[applause] >> you are watching book tv on c-span2 with top four action books and authorsevery weekend . dd: television for serious readers . >> okay, good evening everyone and thank you all for joining us tonight. on behalf of carmichael's bookstore i am delighted to welcome you all to tonight's event. if we can all take a moment before i begin and silence are cell phones iwould greatly appreciate that . tonight, we are joined by kathy chambers whose debut

memoir all women honored her childhood in appalachia and the strong women who raised her. she later went on to earn a degree from harvard law and has now worked extensively domestic violence survivors in kentucky. she currently lives in loisellewith her husband . by me ingiving a warm welcome to cassie . >> thank you all, first off i want to thank everyone for being here and coming out in the rain on a cold night. it means so much to me to have people from the various stages of my life and it is wonderful to see you here. i want carmichael's for hosting this event you carmichael does so much for our community, please purchase books. if we want to have events like this but support them and use our dollars to do that so please at the end of seven tonight i would appreciate itif you would

purchase your book and i will be signing them at the signing table after this event . what i want to do tonight is i'm going to read some excerpts of hill women and talk about why i wrote this book, what inspired me to write it, the writing process and give you an overview about how this book came to be and came to the into the world and after that i will have time for questions and anything that is on your mind i would love to hear from you. this is a discussion and dialogue and i look forward to hearing yourthoughts on the book and the subject matter and anything you have on your mind . the first part i want to read comes from the introduction when i am talking about owsley county kentucky which is one of the poorest counties in all of america in the appalachia. about 4500 people, one ofthe highest poverty rates in america . it's hard for me to know which part of costly county i

should show the rest of the world. presenting the broken, fallen in places helps people understand the extent of the poverty and i want them to know how deep it goes. maybe if they understand it they can help fix it but i also don't want them to think that this poverty isall that exists in appalachia. to see eastern kentucky is hopeless, broken,dirty. that's not what i see when i look at this place i love . i around the square and continue driving . alongthe way , some of the lawns are scattered with what appears to be junk. old car parts, refrigerators, children'stoys . but i know that for some people, the piles of seemingly useless stuff serve a purpose and an entrepreneurial one at that. people here make aliving however they can . selling old car parts, repairing refrigerators, organizing yard sales. they collect anything of possible value because they

never know what will come in handy. if nothing else, they can sell the junk in a nearby town for $50 a truckload. they are always thinking of ways to earn money. help a neighbor, provide for their family. their drive, creativity, effort in unexpected places. some people look at this image of poverty with a sense of disgust. they see unkempt humans living in unkempt homes. others view it with a sense of pity. those poor people trapped in such awful circumstances. i try to look at it with a sense of respect. to remember how hard they are working to survive in the overlooked corner ofthe world they call home . that last few of ausley county feels the truest to me, even if the other views fit more neatly intothe categories outsiders want to create . for me there is hope in the

spirit of people who find creative ways to exist in a community that has been systematically marginalized and men and women who take care of each other even when the outside world does not take care of them. in people who broke their bodies in tobacco fields and coal mines to make a living in the onlycommunity they have ever known . we don't take the time to see it. the hope in the poverty, the spark that gives the dreary baccarat backdrop, thegrit and the mountain women. i've come to know that grits well, that fire that fuels so many women in rural kentucky. i see it in my client , women in the midst of acrisis doing what it takes to keep themselves and their children safe . once i recognized it i saw its fx everywhere, the way it has shaped people, families, amenities. the way it has shaped me. of course, not everything in ausley county isexceptional .

exceptionally horrible, exceptionally virtuous, exceptionally whatever we want it to be. in many ways ordinary, full of normalpeople living normal lives . these lives take a different shape and art and in other places but the basic themes are the same. people care about love, community, family. about a mile outside of town is a narrow gravel road that drops dramatically over the side of the hill, plunging steeply into the hollow below. the hollow is called paul carr creek and it shares his name with a stream through it. a few hundred yards farther the bottom of this valley, a small flat face enclosed by rolling hills, on the top of one of these bills is a farmhouse looking out onto the field below. it resembles an elderly woman leaning into itself. folding around and ever weakening structure . it is gray now.

