january 6, right? i mean 500 more than 500 people have been charged people starting to receive. prison sentences and these are not it's not a tifa. you know, these are these are trump supporters and yet trump still maintains a pretty stronghold on the party to watch the rest of this program visit booktv.org use the search box at the top of the page to look for mi questions female, text and social media. her books include the failure of immigration, anna weis space, and black code. we see a geography based

caste system. >> it is wonderful to be with you. i was surrounded why engineers who came to huntsville in the race to put man on the moon. engineering is a common degree that people pursued. i needed money for college, my activist parents were broke and vanderbilt offered me a merit scholarship. i loved science and math. i used the logic of engineering in my writing. you could see it in my most recent book where i am a self-taught historian but i bring a systems analysis to the

structures that create racial inequality. there is a connection there. it helps me to think critically. >> that path began in huntsville, alabama and it went to vanderbilt university and then to oxford in a masters and a jd from harvard and a clerkship with supreme court justice thurgood marshall. the clinton white house and eventually to authorship and georgetown university. you are only the second african-american to clerk for justice marshall, is that correct? >> i was the second black woman to clerk for him. he had a number of black male clerks. i was his second lock female clerk after his goddaughter. >> what did that extremes mean

to you. >> on till i got married and had children it was the best year of my life. a was an icon and he was a wonderful human being. -- he was an icon and he was a wonderful human being. barely getting out of sleepy southern hounds with his life, evading lynching to meeting with prince philip when and were grafting at the canyon constitution -- drafting the kenyan constitution. it was delightful. i devoted time to my work but

also whatever i had the time to just sit and talk to him, i took it. >> your second book came out in 2008, who is the agitator and is the daughter -- and who is the daughter? >> i am the daughter and the memoir was my effort in my mid-40's to come to terms with my childhood and understanding why it is that a two time valedictorian and dentist in huntsville, alabama would pour hundreds of thousands of dollars of his own money into a political party for the benefit of dirt poor black sharecroppers who were down in the western part of the state.

in ways that caused a lot of financial turmoil for our family. it was because of the attacks that came to him. i off in search of understanding my emotional inheritance -- i go off in search of understanding my end motional inheritance. emotional inheritance. i go into family lore and understanding my father's obsession with re-achieving reconstruction in the state. >> your father ran for governor against george wallace. >> has the top of a ticket of a party that he and others -- he was at the top of a ticket of a party that he and others had created. he had no illusions about winning that race. his point was to create a party where newly registered black voters coming off of the voting

rights act had a place to go with their votes. as late as 1966, the official slogan of the alabama democratic party was "white supremacy for the right." it was a banner above and below the party emblem, a rooster. they found a different party to enable particularly black people in the black belt of alabama not just to vote, but to run for office themselves. he headed that ticket trying to inspire people to do that. he would say that in that election, the election of 1968, 80 counties in used to be dominated by a verlander violence white supremacy -- dominated by violent white

supremacists, they got the school board, reconstruction returned to those counties because of the party. >> in your latest book, you to defy as a descendant of both slaves and slaveholders. >> event is the truth. -- that is the truth. i go back six generations and i dissent from a guy named john -- descend from a guy named john ca ssin. he had apparently had a benevolent relationship with a mixed race woman and fathered a gaggle of children including my great-grandfather. my mother's side of the family i also desend from enslaved

people. my great-grandmother is the mixed race woman who had the relationship with john cassian in augusta. we cannot establish for certain whether she was enslaved or free. i find her in philadelphia in 1860. the head of the household with something like six children named cassian. her common-law husband, john, was deceased. somehow, this seamstress was able to raise these children, mary offer oldest daughter into a very established black family in the city and my grandfather,

one of her children, two of her children were afforded a classical education at the institution of colored youth. that was the beginning of my grandfather's radicalization. there was a lot of leading lights of abolitionism and civil rights involved in that school. he goes from there after back south. after leaving the institute, he has gotten himself elected to the alabama legislature reconstruction. >> she is the author of five books beginning in 2005, the failures of integration. how race and class are undermining the american dream. the agitator's daughter, four generations of an extraordinary

african-american family. place, not race. loving and durational -- loving interracial intimacy white space, black hood. opportunity hoarded in the age of inequality. is there a thread that connects these books? >> all of them are wrestling with the epic story of the american experiment. how and whether we are going to have a republic where racial minorities in addition to white people have a union. we have politics which enables everyone to be a citizen with equal access to opportunity.

we have been in this dance, in the loving book, i start from 1607. i go from there to the present. my most recent book, white space, black hood, i go from 1890's-present. we have been in this dance between our values of -- beautiful values -- of universal human equality, dignity. a competing ideology of white supremacy. one of the themes of the book and thank you for having me in to reflect on this body of work, we have had these structures of white supremacy. the iconic racial segregation that created the black ghetto.

we are all trapped in it. my theme is that all of us, of all colors, are in structures created by supremacy. by supremacists and cynics. we have to figure out how to break free to be a unified country. >> in your book, place, and our race, you write "i prefer place rather than race as the focus of affirmative action for the pragmatic reason that it will foster more social cohesion and a better politics." what do you mean by that? >> i believe in affirmative action. all institutions should endeavor to be racially and economically diverse. in their hiring practices and looking for candidates, they should endeavor to do that.

when it comes to higher education, a lot of people and/or structural disadvantage, like separate and unequal, under resourced schools and a lot of the practices in higher education tend to reify advantage. i believe that as a matter of constitutional law, it is legal and constitutional for institutions to consider race as a plus factor, i argued that as a matter of policy design, universities ought to consider pursuing affirmative action in a way that expanded opportunity and reduce social tension. at the time, it feels quite. i wrote the book in 2014.

this was before from became president. there was a lot of backlash to obama, a lot of nasty politics going on at the time. i said, to progressives, if we do not figure this problem out, of bringing cohesion, a cohesive politics where the vast majority of citizens believe in the enterprise of democracy and believe in the enterprise of government and see it as responsive to them and their needs, we are going to get in an even worse place. when i was rereading what i said, obama was still president. we had not yet had a resurgence of all to write white nationalism -- alt-right white

nationalism good it was against my own children -- white nationalism. it was against my own children. we were going to be entering a bad place of politics and it has gotten worse since then. >> i want to give another quote from place, not race. this ties into what is happening at the university of michigan, harvard, some of the other schools. "the achievers in of the opportunity places that arise, despite the undertow, deserve special consideration from selective schools. colleges should reform their admissions processes in a way that enables them to discern these critical noncognitive skills and count them as merit." this is coming up before the supreme court, correct?

