>> booktv continues now on c-span2. television for serious readers. >> i am daniel greene and i'm the president at the newberry library. thanks for joining us on our continuing meet the author series. it continues with a.k. sandoval-strausz, discussing his new book, "barrio america: how latino immigrants saved the american city". we are really honored to welcome andrew to the newberry on the very day his book has been released. so congratulations on that.

before i introduce a.k. sandoval-strausz, this program is sponsored by next chapter. a group of donors between the ages of 21-45 who support the newberry through their membership. helping us grow a new generation of donors and supporting our efforts to share the forgotten or marginalized voices of history. it's always free and open to the public. being a gathering place to learn about and discuss ideas that matter in history that matters is an essential democratic function of libraries and it's critical to our mission at the newberry. it's able to host programs like this free of charge because of the generous support from next chapter and people like you. there are many ways all of you can support the newberry. you can visit our exhibitions

and visit programs. spread the word. follow the newberry on socially. you can volunteer at the newberry and make a donation to our annual fund. the staff will behappy to talk to you about any of these opportunities to get more involved in the library. it's my pleasure to introduce a.k. sandoval-strausz . he's an associate professor of history. he earned his ba at columbia university and phd at the university of chicago where i first met andrew and looked up to him frankly, as one of the grad students who seem to have everything figured out all the time. we all looked up to andrew as a generous and collegial guy. i have to know, the host of the some of the best halloween parties to any grad student has ever attended. on a more serious, andrew has received fellowships from princeton, the andrew w mellon foundation, the new york historical society. the library of philadelphia.i could go on and on. he is a national endowment for the humanities public scholar.

andrew's first book, hotel, and american history. which was published by yale university press in 2007 won the american historical association book award and named to the best book by the library journal. andrew is the coeditor of making cities global, the transnational turn in urban history. we are here tonight to about a.k. sandoval-strausz's newest book, "barrio america: how latino immigrants saved the american city". is a compelling narrative that challenges conventional wisdom about american cities. the book begins by recalling dire predictions about the future of american cities beginning in the 60s and continuing until the rise in la in 19 of the two after the brutal beating of rodney king. cities were in crisis, americans were told and maybe they had no future. as andrew writes, they were

losing populations, losing jobs, losing the experience of the neighborhood and communities. safety and attractiveness. and then andrew tells us, the forecast turned out to be wrong. one standard narrative about why these forecasts were wrong hold that the creative class returned to cities and revitalize them. as andrew compellingly shows, this narrative overlooks of instruments the ãindispensable role played by latina and latino residents. they transform cities and neighborhoods over the past decades, importing distinctive traditions, reshaping urban landscapes and experiences. "barrio america: how latino immigrants saved the american city" is a thoroughly engagingly great read with a deep focus on our own city of chicago and especially the little village neighborhood. after you andrew speak, we will have a brief q&a session and then you will want to buy the book. you can buy the book in the bookshop and have andrew find it right after the talk.

holiday season is upon us soon. >> i spent so many hours here researching the first book and researching the second book. the digital repository of the mexican oral history project, which has the voices of the

immigrants at the heart of this book is housed here. if you ever want to point your browser, look for the mexican migrant oral history project. we have dozens of hours of the stories and accounts, both in audio and in text of what it meant to these folks to be. we are working on having some of them translated.we have recorded transcripts. if you can understand or read spanish, this might be for you. and then most broadly, i am always so happy to be back in chicago. the eight years i spent here were the most fun i've ever had. really culminating in the fact that 17 years and one month ago, my wife and i got engaged at a chinese restaurant on wentworth avenue chicago has been nothing but good to me. even though i'm not from here, it always feels like home. i'm here to talk about my new book, "barrio america: how latino immigrants saved the american city".

this is sort of a story of a remarkable migration. about 25 million people. latinos, latinos and people from latin america we then moved to or were born in u.s. cities over the past 50 years. these migrants i suggest arrived when they were needed most. it began at a time when american cities were in deep distress for all the reasons we are familiar with. loss of jobs, loss of population, increasing fiscal crisis and rising crime. also just a sense that the era of the big american city had, and gone. i suggest that if these migrants had not come, a lot more migrants it is would like like parts of michigan or gary, indiana or youngstown, ohio. poster children of abandoned decay. ghostly office buildings and empty schools we are familiar with.