it's wooden boards worn and faded but there are hints of the white and green it once more. there's a strength in its brokenness. it has withstood whether, time and families. it is vacant now, resting , watching, waiting as each new day cascades into the creek. this hollow feels like home and the housefeels like family . their own women's tories here, stories of resilience, love and strength. this minute he knows them well. their echo has reached far enough into the outside world . instead, these tales have ricocheted within the mountains, growing more paint with time. i want to tell these stories because they matter, because i'm afraid they will be forgotten. because half the power tomake this community visible .as

i stop my vehicle and walked towards the house, the memories wash over melike the sunlight on the melton hills . and so this introduction i think says a lot about why i wrote hill women and how i see it being in conversation with other depictions about appalachia that we see being really popular both in recent years and presently. around 2015, it became, there were a lot of things written about appalachia and a lot of people were debating the problems there and these were problems i was aware of, once i was familiar with but what i wasn't hearing a lot about was the hope and the way that people are coping with those problems and the creative solutions and strength of communities addressing these problems and addressing them well so i wrote this book in large part to tell that side of the story, to show that there is hope in these communities people talk about the problems so often, there is hope in poverty and strength in communities that struggle.

i had always known this, i had always been aware of these virtues of appalachia and the way that struggling communities so much to offer but it wasn't until i began seeing the other portrayals of these other books, movies and films i realized nothing about the story of this community and of my family was noteworthy when you grow up in this way this is your life story don't know that it's something anyone else would be interested in and all of a sudden these stories come out about people who came from this background of poverty in appalachia and went to the halls of the ivy league and somehow that was a journey that was worth talking about and there were lessons to take away from that and i look at these people telling these stories that had similar plot points to my own life story and i realized from the outside that's what my life looks like, that's what the story of my families life looks like.

it looks like a story of being born in a trailer to two young parents who couldn't afford to run the air-conditioning and going on to have the opportunity to earn a degree from yale college and harvard law school but the way i thought about those experiences is different than what i was reading about and for me everything i have to and every opportunity i have was because of my community and those people that shape to me and informed me so i talk about this book as i call it the anti-bootstraps narrative because we all know about the pull yourself up by your bootstraps narrative, get an ivy league degree . for me the take away is the only reason i was able to do that, the only reason i had boots at all was not just because of my immediate family but the generations that came before me and how the women in my family tried to do something a little bit better for the next generation and build something better for the women who came after them so that at its core what phil women is all about, it's about the ways they work to

make their communities better and maketheir families better and do better for the women who come after them . so just give you a little bit of a context and a flavor for "hill women" and the stories in it , it starts off with my grandmother. my grandmother, i called her granny, had a third grade education and she was born into extreme poverty, poverty bad her blanket used to freeze at night because her house was so cold and they couldn't afford to heat it and she never got to a play, never got to go to the movies or a restaurant or even had toys. she lived the life that was hard and he was treated like an adult from the time she was a child and more than anything even though she hadn't had the opportunity to get an education and didn't have the ability to understand what getting an education meant, she wanted her children to be able to do better and she had done and to go further and she had been able to go she had seven

children, the six of which was my mom and she pushed my mom from the time she was born to graduate high school, go get an education and because of that and because of my mom's sister ruth who also encouraged her to get a degree, my mom became the first in her family to graduate high school and went on to graduate college . she went to a wonderful place that allowed her to get a free education which was something her family didn't have the money for her to be able to go to school to pay tuition and quite frankly she had to go into debt and that wasn't something people did so she wouldn't have had the chance to get her degree if she went to those various places and my mom coming from that background saw the way education changed her life and made the world smaller, the way it opened doors for her and she felt like she had come so far from that holler to be able to go to berea

college to learn aboutthe world and just have her horizons broadened . that she raised me to believe there was nothing i wasn't capable of doing because she had come so far that she believed i had the ability to do anything in the world that i wanted to so because my mom instilled in me from an early age how important it was to get an education, experience the world, take chances because she had taken chances, i was able to go on and earn a scholarship to yale college and graduate from harvard law school and then the book talks about how i believe that when you are the person that three generations have worked to get opportunities to, all this effort and care has gone

into making you who you are you are under anobligation to pay it forward so i returned to kentucky and i came back and worked with low income women in domestic violence situations trying to provide other families and other women with the same opportunities i had been provided . so i have anotherexcerpt i want to read from the book that plays on that theme . it is about my mother going to college . >> .. where graduating, i told my family, as we walked past them down the aisle. i didn't know then how true that statement was. how by graduating with a degree my mother changed both of our lives, have values should come to place on education which seep