sheryll cashin: it was time to take the decades of affirmative action and apply it to the entire admissions process for everyone. i said that we should scrub the admissions process of any practices that do not scream for what social sciences actually says is merit. for example, i called for making sat scores optional because what they most predict is the wealth and socioeconomic background of the parents of the applicant. they are not even the sixth or seventh strongest predictor of actual performance in college. the most strong predictor is human to high school gpa -- is cumulative high school gpa

and willing to put aside your creation to do the work. -- recreation to do the work. i also called for stopping legacy preferences. i was -- i was the co-valedictorian of a pretty good but not stratospheric public high school. i was aware that there is a voted tory in every high school -- valedictorian in every high school. it was a method of exclusion. i do not take credit for it.

i am happy to see that the pandemic has accelerated some of the innovations. many schools now are making standardized test optional. i want to make this clear. i teach constitutional law. i am not saying and i have never said that the constitution requires universities to never consider race. to be race neutral or colorblind. there is nothing in the constitution of the requires that and indeed, if you look at the framers of the 14th amendment, who were some of my heroes, radical republicans who are trying to reconstruct the former confederate south. the idea that they would require equal protection to eliminate any consideration of histories

of racial exclusion i think is antithetical to their original intent. try to affirmatively surround or give black people formerly enslaved people all of the full rights of citizenship and access. i want to be clear about the difference between the supreme court case and what i argued is a matter of policy design. >> why do we not know more about the progress that huntsville, alabama made prior to the very well-publicized civil rights movement in alabama? some of the struggles? sheryll cashin: i think the images of birmingham and water hoses and attack dogs being turned on the children of birmingham. george wallace and his iconic standing in the schoolhouse door and his rhetoric, segregation

today, segregation tomorrow. back caught the most attention. -- that got the most attention. huntsville, alabama desegregated its public accommodations two years before the civil rights act was passed. one year before the water hoses or turned on the children of birmingham. a bloodless transition. in part, i have a chapter about this in my dad and mom and other civil rights leaders in huntsville. they came up with a maze in strategies -- amazing strategies. they knew what the city fathers, most cared about was huntsville's image as it was

trained to help get man on the moon. they cared about that. they would stage incredible protests like my mother taking me as a four-month-old baby to a large counter to get herself a rusted -- arrested along with a pregnant woman. or having protests at the new york stock exchange. the city leaders decided we cannot have this, this does not look good. they negotiated. about was a quiet story that did not get told because other things, violent things were happening in alabama that got more attention. >> before we leave that up supreme court, you are quoted in the washington post talking

about the supreme court justice that is pending. you say that there will be many black girls across the nation who will see themselves for the first time as future lawyers and judges and that will contribute to diversifying the profession. i want to ask you, or was it a mistake for president biden to narrow his search prior to conducting the search? sheryll cashin: why did i know that you are going to ask me that question? can i tell our watchers that you are in one room in the studio and i am in another and i am looking at a camera. i cannot see you. i want to apologize to the audience in advance if i look off. it is a strange experience. anyway, it was not a mistake.

i defend what he did and what he has promised to do. it makes transparent what has been going on with the court for decades. ronald reagan famously nominated sandra day o'connor, he said he wanted to nominate a woman and he nominated her. wasn't the case prior to that moment that the only qualified people to serve on the u.s. court were meant? n? no. when biden made this pledge, he had lost in the primaries twice. he was going to south carolina. he wanted to energize african-american voters. it worked. it was part of his pledge.

in some ways, it is the acknowledgment that there is a group of people who has been excluded from serving systemically on u.s. courts. who are his most loyal supporters and re-energize politics in the south to help him when in georgia -- win in georgia. presidents have done similar things to energize the puppies. - their base. it is true. it is a political institution in this sense. the president is allowed to nominate who he wants. it is not the same as a written policy for college admissions. affirmative action as a general

matter, it is designed at its best to force institutions to diversify themselves in order to be more legitimate in the eyes of the people. the only thing the supreme court has for its legitimacy is that we the people look at it and support it as legitimate and therefore will comply with the laws. having an african-american woman on the court will certainly expand its legitimacy in the eyes of a lot of people. particularly african-americans who are often on the receiving end of opinions by the court that they hardly disagree with. it is a long winded way of saying that i defend what he has done. it is uncomfortable, i suppose. to have him say it out loud, that i want to nominate a black

woman, but at least he is being transparent about a history of exclusion on the court. >> good afternoon and welcome to book tv's in-depth program or we spent two hours with an author on their body of work. we are with sheryll cashin. we want to encourage your participation. dial in on the phone, 272 -748-201. if you want to send a text message to professor cashin, please include your first name and your city, 202-748-8903.

you can make, is on facebook on twitter, @booktv. i want to spend a few minutes with your book, loving which came out in 2017. july 11, 1958, 2:00 a.m., central point, virginia. what happened? sheryll cashin: a couple of police officers first in to a home. there were newlyweds and they were in bed, they had the marriage license above the wall above them. they were -- mildred was pregnant. bubble arrested the couple with -- police arrested the couple as

felons because they were in love and had gotten married. that was the beginning of a nine year struggle on the part of the couple to just live in virginia as a happily married couple. >> what we know about richard and mildred is that they were not trying to make a point by getting married? sheryll cashin: no. to his credit, richard loving, he was participating. they were in centerpoint, virginia. a small hamlet mainly of farmers that had a habit of mixing with what my father used to call nighttime integration. a habit of mixing, going back from colonial times. there was a fairly widespread practice in that community of white men having a black woman

on the side. richard was unique in that he wanted to marry the woman that he loved. the brown woman that he loved. he was not making a political point, he just loved her and wanted like everybody else to have the ability to marry her and live and be left alone. >> 1967, supreme court decision, unanimous. wanted is say? -- what did it say? sheryll cashin: an opinion written by the author of the brown v board decision. he said that this law, the racial integrity act of 1924 which made it a felony for a white person to marry or have

sex with a nonwhite person. white was defined -- were only wait if you had 100% white blood which was probably impossible for most people. the history on the part of virginia, separating people this way. regulating them, banning them from interracial marriage and sex was a policy designed to promote white supremacy. he said it with capital letters, it was the first time in the history of the court in which it used those words, he used it twice, white supremacy, to name the ideology behind the law. under the will protection clause and the due process clause -- equal protection clause and the due process clause this is

unconstitutional and we cannot have it. there were 16 estates who still had laws like this. at one point, it was 41. that was the formal dismantling of one plank in jim crow. the last plank of the jim crow. since then, it was decided the social barriers to interracial mixing have come down quite a bit. >> what was life like for mildred and richard from 1958-1967? sheryll cashin: i started hearing myself echo in my ear. it is quite distracting. i just want to let you know. thank you. they fixed it. they agreed to the exile rather

than jail because they had very young children. this was not -- the judge who oversaw their case convinced them to leave the county for 25 years and not come back. that judge wanted to do that rather than have a precedent on the books them ultimately be challenged and that is what happened. they moved to washington dc. richard was a bricklayer, he did construction work here. they were very unhappy, particulate mildred who liked living in the country. -- particularly mildred who liked living in the country. one of her children got hit by a car and that was the last blow for her.

