, economics and what i saw over and over again is that people disadvantaged others based upon the membership in racial groups most dramatically black people disadvantaged, but it's not exclusively white people that even includes a significant

number of black people who did end up disadvantaging a black person, so it's not really about this question of the individual attitude. these are learned behaviors. we exist in a culture that teaches us that as my colleague says that why people matter more and that-- i wish that book had been written before i wrote this book because it would've been useful, but if you understand that it is a culture becomes very clear why it is so hard to address it, why policies-- because you need a cultural shift. we have to actually be intentional about the process. one of the common places in our society is that people often think it's impolite or not nice on comfortable to talk about race, but one thing we know from research is talking about race actually helps people behave in a

less discriminatory fashion. it's evidenced and so that's a cultural shift that needs to happen. for me it was really important that it wasn't one that we understand that we can all participate in transformation, but that this is not a matter of kind of individuated attitudes or individual behaviors. host: how many self identified conservatives take your courses at princeton? guest: that's a hard question to answer. there are particular courses that i teach that are more likely to attract students who identify as conservatives. i teach a course on the history of race in american law and so that tends the conversation to more likely go across the political spectrum. i do think african american studies tends to be a self-selected group towards more of more to the left, but one thing i think people

are not aware of is that across the self identified political spectrum people hold very conservative ideas about race, so it's not as though the process of kind of educating and sort of demythologizing doesn't happen even if i have a class room full of self-described liberals. there are people by virtue of their something like some of your kind of niceness might identify as a liberal and yet hold very conservative ideas about race work stereotypical ideas about people based upon racial groups. that's important because for me the role as an educator is not so often those of us on the left are accused of that is not political indoctrination. my objective as an educator is to teach

people history and range of ideas based in fact an episode and events and some tools for interpretation, so many years ago-- this doesn't happen now because of social media where it's very clear what my politics are, but when i taught law school many years go-- host: at rikers? guest: at rutgers. they would say we don't know your politics are which is hard to imagine because now they are all out there. rigor is important to me so strong ideological commitments, but rigor is more important. never can a writer say anything that isn't backed up with a substantial body of evidence and i'm also not going to function in such a way that my evidence can't be contested. host: next call for imani perry

comes from daniel in minnesota. , daniel. caller: hello. host: go ahead. caller: mia on tv now? host: you are. caller: really delightful to have this moment. i sort of-- i really believe in what you are doing. i know for a fact because i'm sort of like the opposite part. i am a man, i am white, but i'm racist because of my color on my end but my life in history what happened and what's happening as far as of the structure and i have the means in the manner and what sparks how i can inspire my life, but i'm not a good writer. i'm not well-educated. and not a good in school because i have adhd, but i'm an artist, inventor and i feel like black

and white sweated together and made the contractor of my races but not only that because of my father and what he did as a green beret and what he had done, intelligence and-- host: daniel, before we go too far want to come back to comment that you made that you consider yourself a racist in some ways because of who you are? caller: no, at the moment in time i'm not black and white, but i feel like if i was black i would be the racist part but i'm white racist because of the archives of my history. host: because of the archives of your hair streaked. let's hear what professor perry has to say about that. guest: this is challenging to parse, but i think it's really important. i don't think-- why

people don't-- are not necessarily racist because of the history of this country are the world. i think that is not true or particularly a helpful formulation. i think it is very difficult to transcend the messages that are racists because of the way our history is told, because of the way our society is organized and because of what's obscure and i also think it's extremely important to not talk about race in such a way that it becomes the only or gender the only mechanism of thinking about any quality-- any quality. educational access, disability, poverty, regional distinctions, all of these things are extremely important in the distribution of opportunity and so sometimes i do worry that people read the

conversations that others have about race as implication that if you are right and mail therefore you have everything. obviously that's not true. i was born in alabama. i have been to appalachia. that's not true. the thing that is so-- [inaudible] it creates a barrier, so often between why people who are suffering the same kinds of any quality that black people are where race actually functions to disassociate so that where white people think who are poor and foldable think of themselves as aligned with those exploiting them more than the black people on the other side of town who are also suffering being exploited the doctor have adequate healthcare , so i just went to parse it out because there will never be a case and i have had