in other words, they and monday? many other immigrants from around the world ãi did a book on latino immigrants but i do not speak cantonese or mandarin, korean, arabic or many of the villages to do a thorough job of talking to every immigrant group. these immigrants altogether solved one of the biggest problems of the 20th century of the united states. that is the urban crisis. this has been a national phenomenon. immigrant driven revitalization, to offer the detail we need to understand at a granular level how this happened. what the mechanics for i look carefully at one barrio in chicago and one in dallas. it begins just 2-3 neighborhoods away. originally south lawndale,

better known as little village. - - was five years old when she moved to south lawndale in 1958. by then, her family had lived in chicago for two generations. ever since her grandfather had been accrued by the railroad to come work. when they first arrived, the neighborhood could be a hostile place for them. she remembers as she put it, older people would call the police on us because we were in the back alley playing ball. indeed, she and many other mexican-americans at this time remember people in the neighborhood would often, as they struggled to figure out where these brown people fit in our racial order, they would refer to their red them with the n-word because that seemed

the logical thing to call them. this was said and not a little ironic because south lawndale was in deep trouble. it prospered initially as a place for immigrants. first from germany and then from bohemia and poland. because they could find work in the factories. you had the mccormick works and international harvester to the east. in the middle you have lots and lots of affordable housing. this worked out pretty well at the neighborhood peeked quite early. it reached its peak population in 1920 and then actually began to decline. so, by the 1950s and 60s, the writer stuart - - remembered the neighborhood as it was at that time. he described the area where residents walked past block links guided factories. doors hammered around excretion

sites. telephone then began - - south lawndale began to empty out. at a time when black families could finally begin to move out of the neighborhood to which they had been restrictive for decades. for better housing and better schools and stop paying exorbitant rents because they were not allowed to live anywhere else. the people of south lawndale who were overwhelmingly white, decided this was unacceptable and they began to move a lot more quickly. they looked at north lawndale and so they had gone from a virtually all-white neighborhood 2090 percent neighborhood in one decade. and thought, this is our future. maybe it's time to go.

not everybody saw it this way. one of those that did not was this man. richard told us ãhe would become the head of the chamber of commerce. an important citizen and man about town. like mayor taylor would come around anybody in his family always got a shot with the mayor. he thought these newcomers looked like a lifeline for south lawndale. he got a bunch of people together and as he recalls, what about the mexican community? we should appeal to that group and try to bring them in. he invited mariotti's to the chamber of commerce's night of nights. he sponsored a mexican independence day celebration in 1964. he would individually welcome - - the center of little villages business community. he would, in order to do this, hire at the mexican real estate

agents who could speak both english and spanish and help the first mexican-americans and later, mexicans, move into the neighborhood. now, even more important than all of this, he persuaded his associates and neighbors to issue particular kinds of home loans. federally backed fha insured loans to this? these newcomers that made housing more affordable and meant they were no longer subject to audible exploitive practices. now, let's be clear. this was not about altruism and innocence. part of the key was people may have wanted to sell their houses and get the equity out and move out.but they certainly did not want to sell them to african-americans. it was a racially defined thing. when i first interviewed him in 2015, he said, the things we did were wrong.

i know i violated the law. that was illegal. a violation of civil rights in its finest aspects. at that time, we thought it was a good thing to do. this was a particular kind of conspiracy. i should add there were rumors about it. if you read - - people had the sense this was happening but i've never seen evidence before explicit as to, here is how we did it. he said all right, we've only sell to mexicans above 23rd street. we will continue to live below. the idea that this was an offer, not of the quality or whiteness exactly but at least acceptability. i think we have to see it in the context of the standard racial relations at the time. neighborhoods like south lawndale with places where one single black family moved in.

one black family moved into an apartment building. a mob of thousands of white people charged the apartment building. frightens people away. take all their stuff in the street and burn it. a lot of people thought that this kind of racial violence might happen if black people moved in too little village. in an odd sort of way, - - was a racial moderate of widely expected racial violence. he acknowledges the things we did were wrong. this was needed quite greatly because these were tough times for chicago. the city lost 600,000 residents. it lost half of its industrial jobs. - - it had to negotiate with creditors and maintain its bond