into my core and carry me far beyond the hills of appalachia. how her ability to better understand herself and her family would set me up for success. the day after the graduation ceremony, the local newspaper ran a a picture of the two of . my mother in me standing side-by-side. eyes focused forward, graduating to the next stage of our lives. and so the last thing i want to talk about in the book and then i would love to hear your thoughts and questions and have a conversation about appalachia and the depictions of appalachia and the wish to move forward and think about rural poverty and how it's different from urban poverty and education and all of these things, the last thing i want to talk about a little bit is my work and paying for because i believe when your community gives you opportunities it is incumbent upon you to pay those opportunities forward. for me that took the form of starting my career at the legal

aid society and working with women in the state of crisis to do with safety issues trying to keep themselves and children safe, trying to protect themselves and her family. i worked in the rural counties surrounding every county that touched louisville. i called myself a one woman traveler law firm. i had a printer back of my car and i met clients in subways, lifers and public libraries. i think how to get people to print things when they didn't have access to technology and e-mail things when it didn't have an e-mail address. and have lots of really fond memories from life on the road. but in this work one of the things was important to do was to find tangible ways to make the system better. because my experience working in rural kentucky and in eastern kentucky showed me there were a lot of barriers that exist in places we don't necessarily see

them. when i was working in the civil justice system, i saw the way through a lot of financial barriers that stop women from being able to fully access support systems and keep themselves and their family safe. we talk about this a lot in the criminal law context, though a lot of people here you have the right to have an attorney, it can afford what one will be provided to you. people don't rely shall have the same right in civil context. when i was working with these women trying to get custody orders or addictive orders they didn't have a right to get an attorney. i was representing them for free, and sometimes i was hopeful but it wasn't always enough because a lot of times there are fee shift pay for things like having an attorney appointed for your children, commissioner systems where you have to pay hourly fees to have your case wrote on the docket. just all these little fees that add up. one of the things i noticed was there was a law on the books that required women, or anyone,,

if you wanted to divorce an abusive partner, and a partner was in jail for assaulting them. the log required the person be appointed an attorney, which in itself isn't a bad thing. i believe people should have representation and if you're incarcerated they should have learned to make sure they represented. but the problem was who had to pay for that attorney. in the situation it was a person seeking the divorce, normally the person who had been the victim of the abuse and the person was in chill for abusing them. it was that person, that victim, the survivor who got stuck with the legal bill for that. i thought time and again how this made women feel like the court system was working for their abuser instead of them and it made him them feel re-victid and made them hesitant to use legal system to get the kind of help and relief they needed. they saw it as a place that didn't protect their interests, didn't have anything to help

them. i decided to work with one of my clients, a woman named jeanette, to be able to address this problem. i believe strongly in the sort of client driven solutions and in partnering with people who experience the problems the most to find solutions to them together. and so i want to read an excerpt from the latter part of the book where i'm talking about jeanette and our work together. so what jeanette and i did together is, it started off with me saying cannot tell your story? can i use your story as a way to try to make the system better? and jeanette had a pretty dramatic story. she had experienced violence and abuse for a number of years at the hands of her then husband. one night he came home. he was intoxicated. he assaulted her.

he fired a pistol at her and the bullets ripped through her clothing, at her clothing today are still in police custody. her husband ended up going to jail and jeanette file divorce and i was her attorney charged with helping to navigate through the divorce process. and at first it was just me asking jeanette if i could use a story, the fact whenever you try to get this divorce she got stuck with a legal bill so that he could have a lawyer even though i was representing her for free because she couldn't afford an attorney. and every time i have asked the survivor, can i tell your story to try to make things better for other people? the person has says yes, absolutely if my story can help someone come use. the fact jeanette had to pay for incarcerated husband to have an attorney, although she couldn't afford one, that was something she wanted to tell the worry and she wanted to use that as a way to make a change. i wrote an op-ed and i started to tell her story and started to

get attention, and lawmakers filed the bill. and then at the point jeanette said i'm okay telling my story myself. i want to use my face. i want use my name. i want to carry his torch because i'm not ashamed anymore, i'm not embarrassed or afraid. i want to make the system better myself. jeanette and i had some conversations about how she could get involved and how she could do that. one of the most powerful things i've ever seen is jeanette deciding to testify in front of the kentucky general assembly and go on the news media and just tell anyone and everyone who would listen about her story about her experience and why it matters and why things needed to change. as a result of that, the bill passed through the kentucky general assembly and was signed into law by the governor and he was called jeanette law. it would stand after. today she will tell you it's the thing she is most proud of in the world. i am so proud to have been able to watch her transform the system that are taken advantage

