that first dating and we cheered and began opening bottles of champagne and then two, three minutes later ding, ding, ding, 30 more orders and we were so excited and we got two more orders and in all the excitement we lost track of things until someone noticed that it's been a while since the bell has rung and we were unplugged and is there a problem and it turned out that in the first 15 minutes of being online we crashed all our servers. >> mark randolph, a monday night at 8:00 p.m. on "the communicators" on c-span2. >> it is book tvs monthly in depth program with auster and princeton university imani. , her books on race and african-american is to include "prophets of the hood", maybe forever stands and the recently published, brief: a letter to my sons.

>> professor imani perry, what is the structure of your newest book, brief? >> guest: well, there are three sections. fear, fly and fortune. it is a letter, a series of letters to my son but it's also a letter to the larger world. both about the reality of the terror and anxiety and the worry that comes along with being the parent about black children in particular at this moment but 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 lesson for an extraordinary tradition which we have to draw from.

>> host: where did you come up with the idea to write your son's a letter? >> guest: i have written some letters privately for years and my editor at beacon press said is this something you'd be interested in doing in large part because ado talk about my children all the time and i write posts about them on social media and initially, you know, i think what we both had in mind with something that was probably bit more lighthearted but then when i started to reflect on what it would mean to tell a story to them about both my expectations but also my warnings and the depth of my love and a story for both them and for the world it became something more sober and i reached into the archive in my mind of the way it did that for me and tried to have a

conversation, both with the past and the present, foror their future. >> it reads as if it flowed out of view and that's probably that it reads -- >> guest: thank you. it certainly the book that came out most quickly andth did flow out of me. my previous work was a foundation for it and i wrote most of it while we were all in japan where we were working so there was a way that provided about contemplation and retreat that allowed but it's also the conversations in the book and the conversations we have all the time and to craft those conversations and to craft those take message to time but there is something that slowed forth and to benefit from the

emotional energy, i think, of this task which is kind of breathless and beautiful and exciting meaning stewarding children's lives is just like that and -- >> host: where did you come up with the title? >> guest: it is so interesting because as many people guess there's a reference to eric garner's statement, i need to breathe. but there is also a reference tk about is the city i was born in alabama had one of the worst air quality in the nation the year i was born and i was thinking about the prevalence of environmental racism in the way that makes it hard to breathe , you know, i thought about the holding in one's breath of deep anxiety around thehe threat of violence moments of racial injustice and

also in part because connected to my taken in what they need to survive and flourish but also managing the breath. right? , navigating the difficult moments which is what it means to get out 16 bars without barely catching her breath was a powerful metaphor for me. tweend

me and there is a modification that i will talk about of unarmed black people often by police officersof without any process and without any just cause and it's a most minor

infraction if none at all. there is that part of the fear but the fear at large. the ways in which inequality can limit your opportunities but also get in your head. right? those kinds of fears are without question ever present and part of the task of parenting for me is to attend to navigate around the fears with the recognition that tomorrow it really isn't promised.pr so you have to both attempt to navigate but also cannot a be completely overwhelmed by the fear otherwise you won't live. right? if you have to deal with the reality of tragedy and disaster are possible and then fly if in some ways an indication of toni morrison and you know, as opposed to a flight four in a native son is the moment when

the protagonist, bigger thomas, is running away from the law because he is committed a murder that is prompted by his terror of being lynched essentially. but i thought that flight in the sense of actually taking flight in life so it's an extension of the idea of not being defined by the fear but how to take flight and that is a direct reference to toni morrison's, song of solomon, and the idea of flying. if you give up that stuff that weighs you down, as she says. in fortune for me was a way of talking about the abundance of that that is not talking about the inheritance and weight we tend to describe it but actually the fortune of a tradition of an ancestry of resilience and of

ioincredible beauty and of creativity, even in the face of constraint and so you know, i talked about everything from our ancestors who worked the land to felonious monk and his mastery and the repetition of a single compact -- composition over and over it which really function to me as a way of thinking about how to i navigate this and a he has this set of notes which we could say is medical for life and in navigating the terms over and over again. that is the foundation of the structure. >> what do we know about freem freemen? >> oh gosh. this is a hard question to answer because sometimes they tell me different things to tell the world but in some ways the

most important part is that they are fully and absolutely human in all of its complexities. i say it that way because so often, i think, black childrenty in particular aren't granted that recognition. i can talk about how they are distinctive so asa is a brilliant athlete and incredible sophisticated and human understanding relations and a beautiful writer. i can talk about freemen is composers of extraordinary music and an amazingly gifted artist and they're both really good friends and all of these things but sometimes i hesitate because these thingsth are true about tm but it is not -- i don't want to sound as though i'm making them exceptional because i really do that all children are special and that 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 and don't have much to offer which, i think, that disproportionately falls not on black children but on black boys in particular. so, they are really human. >> what a thing about the fact that you've wrote a letter to them exposing them to the world . >> guest: while, thus far they are okay with it but i also understand that might change over time becauseok my sons are 13, 16 and in a pretty intense stage of development each of them and i didn't give them veto power over the content of the book so allowed them to say if they were stories they do not theren the book or if were details but i hope they let me tell later in life but maybe not treated but, with respect to the idea of being on book tour in the book getting public attention that is not particularly interesting to them

and i think that's a good thing. i am notn, in our intimate domestic life a public figure, you know, that part of the day today of our lives isn't on display and that is most important piece for them is the relationship. >> from your book you write that racism is in every step and breath we take. >> guest: yes, it really is. when you actually start to deconstruct it in a detailed fashion and you see everything from how homes are constructed to how frequently the street cleaning operations take place, who can be where and what opportunities exist and who has bank accounts and who doesn't and who has spots and who

doesn't, walking along the street, who -- whose body elicits a clutching of the purse, who gets followed in the store, where are their bookstores? in which communities? what to the schools look like and what is the quality of the air we breathe? it is so pervasive and it's part of what makes, as uncomfortable as conversations are for so many people, u we cannot function asa decent society without talking about it because we are in the thick of it all the time. >> host: imani. , on friday we send out a tweet promoting your appearance here on sunday and in the tweet we put the wordsin, are white peope he redeemable ask imani. of princeton university?

you took issue with that. >> guest: i did. >> host: i want to read from breathe what wanted that question but we will put it on the screen as well so 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 did not mean individuals, individuals are the precious bulwark against total desperationa in them we find the persistence of possibility. of course, a single person can be someone's help but a single person could be a heaven to or a friend. i worry that white people are irredeemable and it scares me. what would the complete disassembling of the kingdom of identity look like? how would the this role pulse under a cracked open service? wouldun be all shatter or coulde put something together again? i don't know, i am losing some of my ability to dream a world.