rating which was hard to do with the shrinking population. in 1981, the chicago tribune published a famous five-part series called, city on the brink. one expert testified in this article he said, chicago is not going to disappear. but the trends are against it. another added, according to available evidence and many experts, there's no reason to think things will ever turn around. in brief, this was a tough time for cities all across america. an era where over 30 years, detroit lost 35 percent of its citizens, cleveland 37 percent. more than one third of people were simply moved out. nationwide, the rate of homicide doubles. the rate of assaults either quadruples or quintupled,

depending on how you count it. signs of distress were all around. people would take the subway or trying to work at one and see panoramic views of abandoned buildings and empty lots. then they'd come home, turn on the evening news and see story after story of violent crime in the city with each killing, more senseless than the one before. underlying this year was a sense again, perhaps big cities were doomed. but then a funny thing happened. if we look at south lawndale, you can see a microcosm of this process. the neighborhood stabilized and began to grow. between 1960-70, there were no more people. about 59,000 each year. but the postulation went from two percent martino to 34 percent martino. if you look at those numbers,

had it not been for these arrivals, south lawndale would have strong faster than even detroit in its worst decade of population loss. by 1980, the neighborhood had grown to 70,000 people. at which point it was about 83 percent martino and - - - - 83 percent latino. pretty soon as you remember, chicago business reported the little village shopping corridor was the most active in the city only after the magnificent mile along michigan avenue. home values more than doubled between 1990-2000 and pretty soon, sociologists, journalists, political figures, began to praise the community as kind of a place of great vitality, active street life and something that represented the future of chicago. now let's be careful that we don't romanticize it. the area did and still does have problems with poverty, with gangs. but it's crime rate fell

dramatically along with the rest of chicago. one sociologist robert vargas called remarkable called wounded city. is that the gang activity is so concentrated in four of the - - of the neighborhood. they are among the safest neighborhoods in the entire city. i should say the stories of recovery were not limited to little village. crime is near 50 year lows. housing stock is being refurbished. so much is itself a source of problems. the biggest issues in a lot of cities is it's no longer antidepressant abandoned properties. but a severe shortage of affordable housing's. most cities have begun to grow

again. the question then that arises is how do they do it. how did these immigrants, people that aren't limited incomes. politically demonized and some of whom were undocumented, how did they revitalize urban america. this is a position most closely associated with - - 2002 book the rise of the - - class. [indiscernible] i should say it's not just that book. even if you look at more sociological approaches, and this is sort of a marxian approach of what is right and wrong with cities.

but emphasizes the very wealthy concentrations of solid labor. it's kind of a - - of florida's ideas themselves. on the contrary, what i try to show is that the latino population growth started earlier and laid the foundations for the professional people who only leader came back to the city. who lived where, when do they leave and in what numbers. this is a graph from my book that shows latinos leading the edge of demographic change. you can see from 1960-2010, little village and - - go from two percent latino to more than 90 percent latino over those

times.i should say this is not a transformation limited to a couple neighborhoods. there are many more just like them. so you have dallas going from about 6-7 percent martino to 22.4 percent by 2010.chicago, three out of 10 chicagoans are latino. then you see a more gradual but still unmistakable growths in the latino population something like three percent in 1962 16.4 percent currently. more revealing than this, if you look at exactly how this plays out by year, by city and by demographic. for me start by reminding us that these two graphs are not to the same scale. the congo is 2-3 times larger - - chicago is. when you call texans small, they tend to get angry. [laughter]

you see that bottom part of each graph as the non-hispanic white population. you see very rapid declines. so the net departure of white anglos is pretty rapid in both cities. again, it's important to remember this decline goes into the present. what people focus on the creative class. a group of people that are heavily white, this white population is very important despite the fact that the overall numbers are still declining. not to say they're not important. they are, but it's a particular approach to say this is the solution when you look at the national population, that's not the case. i think the other thing we want to note is that african-american populations are also declining. you see a peak in chicago at 1.2 million and it falls

noticeably to 188,005 2010. black people can increasingly move to the suburbs. and then they begin to move back to sunbelt cities like atlanta and dallas which has big middle-class african-american populations. but it certainly much slower in only recent decades. but this underscores what's important to mention. my entire analysis is about large structural changes. we know that the african-american great migration has largely come to an end by 1968. when i say latinos saved to the american cities. it's like, what about black people? i'm not think they did something or didn't do something but they're just

simply not moving to the city anymore. those who are typically immigrants and the children of immigrants. so you see that top set of bars and the third one that is martino and asian americans. for the kids of immigrants population. . they account for pretty much all of the popularization's stabilization in chicago and all of the population growth in dallas. we also see native american numbers are increasing quite a bit. less in dallas but also small but important to note part of this. now, these are the two graphs from my book. about 3-4 weeks ago, the new york times did a writeup of this research.