these discussions and debates and certainly not everyone in my field agrees with me and i think many if not most do, but race is not everything. i don't think that it was concerned with injustice can ever be your only-- only analytic. host: los angeles, good afternoon. caller: how are you doing, sir cracks-- thank you for having me. hello? host: please go ahead. we are listening. caller: here's my question to professor perry, are we ever going to be living in a: free society? before she answers, i was born in guatemala for-- 10 miles from british honduras, all

races, all sorts of people and to me it was a color free society. are we ever going to-- it seems to me like african-americans are obsessed with race. i understand, i truly understand the situation by the then the united states for 45 years. i've lived in kentucky, tennessee and the army, are we ever going to leave though wars of doctored king-- [inaudible] who's going to take the first step. my final question is, are african-americans obsessed with race, is it because of the product of so many hundreds of years of oppression? i do appreciate your work. i don't know how she was able to do a jd and phd.

amazing. host: before you leave, where you come down politically? caller: i am a far left, a yellow dog democrat. host: thank you, sir. guest: i will say a couple of things in response. i appreciate the question. i do think it would be our-- that african-americans obsessed with race and a thank goodness because were we not it would require us to be deeply self hating people. when something profoundly shakes every aspect of your life and your history and denies you opportunity, if you are not obsessed with the question it's hard to understand how that would make you someone who can have any self regard. so, yes, i am unapologetically obsessed with race. i think that's what's necessary to get to a

more just society. i would take exception to the characterization of central america latin america as race free society there-- they are not. there are places where one doesn't talk about race in the same way, but if you look at central america, black communities that are deeply marginalized or the indigenous community has opposed to other communities or if you look at the way in which call it functions as a stratification in brazil and colombia, puerto rico, in the dominican republic, so not talking about race actually does not impact how materially racial inequality functions. latin america is a mother-- wonderful example because of the evidence of how deeply stratified things are along the lines of

complexion even though the words are different, a sign of not talking about a dozen make it better. host: february 6, 2016. what happens-- happened? guest: i'm drawing a blank ..

the use of the police power is appropriate for that. i think finds are appropriate and i said that. also, it is the case that black drivers are disproportionately stopped in princeton, so both are true. plenty of white people have been arrested for tickets in princeton. black people are disproportionately arrested and certainly the officer's discretion, i thought, was an appropriate in

things like handcuffing me too a table and also details i didn't talk about, that i could not pay within atm and had to pay with cash. they would not take me too an atm and had to-- i don't live in princeton's-- all those details. at the thing that was really harrowing and this did not make it in the news is that after i talked about this incident, i received consistent e-mail messages on social media , calls on my cell phone and calls on work that were filled with the most disgusting slurs you could imagine. ..

i am not the only person in my building at work who experiences that kind of harassment on a regular basis. we have increased security in african-american studies building on campus because we experience the most threats and they are very ugly and given the current climate they feel real. so when people on the one hand say, would he mean racial discrimination? there is no racial discrimination and then respond with that thing, that's an indication of the world we live in. that was what became monster back about it. at the moment of the rest i was terrified because ãbhad just happened and she had been killed and it was just a traffic infraction. so when people respond like that strip's proportionate, i had seen the footage of her and

i was terrified. but the worst part was actually the venomous response to be speaking about the incident. corrected the university stand by you? >> absolutely. the university stood by me committee group of black women academics from all across the nation and abroad spoke out among the half, my students stood by me. it was a saturday on my way to campus for a student conference on black women and one of my students who i saw yesterday she is a graduate student elsewhere now but was organized had organized the conference. i received a great deal of support that was essential from an institution and my community so i wouldn't want to wet will give the impression i was not surrounded by love because i absolutely was but i was also afraid and afraid because as

much as there is this conversation about the importance of free speech when you say certain things, you are under enormous threat. >> did you ever hear from the princeton police and because of your association with university issued an apology? any type of ã >> you know where i'm going? >> yes. right. like the skiff games incident. i will say this, the judge in my case because i had to go to court was very gracious but it was remarkable because we walked to princeton you don't see very many people of color but in the traffic court you see lots of people of color. lots of black folks. lots of asian folks. middle eastern asian. so on the one hand, i was