she wrote for help at the suggestion of a cousin and robert kennedy referred them to the aclu. two young aclu lawyers who were recent graduates of the law school i teach at, georgetown law, took up their case. for the next nine years they were in and out of court. they persisted. this quiet couple who did not like publicity and they started opening up their life. there is a beautiful photo essay article about them in life magazine where they started opening up their life and talking about what they were going through. particularly mildred who had been very quiet. there is a documentary about them you can watch. they became the ordinary people who became advocates for themselves and other people.

>> let us take some calls for the professor. barbara in new york city. >> good afternoon. professor, in york opinion, how likely is it that justice ruth bader ginsburg did not retire from the supreme court when the democrats had the senate because she did not want to give obama the opportunity to replace her with a black person? sheryll cashin: i could not hear the last part? >> a black american. >> barbara, where did this train of thought come from? >> it came from the fact of how many black clerks that justice ginsburg had overheard 20 years on the court compared to how many jewish clerks that justice marshall gave up the

opportunity. being a clerk for a supreme court justice is a big boost on a resume. i am curious as to what we can make at this point of justice ginsburg? sheryll cashin: i have find feelings about -- fond feelings for justice ginsberg. i clerked when she was there. what i would say is the reason that she did not retire was not because of worries about being replaced by a black person. she might have even welcomed at that. if you look at her distance and the affirmative action -- her stance is in the affirmative action cases, she is a strong advocate for racial equality. what was going on is that she had hit her stride, she was the in some ways the most senior of

the liberal wing. i think she felt that she still had a lot of work to do. i do not think that she was going to die when she did. i wish she hadn't stepped down too. i do not think she had any bad intentions around it. i will leave it there. >> roslyn from las vegas, good morning. >> good morning. very interesting conversation. you mentioned about your father helping start a new party for black individuals to be elected if they want to be elected. can you talk about the progressive democratic party? my grandmother is from south carolina and was part of that. i know that they went to a

convention in the 1940's and bombarded their way into it. they did not want to be heard. most of the blacks were still republicans back then. sheryll cashin: i do not know the history of the progressive democratic party that you mention and i am sorry i cannot offer you specifics. i will say that my father's party was similar to an independent party in mississippi that is better known, of the mississippi freedom democratic party. that was a caucus. there has been a history of black americans experimenting with alternative parties. stokely carmichael asserted the

black panther party before my father's party was started. yes, many african-americans including members of my family have been republicans, my great-grandfather had been a radical republican. there had been examples throughout american history of black americans and others in moments trying to participate in democracy through third parties. i am not familiar with the progressives. i will say that the pressure the party put on the regular democratic party was enormous and the regular democratic party reformed tremendously in the state to the point where when i was in high school, they were actively recruiting blacks and

women to run to be delegates and iran to be a delegate under the regular -- i ran to be a delegate under the regular party ticket and i went to the first confection -- to my first convention as a delegate of jimmy carter. i do not have specifics about the movement you mentioned. >> from the agitator's daughter. "daddy is running for governor, i do not ever get to talk to him. i am his only daughter and i support him. august 11, 1970." you referenced the effect of your father's activism on the family structure. did you have resentment against some of the money he was spending? what it did to the family unit? >> not until i was a rebellious teenager and trying to figure

out how to pay for college. i always was part of my parents. my mother was a deputy director of a community action agency. she spent her life in addition to civil rights activism, helping poor people. i was proud of them. yes, today i appreciate a lot more. the city of huntsville took my father's dental office and put a parking lot there. i write about this in the book good my father had his own target plane and there were two attempts to sabotage the plane and he crashed once and he was not harmed. the whole world -- the irs investigated him. the whole world came down on him.

as a teenager, teenagers think about themselves a lot. i was frustrated by the -- we had been a very affluent family. i was experiencing this tremendous change in economic station. i was resentful and angry. i got over it. in writing the book, it was like my private therapy. it helped me understand the cost and consequences of being an agitator. there are many other families that indoor worse than we have. the bombing of homes and all of this stuff. i am very proud of them. the final thing i will say about that is as i see in the book, my

parents give me everything i needed to be successful in this world. i inherited two emotional legacies. one was a commitment to academic excellence. both of my parents were very bright people who did well in education and my father in particular distilled in me that i was excellent at i was capable of excellence. -- and i was capable of excellence. the other creed was at this agitator's creed. the only value that mattered that you spend your waking life advocating for people, your people who had less than you. i have that. i am not out in the streets but i use my platform, particularly this most recent book to do just that.

that is my contribution. >> david coming in from hope sound, florida. >> nice to finally speak to you again. how are you doing? earlier, professor, you said that the admissions into universities taking race into account is a positive. it was a concurring opinion by justice powell. mr. bakke got admitted to the university and car discriminate against him because he was white -- and got discriminated against him because he was white. we have a case in the supreme court where asians are being discriminated against because they are asian and they are doing well. they have done well in high

school and cannot get into the universities because there is a quota as there was for jewish students in the 1920's to the 1950's. let us get that clear. this was a concurring opinion by justice powell, not a constitutional decision. >> that is david in florida. sheryll cashin: professor bucky was discriminated against in a system of racial quotas. there has been subsequent cases decided by the spring court, most recently, -- by the supreme court, most recently, there is the fisher case. in both cases involving the university of texas, a majority

of the supreme court said that it was constitutional for universities to consider race, not as a quota, the taste made that clear. -- case made that clear. as a matter for all students, the educational benefits of diversity. yes, it is unconstitutional to have a rigid quota like it existed in the case you mentioned. powell cited the harvard plan and the more modest use of race as one factor among many as constitutional. the supreme court has said this multiple times. this is within the constitution.

as long as universities are making a good-faith effort, to try everything they can to create diversity without over considering race. the lower courts who have looked at the effects of the harvard case have found in favor of harvard and said that they do not see evidence of intentionally excluding asians or anybody else. the fact of the matter is, harvard and other places of selective higher education, most people who applied market in. harvard is now 3% or 4%. nobody is entitled to these places. what counts as merit is -- therein to get a diverse class where they have people from all kinds of mike rounds.