so given those two paragraphs sound like we were rather accurate asking that question, no? >> guest: let me say whypa this single sentence question is hard for me because without the larger context, so, often sentences like that trigger a defensiveness that becomes impossible to engage. right? this is the difficulty of social media all the time.me it is not unique and i've certainly experienced it even with tweets i wrote. but that second sentence that is the caveat is important because people here when you say i wonder if white people are irredeemable they hear all white people and they hear white people w w as individuals as opd

to whiteness as an identity that it has clung to. when i go into the second paragraph i say what if we took this identity in parts and those people would notwh sort of havea different history or body right but it would be a different relationship to identify and i think it would potentially havee as a consequence a more humane relationship to each other so when i went into later in the third paragraph when i'm saying a person can individual can be a heaven, i'm not talking about an individual but an individual can be a heaven certainly both as someone who was raised by a mewhite man or as someone who thanks of so many figures likean pick for example john brown or bob zellner, who i think are

some of the most precious people in the worlde it is important o me to not have a formulation that removes themn from my sene of the struggle that i'm engaged in. so, that's what i was thinking. >> host: one more question about breathe before we move on to some of your other books.e mothering black boys in america is a special callingng. >> guest: yes, that's a sentence my mother said to me and i think about it in a number of different ways. in one, of course, it's all the risks, right. 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 in scho or high school graduation rates, college attendance rates, employment and all sorts of things. i think about it differently. i think about ittk and not allf those things are true but i think about the simultaneity of wanting to raise my children who are identified as black boys thatid, in a way that doesn't limit their sense of possibility and imaginations and allows them to understand the facts of racial inequality and that keeps them from to give that they are superior to people because they are relatively privileged and vis-à-vis other black people and other people generally but it also keeps them away from seeking patriarchy or dominance in this society the values of those things highly so that even though those things are more

elusive to black men to attain it's a society that values that and so part of the task is raising them for me to not value that, let's value their characters and their sensitivity and complexity and other people around them irrespective of what lock of life they come from. all that is a special calling because the lessons about what it means to be a man are across-the-board oftentimes with things that are not so good in the lessons of what blackness is is oftentimes not so good unless you counter both of those things with the story i think is more accurate but also much more loving and gives him a much greater capacity to be fully human. >> host: in the last 19 minutes everything we talked about are these the types of things you teach or in part at princeton? >> guest: not really which is interesting. in some ways it's a departure for me and it's a spirit with

which i teach. and i certainly teach to the work of tom morrison and richard wright but i tend to teach much more sort of fact driven material driven as opposed to the kind of emotional register but i do think teaching itself is a kind of calling so it's important to bring to that one's a sense of value and humanity and justice and love to the students even though we are supposed to be, i guess, somewhat dispassionate. >> host: how does one get a phd and a jd from harvard at the same time? >> guest: unwisely. [laughter] you know, when i was graduated from college 21 years old and i was just completely in love with the lights and the mind and ideas and i do not want to

choose and i wanted too do everything and i said well, if i go to graduate school and law school and did two years of graduate school and took my orals and into my first year of law school so it was awo frenzid pace but it was beautiful and amazing for me. i loved it. i learned so muchit and every dy i was being nurtured by all of this generation of people who came before me and help me understand the world. >> host: we want to play a little bit of music and a little bit of video and this is from 1999. turn to lift every boy ♪ ♪ [inaudible]

♪ ♪ >> host: that is jesse norman singing at the rosa parks congressional gold medal ceremony in 1999. what is that song? >> guest: that song is lift every voice and sing, the song that was known as the negro national anthem in the black national anthem after the 1970s.em it is the song i described as black america's most precious song.. gosh, you know, that clip of rosa parks who, of course, is an alabama woman and jesse norman who has recently departed is incredibly moving. >> host: you've written a biography. >> guest: of the song.

o host: of the. song, "may we forever stand" is the name of the book. james weldon johnson and [inaudible] >> guest: yes, 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 race men, people who saw every achievement they had as being in service of the race. james weldon johnson became the first secretary-general of the naacp and the first black man admitted to the bar in florida and it's really extraordinary but you know, what is the signature accomplishment about their lives is the composer of the song. >> host: they were first-generation freemen. >> guest: yes, and so, well, their mother's family had been enslaved and was bahamian and their father had been enslaved in virginia but yes, of that generation and that emerge from

slavery with all the hopes and dreams and aspirations that were so quickly -- with the end of reconstruction. >> host: what was the reception in 1900 when the song was written? >> guest: what was extraordinary is that the song caught on like wildfire and it was almost immediately embraced as an anthem of black america and i think one of the things i try to detail this in the book is that the united states did not have a national anthem at this moment so even so early on people were referring to it as an anthem and it was a big deal. the johnson brothers were both educators at the time of the composition and they left florida and moved up to new york to work on [inaudible] alley as songwriters, in part because there had been a terrible fire in the city. they weren't there in florida as

the song caught on.n. it caught on lacrosse schoolchildren passed it on, blackard called women so collated it, they reprinted it, and began to be printed in the back of hymnals and so it was an anthem of a community's making. they did not prescribe this as an anthem and did not intend it necessarily as an anthem but black communities say this is our anthem. >> if we had continued playing that video there we would have seen then-president clinton. >> yes, who knows all three verses. >> host: singing a. >> guest: yes, it is one of his rsdistinctions he may be the ony u.s. presidentis who knew all three verses. >> host: from your book may be forever stand, hip-hop uttered its farewell to the black national anthem. >> guest: so, one of the things and i talk about this in my first book is that there are

some things that happened in the 70s and 80s which is a transformation both of some norms and black social and political life to have to deal with the kind of civic engagement and associationme lie and it's also one of big connectors of the industrialization and there's a piece where i quote the reverend joseph lowery on this where he says or he said may he rest in peace the black people are once the moral conscience of the nation in hip-hop is the refusal of that position so it is bold and not formal and it's profane and it's not an unwilling to perform a particular kind of but unraveling in outlaw which is

commonplace in american culture but it's a different kind of public presence for african americans so that departure i think was a significant but what i also talk about in the book is the song keeps coming back so there have been various moments where we have seen like it will peter out completelymo and it keeps coming back even though the kind of institutions and the kinds of communities in which it was song weekly or a daily basis don't exist in the same white and black communities. >> host: what did you learn about the song in these books? >> guest: well, i will say the biggest surprise because so much of what i write about it is how it was ensconced in institutional life. it was so exciting to see the graduation program that like is a dressmaker's academy where they sing the song or every day

and dizzy gillespie talks about the world in south carolina singing the song on the porch of the school looking out on a cotton field but what surprised me and was so beautiful was how many educators used it as a tool so i encountered all these curriculum in which their vocabulary lessons that the song becomes the basis of their art history lessons and plays an pantomimes in school so it rereally has so many functions d to see the way that the teache teachers, so many black teachers and segregate her's and 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. >> host: you share your views on this in the book and i want to

read that very quickly. you write i come on like many other people find singing lift every voice alongside other people of conscious to be one bulwark against the pessimism that threatens to descend at every turn but when i look around the room and see so many closed mouths and eyes focused on the page, nervous gestures i am reminded not to be deceived about the moment in which we live, grasping somewhat randomly into partitions in their archives and yet in desperate need of rebuilding traditions or building a new. >> guest: rights, one of the things that emerged for me asof part of the book and i talked about in early chapters aboutss associational life, taking us from alexis who talked about americans loved to join groups and they can create a club for anything but it was so robust and black americans association life was very explicitly

political in the context of jim crow. people would belong to ten, 12 different separate organizations and have commitments to them over a o lifetime and we don't live that way anymore, across the board but that's not just black americans but black americans in general but that is precisely what was necessary to wage certainly the civil rights movement and its necessary to actually solve social distancing and have to have the sense of being a member of a fabric of a community who are working together where there's mutual dependence and trust and so there is a way in which i'm very emotional and sentimental but what was most important about it was that it was a tool for creating an emotional bond in the service of community so that the community itself is ultimately what was most important and morely important than what we think that

particular song is a ritual and the commitment that made it so powerful and that is what i think we need to re- embrace. >> host: author and princeton professor, imani. , is our guest this month on in-depth. once a month here on the tv we invite one another to talk about his or her body of work and to take your calls as well. we have reached that point in the program and we will put the phone lines up. you will seenv them in a minute, 202 is the area code, 202748 thousandu , (202)748-8001, if yu can't get through on the phone lines and would prefer to send a text you can send a text message to this number, 2,027,488,034 -- (202)748-8003 and we will put that up throughout the program.