treated well and i do think that was in part because of not just my association with the university but the attention to the issues it created. but on the other hand in the midst of being treated well is able to see evidence of inequality. even if they had issued a personal apology i don't know that it would have been appropriate for me to embrace that given what i see in the town. there are plenty, i should say, i don't know ãbi have friends who live in preston who experience it, people of color who experience a place they were in embraced, respected, and cared for. i don't ãbit's a set of

observations. >> we have about 25 minutes left with author imani perry, bill is in asheville north carolina you are on we are listening. go ahead. >> thank you very much for accepting my call. on behalf of all americans to professor perry i would like to apologize for such an incident that's heartbreaking. for that to happen to you. to my point, are you familiar with the book the southern passed by william brundage? >> yes. can you give some discussions or some at least bring the audience and the rest of the viewing listening audience up-to-date on some of those some of his writings and talking about how the monuments and the confederate monuments came about in the south?>> bill, why is that a book of interest to you? >> because it parallels the story of after the civil war and how a lot of these monuments in the self compared with monuments came about but it also parallels the from the

dominant culture and it parallels to the african culture, their stories and how they also were living during that time after the civil war and how their societies also came about and grew as she referenced earlier a lot of the fraternal organizations and so forth for the african-american community. >> before we get an answer, give us a snapshot of yourself. >> retired from stanford university, i'm also currently living in asheville joined the southern jazz club. >> how wonderful. >> thank you so much. from stanford to asheville. >> that sounds like a delightful journey. [laughter] i think that what he's referencing is that it's really important to note in the midst of all these debates around the confederate monument that the

monuments were placed by in large as retaliation against reconstruction as opposed to coming up after the civil war to honor confederate soldiers. actually as part of the reassertion of white supremacy during jim crow. so they had this public, they were a public statement that we, as white people, run the south again after the reconstruction governments came out. i was talking about this with one of my friends the other day, the united states sort of conceives of itself as a nation that had not been defeated but we have a region in which people think of themselves as having been defeated by the nation. in that region there is also the largest proportions of african-americans who are the peoples whose liberation of the civil war would've fought over. so it's a complicated dynamic

and what has often happened is that there is almost, i talk about in the dissertation of former reunion like a concession drawn like we will let you keep the south as a kind of white supremacist state and is stay in exchange of getting back for the nation with cost being felt by black people in the jim crow era but we have the repetition of this through many of the conflicts over the confederate monument. i am often saying that on the one hand while i'm opposed to the monuments because obviously they were placed to celebrate the enslavement of my ancestors but i also am very cautious about the fact that we placed disproportionate attention to those types of monuments as

they exist in the south as opposed to the nation at large. there was a moment when the president said, i think a couple years ago, what are they going to do next? attack george washington? george washington was a slaveholder. dc where we are if we are going to raise the questions about monuments or what we celebrate, let's raise it broadly. must not just talk about the one region. let's talk about as a nation how do we want is a wonderful friend of mine is doing this project in philadelphia where he thinks about what kind of monuments do we want to have two celebrate our city or our communities.i think those are good questions to ask let's bring it a little closer to home at princeton university.

the woodrow wilson school of international affairs exist as the wilson school of international affairs? >> i will say this, i don't like the name of the school. wilson wasn't unapologetic racist. i think the students who organized against the name of the school and the money metallization of wilson did an enormous service not just to the school but to the nation. he took the nations backwards on issues of race. i think as an institution we did collectively address ãi wouldn't put it at the top but i'm grateful for the conversation and if certainly would prefer another name. >> so far social media pages

was "lift every voice and saying ever considered in the running for being the national anthem for the u.s., i recall hearing that a number of years ago and this is devonian and margaretãbin mount vernon new york. >> i think what she's probably referencing is james earl johnson and others suggested as a defense of the charge. the criticism of the song is how can black people have a national anthem? you're trying to be a part of this nation at large. that's part of why the naacp which has a song as its official song does not refer to it as the black national anthem or the negro national anthem because they have a history of strong integration agenda. johnson ãbeven though it

tells the story of black life in these epic terms. it was never in the running in the nationals. there have been discussions that the values that are asserted in the song and the beauty of the composition are without question universal. he could tell a particular story about the struggles of african-americans in this land and it has messages that are meaningful for everyone. >> next call for author imani perry is dave in oakland. >> thank you c-span. >> you are on the air. >> i live in a mixed