-- grounds. background. no one person can say that i am entitled to that spot or you can see in a system in a reference to race as a plus factor in order to achieve real racial diversity. you cannot honestly say that this person was excluded because that person was included. i agree with your analysis of the concurrence in powell. i disagree with your analysis of the facts of what is going on in harvard. >> let us hear from police in alexandria, louisiana -- lewis in alexandria, louisiana. >> on to bring up two quick things. i want to thank you for taking the questions. i'm african american and our

lieutenant governor has gone on these civil rights trails and stuff and recently we had the 761st. they fought in world war ii,. we honored them this wednesday. i told the call screen if you have ever heard of them and would you do a book about them? this is my second thing. i grew up in the 60's, i am 61 years old. i grew up under segregation and integration. i know that you did not think that we did well. to a certain extent, i think we did on that because there was more discipline in the segregated schools and once we became integrated, we lost a lot of that discipline.

the supreme court is really messing up when they took the bibles out of school. >> cornelius, your integration is not something that you support, is that correct? he is gone. i think that is what he said? did you hear that? sheryll cashin: i want to make it clear. i never said that black americans have done less well in integrated schools. he attributed that to me and i do not say that word all of the social science shows that black americans tend to do better in an integrated, well resourced schools than in segregated, low resource schools. i did well in well resourced integrated schools. the caller and i are basically

the same age. i was fortunate, huntsville, alabama. i went to -- me and my brothers were integration pioneers. the schools i attended became more integrated and they were well resourced so that i was able to leave those schools and go to vanderbilt and compete and graduate in electrical engineering. that said, of the high school that i graduated from, it became very impoverished after i left. racially re-segregated, so impoverished and segregated that they closed the school down. we had -- i feel fortunate to be middle-aged in some ways where i got to go to school in the south

at a time in the 20 year period when it was mostly trying to give effect to brown v board. we have retreated from that work. the average black or latino child as to be in a school in which a majority of their peers are minority and half of their peers are poor. it is not serving those students well. nor does it serve white children in highly segregated majority white schools well not to have the experience of going to school with people of all walks of life. >> i want to spend a little bit of time with your newest book, white space, black hood. what do you mean but opportunity hoarding? sheryll cashin: opportunity hoarding is the overinvestment

and exclusion of affluent high opportunity places that tend to be very white and increasingly asian. the disinvestment and containment elsewhere and exclusion of people elsewhere. that is the dichotomy. what i argue in the book is that we have a system of residential caste. a food majority white space and concentrated black and brown poverty in between. what i am arguing is that society overinvest in and for, schools -- infrastructure, schools, all of the things that makes life good in high opportunity settings.

everyone who cannot afford to buy their way into their neighborhoods is getting a different deal. they are also subsidizing those places with gas taxes, income taxes, for the golden infrastructure and amenities that they get. that is opportunity hoarding. a more concrete example in my first chapter, the struggling people of baltimore, carless people who need public transportation were denied a light rail redlined by governor larry hogan. the relatively affluent suburbs of washington d c and maryland did get a purple line. it is being built. that is an example. overinvestment and disinvestment. >> to stick with baltimore, you

talk about the highway to nowhere. what is that? sheryll cashin: there is a picture of it in my book, the hardware to nowhere, you can google it and see it -- highway to nowhere, you can see it. large numbers of great migrants landed in the city, they were subjected to cumulative blunt-force trauma of major public policies. urban renewal, displacing black people from downtown in order to revitalize it for professionals. the interstate highway program, look at almost every major city that has a critical mass of black people, they tended to run the highways through their neighborhoods. in baltimore, but the highway --

a highway was run. through the advocacy of barbara mikulski, they were able to stop the highway from running through some of the white working class neighborhoods and they stop it. it was the highway to nowhere. black neighborhoods adored the tom of it -- received the trauma of it but received no way to travel from it. >> you spend some time talking about what a ghetto is. you call them government created ghettos? sheryll cashin: has a primary response to the great margaret, -- migrants, many moved north and west between 1910-1970.

the primary response to contain them in their own neighborhoods. through a series of policies, in chicago, a good example is the southside of chicago, black people near where michelle obama grew up, you had people living on top of people. nowhere else to move. after urban renewal which i just mentioned, hundreds of thousands of black people were displaced from their homes because of the often lived very strategically near downtown. in the name of slum clearance, their homes be mowed down -- are mowed down.

in chicago in particular, high-rise competence public housing projects. what happens when you have a public policy based on a disk midori basis -- on a scrimmage discriminatory basis? overnight concentrated black poverty is constructed. in baltimore, blacks were scattered throughout the city. you could live where you could afford to live. you could try on the clothes, shopper you wanted. -- shop where you wanted. in the 1910's, they say that we will contain all of the black people. they used violence, racially certain zoning -- restrictive

zoning to push them into a areas. ideas about blackness get associated with neighborhoods that are historically redlined. white avoidance of living nearby people becomes entrenched. we live with that dilemma to this day. the same neighborhoods that were redlined, look at the maps, i encourage everyone listening to me, google redlining and name the city. aim apple come up and you will see the history of -- a map will come up and you will see the history. to this day, those neighborhoods, eight decades on, a fed study shows that they experienced disinvestment and segregation.

>> don is coming in from osiris, texas. >> cypress, texas. i think the professor. we want to congratulate alabama and them -- alabama a&m. doing great things down through the years. in texas, we have two of the largest publicly endowed universities, promoted by the late reverend jacob fontaine, one of the early black newspapers, the founders of many churches here. he was enslaved patrick henry's great grandson. we also have to realize, head of the republican party in texas,

the black and tan that was part of the -- because of their prosperity and economic and political advancement in louisiana had the first black governor. look at mississippi, the first u.s. senator was republican. my point is, you teach at georgetown. georgetown is part of the dr. jones whose 1619 project, the original 13 colonies. the original 13 colonies did not include much of the country as we know, today. when you talk about georgetown, the priest there, selling enslaved africans to plantation owners in louisiana, and you talk about -- >> what is your question? what do you want the professor to respond to? >> why are we allowing the

policies that were original in scope as far as slavery, the types of slavery, and the emancipation and freedom and movement and thought of african-americans, why do we allow the original 13 colony universities and the intellectual society dictate how the rest of the united states -- why is our history being spread like cancer through the united states -- >> i think we have a lot to work with, professor sheryll cashin. >> i didn't really quite get the question. i want to respond to a couple things he said. i write in "the agitator's daughter" about my great

grandfather's participation in the great reconstruction. he talked about the black and tans versus the lowly whites. my great-grandfather was part of radical republican black and tan republicanism. what i do in that book, is i celebrate the era of reconstruction that my great-grandfather participated in, and the area of the second reconstruction that my father participated in. in both of those examples, what you had was biracial coalitions participating in agitating and politics together with black leadership. he mentioned famous or they ought to be famous black people who served.