you can also contact us via social media. just remember @booktv for facebook and twitter and our e-mail address is book tv at c-span .org. all sorts of ways to get through and we will get to those in just a few minutes. turn one. is the author of five books, six books, sorry. >> guest: that's okay. [laughter] >> host: "prophets of the hood" which camest book out in 04, more beautiful and more terrible, the embrace and transcendence of racial inequality, 2011. sexy thing on gender andd liberation came out in 2018 as did "may we forever stand", history of the black national anthem and looking for elaine the radiant radical life of [inaudible] came out in 2018 and that's three books in 2018 and

breathe: a letter to my son's is her most recent which just came out this year. i want to go to your first book, you mention it a couple of times, process of the hood and we will get to that in a minute but can you draw a direct line from langston hughes to biggie smalls? >> guest: oh, absolutely. in so many ways both of them took the beauty of macular language crafted it and then they made decisions to tell stories that were pointed and that often have a political content and resonated deeply and it's pleasurable to listen to and engage with and they are different kinds of political subjects lane langston hughes is very overtly and activist and organizer but their relationship to black language both in the u.s. and throughout the ds bora

and the desire to understand that as the foundation for the production of art absolutelyti directly connected. >> "prophets of the hood". >> guest: yes, double and tundra. part of what i talk about in the book is of course, the process by which it became the most popular form of music in the country and had an audience that expanded beyond its initial core audience and produced an irregular wealth that has been produced in hip-hop but there is something to talk about that is something prophetic about it because there was from the very beginning and expedition and elucidation of what postindustrial life in urban centers and the united states was like and in all its

complexities so it is not, as i was saying, it's not just this [inaudible] to the hood in hip-hop is not but it is an exposition of it in expiration of it. >> host: imani perry, you use the term mc and what does that mean? >> guest: it is the word for rapper and is more organic to have pop and so initially it comes from that which is a pretty commonplace but then and others spell it mce to make it phonetic but this idea that there is a relationship between the wrapper and the dj and subsequently the producer was really important and -- >> host: it is almost a title. >> guest: it is absolutely a title. mc is a raptor. it's internal way of internalizing that role and i'm

interested really and what made the mcan good so not just becaue it's a reflection of a moment in history or conditions in communities but what did the art consist of an to them the mc became important as i did a literary analysis of mc. >> host: from your book, "prophets of the hood", the historic construction of blackness and opposition to whiteness in which blackness is demonized has become part of the art forms conscious. >> guest: right, this is and before i go into this hip-hop is changed a great deal since 2004 although i think there are aspects of the book that are still described in the form and present and but there is a very overt play with the imagery of black people as dogs and tupac

shakur embraced the idea of thug criminalization of black people and the very long history of american stereotyping of black people is as prone to criminality and excess and gangsterism and violence and hip-hop has engaged that satirically, critically, played into it and it has played with that social reality throughout. >> host: let's hear from our viewers but we continue to talk about your books. charlie is in roslyn heights, new york. hello, charlie. you are on booktv s he. >> caller: hello everybody. i'm in fighting racism my whole life and proud of that but it grown and i have seen that the

world is a very complex and politics is a complex situation. i don't support black nationalism because that's just as bad as white nationalism and it is feeding the fascismsm in r country and feedings trump base. there are good and bad in all groups and black people are just people.. they're not inferior and they are not superior. blackness or black nationalists is just as wrong as white nationalism and i can understand why ms. perry is supporting black nationalism. >> host: imani perry. >> guest: i am not a black nationalist. i am a far left andon nationalim takes on many different faces. there are certain conservative branches of black nationalism that politically are quite aligned in many ways to political conservatism so if we take an organization like the nation of islam which is

politically quite conservative also advocates black nationalism and then there is the version of black nationalism that you would see on an organization like the black panther party or t the [inaudible] committee which are about revolutionary socialism,ar third world politics, anti- colonialism and they call themselves and identify and align with colonized people across the world historically so i should say that the single term actually doesn't mean much without the larger context but i don't or i will say i don't think and i disagreed with the call that they are equivalent because certainly people trying to find a way of building the sense of control and autonomy over communities that they live in has a long history of colonialism and enslavement and domination and it is not the same.

that is not a designation that i would subscribe to. >> host: you say you are far left, what is that? >> guest: i identify as both someone who believes in a democracy and a socialist. because i believe that i'm against economic exploitation. i believe everybody should have access to face environments, clean water, for schools, a living wage, healthcare and i believe in this extraordinary wealthy country that we shouldn't have children who are poor and we should not have people living on the street. i don't think that the narrative and the consequences of economic vulnerability are just the consequences and we should be okay with them. i don't think that's a decent way to organize society and i

don't think people are poor because they're deficient overwhelmingly but poor because they are exploited or have a lack of opportunity.wh and so that is what i believe and that and so the question inasmuch as i write and think about race it is never separate from the larger question of the distribution of suffering in our society. it's an example of how the society has been organized in a way that distributes suffering and opportunity and wealth unjustly but i don't want my objective is not for black people to become those who dominate and that is not the idea for me is to become free, 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 are born 1972 -- >> guest: yes, i was.

>> host: what was your childhood like?in >> guest: in some ways it was conventional and in some ways other conventional. i was born in alabama and a few waiters from the 16th street bombing to a family of strivers and also very solidly black southern working-class culturally. e d then i was raised by my mother who is an intellectual like most cerebral person i've ever met in my life and my grandmother who was a domestic and marked in hospital it was the most resourceful and without question the most billion peoplc i've ever known, 12 children went to college. and my father who was my adopted father who was my mothers partner who was a jewish man from brooklyn who was a communist and an activist in the early person who fought against

mass incorporation. we moved to cambridge, massachusetts when i was five and that w is when cambridge was bohemian and artistic and intellectual and all those things but it was also rightal after the boston crisis so the shadow of the most difficult moment and some of most difficult moments came through and it was always on my ysshoulder. i was between those places and also chicago where my dad moved and so and always circles of scholars and intellectuals from all over the world and activists also and so i moved around a lot and i was in a lot of different worlds from a very young age. >> host: were you always in a book as well? >> guest: i was always in a book. i was a voracious reader although something i always mentioned i watched a lot of tv.

i'm at and not because people think if your kid is in front of screens while, things will be terrible but i loved reading and i would read all day pit i also loved watching television as a childhood it fed my imagination ldso -- >> host: let's hear from lloyd in st. louis. you're on with imani. >> caller: hello. hello. >> host: we are listening, please go ahead. >> caller: oh, okay. i'm really impressed with you professor. don't tell me, professor. period i am 85 years old and i will be 86 march 23 and i was born in st. louis, missouri and went to what you call and all colors schools and we were s singing lift our voices and sg with a lot of pride and i remember and i don't know if you checked it out but once upon a time, once upon a time we were colored we were called colored peoples in those days and we went through many changes but i think about you getting a phd in

the i'm also an educator and a masters degree and i didn't feel like i needed a phd in education because of it like it was an excellent educator so i went and pursued a ged and started at 49 years old but this is a part of being black and you had to wear many hats and i'm so extreme the prop of you and i have a paper i will send you but i just need your address for princeton, new jersey. carry on the good work, sister. you said a lot of good things and now i will hang up and listen to you. thank you very, very much. >> host: lloyd, before you hang up you mentioned some of your education credentials and what have you done as a career? did you teach all your life? >> caller: i taught math and linger darts and then i went to law school starting at 45 years old and.