or. i just want to read you a little bit of it excerpt about jeanette and jeanette law. my experience with jeanette was a powerful reminder about the importance of telling women's stories. her voice like to like a tangie changes in the state law. because of her bravery, other women's lives will be better. and each small win is just that, a win. and each win is reminder things can change. these are also a reminder that the people who have been victimized either by spouse or an unjust system, are nonetheless powerful. some people portrayed survivors of domestic violence as weak. some people portrayed the women in appalachia the same way. i think gen x story illustrates the opposite. when given the right tools, support an environment, these women are capable of changing the world. and so with that i will conclude

my reading part of the night and i look for to hearing all of your questions. again i want to thank card michael's for hosting this event and please, please buy books and support to local bookstores. they do amazing, amazing work. and with that i will go ahead and open it up to questions. there's a microphone at the il. and i know to make sure we're capturing the audio, they ask that you speak into the microphone if you have a question. [applause] any questions? okay. >> i'm also from kentucky. i'm also an attorney. i think one of the books you talk about his "hillbilly elegy." >> you got it. >> i'd like to hear your thoughts and reaction to that. i also had a similar negative

reaction to it because i had a great time growing up in eastern kentucky. i was lucky and was not in the poorest county and it was a wonderful place to grow at that time. the other thing want to ask is how do you pronounce vienna sausages? >> vienna? >> will, at least in my county we pronounce them vienna sausage. [laughing] >> that's a new one to me. i like that. that is good to know. just to touch on that, one of the books that i think gained a lot of tension and became what the rest of the world about appalachia was "hillbilly elegy elegy." while i was think it is good for people to tell their personal story, i do think that book talks about appalachia in a way that is unhelpful. it focuses on the problems,

focuses on problems in people and it doesn't acknowledge the ways that systems marginalize people people over time and help our people working in these marginalized communities, and how much honored that its net and working really hard in the community that is been marginalized over time. that was really one of the driving forces behind writing "hill women" was try to put something out there in the world that showed what you think is the true view of appalachia and shows the positive view of appalachian something that focuses on women. my experiences with women in these communities take on leadership roles. they are unacknowledged leadership roles within a difference in the community and the larger world, and i think this is a book i hope it is a a book that elevates women's voices and tells women's stories. thank you for the question. any other questions? i see someone in the back.

>> let me take hers and then i will get to you. >> i was wondering if you could tell us a little bit about what it was like to write about your family and you know that both they're going to read it and people who knew or didn't know your family going to read it and if -- i guess that's all. >> thank you for the question. so for those of you that might not be able to hear the question was about the process of writing a memoir and what it's like to write about your family and write about people that are going to read the book. so to write a memoir, i think it's a really interesting process, and there's a lot to be said. i think jeff to to work with an editor that really understands you and how your brain works,, and i'm lucky that my editor from ballantine books is here tonight, i do hope that you all to grant a meter because she's an incredible woman and i'm really glad she came down.

but when do the things she did a lot of was asking questions, you know, why did you make this decision? why do you think this? why did so to make that decision? what's underneath the surface the way you understand the world and her story? i think that digging is what's important to get at the deeper level in this sort of systemic issues and the real value in any story. i was lucky i worked with an amazing editor who really helps me dig into that. i will say about writing a memoir, it did not occur to me it's not got close to publication the people i was writing about what actually read the book and that i was faced with the prospect of driving down with finished copy sensing here's the book. i hope you like the wheel are per trade. which is quite an experience because i think none of us believe anyone would write about any of us is different from the we way we think about or talk about ourselves. i got some advice of someone who wrote a memoir at the outset

that the said he will never regret being a really -- overgenerous in your portrayal of people. at the time that didn't make sense to me. yes, that's good advice but what else can you tell me about writing a memoir? now in hindsight that the best advice i got and that's what i would absolutely kill other people writing mmr is be overly generous in your portrayals of people because when you write about them on the page lives for ever, and you can't take it back. you will never regret being a little bit kinder than perhaps your initial inclination was to be. and i think we had a question over here. [inaudible] >> okay. just to talk more about the process of writing the book, i was lucky that this book didn't take all that long to write in part because when you're writing back to store you already know it. you've heard the family tales. there's a lot of sitting down. i get a lot of interviews with family members and i said i've always heard you tell that story about grandma getting married at