600 or 700 men of color served in the legislature during reconstruction. this is a period of history that is not known so well or celebrated. it was the first reconstruction, the first effort i believe, in the history of the world and certainly we are still in this struggle of an experiment where you had equality in politics, where everybody regardless of color is supposed to get to vote, supposed to get to run, compete for ideas, and is -- and it is not suppressed. it is destroyed quickly. this is what the voting rights act was about. my hope and prayer is that we figure out how to have a functioning multiracial politics in which people of all genders, races, get to express themselves

at the voting box, they get to run and not have structures that suppress popular will. >> paul, portsmouth, rhode island. text message. quote, for an entire generation of blue-collar whites who grew up in boston during the forced busing policy disaster, it is hard to have policies like perpetual admission set-asides exclusively for nonwhites who are in the same socioeconomic positions as the blue-collar whites. moreover, any opposition to this true inequality as racism versus 50 years of bad policies is what most people on the right are pushing back against. >> i want to make it clear that under the constitution and the decisions of the supreme court that we have talked about, i'm

not aware of any university that sets aside slots for individuals based on race. if they did, it would be illegal. when i wrote "place, not race," arguing against consideration of race, but for reforming admissions processes to widen the pipeline so that working-class whites and struggle -- in struggling circumstances and people of color would have a better chance of getting into selective higher education. at that time, only about a third of public universities were still considering race and only about 45% of private universities were still considering race.

this idea that there is this pervasive practice of setting aside slots for people based on race is just not true. it is not true under current law, and it's not true under current practice. but i will admit that the stoking of resentment and division, based on the real economic struggles of people, including the white working class, that has been central to republican politics for 50 years. from richard nixon come along order, ronald reagan with welfare queens, the clintons and super predator. there is this stoking of division, of resentment and that is exactly what i was responding

to in writing "place not race." we are in a very bad place, and we are getting to this place where trust in the entire project of politics and the entire project of government is declining. it has fallen off the roof since then. the toxicity has gotten worse. my life and my writing has been about how we can create a functioning multiracial -- motion -- multiracial politics. that said, i just can't support the colorblind constitutionalism coming from the right, that says you can never under any circumstance consider race, when it might be necessary it might be necessary. i don't think that is what the framers of the 14th amendment had in mind.

that said, i think we all need to bring the heat out of politics and the stoking of division out of politics. >> if you can't get through on the phone lines and still want to make a connection, you can send a text message. please and stash please include your first name and your city. those are for text messages only. linda in santa barbara, california sent in this text message. what is your opinion of the effect of lyndon johnson takei great society programs and their effect on blacks and black families in particular? do you ever dialogue with other black conservatives customer account do you feel about their point of view? -- conservatives? how do you feel about their point of view? >> the great society programs are often lambasted, but the great society as a general

project and the whole project of the civil rights revolution, which i credit lyndon johnson for responding to a social movement and supporting and signing the civil rights act of 1964, the voting rights act of 1965, reforming integration to no longer discriminate against people from asia, for example. being able to naturalize and move here. the fair housing act. that was a social revolution. in one generation, we went from a country where two thirds, maybe close to three quarters of black people lived below the poverty line. the poverty rate was 72%. these programs and policies and civil rights enforcement opened

up opportunities and in one generation, a majority of black people are not poor. three quarters of black people are not poor. the johnson administration did a good job, of bringing black people into -- out of a caste system and into citizenship. we still have a struggle, but i view that as positive. do i commiserate with thomas soul? no, but i've been on panels with black conservatives. i'm not adverse to that. i am open to ideas. i self identify as a progressive . i believe in civil rights and enforcement and equality and i will keep writing and advocating for it. >> george is calling in from

king of prussia, pennsylvania. you are on with author sheryll cashin. >> i would like to ask the author if she thinks the black lives movement has helped the typical black community. i live outside philadelphia, where there has been a significant increase in crime and homicides, and i believe they are related because now there is less law enforcement and crime prevention. >> professor? >> i am not intimately familiar with the state of reform or lack thereof, with policing. it is not my area of expertise. there has been, admittedly, a spike in violent crime since 2020, since the pandemic. there is a lot of speculation

about the why of it. some people would like to suggest that police have been hampered and can't do their jobs. others are speculating that there is a lot of economic deprivation coming out of the pandemic, and i don't purport to know the answer to that but what i will say is that i've studied some cities that have experimented with strategies outside of policing, that have achieved a decline in violent crime, even in this period where it is going up. i offer that example in the last chapter of my book. i want to celebrate richmond, california and the 20 cities in this country that have opened

offices of neighborhood safety, where they are hiring former incarcerated people, people who used to be caught up in gun violence and turned their lives around, people who are intimately familiar with the cycle of gun violence, particularly in poor black neighborhoods. they are hiring them to be disruptors, to proactively -- they know that kids in some of these neighborhoods that are most likely to pull trigger, and being interventionist with these young people and wrapping them in services, being mentors to them, richmond, california tried that approach and reduce gun violence by 55% for a fraction of the cost of mass incarceration and policing. i don't believe in defunding the

police, but i do believe that we can't police our way or incarcerate our way out of some of the endemic problems in high poverty neighborhoods, and we need to be innovators. the way to get there, first you have to see people, even people who are engaged in gun violence, yet to see them as three-dimensional human beings who are capable of transformation if given the chance. other cities have innovated with giving universal basic income and some of these high poverty neighborhoods and that alone has lessened gun violence. another city tried moving some of the public housing, trying to de-concentrated poverty and moving some of the people out of public housing into higher

opportunity areas and found that helped reduce gun violence. what i call for is setting aside the stories we tell ourselves, some of the dogma we tell ourselves constantly about certain neighborhoods or black families and free yourselves by bringing an attitude of care rather than predation, to certain areas and once you do that, you can focus on evidence-based energies that may make the problem better and cost less. >> in "white space, black hood," you spent time with the new york city broken windows policy. 80% of young black males were probably stopped or under threat of being stopped at some point during this period. was it not successful in your view? >> it was not successful. imagine if you are the parent of a black sun or you are that black person.