>> host: did you practice law? >> caller: i practiced part-time and taught middle school in the daytime and practiced part-timec and i do not love the legal profession but i would never exchange that experience because of the background it gave me and i promote encouraging blackout males and female to go to law school because this is what we need. ...k you have people like thurgood marshall who went all black, colored whatever it's called, and the environment we were raised in years ago, thurgood marshall predates me of course. i think about you mentioned different organizations and the origin and many fraternities and sororities and i won't tell you which unless you really want to know. >> i do want to know. >> ãb

many of those members are descendents of slaves. >> it is amazing what they developed in those days. again, i'm going to let you talk, but i'm going to send you the package i developed about being antiaffirmative action of where the beneficiaries of affirmative action have been some of the -- some people who have been antiaffirmative action, and i will go into detail with the paper that i will send you. >> host: thank you very much. we will get a response. if he sent it to you at princeton, it would get to you; correct? >> guest: absolutely. >> host: any response? >> guest: i'm so appreciative for your words of encouragement. one of the things that has been so profound in my life and i think it is worth mentioning in public frequently is that older black people have offered me the

most -- you know, generations older than me, the most consistent support and encouragement and in particular appreciation for both my writing and my educational aspirations, and i think they sort of get left out. i mean, often times people -- which i think is the greatest generation of black americans, the civil rights generation, are often sort of 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 create -- you know, hold together the foundation of our work and made the work possible very thankful. >> host: we're going to play one more piece of music and if you could identify and talk about it for us. >> guest: okay.

♪ ♪ you are young, gifted and black ♪ ♪ we must begin to tell our young there's a world waiting for you ♪ that's just begun >> host: who was that? who was she singing about? >> guest: that was nina simone, and she was singing a song in honor of a dear friend who had passed away, and she takes a line from a speech that was delivered to young black writers in which she said that it was a gift to have -- to be young and gifted and black. and so it was a song that in fact -- at certain moments

people thought well this might become the next -- because it was so incredibly popular and a beautiful ode to her. >> host: had nina simone move overseas at that point? didn't she end up in paris? that was in 1969. >> guest: yes, she was also in west africa. i don't remember the exact date, but it was four years after lorraine had passed away. >> host: this is what you write about her. >> she was a black lesbian woman born into a middle class who became a leftist, married to a man, a jewish communist songwriter, she cast her lot with the working classes and became a wildly famous writer. she drank too much, died early of cancer, loved 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. >> guest: yeah. >> host: sounds like an american life in some way. >> guest: yes, oh absolutely, and hansbury although politically she was an internationalist, she used to say before she passed away, you know, people always talking about going to europe. i want to travel the americas. she thought she was captivated by the story of the americas. you know, between chicago and the village, and between the small but prominent and her radical comrades in between her activist community and her lesbian circles in new york, and then she crossed a lot of boundaries.

>> host: broadway, 1959, what happened? >> guest: so a ray in the sun opens. it is the first play authored by a black woman on broadway, and it is an astonishing success. and so hansbury this woman who has been -- you know -- >> host: she's 30. >> guest: yeah, she was so young. and had, you know, she'd been writing, but she in many ways had also -- she'd wait tables, work at camps. you know, she'd been a journalist, and so it was surprising, and it was also surprising that she wrote this extraordinary play. i mean it is the most wildly produced play by a black play right in the united states. -- play wright in the united states. three film versions. she hadn't yet turned 30 when the play went up. i mean she was 29. it's -- it was phenomenal, and it was also hard. it was hard for her. >> host: where did you research

this book? does she have relatives living? >> guest: she does have -- her cousin -- i mean she has various relatives living, but her cousin lives in washington, d.c., who i met, and we shared tears, and her best friend -- but i actually talked to them after i finished the book. her papers at the center for research and black culture. in harlem. what i would do is i would take my kids to school, and drive to harlem -- i live in philadelphia now. a little bit longer drive. and i would stay in the stacks as long as i could, in the papers, and then i would drive home, pick up my kids from school and come back the same day -- the next day. you know, it was an extraordinary collection, and i could use other archives too, so

i could see letters -- >> host: with a friend of hers? >> guest: yes, a close friend of hers, nina simone. she had a mentor. paul rosen was a mentor. as she was dying, she wrote an extraordinary obituary, just absolutely beautiful, that talked about her mentor's significance for black people at large, not just as a scholar, but as a citizen, important social and political force, as she's dying. you know, he dies in 63. she dies in 65, at the very beginning of the year. you know, something like heart breakingly poetic about that

relationship. >> host: robert, new york city, you're on with the professor. >> caller: hi, how are you? >> guest: i'm fine, thank you. >> caller: good, good. i wanted to ask you, if you could elaborate a little bit more on -- [inaudible] -- if indeed that still resonates at all with our current cultural landscape as an african-american community. as a person that's worked -- [inaudible]. i want your thoughts on that and where we stand. -- were a very large part of the

community there at that time as well. that's it. >> guest: thanks, robert. >> host: anything to respond to him? >> yeah, so black formalism is a term that i actually use. i use it to distinguish between a concept that's gotten a lot of currency and it's 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 sort of respectability in order to make the argument for full membership in the society, that if we are respectable, then therefore, then we might be embraced. formalism -- black formalism is distinct because it is not actually to make an argument to the larger society. it was a form of self-regard and ritual, so black formalism would be, you know, rules about how

you dress and comport yourself in civic associations or church; right, or various types of events. and that was particularly potent when the vast majority of black people were agricultural laborers, right, but continued. the question about whether it's sustained, not nearly as much as it once was because again there's less of that civic culture, but i do think we still have it in certain pockets and particularly in the south, there's a lot of rules about how to act right in certain times and places that aren't about looking externally, but are about what are the rituals that happen inside a community. >> host: you use another term and of course i'm going to lose it here in all these books i have in front of you, but raced people? did i get the right term? >> guest: yes, i use that term -- >> host: raced bodies. what does that mean?

>> guest: what it means is what it means to be registered as other because of race, right, because of the designation because, you know, i operate as i think many scholars do with the deep knowledge that race is not real in any biological sense, right? there's no race genes, that these categories are socially constructed, that we create them. i wanted to use the term to talk about kind of the way race is ascribed to people, as opposed to the idea that it just is, right? even though the fact that it is ascribed is incredibly powerful, and it shapes so much of our lives. it's something that is placed upon us by us, as opposed to something that just is, and i think sometimes that's confusing because you could say well, people look differently, right, but we don't have to make a meaning of that necessarily. race is the making of meaning,

not just of the way -- different ways people look but their genealogy; right, and their personal histories and all those sorts of things. >> host: i skipped it over this in a little bit, but how did you have three books come out in 2018? >> guest: yeah, that was not planned. [laughter] >> guest: i never work on a single project at a time because i have a hard time choosing, and my mind is moving all over the place, and i worked on all of them for the seven years between 2011 and 2018. and i anticipated that they would come out in sequence, and then at a certain point, i realized oh because of the production schedule, because at a certain point, the book is out of your hands. i was like they are all going to come out in the same year, which was pretty overwhelming, but it was also nice to see the fruition of the labor, but it wasn't like -- i sometimes think it kind of looks like it was kind of a parlor trick or some

sort, right like it was a magic trick. i would work on this for a year and then work on them for a month at a time. >> host: in the construct of what you do with it? >> guest: so that's such a good question. it is not a hard fact distinction. academic books tend to focus on a conversation within a field. and part of what distinguishes them is that in that conversation within an academic field, the conversation becomes somewhat interior, right, so the people who are reading have a certain sense of books they have read, but as a scholar, i have always wanted to write in ways that don't require people to have read the same, you know, 100 books beforehand so i try to write in a way, even in the most scholarly of works that invites people in and then points in the

footnotes in certain sections, okay, for the foundation of this, go here or here. i also think, you know, obviously a trade book or a general market book by in large tends towards serving the pleasure of the reader much more directly. again, you know, i think that's important for all books. i think that we should -- you know, you want to engage the reader emotionally as well as intellectually. you want to teach them something so that it's about knowing something, but also feeling something. and so for me the development is then -- or have this foundation as a scholar, and then i can consistently also building my craft as a writer. so the books take on slightly different -- but i wouldn't say that i give up the priorities of either genre when i move between them.