they did a whole bunch more graphs.so i can sort of say, this is not just to cities. very briefly, they organized it a little bit differently. hispanic is the orange, other. again, non-hispanic whites at the bottom. you can see even in sunbelt cities like dallas, houston, los angeles and phoenix, those cities would be shrinking if not for latino populations and immigrant populations. other cities would not have grown at all. 1 million-close to 2 million people would not have grown at all if not for the latinos. by the same token, the very prosperous rebound cities. these are cities where there

would be no population growth at all. and again, you see from the way the bars are laid out, that you have arising latino population and it's only at the very end between 2010-2017. you actually do finally see a rising white population. that is 100 percent creative class but a relatively small number of cities. you can see the white populace has begun to grow again. not unimportant but happens fairly late in the game. all right, so this is a significant - - of the significant numerical findings.

there are also other parts of the story that can't be explained just by numbers. as i put in the subtitle of the book, it's how latino immigrants saved the american city. it also has to be qualitative. in particular, it has to be about the qualities of the landscapes that latinos created in places like little village. i'm going to focus on three latino landscapes in particular. i want to talk about the landscape of business. transportation and the landscape of home. i make the case that each one of these is essentially a transplanted latin american behavior or tradition which has been adapted for use in the united states. let's begin with the business landscape. that was a lot of stores were

closing and reopening in suburban malls. then later they began to be pushed out of business by predatory big-box retailers. this transformation was not just bad for urban business people but catastrophic for them. but also further depleted municipal - - and street life. if you look at little village, it exemplifies that loss of vitality. as latinos arrive, little village is filled with fairly small storefronts. even more so in oak cliff. you had small mom and pop stores. one lawyer, one doctor offices. a 20 foot storefront is plenty of space for them. with the rise of retailers, - -

sorry, with the rise of suburbanization, retailers want to reproduce a thing. they want a lot of land. a big store in the middle of it and surround it with acres and acres of parking. it was hard to figure out how these spaces fit in in anglo america. that's indeed why we remember those mom and pop stores going out of business in the 70s and 80s. being replaced by the shopping centers and the big box stores. but this has worked differently in latin america and latino america. south of the rio grande and throughout the hemisphere, the scale of retailing have remained much smaller. as a result, for example, supermarkets did not catch on until much later in latin

america. there were stores that have mostly disappeared in the united states. things like butcher shops. independent food stores and bakeries that were alive and well in latin america. - - that essentially gets transported and transposed to places in the united states. [indiscernible] i want to talk about those in a little bit more detail. often as a writer, these immigrants work really hard. let's be honest, small business owners all work really hard. it wasn't necessarily about them. it was about other external factors. the first factor is language. they want to do business in their own language.

with their countrymen and country women. it's a source of familiar allergy, comfort and ability. if you are doing things like buying insurance or getting medical care, don't want to do it knowing we don't speak well. if mistakes are made, it can be serious indeed. the second factor was competition. the same kind of devastating downward pressure on the prices they could charge. affects english speaking businesses, just doesn't apply in the same way to hispanic businesses. that's why bodegas and - - could revive commerce in places like 26th street. if you look at a thing called the - - index. it's a well-recognized index of entrepreneurial activity.

between 1996-2018, latinos are the ethnic group most likely to start their own businesses. now the success of these small businesses has to do with another factor. the transportation landscape. the basic story here is the high propensity of migrants from latin america to walk rather than drive. an incredibly important part of the local landscape. it really depends on nearby clientele. this is an adaptation of the latin american norm into the urban space of the united states. when they came to places like south lawndale, little village and oak cliffs, latinos especially noted without any prompting, the role of cars in the way of life. - - will arrive tonight and i 71 from a small town - - 1971.

said one of the reasons mexicans liked to live in oak cliff was it was small and compact enough to get place to place on foot. he explained, you can play in the streets. in the park. not like in north dallas where you never get out of your car. - - observed walking is a culture thing to me. they will walk to the bank, down the street. growing up, anglos mostly didn't. i should say this is not just anecdotal. it's very clear that latino households owned considerably fewer cars per person than anglo households. in a way this is just what you would expect. if you looked at the rate of car ownership in places like mexico or el salvador. you find in 1960 in mexico, there are 22 motor vehicle for every thousand people.