neighborhood and i have five grandsons to go to school, the school is probably 65 percent to 80% black. i would like to know what i can do to teach my grandsons to be better americans so we can get past this. because i make no connotations or denotations to color with the kids in our neighborhood. i say, the boy across the street, or i say that girl across the street. because this really breaks me up to watch our nation go through this. it's breaking me up now. >> are you white? >> yes i'm white. it just breaks me up to wonder what my grandkids might go through. i feel the pain of what little black kids probably went through. >> let's get a response. >> i don't want to make

assumptions about dave's story but i was very moved by what he said. i think that there is a complicated and rare and precious circumstance for white families living in predominantly black communities. on the one hand it's very powerful because white flight was and is a real thing. whatever is a critical mass of black people move in communities by and large the majority white people depart and so the prospect of integration it's also the case, i gleaned that from what he was saying is that it's always hard

to be one of the few edits particularly hard to be one of the few in areas where people are economically vulnerable, which is a vast majority of predominantly black communities. i imagine his reference to his grandson, it's probably tough to be white kids in those schools. i think we can acknowledge that instilling knowledge that in a society and large it's not tough to be white. so for how those kids to navigate on the one hand the reality of racial inequality but also that they may feel slighted or cast aside or marginalized in their school environment, i think it's important and i think it requires sensitivity and they always requires sensitivity with children. in the best way, certainly i think, i'm the person who's light, policy, structural changes, legal changes, at the neighborhood level as to what i

talk about is right relation it's slow work but i think it's essential that's the best you can do as an individual. he can't shape the fortunes of all the kids in the neighborhood. but having at the relationships with them sharing knowledge, sharing information. >> am sure you saw a couple days ago michelle obama was talking about white flight out of herself chicago lorraine hansberry south chicago neighborhood. the wall street journal had an order tutorial tying it in with the strike in the chicago

school they were fleeing black families they were fleeing poor schools and high taxes. some of the other issues. they're not just making it about race. as part of what i read about in more beautiful and more terrible as those are not contradictory statements. federal policy dictated explicitly in the early 20th century that neighborhoods were less creditworthy and homes were valued less simply by virtue of the proportion of black people in them. including racially mixed neighborhoods. therefore it was harder to get credit in those neighborhoods. federal government policy made it so that it was a bad economic decision for white people to live in integrated neighborhoods. that's the function of racial inequality and it becomes, the question is, now it accumulates. we don't have those fha

guidelines anymore.we don't have the rules that make it such that you can't formally get credit if you can't buy a house in a black neighborhood. but we have now generations of the notions that neighborhoods where black people are are worth less and we know that the price of house depends on what people will pay for them. we have a system where the assumption is if the neighborhood had a lot of black people it's worth less and would not pay that much to live there.there is a perpetuation of what some socially only just called this accumulation. so that the value doesn't accrue in the same way. and black neighborhoods even all other things equal. it's also true that black neighborhoods get less services even affluent black neighborhoods. it's harder to get a grocery store. the consequence of all that is because schools are funded by

virtue of local taxes. is that yes the schools are poor because if the schools don't have nearly as much money and nearly as much investment and nearly as many adults who can supplement the school funding because of white flight then the question you are posing at the individual level is that i don't want to live there because these things are better. at individual level, sure. it's important to understand that the whole structure is a consequence of how race is functioned and if we want to change it it's going to require that people live in neighborhoods that they think are undesirable and contribute to them.>> one of the things we like to do with every author that appears on in depth is asked what he or she is reading and some of their favorite books. imani perry listed two toni morrison books mercy and song of solomon along with herman melville moby dick, molson hamid exit west and pablo

neruda canto general. >> part of the reason it connects to a lot of what we've been talking about i read him in english and spanish. he has had this capacity and feels like he's alive in my mind. to capture extraordinary beauty and love of the natural landscape of south america intimate passions and always sustain political content. critique of the united company. critique of the exploitation of the land. critique of various forms of indigenous people. that there wasn't a sense that you had to make a choice and that you could tell a story

that resonated deeply with all your readers and also hold fast to a set of commitments to justice so he is a role model in many ways. >> is there a difference in the translation? is it more beautiful in his native spanish? >> yes obviously i might be completely wrong on this. neruda as well as gabriela marcus, they both translate really well. there are other writers i read in spanish and the languages at work. they both work extraordinarily well in english and that to me is also a mastery of the craft at the level of the idea along with the language so that you