>> host: this is a text, professor perry, if you had a daughter, what letter would you write to your daughter in 2019? second question, why can't america get beyond the images 61 to 63 of your hometown of birmingham? and this is from a professor at golden mesa community college. professor golden at mesa community college, sorry. >> guest: i'm so grateful for that question. i asked that question in the book. i have had some people say why did you write to your sons because i have sons. i don't think the book would have been 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, so i probably would have had a different angle on the question in that respect, but largely, it would be the same. 61 to 63 is so powerful. one of the formulations was about how the city in the way people regard birmingham, and images come up, usually in january, sometimes in september, but it's a city that has grown and changed and was even much more complex than it's given credit for in 61 and 63 in terms of the various politics. 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, revolutionary socialists, all these sorts of things in the city, and then

we've had -- we had a major transformation with the election of the mayor, and he was the mayor of birmingham for 30 years. he's still alive. he's extraordinary, who saved the city from the ravages of the industrialization, first black mayor of the city, by bringing in the hospital industry, lost the steel mills and coal mines, and he built the -- and so there's all this history that's intervened, right? and in general, an erasing of the urban south in society, but also a sense of these places -- similar to angela davis, of birmingham also, you see the picture of her with the afro of the 1970s and she's a living breathing person who has had a long history of scholarly accomplishment, so similarly. i don't know the why

necessarily, but i do take it as part of my task is to kind of unfreeze, unfreeze that place. >> host: yet, 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. >> guest: they are unique. they are hallowed ground. so i i think we can cherish and embrace history and also acknowledge that life continues to happen in and around it. so one of the stories i tell is about -- we went to a reunion, in mississippi, and so there are all these veterans of the movement or current organizers, a beautiful intergenerational event, and there was also prison labor on the campus, where we gathered. and it was just a reminder that, you know, you have this

extraordinary history, and yet the struggle continues because the prison labor looked like all the organizers, right, in the group, and many of the organizers who were working on voting rights and economic justice then are working on mass incarceration or, you know, educational equality now. i mean, there's a continuum. it is important to cherish history, but not to treat it as something frozen. certainly not place it as frozen. >> host: if you can't get through on the phone lines, you can send a text message to imani perry. the number to use 202-748-8003. we'll get to as many of those as possible as well. but right now, it's amy in tallahassee, and you've been very patient, amy. thanks for holding. you're on. >> caller: good morning, dr. perry.

i enjoy your work. i'm a 50 something year old, closer to 60, but i'm a native floridian. you know, florida, we get a lot of -- [inaudible]. but i have to tell my florida history a little bit. you started out with the origins of lift every voice and sing. you gave a nice little summary, but the backdrop to that song -- or to that point is much deeper. i don't know how far -- i didn't read your book, so 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 at -- >> guest: at stanton, yes. >> caller: the principal there at the time wasn't gone --

>> guest: no, no, he wasn't gone. he moved after that. >> caller: okay, and then the booker t. washington, the orange park issue, the integrated schools and william sheets, and florida was the best funded among african-american schools at the time in the south. >> guest: yes. >> caller: i wanted to toot my little florida -- >> guest: all of that is in the book. >> host: it sounds like she either read the book or knows her history. john in corning, california. hi, john. john, you got to turn down the volume of your tv. otherwise you get that delay. can you do that very quickly and start talking, or do we need to move on? john, i apologize. if you get on the air, turn down the volume. otherwise you will get a delay. you will hear everything through

your phone. i promise. amber in lake charles, louisiana. your turn. >> caller: good morning, dr. perry. >> guest: good morning. >> caller: i'm thinking about your research. [inaudible]. in the 21st century, how will gathering sources change? [inaudible]. >> host: another thing, if you are using a cell phone, please talk into it clearly and don't use your speaker because that sometimes gets garbled when it comes on the air. did you understand her question? >> guest: yes, i think so. so i think the question is how the 21st century changes and technology are going to affect research and creation of archives. i think that's a great question. it is not one that has sort -- we haven't completely explored it, you know, those of us who think about it, but certainly

there's a couple of different potentially challenging forces, and one is, both the quantity and the fundability of materials. by that i mean, we take for example, exponentially more photos than we did in previous generations. we have constant communication. a lot of it isn't printed. when we lose a device, we may lose all of that. you know, it is not as though when you have letters that you keep in a folder, letters that you keep -- so it's both -- the archives are both too big and too small or at least too vulnerable. this is i think this is a real question. i think what it suggests is that people ought to be -- we have to be increasingly 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 are going to have a lot more trouble with archives, aren't they? >> guest: oh, yes, and reading through them and collecting them and making decisions about what goes into an archive, what counts. and also, i will say this, you know, sometimes things that look like they include everything are deceptive. so, for example, you know, if you ever google something that you know happened and then you can't find it on google, you're reminded that even with incredible abundance, not everything is there, and so that's also a question for historians too because if you think you have a full archive, you in fact may not. >> host: next call, maya in new york city. hi maya. >> caller: hi, good afternoon. great great program. i guess i have a two parter. dr. perry, i want you to speak to -- of what seems to be, some

of us were stunned by it, but a present moment where the lie has become normalized and excitement of division and even violence has also become normalized. i would like you to speak to the patriarchal aspects of it. also you mention 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 and what the future might hold in terms of the very identity of whiteness, and i will listen over the air. >> host: do you have a follow-up you want to make, maya? >> caller: that's it. >> host: i promise you, if you hang up your phone now and turn

on your tv, you will hear the entirety of her answer. but if you feel more comfortable staying on the line, we will leave you on the line. she's gone. she hung up. she believed me. >> guest: that's wonderful. thank you so much for that question. -- or series of questions which are really thought provoking. i mean, so let me say this, i certainly as an individual could not answer the question of how we get past the way, the idea of what whiteness means hinges upon exclusion and notions of superiority and notions of greater depth of humanity. but i do think that there's a huge body of work that we need to peruse and pursue and grapple with, and one of the challenges -- 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 to think in particular ways. and as americans, one piece of that sr. we invest deeply in mythologies about the nation. we invest deeply in the idea that we are as individuals innocent and that that is what makes you virtuous, and that combination is really difficult if we're trying to address inequality because the immediate response to the fact of inequality becomes defensiveness because you have to be innocent to be virtuous, as opposed to what i think the truth is, is grappling with issues is what makes you virtuous; right? challenging one self. the mythology of what it means -- of the history makes it very hard to confront the ugliness of the past, and even the mythologies of our personal

history, you know, and 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, with sensitivity, and with grace, but one that doesn't lean towards -- but leans towards the notion that history serves us. the reason we draw certain aspects out of our history is because we want to build a good society. 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 toward values that are more inclusive and more decent and more beautiful. so, you know -- so i don't have all the answers, but i think that's without a 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 practice. >> guest: yes. and it was really important in that book for me to say that the way racial inequality -- one is that we are not just living with the impact of the past though we certainly are. when you look at the wealth gap, you see that's the impacts of 20th century policies that created wealth gaps along the lines. but the reality is -- with that book i researched so many fields, neuroscience, media studies, you know, literatures, social psychology, economics, and what i saw over and over again is that people disadvantage others based upon their membership and racial groups, most dramatically black

people are disadvantaged, that it is not exclusively white people, that it even includes black people who did that disadvantaging of black people in professions of various sorts, and so it is not really about this question of individual attitude. these are learned behaviors. we exist in a culture that teaches us that as my colleague says that white people matter more; right? and so -- i wish that book had been written before i wrote this book because it would have been useful, but, you know, and so if you understand that it is a culture, then it becomes very clear why it's so hard to address it, why policy is insufficient because you need a cultural shift. we have to tell different kinds of stories. we have to actually be intentional about the process. one is the common places in our society is that people often think it is impolite or, you know, it is not nice or it is uncomfortable to talk about race, but one thing that we know