it is 18 times higher at 4-1-1 per 100,000. if you look at liberal mexico where these immigrants come from, car ownership is even more rare. for example, in the village of - - they found in 1945, none of the two and 46 inhabitants owned a car or truck. in 1960, only one of 120 people did. by far the most important influence was the automobile. when you talk about tens of millions of people in the united states who just don't

have that same relationship to auto mobility. that's a big influence on the way cities work. the third latino landscape was the landscape of home. some years ago, a clever geographer named - - noted what he called a mexican american house escape. a freestanding house surrounded by a perimeter fence with a lot of areas in front. often with a santo and kids play area. he interpreted this as - - the mexican courtyard house on the left. the freestanding anglo-american house at the center of the property and the hybrid is illustrated on the right. and shortly thereafter, james rojas elaborated on this idea into the residential space of this home did not end at the

front of house but spilled out into the front yard. right after a chain-link or wrought iron since. he pointed out this area was mostly in pretty heavy use throughout the day. family and friends would sit on the porch where they could supervisor the small children who could play safely inside that line without the worry they might run out to the street and get hit by a car. in the years since, i should say this kind of front yard space even garnered its own spanglish neil alleges him - - - -. it's called la yarda. i should say this is three examples. if you walk around little village, use the block after block, property after property. you walk up and down any of those blocks and you see largely the same thing.

and i think this has pretty major implications for how cities work. one of the things criminologists have noticed over the past 15 years is that in immigrant events including latino neighborhoods, crime is substantially lower than you would expect it to be. generally speaking, immigrants commit fewer crimes per capita than american-born people by a pretty solid margin. they notice in every neighborhood. you also see lower crimes. the question becomes, okay, why? i've spoken to top criminologist and so where are you out with that explanation. well, people tend to migrate. mexico is a company with a huge crime problem but immigrants are not at all crime prone as compared to americans. - - to see how these yards work.

the fact is at a time when throughout the 1970s, 80s and 90s. we've had american sociologists say the public realm is being lost. everything from - - to bowling alone by robert putnam. that is true for anglo-american as people have their home theaters and backyard pools and barbecues. completely not true for latino america. there are constantly people in front of the house playing with the kids and keeping an eye on everything. the combination of that home scape and streetscape you see on 26 street and on jefferson boulevard is the kind of thing that - - described in 1961. what kept greenwich village safe as she knew it? eyes on the street. it was not direct law

enforcement or passive mongering of space. this is an important way of explaining the criminological - -. i think it's important to note that urban political and business leaders have seen the importance of immigration to cities in the united states. they have organized to attract newcomers. when the senses came out in 2010, there were a lot of cities, most notably detroit that saw they were suffering pretty substantial population loss. such growth was in places like the can town in detroit. seeing that this was a potential solution, again they

organized. immigration has proven by far to be the best american strategy to combat population loss. to create the welcoming economies global network which is a consortium of cities, often called the rustbelt. saying listen, we have to attract newcomers to survive at all. their official motto is leading rustbelt immigration innovation. those most concerned with the fate of cities have set up and take notice of the essential role of immigration in restoring finalization to metropolitan areas. i should say these leaders have not been alone in seeing the benefits of immigration to cities. urban professionals. have increasingly look to

latino urban spaces as they seek out neighborhoods with character and authenticity. in many places, urban professionals have paid five euros their highest compliment by gentrifying them. in los angeles is boyle heights, new york city's washington heights. speaking of washington heights, it's indicative that lin manuel miranda and - - in the heights has of this scene and seen one where the main character is a bodega owner named - - and has this one verse where he says, in five years when this whole city is hipsters, who will miss us? you are seeing the same kinds of transformations in chicago. the ãa mexican immigrant center that had been there for decades. people were not moving up and they painted the entire thing over, causing a huge community

outcry. this was one of the - - that exists to latino barrios. a few years ago, an immigrant from mexico to chicago named - - described an incident that i think sums up the aspects of u.s. metropolitan history. he told the story this with. if an anglo guy comes along. the ãhe is speaking spanish. i tell him, what can i do for you? he says, this is my father's house and i want to buy it. i tell him, it's not for sale. but i like it here. i was born in this neighborhood. i asked, so why did you leave. he said i don't know why my father moved out, he just moved us out. we latinos think these americans left because they thought we would destroy the neighborhood. these parents got scared and moved away and took their children with them.