what sense does it make to have a policy where 80% of the black males in the entire city get stopped? often for just being on the sidewalk. i teach law at georgetown. i've had some black male students tell me about these experiences. one told me he had been stopped 19 times. he was a law-abiding citizen. think about the distrust that that kind of blanket approach, where every black male, a lens of thug, of presumed thug versus presumed citizen. the state overinvest in policing. a lot of wasted time and resources. it didn't necessarily reduce crime. you create distrust.

communities are less likely to cooperate with the police. i cite a study in the last chapter of the book, where in chicago alone, they are spending $851 million per inner-city black -- inner-city block every four years, to incarcerate people. almost a truly -- almost $1 trillion -- no, almost $1 billion, every four years to incarcerate. has it made the gun violence go down in chicago? no. so what i called for is again, focusing on communities, particularly historically defunded high poverty communities and seeing the people there as citizens and assets, particularly the people

who are potentially engaged in gun violence, giving them an alternative to the life they are leading. that is what richmond did. they created a peacemaker fellowship. it was only like two dozen young men who were doing the shooting or likely to do the shooting. they brought the men and said what do you need, to change your life around? do you need behavioral therapy? do you need drug treatment? do you need a job? do you need training? do you need to get out of here? they just help them develop a life map for transformation, and it worked. it worked. > next call for sheryll cashin comes from kelvin in portland, oregon. good afternoon. >> good afternoon. thank you for taking the call. professor, i just want to say thank you, for your leadership

in writing the books, and your narrative, because i believe it allows those of us who do not follow the policy and politics very closely to dispel the intellectual dishonesty and have that done -- and to have that done is really fantastic, so thank you for your leadership. my family is from birmingham, alabama, and i have a question for you, in reference to the archaic political structure in the south. any thoughts on how that could change, to push more democratic thinking folks to the electoral finish line? over the past 10 years, the only folks who have run have had systemic leadership and being

the purveyors of racism, and yet they receive funding year after year and they have been on the frontline. >> can you give an example of whom you are referring to? >> i don't want to practice labeling. i will just keep it general and say that i want to thank c-span and the professor for her analysis on social issues. >> we will leave it there, thank you for calling in. any response for that caller? >> i want to say thank you, kelvin. your comment makes me feel good. i appreciate your support and your kind words. >> text message. no city or name. don't you express your social

justice commitment through your art? are you showing your art anywhere now? is that somebody who knows you? >> i have a feeling i know who this person is. one of the things i do to heal myself and take me away from the troubles of the world is i paint. i am a practicing artist, and i have -- i am in an exhibit right now at the zenith gallery in washington. we just had the opening. i did a series of collages of black women, surrounded in nature informs, including breonna taylor. i just wanted to surround her in things i felt she deserved.

i was trying to heal her and heal me, and focus on beauty. >> i think we just showed an image of serena williams? can we go back to that image? >> yes, yes. >> p rigo. -- here we go. >> i hope you don't mind. i was so inspired by you on that wheaties box. i made a collage. i just wanted to surround her because i thought she deserved it. she is such an inspiration. the lawyer in me, under the council of my husband, made sure that i added my own art to it and not appropriate the image. so jokingly, how to avoid copyright infringement. >> is your husband also a lawyer? >> yes. >> is he a professor? >> he just stepped down as

general counsel at a tech company in baltimore. he worked for a series of tech companies. he is an intellectual property lawyer. my wonderful husband. >> and zenith gallery here in washington. how long will it be up? >> i think the show is up to the 25th or 26th. you can go to the zenith gallery website. >> the next call for artist and professor and author, sheryll cashin, tony, fort worth, texas. >> thank you, professor cashin. i've heard about critical race theory in the last few years, and i had never heard about that before and i've been wondering about it ever since. i wonder your thoughts on it. the superintendents and

education in texas are resigning left and right over this issue. we have nine retiring just in the dallas-fort worth area. and a white student getting their feelings hurt, feeling inferior because of critical race theory. >> thank you so much for that question. i thought peter was going to ask me, so i appreciate that you brought it up. first off, critical race theory was developed by legal academics, to the extent that it was taught at all or is taught at all has been in higher education mainly, in law schools. the idea, two main tenants -- tennets.

one is that systems of racial disadvantage, racism, systems of racial disparity, racial disadvantage, racial inequality, are embedded in our legal structure. we have laws that may be facially reached -- facially neutral, not like the jim crow laws that said separate water fountains, but they have those consequences, they have consequences of structural inequality. you could read my book, "white space, black hood," and i show that we have a system of residential caste where we have separate but equal neighborhoods with facially neutral laws. that is the first tennet. the second is that the civil rights revolution we had, which was mainly an antidiscrimination

-- we passed laws that banned discrimination against individuals, in housing and employment, that those were not up to the task of eliminating these structural, systemic systems of racial inequality. that is basically what crt does. it teaches, particularly law students, to think critically about our systems. the third thing i would add. i am not a critical race theory stte. i don't teach it in my classes. but the third thing i would add that i think is part of this inquiry, and has always been there, is that the systems that have been constructed that oppress racial minorities also harm other people. it is a way of teaching people to think critically about our systems. that is what it is.

it is not taught to -- not taught in k-12. it is not. crt as a label has been used and weaponized to divide people and now we have screaming matches at school board meetings, and fights. people are asking for books or stories that center nonwhite children, some of them are just being attacked as if we should ban these books. i just read an article on alabama.com about a session where a superintendent was telling people, it is black history month, having some

curriculum that teaches some black history is not crt. i think it is unfortunate and i think what happened, and i will be honest. the previous president brought it up during the election. we are going to scrub crt from everything, and now it is like so many other things, a point of dividing people and upsetting people. i don't know about the specifics in texas, but it is troubling to hear that school superintendents are resigning over this. i am not aware of any curriculum that is taught to children that is designed to make white children feel bad about themselves. for example, i teach a course,

race in american law. when i teach about the era of slavery and the laws that existed, i am not trying to make the white students in my class feel bad about themselves and there is no reason they should. they didn't create this system. >> we have a half-hour left on "in depth," with our guest, professor sheryll cashin. (202)-748-8200 if you live in the east or central time zones and you want to dial in. (202)-748-8201 for those of you in the mountain and pacific time zones. if you can't get through on the phone lines and want to send a text message, (202)-748-8903 is the number to text in. please include your first name and your city. stephanie is in deerfield beach, florida. >> thank you.