from research is that talking about race actually helps people behave in a less discriminatory fashion. it's evidenced; right? and so that's a cultural shift that needs to happen. and i also think it was really -- for me it was really important that it wasn't one that we understand that we can all participate in the transformation, but this is not a matter of kind of individual attitudes or individual behaviors, you know. >> host: how many self-identified conservatives take your courses at princeton? >> you know, that's a hard question to answer. certainly 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 conversations tend much more likely to go across the political spectrum. i think that african-american

studies tends to be a self-selected group. it tends towards more sort of more to the left. but one of the things that people aren't 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 de-mythology doesn't happen even if i have a classroom of self-described liberals. people by virtue of their sense of like sympathy or kind of niceness might identify as a liberal and yet hold very conservative ideas about race or very stereotypical ideas about people based upon racial groups. so i think, you know, that's important because for me the role of an educator is not -- you know, so often those of us

on the left are accused of this is not political indoctrination. my objective as an educator is to teach people a history and a range of ideas based in fact and episodes and events and some tools for interpretation. so you know, many years ago i had -- this doesn't happen now because of social media, right, where it is very clear what my politics are, but when i taught law school many years ago -- >> host: at rutgers. >> guest: at rutgers, you know, we don't know what your politics are which is hard to imagine now because they are all out there, but because i do -- i take it -- rigor is really important to me. strong ideological commitments but rigor is more important to me so i'm never going to write or say anything that isn't backed up with substantial bodies of evidence. and i'm also not going to function in such a way that my

evidence can't be contested. >> host: next call comes from daniel in minnesota. hi, daniel. >> caller: hello, sir. >> host: please go ahead. >> caller: okay. it is delightful to have this moment. i really believe in what you are doing. i know for a fact -- i'm sort of on the opposite part. i'm a man. i'm white. i'm racist because of my color, but because of my life and history, as far as what is happening, as far as the infrastructure needs to be changed -- [inaudible] -- how i can inspire my life, but i'm not a good writer. i'm not well educated in schooling because i have adhd.

i'm an artist, inventor. i feel like vietnam, blacks and whites sweated together. not only that, because of my father and what he did as a green beret and what he had done, intelligence and it's -- >> host: hey, daniel, before we go too far, i wanted to come back to a comment i thought you had made that you consider yourself a racist in some ways because of who you are? >> no, no, i'm racist -- at a moment in time, i'm not black and white, but i'm a white racist because of the archives of my history and up bringings. >> host: because of the archives of your history. let's hear what the professor has to say about that. >> guest: i mean, i -- this is challenging to parse, but i think it's really important.

i don't think that -- white people don't -- are not necessarily racist because of the history of this country or the world. i think that's not true, and it's not particularly helpful formulation. i think it is very difficult to transcend the messages that are racist because of the way our history is told, because of the way our society is organized and because of what has -- [inaudible]. i also think it is extremely important to not talk about race in such a way that that becomes the only -- or gender, right, the only mechanism of thinking about inequality. education access, disability, poverty, right, regional distinctions, all of those things are extremely important

in the distribution of opportunity. so sometimes i do worry, you know, that people read the conversations that i and others have about race that as an implication, if you are white and male, therefore you have everything. obviously that's not true. right? i have, you know -- i was born in alabama. i've been to appalachia; right? that's not true. the thing that is so insidious about race is that it creates a barrier so often between white people who are suffering the same kinds of inequality that black people are -- that black people are, where race actually functions to disassociate so where white people who are poor and vulnerable think of themselves as aligned with those who are exploiting them more than the black people on the other side of the town who are also being exploited, also suffering, also don't have adequate healthcare, so i just -- i want to parse that out

because there will never be a case -- and i've had these discussions and debates and certainly not everybody in my field agrees with me, as i think, you know, many if not most do, but race is not everything. right? and i don't think that if one is concerned with injustice, that can ever be your only analytic. >> host: guillermo, los angeles, good afternoon. >> caller: how are you doing, sir? thank you for having me. yes. hello? >> host: please, go ahead, guillermo, we are listening. >> caller: yes, my question to professor perry is are we ever going to be living in a color-free society? okay. before she answers, i was born

in guatemala, 10 miles from [inaudible]. to me, it was a color-free society. and now are we ever going to -- it seems to me like african-americans -- [inaudible]. i've been in the united states for 45 years. i live in kentucky, tennessee, in the army, but are we ever going to live the words of dr. king, i want my children -- [inaudible]. who is going to take the first step? my final question is, is it because of the product of so many hundreds of years of

oppression? i do appreciate her work. i saw her google history. amazing. >> guest: thank you. >> caller: that's my question. >> host: guillermo, before you leave, where do you come down politically? >> caller: i -- [laughter] >> caller: i'm far left. i'm a democrat. >> host: far left, thank you, sir. >> guest: i will say a couple things in response. i appreciate the question. i do think that we are -- that african-americans are obsessed with race, and i think thank goodness because were we not, it would have required us to be deeply self-hating people. when something profoundly shapes every aspect of your life and your history and denies you opportunity, if you were not obsessed with that question, it's hard to understand how that would make you someone who has any self-regard, so yes, you

know, i'm unapologetically obsessed with race. i think that is what is necessary to get to a more just society. i would take exception, though, to the characterization of central america or latin america as race free societies. they are not. so there are places where one doesn't talk about race in the same, but if you look at central america, black communities that are deeply marginalized or the indigenous communities, or if you look at the way in which color functions in brazil and columbia, in puerto rico, in the dominican republic, so not talking about race actually does not impact how materially racial inequality functions. latin america is a wonderful

example because the evidence of how deeply stratified things are along the lines of complexion, even though the words are different, it is a sign that not talking about it doesn't make it better. >> host: february 6th, 2016. what happened? >> guest: oh, i'm drawing a blank. i'm sorry. [laughter] >> host: you were arrested -- >> guest: oh, that's probably why. [laughter] >> guest: yes, i was arrested. i was pulled over for speeding, and then i was told i had an unpaid parking ticket and later subsequently told that my license had been suspended for an up paid parking ticket in -- unpaid parking ticket in philadelphia, and it became national news because i talked about it. and i will say some of the details and the part that was most significant for me. one of the details was that the person -- there was a male and a female officer, but the person who searched my body for weapons was a man, which i was not

pleased about. a male officer. >> host: why were you searched? >> guest: i don't know. and then i was handcuffed -- i said well can i pay the fine? and i asked if i could call the president of the university, and i was told no, i was handcuffed and taken to the police station. it was very clear to me that they were skeptical of my claim to be associated with the university, which is fine. but whatever -- what i learned, and i made this very clear, is that people are arrested for tickets, something that i think is a bad policy. i don't think that the use of the police power is appropriate for that. i think fines are appropriate. right? and i said that. also it is the case that black drivers are disproportionately stopped in princeton. so both are true. there are plenty of white people who have been arrested for tickets in princeton. black people are

disproportionately arrested, and certainly the officer's discretion i thought was inappropriate in things like handcuffing me to a table. and also some details that i didn't talk about, but that i couldn't pay with an atm. i had to pay cash. i didn't have cash on me. they wouldn't take me to an atm. i don't live in princeton. i had to get somebody -- all those details. let me tell you the thing that was really harrowing and this didn't make it into 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 of every sort you could imagine, gender slurs, racial slurs, death threats. police had to get involved. police officers had to patrol in front of my home. and cell phone calls also that people got ahold of my cell

phone. and the violent reaction was terrifying, and i'm not the only person in my building at work who experiences that kind of harassment, on a regular basis. we have increased security in the 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. and so when people on the one hand say what do you mean racial discrimination? there's no racial discrimination and then respond with that, that's an indication of the world we live in; right? so that was what became most traumatic about the incident. at the moment of the arrest, i was terrified of course.