15 but what else can you tell me about that? what you remember her talking about? it was interesting to see the ways of the ones memories different and so that's one of the things about writing mmr is this is not researched book. these are are stories and i acknowledge everyone's memory is different and the accounts come sometimes granny had a brand wedding brass and trade dress, no, it's blue. at the end of day i think blue but i'm not sure it might have been brown. it was really fun to be able to sit down and talk to relatives about their memories and my mom was very involved in sitting down and talking with me and sharing her memory and sharing her life story. in a lot of ways i was very lucky to have that opportunity in that time to have those conversations because a lot of us don't have the chance to sit down with our relatives and tell them how much we admire them how much we've taken away from their life story so i feel very grateful to have that opportunity. any other -- i see someone

coming, yes. >> congratulations on your book. >> thank you. >> i wonder, you know, you grew up in owsley county, what ought to heal and harvard, et cetera and it came back and laid in louisville which many people in eastern kentucky barely even consider to be kentucky, right? tell me how did that wind up being, you know, your decision? you could've gone to pikeville or someplace out there. tell us about that process. >> i fell in love with louisville when i'm so lost it and at the opportunity to come and spend some summers here. i always tell folks about louisville to what a love is big enough to have everything you need and small enough to actually use it.

[laughing] it's true, , you could get a set at a coffee shop or at a nice restaurant. you can go in. for me i had gone and i had lived in cities and i think they're so much value in cities, and one of the things i'm really interested in this whole idea of the rural urban divide because i think people are people and we all have more in common that we have that divides us. i love living in cities because i loved the unique and interesting things that happen. kentucky was always home. it always felt like home. i fell in love with louisville and i thought this was a place i could land and make a difference, and so i moved here in started doing the work that i was doing, and met my husband, and my husband, his first question when he proposed is what you marry? the second one was, can we always live in the high lands in the louisville? [laughing] so i'm locked in for life, and at the end of the day i really

enjoy having the opportunity to talk about how we can bring rural and urban areas together because i think that's perspective i've seen both sides. and again, i believe more unites us than divides us and i enjoy having the opportunity to talk to folks in rural areas about louisville and talk about louisville in rural areas. thank you for the question. >> along the lines of having so much in common, what is the common thread between louisville and urban poverty would you say? >> that's an interesting question, and the truth is i think rural and urban poverty actually do look quite different. i think they are both significant problems and we need to have resources available to address both. there are unique challenges around rural poverty. one of the things i noticed in particular is, in cities, for

example, louisville there are a lot of organizations that provide social services and they're supposed to provide those services for an entire accounting area. and yet for my very low income clients, they might not have reliable transportation to drive the hour and half to louisville to access the social services or they might not be able to afford the gas or if their car broke down that might not be able to make it. it's one, transportation and infrastructure at access really matters in rural areas. the way the poverty is more diffuse makes it harder to bring people together to access services. because you might have a couple of people at a holler over here and a couple people at a hall or three miles away and is just north east but that's not to say, i think the take away from that is you have to have different strategies from targeting both. it's not to say either, they're

not competing with one another or to say either is a more pressing concern than the other. >> that brings up another question. [inaudible] at the time i remember a conversation which took place about what would happen rural areas? we do have lots of areas that are contiguous. you get in rural kentucky and it's a great discussion right now in the governor's office about wi-fi accessibility. i know in the rural counties that you work in -- [inaudible]

>> the question for those of you who did hear was about in inrod counties that a wi-fi access, it might still a pay for protected oars as opposed to electronic protected orders and the lag time, what happens. i will say i have had clients, and i had to call the police on behalf of class because there's been a safety threat and so has shown up and have been able to get the police to respond quickly enough. i think the answer is, when there's a delay in providing people with safety services, bad things happen and it shouldn't happen and we should do whatever it takes to make sure that doesn't happen. the point about wi-fi access more general is a good point. we live in a world where we talk about access to the internet and access to wi-fi as a fundamental right, it's something that

connects us all and something we all need to participate in our society today. i have relatives who to this day and never used a computer. they don't a cell phone. they've never seen a facebook page. these are relatives of what i said would you like to come to a wedding in weevil, i would love to have you? they did know how to get to louisville. they don't have any gps. they've never use the gps. some of them haven't used parking garages. that was just not an option for them. i was telling people when my husband was like why isn't your eastern kentucky family coming to your wedding? i said it might as will be in taiwan. they don't know -- it'll have the ability, they don't have the phones and the gps to be up to navigate. that's something a lot of people still find shocking in this day and age, the sort of disparities that exist and access to technology and access to information about how to use that technology? it's important when we are talking about these high poverty