thank you so much, professor, for so many topics and i appreciate it so much. i wanted to ask you your thoughts -- first of all i appreciate what you said about biden being transparent about the promise he made, that he wanted to select a black woman for the supreme court which does not seem thati wonder your thou- clyburn was maybe suggesting that michelle childs, academic diversity is also important and it would be really wonderful if biden chose someone who was obviously intellectually qualified and in character but was also from a public

university, which i even think scully a said we need to get away from a supreme court made up of just people from harvard and yield. would that be a bridge too far if biden were to choose a black woman who wasn't from yale or harvard? sheryll: absolutely it would not be a bridge too far. thank you for the question. it is an excellent question. part of the problem with the way we have gone about selecting supreme court justices is we very much narrowed the pipeline. some of that has to do with the politicization of the nomination process and how it makes it very hard to nominate anyone who has a paper trail who is remotely expressing an opinion about anything in a gridlocked

congress. what they tend to do is nominate almost exclusively now court of appeals judges, circuit court judges, who the only paper trail, for the most part they have is judicial opinions. and, as you say, a lot of the people that get nominated went to harvard or yale. i went to harvard you -- harvard law school and enjoyed it very much, thank you. but it creates this perception that anybody else who doesn't come from that distinct pipeline is somehow, to use an unfortunate phrase that someone used an recently is lesser than. as if experience in different walks of life is not relevant to

the project of judging, when it very much is. we shouldn't just be looking at people who went to harvard or yale. we shouldn't just be looking at men, we shouldn't just be looking at, we should not be excluding women or women of color, but we should be thinking about district court judges. district court judges try cases. they are there with human beings seeing the justice system in action. i can't remember the last time we nominated someone for the court who came from the trial experience as i believe this person you mentioned would. just as i said in "place not grace" -- we need to expand the

pipeline and, absolutely, having someone come from a fine public university, they are wonderful -- there are wonderful public institutions out there. there is genius out there everywhere. i applaud that. there will be, inevitably, if this particular person you are talking about -- i'm forgetting her name, but the judge from south carolina who was nominated to the court of appeals but they are thinking about holding it. we will see what happens to her -- i lost my train of thought. host: you had been talking about the court -- i apologize -- the court right below the supreme court. sheryll: my point was that there

is genius everywhere. if that particular person gets nominated, inevitably, there will be some snark, particularly on the internet. there is too much snark on the internet projecting yes, we have a black woman and she's from a lesser than institution and there will be commentary like that, but we need to resist that. although i'm not endorsing anyone in particular, but i am endorsing the project of opening up the pipeline to institutions, be it higher education or c-span or any university to people from all walks of life, to enable us to be a more cohesive country. host: angela, san mateo california. caller: thank you for taking my call. i would like to address -- can

you hear me? host: we are listening. please go ahead. caller: thank you. host: don't look at your tv. turn down the volume on the phone. just go ahead and talk. we can both hear you. caller: very well. good morning again. my question is, i find it most intriguing that people who want to dumb down education -- it usually comes with people who themselves are well educated and have gone to university. when you graduated high school, it was a difficult time.

but i don't agree with dumbing down to the black children. it does not take going to the mall on the weekend, it takes a lot of things to do this -- they are too stupid, too blind, too poor, they can't make it -- i don't understand that. host: the so-called deming down of education? sheryll: i thought she was talking about scrapping standardized tests and saying that was deming down. i thought she said the sat and psat. host: take it in any way you thought. sheryll: i want to be clear that my advocacy is for colleges focusing on the strongest

predictors of success in college completion, that they should focus on that. the cumulative high school gpa and the willingness to do exactly what the caller was suggesting, to forgo recreation to do the work. you know, admissions is a bit like detective work. you can see the evidence from recommendations and what you find out about a person about how many hours a week are they putting in general cumulative high school gpa, i graduated back in the day with a 4.0. i made an a in every single class. i only made one be in 40 years. my sat scores were ok.

they were not stratospheric. they would not have predicted i would have graduated sigma cum laude in electrical engineering. but if anybody had interviewed me or paid attention, they would have realized that when i got to vanderbilt, i was going to be in the library on friday and saturday nights when no one else was there. so i am not an advocate of dumbing down. take the most challenging classes available to you. i can't speak to what she means in terms of k-12 education. but i will say that black and latino children in public school today tend to get a soul-killing, rote education,

teaching to test, rather than the stimulating thinking that students in advantaged schools tend to get, which is unfortunate. host: what was the in vanderbilt? -- the b in vanderbilt? sheryll: some kind of digital electrical class. i've forgotten. host: sharon, woodland, north carolina. go ahead. caller: hello and thank you so much for this wonderful, exciting conversation. i feel like she is so knowledgeable that i'm going to go out and buy all four of those books. sheryll: thank you. host: five.

caller: we do need to have these discussions. i heard someone ask you what you do to get all of this stuff in the back of your head and enjoy yourself and i know you have to escape from it because there is so much. but, you have been picked out for such a time as this and i thank you so much. host: can you tell us a little bit about yourself? caller: i'm a nurse. i have a masters degree in nursing education. i taught nursing in eastern north carolina. just so many things -- i do believe education is important. i do believe we have embedded institutional racial discrimination and it is very hurtful when you go into a

nursing institution to care for people in eastern north carolina that you run into these situations. when i wanted to ask her is how do you continue to not be an agitator but to help upcoming nurses to get into an institution, using their academic abilities and to not be distracted by the inequality even of advancement in the institution of nursing? host: thank you, ma'am. sheryll: first of all, i want to thank you. your words mean so much to me. i don't know you but your words, your intonation reminds me of people i love back home in

alabama, so thank you. and i want to thank you for being a nurse. nurses are having a very difficult time. they are on the front lines right now of the pandemic. close to 900,000 people -- i don't have a specific answer for you about nursing itself. and how individual nurses -- i assume you are a black american -- you sound like one to me. as you struggle in institutions and you say how can we advanced things, help people and not get distracted, by whatever else is going on institutionally or inequalities, that is a challenge for a lot of people. it is a difficult time.