so when people respond like that's disproportionate. i had seen the footage of an arrest, i was terrified. the worst part was actually the venomous response to me speaking about the incident. >> host: did the university stand by you? >> guest: yes, absolutely. the university stood by me. a group of academics from all across the nation and abroad spoke out on my behalf. my students stood by me. i was actually -- it was a saturday. i was on my way to campus for a student conference on black women, and a student i saw yesterday she's a graduate student elsewhere now but had organized the conference, so i received a great deal of support that was essential for my institution and for my community. and so i wouldn't want to at all give the impression that i was not surrounded by love, because i absolutely was, but i was also

afraid and afraid because as much as there's this conversation about the importance of free speech, when you say certain things, you are under enormous threat. >> host: did you ever hear from the princeton police, and because of your association with the university, issued an apology? any type of -- >> guest: well -- um -- i mean -- >> host: you know where i'm going. >> guest: right, yes, like the sort of like an incident of an arrest at harvard. >> host: yes. >> guest: so i will say this, the judge in my case because i had to go to court was very gracious. but it was remarkable, but when you walk in princeton, you don't see that many people of color. but in a traffic court, you see

a lot of people of color, a lot of black folks, asian folks, middle eastern. so on the one hand, you know, i was treated well, and i do this that was in part because -- not just my association to the university but the attention to the issues that it created. but on the other hand, i was able to see evidence of inequality, and so even if they had issued a personal apology, i don't know that it would have been appropriate for me to sort of embrace that given what i see, in the town. now, there are plenty of -- i should also say i don't live in princeton, and i have friends who live in princeton who experience it -- who are people of color who experience it as a place where they are embraced and respected and cared for, so i don't want to characterize a town that i don't live in. merely just a set of

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

monuments in the south, the confederate monuments came about but it also parallels the -- from the dominant culture and then it parallels to the african cultures, 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, the african-american community. >> host: before get an answer, give us a snapshot of yourself. >> caller: retired, from stanford university. i'm also currently living in asheville, trying to start a jazz club. >> guest: how wonderful. >> host: thank you very much. from stanford to asheville. >> guest: yes, that sounds like a delightful journey. i love that [laughter] >> guest: yeah, i think that what he's referencing is that, you know, 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 a retaliation against reconstruction as opposed to coming up right after the civil war to honor confederate soldiers. but actually as part of the reassertion of white supremacy through jim crow; right, so that they had this public -- they were a public statement that we as white people run the south again after the reconstruction governments came out and that, you know -- you know, talking about this with one of my friends the other day. you know, so the united states sort of conceives of itself as a nation that has not been defeated, but we have a region in which people think of themselves as having been defeated by the nation. and in that region, there's also the largest -- you know, the largest proportions of african-americans who are the

people whose liberations the war was fought over, so it is a complicated dynamic, and what has often happened is that there's almost -- i talk about it in my dissertation, a form of reunion, like a concession that's drawn, it is like okay, we'll let you keep the south as a kind of -- as a white supremacist state in exchange for sort of us getting back together as a nation with the cost being felt by black people in the jim crow-era, but we had this sort of repetition of this through many of the conflicts over the confederate monuments. i don't necessarily -- you know, i'm often saying that on the one hand, while i, you know, i'm opposed to the monuments because obviously they were placed to celebrate the enslavement of my ancestors, but i'm also very

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; right? so there was a moment when the president said i think a couple of years ago, what are they going to do next, attack george washington? george washington was a slave holder, you know. d.c. where we are is here because as -- the capital is here as a concession to the south. this is not just a southern story, and if we're going to raise the questions about monuments or what we celebrate, let's raise it broadly. let's not just talk about the one region. let's talk about as a nation how do we want -- a wonderful friend of mine is actually doing this project in philadelphia where he thinks what kind of monuments do we want to have to celebrate our city or our communities? i think those are good questions to ask everywhere. >> host: let's bring it a little closer to home, at princeton university, should the woodrow

wilson school of international affairs exist? as the wilson school of international affairs? >> guest: well, i will say this, i don't like the name of the school because, you know, wilson was an unapologetic racist. i think the students who organized against the name of the school and the monumentalization of wilson did an enormous service not just to the school but to the nation because they started a public conversation about wilson's real legacy, so they sort of removed the mythology and talked about his real legacy and how he took the nation backwards on issues of race, the federal government and the like. but i would say that is not number one on my issues of things that i think as an institution we collectively need to address. i wouldn't put it at the top, but i'm grateful for the conversation, and i certainly

would prefer another name. >> host: from our social media payments, was "lift every voice and sing" ever considered in the running for being the national anthem of the usa? i recall hearing that a number of years ago. this is mount vernon, new york. >> guest: i think what she's probably referencing is that james johnson and others at various points suggested, you know, it as a defense of the charge -- one of the criticisms of the song is how could black people have a national anthem? on the one hand you are trying to become part of this nation at large. why do you have a separate anthem? that's part of the reason why the naacp which has the song as its official song does not refer to it as the black national anthem because they have this history of a strong integrationist agenda. so johnson as defense of the criticism of it being called an

anthem, he said i never said that. i think it would be an anthem that would be great for everybody. it doesn't mention race or nation, even though it tells the story of black life in these epic terms. so it wasn't ever in the running in a national sense; right? and we don't get an anthem until the mid 30s. but there have been discussions had over time that the values that are asserted in the song and the beauty of its composition are without question universal, that you could tell a particular story about the struggles of african-americans in this land and it has messages that are meaningful for everyone. >> host: next call for author imani perry is dave in oakland, new jersey. did i say that correctly, dave? >> caller: yes, you did. thanks for c-span. >> host: you are on the air. >> caller: i live in a mixed

neighborhood, and i have five grandsons who go to school. the school is probably 65% to 80% black. i'd 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 that boy across the street or i say that girl across the street because this really breaks -- it breaks me up to watch our nation go through this. it's breaking me up now really to think about it. >> host: are you white, dave? >> caller: yeah, i'm white. it just breaks me up to wonder what my grand kids might go through. i feel the pain of what little black kids probably went

through. >> host: let's get a response. >> guest: yeah. i don't want to make assumptions about dave's story, but i was very moved by what he said. i think that, you know, there's 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 -- wasn't as a real thing so when there's a critical mass of black people moving in communities, by in large the majority of white people depart, so the prospect of integration is actually disappeared almost immediately, like our neighborhood in birmingham is an example. our family was the third black family on the street. several years later, you know, the neighborhood is completely black. but it's also the case, and i

gleaned that from what he was saying is that it's always hard to be one of the few, and it's particularly hard to be one of the few in areas where people are economically vulnerable, which is the vast majority of predominantly black communities, so i imagine that his reference to his grandsons, it's probably tough to be white kids in those schools; right? and i think that we can acknowledge that and still acknowledge that in a society at large, it's not tough to be white, right? and so how for 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 it always requires sensitivity with children. ::

tying it in with the strikein the chicago schools saying they weren't fleeing black families, they were fleeing poor schools. they were fleeing high taxes , some of these other issues and not just making about race >> i mean, it part of what i write about is that those actions are contradictory statements because federal policy dictated like, explicitly in the early 20th century that neighborhood is less creditworthy homes were valued less by virtue of the number of black people in them including racially mixed neighborhoods . and therefore it was harder to get credit in those neighborhoods so federal government policy made it so that it was a bad economic decision for white people believe in integrated neighborhoods