then these children grew up and became professionals. now they want to move back. the influence of latinos and other immigrants now extends far beyond the cities. many problems that once characterized the urban process the - - they both emptied out small towns and left vast numbers of potential workers unable to go to work. it left them disabled. once again latin american newcomers have been among those revitalizing these areas. - - rural counties in the u.s. between 1990-2000, 94 percent of those counties saw increases in the number of hispanic residents. ironically, it's in rural

america that we see the greatest political support for anti- immigrant communities. we have seen that the cities in the suburbs have become the centers of resistance to donald trump's xena phobia. ironically, it's been rural areas that is the places where there are very few immigrants. who are not in competition with immigrant labor. people don't know that many newcomers. they have become the electoral base for those who demonize and scapegoat immigrants. it's like the residents of south lawndale who weren't very happy to see the latinos that were about to save their entire neighborhood. by way of conclusion. let's remember that despite

recent developments, the united states is still the world unmatched champion in incorporating immigrants. [indiscernible] the country now depends on them. as you may have read, america's birthright is too slow to maintain our economy to our workforce and recruits to the military and the same is true for virtually every advanced industrial and postindustrial economy. you see the same problems if you japan, italy, russia. they all face this kind of issue.immigrants are quite simply the solution. the only ones keeping us out of demographic decline. it continues to grow at the slow gradual rate it has for the last 50 years. it would under one percent a year. to look at this and say, the

future of america has arrived. [speaking spanish] we can see this in the face of our neighbors schoolchildren, neighbors, coworkers and caretakers. baseball players. we can tasted on the food of our plates. which would be empty if not for the hand that picked produce. we can hear in the words of people who despite being dispossessed, overworked and underpaid and falsely accuse have a remained some of the most optimistic americans. now it's up to us to make sure we return to you.

[applause]. >> if anyone would like to ask a question, i ask that you step up to this microphone. >> in the last 20-25 years, there's been a movement from what's called little village to - -, what's going to happen to these businesses once - - take it from little village. second question, when i lived in south lawndale in the 70s, the burlington railroad tracks on the north side of the neighborhood was the boundary between the white and latino neighbors on the south. black neighborhoods onthe

north. that boundary has pretty much stayed the same. on the other hand, on the south side when you have black and white neighborhoods . the border is constantly moved. what's the difference, why have those railroad tracks been constant? is it because there's a constant replenishment of mexicans? >> yes, definitely. if you look at the example of north and south lawndale. you see that north lawndale has gone from 140,000 residents to more like 40-50,000 residents. a dramatic decline in population at the same time that south lawndale is growing far beyond its previous postwar peak. certainly in macro terms, over the 1970s-2010., the next migration of mexicans, salvadorans and other central americans to south lawndale and other places means the balance increased dramatically. when i was in graduate school,

you headed straight west from campus and jude go through african-american neighborhoods and then you would hit those taquerias. so you see expansion in part because after the 1986 immigration reform, that created about 3 million new people on people who have legal status. there are people keeping money in there tresses. people who weren't going to buy a house or major appliance or car as if they got deported, they'd lose it all. if they had legal citizenship, they could buy all those things. we know from the research, income goes to about 20 percent over the 10-15 years.

they begin to go to things like pta meetings and talking to their kids teachers. a dramatic improvement in the way of life that also creates higher property really - - higher property values. the big question is how much are the second and third generations and grandkids of latino immigrants, what will they be like. i think that's still a question mark. also because net migration dropped to zero in about 2006. we are not seeking numerical increase at all. i wonder how we will do

thereafter. it's also noticeable that in absolute terms, the greatest migration is now from asia rather than latin america. >> i think you answered a good part of my question. which is what is the future. what if the latino immigrants follow the path of a, my forbearers from poland. we lost the language after a couple generations. we moved to the suburbs and so on. maybe what i should ask you is, you mentioned a couple of different things. a couple of trends or policy kinds of things. what things might we keep our eyes on to give us some sense of what that future might hold where we might have a way to influence the future? >> i think that policy is currently being driven by a

great deal of unnecessary fear. the way that people who are, let's say concerned about immigration tend to freeze, they will say these people are not adopting our ways. they're not learning our language. that isn't true. there's nothing to be scared of here. the same way that your polish or hunt gearing in or eastern european ancestors - - or hunt gary --hungarian. there was a report called, - - their kids are bilingual and their kids are mostly just english but that's certainly a loss in terms of business