can communicate the booty with the ideas put together even if the words don't have the same melody. >> why moby dick? i spent a lot of my youth obsessed with whales and wailing, which was a little strange. this epic tale of life aboard a whaling ship with all these people, which is the whaling industry was like. i grew up in massachusetts and spent a lot of year in massachusetts. you can still see the remnants can be go to new bedford bears ãbthey are, black people, portuguese people, you can see the remnants of that history so on this ship the cross-section of the world is on this ship. facing incredible danger. and kind of ãblater.

life and death of the most grueling but poetic of some consensus. >> paul, brooklyn, good afternoon your own with author imani perry. >> hello, it's an honor to be on booktv and a huge honor to be talking to doctor perry. i certainly admire your work. my question is, martin luther king has been quoted in saying the vast majority of white americans are racist either consciously or unconsciously. he said variations of that one or two other times. i wanted to get doctor perry's view on that. i know it's just the quote out of context but i would like to know what she feels about that 50 years after his passing? >> sure. thank you. thank you peter.

>>. [laughter] >> that means i'm getting old. >> i think the quote is one example among many that i think people are drawing attention to that the standard narrative of doctor king that we get is narrow and sanitized. to remove the things that were most challenging that he said. my sense of why doctor king said that in the reason that i say probably the things that i say that are most provocative it's an extraordinary moment of grace as much as it might not feel like that. because it's a challenge. it's issuing a challenge to reject the dominant order of things the dominant way of thinking.

and to do so by shaking people up. it's always complicated and i will say, in my own journey i moved back and forth on how to do this. one day wrote "more beautiful and more terrible" i decided i didn't want to use the word racism. i wanted a word that didn't actually trigger certain things. even though i think racism is pervasive and i use it much more in my writing now because we are sort of in a all gloves off moment in american history.

sometimes those ways of making the point are more provocative than others but the point always is to try to figure out how to enact change how to transform the world we are in. >> we have one last call other call from brooklyn and this is jay, hi jay. >> how are you doing? >> hello ms. perry.>> how are you doing? >> and doing well. i like to state, it's obvious, white america, white people have a very long history of violence toward black people. black people have been trying to get along with white people in the country ever since ãb slavery, jim crow, black people have been trying to get along with white people. it's obvious that white people don't want that, white people want america to be ãbyou didn't discover america, you started this in america but you project to the world that you

are innovated so much in actuality you are not community would have a culture. so in saying that, i feel like white america people are really trying to get a race war started because the federal government is going to fight with you, the state police, everybody is going to be on the side of the white people and black people just really tired. everyday i wake up i think god for social media today, you are seeing a white cop killing a black person whether a man or woman. or you see an ordinary citizen white citizen running around here using n-word. just blatantly attacking black people. you are trying to start a race war and black people are tired. they are really tired of african-american ãfor freedom are just trying to just live normal and raise your children.

to have to tell your child before you leave home what to do to try to avoid the police and not get murdered. >> j we have to leave it there we are almost out of time. professor perry. >> what he gave voice to come of the experience of feeling tired is true. the general sense. this is always the complication and this goes back to where we started, the formulation that he said white americans are trying to start a race war. i wouldn't say that by any means. i think actually the people there are people in this country, militias are white nationalists who are trying to start a race war, i don't think that's the majority and i think it's important not to identify that as the center because that

actually for me is not where the battle lies. i think the battle lies in the transformation that is no less potent but appears less subtle and much more and certainly much more nuanced. but the sense of being tired, the sense of worry about your children when you leave they leave their home, absolutely. and i think it's fair to say the sense of rage and devastation about the last three years in this country is warranted. because if you think there have been all these generations that have fought for every step in being barreled back into the ugliness of outspoken over racism in the public arena and doesn't seem to be any countervailing force to pull it back that is strong, that's harrowing. that winds up making many black

americans when we take about all our debt, all our debt, all are departed, all are denigrated, we are back where they were. >> booktv continues no on c-span2. television for serious readers. [inaudible conversations] every. we have to try that one more time. we saw you coming in, this is a high energy group. t let's try one more time good