that's a function of racial inequality and it becomes , the question is now accumulates so 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 want, you can't buy a house in a black neighborhood but we have now generations of a notion thatneighborhoods where black people are are worth less . we know the price of houses depends on what people pay for them so we have a system where if the assumption is the neighborhood has allowed black people, white people won't pay that much to live there so that there's a perpetuation of what socialists call, sociologists call this achelation . in black neighborhoods, all other things being equal it's true black neighborhoods get less affluent, it's harder to get a grocery store even if you have a solid tax base so

the consequence of all that is because schools are funded by virtue of localtaxes . it's that yes, the schools are poorer because if the schools don't have as much money and as much investment and as many adults who can supplement the school funding , because of white flight, then the question that you're posing at an individual level is i don't want to live there because these things are bit better. an individual level sure. but it's important to understand that the whole structure is a consequence of how race as function 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 offer that appears on in-depth is to ask what he or she is reading and some of their favorite books to read we listed two toni morrison books, mercy and song of solomon including

urman melville, moby dick. exit west. and pablo neruda, canto general. tell us aboutcanto general . >> so part of the reason and it connects to what we've been talking about but i love neruda is that and i read him in bothenglish and spanish . that he has this capacity and he feels likehe's alive in my mind . to capture extraordinary beauty and love of the natural landscape. of south america. of sort of intimate passions and also always in a political context. a critique of the explication of the land, critique of

various forms of domination of indigenous people, of working people but there wasn't a sense that you have 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 was a role model in many ways and that combined with the fact that the language is so beautiful, so lush and filled with color andtexture . though i go back to him over and over again. >> is there a difference in the translation? is it more beautiful in his native spanish? and it is in english? >> it is but neruda and i think i may be completely wrong in this, i'm not a professional translator but neruda as well as gabriel garcia marquez, mabel translate willie well so there are other writers i've read in spanish and the language doesn't work . they both work extraordinarily well in english and that to me is also just a mastery of the

craft at the level of the idea along with language that you can communicate the beauty with the ideas put together even if the words have had the same melody. >> why moby dick? >> i spent a lot of my youth obsessed with whales and whaling which was a little strange . but you know, this epic tale of life aboard a whaling ship is, all of these people which is what the whaling industry was like and i grew up in massachusetts and spent a lot of years in massachusetts and it's all there and you can still see the remnants in new bedford. there's like people they are, portuguese people there. you can see the remnants of that history and this ship is a cross-section of the world on this ship with facing incredible danger and kind of megalomaniacal leader. and kind of navigating life

and death in the most kind of grueling but also poetic of circumstances so i just think the book is a masterpiece. >> paul, brooklyn, good afternoon, you are on with author imani perry. >> caller: it's an honor to be on book tv and it's a huge honor to be talking to doctor perry. i certainlyadmire your work . my question is martin luther king has been quoted as saying the vast majority of white americans are racist, either consciously or unconsciously. and he said variations of that one or two other times so i wanted to get doctor perry's view on. i know it's just a quote out of context but i'd like to know what she feels about that 50 years after his

passing. >> sure, thank you peter. >> i think you're getting confused with the founder of c-span brian lamb , it means i'm getting old. >> i think the quote is one example among many that i think people have drawn attention to, sort of the standardnarrative of doctor king that we get to . narrow and sort of sanitize to remove the things that were most challenging that he said. you know, my sense of what, why doctor king said that and the reason that i say probably the same states that are most provocative is that actually extraordinary moment of grace as much as it may

not feel like that so it's a challenge to read is issuing a challenge to reject the dominant order of things, the prominent way of thinking and to do so by shaking people up . and it's always complicated and i will say in my own journey i've movedback and forth on how to do this . when i wrote more beautiful and more terrible i decided i didn't want to use the word racism in the book because 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 moment in american history so one i think it's important to talk about that formulation for doctor king i also think it's important to keep in mind that there are lots of different ways to make the point that we

require transformation and sometimes those ways of making the point are more provocative to others but that the point always is to try to figure out how to annex the change, how to transform the world that wherein . >> we have one last call, another call from brooklyn and this is jay. >> caller: how are you doing. hello ms. perry. >> guest: how are you doing? >> caller: i'm doing well. i'd like to state and it's obvious, white people have a very long history of violence towards black people. black people have been trying to get along with white people in this country ever since they were forced to come here. slavery, jim crow, black people have been trying to get along with white people but apparently obvious that white people don't want. white people want america to be there.

you live in vintage americana, you stole this but you project to the world that you happy people that are innovating so much and you're not, you're going to have a culture so in saying that i feel like white america, white people are trying to get a race war started because number one the federal government is going to bite, the federal government, everybody is going to be on the side of the white people instead of black people and black people really are tired. every day i wake up and i look on social media today, you are seeing these white cops killing a black person whether it's a man or woman and whether you just see an ordinary citizen, white citizen running around here using the and word just blatantly just attacking black people. you're trying to start a race war and black people are tired. they are really, really tired

of asking america for their freedom or just trying to live normal and raise their children. when you have to tell your child before you leave home what to do to go to where the police are not getting murdered. >> are going to have toleave it there, we're almost out of time , professor perryarea . >> so i think what he gave voice to, the experience of feeling tired. it's true, the general sense. i wouldn't -- this is always the complication and this goes back to where we started. there's this formulation that he says that white america is trying to start a race war. i wouldn'tsay that by any means . i think there are people in this country, militias or white nationalists who are

trying to start a race war but i don't think that is the majority and i think it's important not to identify the 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 certainly much more nuanced. but that the sense of being tired, the sense of worrying about your children when you they leave their home. absolutely and i think it's fair to say the both rage and devastation about the last three years in this country is warranted. because if you there have been all the generations that have fought for every step and we are being sort of barreled back into the ugliness of outspoken, over racism in a public arena and it does not seem to be any

countervailing force to pull it back that is strong. that's harrowing and that i think winds up making many black americans, when we think about all our dead. all our dead, all our departed, all are denigrated , we're back where they were. >> host: that will have to be the last word in our two hour conversation with imani perry , thank you for your time. >> coming up, amity shlaes, author of great society. she compared the economic debates of the 60s to those happening today. that's followed by secretary of the smithsonian institution lonnie bunche on the creation of the national museum of african-american history and culture and writers of books about the military discuss warfare in the 21st century . >> members of congress are in

their districts due to the pandemic but we have a special edition of the tv airing during the week. tonight, portions of our programs on books about pandemics from authors john barry, david from them, sonja shaw, and jeremy brown and in books on the economy with authors peter wollaston, henry paulson, then breaking, marianne cooper and others. later authors ronald fessler, bob woodward, victor davis hanson and stephen moore discuss their books about president trump. enjoy book tv now and over the weekend on c-span2. >> this weekend on book tv sunday at 9 pm eastern on "after words", andrew mckay with his book the threat. how the fbi protects america in the age of terror and trump. >> i was concerned by what i felt were the kind of corrosive impact that these

false narratives about the fbi, the corrosive impact those narratives were having on the people of the fbi and their ability to do their work and i felt like if people understood more about the organization, who we are, how we work, what kind of people are drawn to the fbi and most importantly how we make the decisions we do that are based on pacific legal authorities and priorities, policies given to us by the department of justice, not based on politics andpersonal preference . >> watch "after words" on book tv on c-span2. >> television has changed since c-span began 41 years ago but our mission continues : to provide an unfiltered view of government. already this year we brought your primary election coverage, the presidential impeachment process and now the federal response to the coronavirus . watch all of our public affairs programming on

television online or listen on our free radio app. or through our socialmedia feed . c-span, created by private industry, america's cable television company as a public service and brought to you today byyour television providers . >> it is great to be here with you all. to celebrate and discuss an excellent new book one of our country's most original and insightful economic thinkers, amity shlaes. over the course of her distinguished career, amity has brought her wide-ranging intelligence and feel for storytelling to some of our coun