competitiveness. i'm certainly concerned that as latinos get used to driving around in cars, that will attenuate some of the gains. i should also note that criminal logically, we see something interesting. immigrants generally, including those from latin america, create - - commit crimes at a much lower rate than american-born people. their kids also commit crimes at a lower rate than american-born people but not quite as low. their grandchildren still commit crimes at a lower rate than american-born people. but barely. so i think, the way that i freeze it in the book is we should ask, not what these immigrants are doing to our country but what is our country doing to them? >> thanks andrew for a very provocative talk. throughout the talk, you really focused on immigrants.

much of the fear and demonization going on today i think blends immigrants and refugees. and i wonder, in the middle of your period in 1980, you get a change in the number of refugees admitted to the country will be determined by the chief executive. i'm just wondering, is there a way to think about refugees as part of this story that changed - - does it change the picture at all as you think about the status of refugees? were so much of the demonization seems to be happening especially from central and south america. >> if you look at the - - act, it's a very long history. it begins with the carver administration trying to figure out like what should immigration and refugee policy be. at that time, there was high unemployment and there's

growing nativist sentiment. at that time, you could link high unemployment and anti-immigrant sentiment. there was a certain logic there. so the plan was okay, we have to reduce immigration. but the whole bunch of refugee crises happened. you have the haitian refugee crisis. a huge number of central americans that backed 30 wars in central america.that resulted in 1 million point something people fleeing to this country. certainly there were crises and that's what leads to - - carter starts the ball rolling on refugees. that gets taken up with the reagan administration with slightly different emphases. it's based on the idea of, let's do one big amnesty which

reagan signs off on an explicitly says, i believe in the idea of amnesty even though people may not have come here legally, initially. we will do it once, everything will settle down. what they did not plan on is the dramatic economic growth of the 1980s. which draws in and requires large amounts of labor. so they figure, do this one amnesty. it will fix things. suddenly the american economy begins to turn around. what's interesting is in the years after that, you have very successful immigrant incorporation.when people say, what about the inevitable fact in - - that when immigrants push - - down. from working-class people to the very wealthy.

it was simply that decade worked well for everyone, including a huge number of immigrants. what happened after that is that the connection between economic privatization and immigrant sentiment ended. they bore no responsibility or relationship to what people thought of immigrants. it became quite simply, a marker of cultural belonging or not belonging. ironically, it's in places where populations are shrinking that you see the greatest suspicion. i think we have to get to a point where just look at our situation and say, this is the way through. we can't be irrational and foolish because our future, quite frankly, depends on it. >> i am by no means a historian. is it andrew sandoval strauss.

? what inspired you to write this book into you mention the fact that there were waves and waves of unprecedented european immigration? in the phrase, the border crossed me instead of i crossed the border. is it written in your book? >> that's a really great question. there are two reasons to do latino history. one is just the sheer influence over centuries of hispanic people in the united states. the entire western u.s. that was stolen from mexico. the landscape is fundamentally shaped by the previous indigenous peoples there. the place names - - goes to them. the other reason is the massive nests of recent immigration.

if you buy the entire latino population of the stay with us, you set them aside and say what is the median year in which they arrived? the answer is in the 1990s. half of us are pretty recent immigrants. i think the reason i focus on the more recent past is that sometimes in the present, it's hard for people to imagine that not that long ago, 50-60 years. latinos were like two percent of the population.

the height of the crisis my mother and i moved out of new york city there was the year there were six homicides a day in the city of new york. we moved out to the first across the border in westchester county and i needed a thing called daisy will for my printer. we went into the yellow pages and picked up a stationary store nearby and my mother called the number and answered in spanish. she switches into spanish she said i'm looking for a daisy wheel. which they said we don't sell those. she said who's there and she said there's nobody here but us mexicans. [laughter] growing up in new york city and westchester county there was lot of latinos but primarily put weekends, a

few cubans. to find a large group of mexicans in new rochelle new york in the early 1990s was ãb like new rochelle is like that city from red time it's all black people and white people. what are mexicanos doing there? a little bit later on and went to an american historical association meeting in atlanta and not sorted famously i went to the aquarium i was surrounded by people speaking spanish. this is everywhere you don't think of it like atlanta like and yet it was. finding people i didn't expect them. >> here's another mind blower. since yesterday was veterans day we should bring honor to ray chavez who died just a little bit not too long ago and was the sole survivor of the pearl harbor and he was a soldier and just died shortly of 107. >> wow add that to the