areas to talk about how we teach young people to be able to use the technology of the future because that is what helps them connect to the larger world and also to job opportunities and economic opportunities that come from being able to connect to that world. >> can you point to any policy -- [inaudible] >> the question was about a talk about how my family and community shaped me, what specifically with a policy that played a role in that. in the book i talk about how my family and we received food stamps. we got assistance medical expenses. i went to a public school. i played in public parks. i went to public libraries because at the beginning of talking up being born to two two

young parents who could render air-conditioning. do you know where it is air-conditioned everyday is a public library. it was a place is open to the public that i could go and learn and also i could escape the summer heat. i am such a big believer in having to policies that provide and become with those opportunities in part because my family took advantage of those. at any one of those been missing i wouldn't be where i was today. i got sick as a child. if i hadn't been able to go to a doctor, at my family encouraged large amounts of debt my family would look different. how can that had the opportunity to go to public school and get a good education my life would've looked very different. i believe we have to make sure we have policies in place that are making sure every child has the same opportunities i had to grow and thrive. yes. >> i work in education, occluding dropout prevention.

sometimes we hear, particularly and rural parts of the state, that there may be a fear of families of the children getting advanced education because it means they may leave the community, particularly if they will go on to higher education and it will come back. and then there's a loss but i'm curious about your perspective on whether that is true in some cases from your experience, and if so, then what is the best way to try to address those complicated dynamics? >> that's something i talk about in the book actually is my mom experienced that. whenever she comes more than anything, granny wanted my mom to go to college and get an education, but her husband did not want my mom to leave for that exact same reason. he said families take care of the children. children stay close to the families. why would you go away? why would you leave? do you think i i can't providea good live for you?

his family was most important thing to him and it broke his heart in what was in his mind might've been to the other side of the world. it was a 50 miles but never had a driver's license. he rarely left owsley county county. and might've been a different part of the conscious farsi was concerned. to some extent that it's getting lessened as people see the ways that education changes their communities, and a lot of people i think there's a focus now on doing sort of what i did it, getting an education and returning and make a difference in the community you come from. there are programs to help bring people back to the communities, in some ways inspired them to want to leave in the first place. they provided them with that bedrock and foundation and values and tried to go get an education. sometimes that drives big problems and own communities that want to come back and salt. there's certainly still work to be done and i still hear stories about people saying my entire

world is owsley county, i'm never going to leave. i've heard young people say college isn't for me. high school is not for me. i just couldn't grow and work at the jail and the never going to leap from going to grow up and do this or that. sometimes it makes me sad people feel like the world is limited. i certainly understand the value of home and the value of family, and i think people can make good legitimate choices to stay in your home and near family. i just hope for a world where every child feels like to have a choice to choose something else if that's what they want. >> all right. so i'm hearing that our time has left and were out of time. thank you all again for coming tonight. it is so great to have you all here. thank you to my agent, jamie, who came in from new york and my editor emily for making the trip can. i was very lucky to have a team

of amazing women supporting in this project. thank you again to carmichael for hosting. i will be over signing books so please, please, please support carmichael's, buy a book. thank you all for being here. [applause] [inaudible conversations] >> here's what's on tonight in prime time on booktv. >> check your program guide for

more scheduled information. >> on a recent episode of both tvs monthly call-in program in depth we were joined by author and "wall street journal" columnist jason riley. in this portion of the program he offers his thoughts on race and the criminal justice system. >> i think the criminal justice system is an improvement today over what used to be over what my father or grandfather experienced in this country but still not perfect. but i would caution against taking these examples and say they are typical versus exceptions or aberrations, or saying the reason so many blacks are involved in the criminal justice system is because it's a racist system per se. i don't see a lot of evidence for that and i think oftentimes we have discussions about, say, the racial makeup of prisons,

jails, but we don't talk but the racial makeup of people who perpetrate crimes in this country and i don't think you can really have one discussion without the other. so as imperfect as the criminal justice system is, has been and continues to be, i still think that there are behavioral differences among groups that lead to something overrepresented in the system and others the underrepresented. >> to watch the rest of this interview at the final episodes of in-depth, visit our website booktv.org and click on the in-depth tab near the top of the page. >> good evening, everybody and welcome. i i'm mike freedman, the 113th president of the national press club, and what an honor it is to have this as the first program on my watch this year. as the