i personally am a christian, baptist. i take sustenance with daily prayer for strength. i prayed before coming here today. [laughter] i read the bible before i go to bed. everybody has to find a way to make it in this country. but i will say having an attitude that the other is not the enemy is helpful. i teach two first years and have people from all walks of life, political commitments, and i try to not have been us-them attitude about these wonderful young people put before me. even with intellectual

approaches to things that i don't necessarily agree with -- i think we all need to take it down to the human level, not seeing people we are dealing with are not dealing with as somehow bad, people people. take it down to the human level and try to meet people halfway and if you can't agree on something, perhaps you just smile and say have a good day and keep on going. i hope something i have said is useful to you. host: every author who is on "in depth" we ask for their favorite books and what they are reading now. here is what sheryll cashin told us. "a mercy" by tony morrison. and the narrative of the life of frederick douglass. currently reading, as she

mentioned a minute ago, the holy bible. harlem shuffle by colson whitehead, the sweet flypaper of life. through the unusual door, edited by stephen wick. swing time by zadie smith and the price of the ticket by james baldwin. mr. baldwin's name came up three times on your list. why is that? sheryll: nobody beats james baldwin as a 20th-century writer for me for the power of his language, for the truth telling, and his own emotion and passion just jump off the page. i've worked very, very hard to

be a writer and to be a good writer. i have literary ambitions and i find myself going back to baldwin. he was a writer who was engaged with the civil rights movement, the civil rights struggles of his time. i try to be. he inspires me on so may levels. but i am a nonfiction writer and he is, for me, among the best nonfiction writers commenting on what i am parentally -- perennially commenting on, the circumstances of race, the african-american experience, trying to gain full personhood. i never get enough of him. host: i have been rereading

baldwin myself and he is one that you've got to turn off the tv. you can't be distracted by other things because of the language and other things, you want to absorb it a little. sheryll: that is why i read. for me, reading is healing at the end of the day. no devices other than your kindle -- but there is nothing more intimate to me than reading and trying to get what an author is saying. it's like the author is speaking just to me what doing it. i don't know why i'm so enamored of him. host: text message just something you write about in “white space, black hood” -- this is from christian in simsbury, connecticut. what's your opinion of gentrification, especially in atlanta? sheryll: i used to spend a lot

of time in atlanta, growing up in alabama. i worked at two different law offices there in summer jobs. but i haven't spent much time in atlanta for a while but what i hear much education, i have two ignore what i hear and it's going on in other places -- there's a lot of displacement of black people where people are discovering people want to be back in cities now. the housing prices are going through the roof and a lot of desired cities, so people are discovering black neighborhoods are more affordable. i think that is what they are alluding to. that's part of the residential caste system i talk about.

i don't engage with it very much in the book but -- i did not say this yet and i'm not plugging this book today, but i say the three main processes happen to be antiblack -- boundary maintenance, keeping boundaries, stereotype driven surveillance. which people are familiar with if you are watching the videos. it so happens the surveillance of black bodies tends to spike in gentrifying neighborhoods where a new group is coming in and they may not be comfortable with some of the cultural norms of people who have been in the neighborhood. i tell a devastating story of a 100 five-year-old dominican man who had been playing dominoes on

his sidewalk for four decades in spanish harlem, having the police called on him hundreds and hundreds of times until he finally stopped doing it. that's an aspect of gentrification that is particularly troubling. but i can't speak to exactly what is happening in atlanta. but it sounds like a lot of what is happening in terms of formally majority-black neighborhoods turning over. but i don't have specific knowledge. host: leon, lincoln nebraska. please go ahead. caller: thank you for having me on today. i appreciate you taking my call. i wanted to talk about the situation -- i don't know if she

has any thoughts on that matter, but on affirmative action which we are dealing with and it has been in my opinion a good tool. we have the situation in the nfl where we are looking at a black guy, head coach that had been overlooked not because of his qualifications but apparently it has to do with possibly the ownership of these teams and who is in position to make these decisions. if it is not affirmative action -- in a perfect world we wouldn't need these types of things, but since we are not in a perfect world, we need something to eliminate these scenarios where people are qualified, there are a number of situations even with the supreme

court. you can look at the qualifications of these women, which i think they are well-qualified, so we will have the conversation of if they are qualified, why are we picking them. what are your thoughts on that? sheryll: as i said that as i said before, i support affirmative action as a tool to diversify institutions. i'm not particularly knowledgeable about the nfl -- i skimmed the headline of this coach you are talking about. america is a bewilderingly diverse country. i say that in a positive meaning with that phrase. it's an impossibly diverse country. it's what makes the american experience exciting, it's what

brings vitality to this country and the research shows companies tend to do better with a diverse workforce. when you have people who have more different perspectives rot to bear, you tend to get a better decision. so affirmative action, well-designed affirmative action, not racial quotas, but it makes institutions better and puts pressure on institutions to widen the talent pool, to break out of habits that tend to reify the same old networks and expands looking for talented, qualified people. i'm not aware of any advocate of

affirmative action saying we need to be hiring unqualified people. what affirmative action does, when properly designed, is help institutions find qualified people who have not been in the pipeline, who have historically not been considered and that is a good thing as far as i'm concerned. host: very quickly, joseph in syracuse, new york. go ahead. we have about a minute left. caller: i have a lot of questions. can you hear me? host: we can hear you just fine. ask your priority question. caller: i have a lot of questions but the more i listen, the more i had questions. one of the last things, she's baptist and i am a baptist also. but is she a saved baptist? sheryll: i am saved and i've

been dunked in the water, yes. [laughter] absolutely. host: here in our last minute, i want to read a text from leslie in georgia. i'm enjoying your conversation. i have to say i can't take my eyes off your necklace. it's absolutely gorgeous and reflects your artistic sensibility. sheryll: thank you for noticing that. host: unrelated to our conversation, but i want to close with this -- this is from the failures of integration. professor cashin writes -- i think the possibilities for integration could be much enhanced if more white people in more -- and more middle and upper-class people would become more comfortable without always being in overwhelmingly dominant numbers. the point of integration is not to pursue it for its own sake, though it does have its own inherent social benefits. the point of integration is the same as the core motivation of

the civil rights movement itself. integration, then and now, is the best route to equal opportunity for everyone. sheryll cashin is the author of five books. the most recent is “white space, black hood” and she has been our guest for the past two hours on "in depth". thank you for being with us. sheryll: thank you so much for having me. host: if you missed any of this program, it is rearing very shortly. -- re--airing very shortly. >> weekends on c-span2 are an intellectual feast. every saturday, american history tv brings you the latest on nonfiction books and authors.

. >> the world changed in an instant. we never slowed down. schools and businesses went virtually and we powered a new reality. because we are built to keep you ahead. >> media, come along with these television companies supports c-span2 as a public service. a geography based well, that's a loaded question