historical facts. >> absolutely. thank you for mentioning rex almost 107 years old. only pearl harbor survivor, latino. i believe mcconnell. >> thank you all so much for coming. andrew will be in the lobby to sign books and there are some more available in the bookshop. [applause] >> you're watching booktv on c-span2 with top nonfiction books and authors every weekend booktv, television for serious readers. here's a look at some programs you will see this weekend. former new york times labor reporter steven greenhouse talks to democratic congressman

andy levin of michigan about the current challenges facing american workers. former deputy assistant to president trump sebastian gorka weighs in on u.s. domestic and foreign policy and vanderbilt university professor brian fitzpatrick offers his thoughts on class-action lawsuits. in jody adams kirchner looks at the impact detroit's bankruptcy is had on the city's poor. >> booktv recently visited the home of psychotherapist jeannie safer and national review senior editor richard book kaiser for to talk about how they maintain a relationship despite their opposing political views. here they offed her thoughts on current political climate. >> every day it gets worse. my brother unfriended me on facebook my sister-in-law broke

the engagement over kavanaugh. you don't believe me. i do believe you. it's gotten more insane. it. >> it comes from both sides. maybe even more from the anti-trump side. i read a statistic that people are truncating their thanksgiving to an hour or two less so they won't fight with each other. there was a piece of the time on 17 things to talk about it thanksgiving other than politics. >> we needed somebody to write an article so we could know something to talk about at thanksgiving. it has gotten worse and worse and worse. >> did you see this as a psychotherapist did you see this during the george w. bush administration during the ronald reagan administration? >> that was the beginning. >> during the obama

administration. >> all this was true but it was under control to a certain degree. i don't think you were getting parents saying they would rather their child marry someone of a different race or religion than a different political party. this has become two worlds. and one of the people they wanted those letters was a guy, a lovely guy, sounded really nice, who lived on the west coast he was a trump supporter he had to take the fact that he was a trump supporter off his dating profile because no woman would go out with him. he had been in the military, very intelligent, thoughtful guy. he really liked her and they had a lot in common. she went on one date, all her friends say, will kill him we will strangle him, how can he do this? she walked out in one date.

he said, i read some of the things you wrote, i think we have a chance, will you talk to her? will you be my go-between? [laughter] so okay, sounded like a great guy. she was very thoughtful and she had a blind spot for this. why is it that if somebody works for trump i consider them antichrist? surely there are guys i agree with and didn't treat me well. we had a long conversation and was it trying to convince her to go back to him but i said, you ever have a situation where somebody who you agreed with didn't treat you well and somebody you did, didn't agree with treated you well? and i told her my great find actually it was rick's line but this is the basis to what matters in life it's called the chemotherapy test. chemotherapy test is the fact that when you rely are lying on

a hospital bed with getting chemotherapy in your veins you do not ask the party affiliation of the person who is standing next to you getting you through it. and we both came to this understanding by having been in that bed and next to the bed and that's what matters to me. >> who passed the test for you beside ã >> he passed the test because i was basically in the hospital for a month and he was there constantly, my mother next-door neighbor. >> in new york. >> yes, who is ã [multiple speakers] >> she doesn't like trump either, she came and did my laundry and my closest friend at the time who was a local democrat and psychoanalyst never showed up.

i also had a really remarkable story i tell in the book i have a chapter called what's the core value? what i'm really arguing is core values are not who you work for. it's who you are. this is a young woman i know really well. i knew her father was somebody important in my life. when he died he had five brothers and sisters, very progressive, serious progress, none of them did a thing, her uncle the ex-marine converted evangelical trump supporters he came and helped her with everything. she did something almost nobody on the right or left ever does, she apologized to him. they been bickering on facebook

she said i misjudged you you are the only one who came through i will never forget it. >> doctor safer's book is entitled "i love you, but i hate your politics", to watch the rest of the program visit our website freelibrary.org and type in the name of the book title or author using the search box at the top of the page. >> hello everyone. can everyone hear me? sounds good? awesome. thank you all for coming out tonight and supporting your local independent an employee owned bookstore. [applause] before we begin tonight's event with holly jackson for "american radicals" i want to mention other great