books and authors. funding for c-span2 come from these television companies and more including cox. >> cox is committed to providing eligible families access to affordable internet through the connect to compete program, bridging the digital divide one connected and engage student at a time. cox, bringing us closer. >> cox, along with these television companies supports c-span2 as a public service. >> up next its booktv's monthly in-depth program with author and georgetown university law professor sheryll cashin. her books include "the failures of integration," "the agitator's daughter" and most recently "white space, black hood" in which she contends that government sanctioned segregation policies have led to a geography-based caste system in the united states. >> host: so sheryll cashin, what is the path from and g

abyei in electrical engineering to becoming a law professor at georgetown university and an author? >> guest: well, that's a loaded question, peter. part of it is that i was born and raised in huntsville, alabama, and surrounded by engineers who came to huntsville in the race to put the man on the moon. so engineering was a very common degree that people pursued. i needed money for college. my activist parents were broke, and vanderbilt offered me a scholarship. i loved science and math, and i use the logic of engineering in my writing. you could particularly i think see it in my most recent bookt where i'm a self-taught historian what i bring a systems analysis to the structures that

create racial t inequality. so there's a connection there. it tells me to think critically. >> host: that path beganle in huntsville, alabama, and went through vanderbilt university and then to oxford university, masters in english law, j. d. from harvard and then a clerkship with supreme court justice thurgood marshall. the clinton white house andnd finally the authorship and georgetown university. sheryll cashin, you were only the second african-american to clerk for justice marshall, is that correct? >> guest: no. i was the second black woman to clerk for justice marshall. he had had a number of black male clerks but i was his second black female clerk after his t goddaughter. >> host: what did that experience mean to you?en >> guest: until i get married

and had children it was the best year of my life, bar none. thurgood marshall was an icon obviously but he was also just a wonderful human being. he was the best storyteller. he would share the most -- you would be on the edge of your seat listening to him tell stories from barely getting out of sleepy southern towns with his life, evading and attempted lynching to meeting with prince, hanging out with prince philip when they were drafting the kenyan constitution, when he was doing that, , to hanging out wih langston hughes, his fraternity brother and my grandfathers fraternity brother at lincoln university. so it was just delightful. i devoted time to my work but it also whenever i have the time to just sit with him and talk to

them, i took it and it was fabulous. >> k.host: your second book, "the agitator's daughter", came out in 2008, a family history. who is the agitator and who is the daughter? >> guest: the agitator is my ogfather, dr. john logan cashin, jr. i'm obviously the daughter, and that memoir was my effort in my mid-40s to come to terms with my childhood and understanding why it is that a two-time valedictorian and a dentist in huntsville, alabama, would pour hundreds of thousands of dollars of its 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 cause a lot of financial turmoil for our family. family because of the attacks

that came to him and so i go off and search of understanding my emotional inheritance this idea of agitation for people who have a lot less than you, but i also go off in search of family lore trying to understand this legacy and my father's obsession with black political participation and and achieve reaching reconstruction in the state. so he was he ran for governor against george wallace. he sure did talk about that. yeah at the top of a ticket of a party that he and others created the national democratic party of alabama. my father had no illusions about winning that race, but his point was to create a party where newly registered black voters coming off the voting rights act of 1965 had a place to go with their votes in as late as 1966

the official slogan of the alabama democratic party was white supremacy for the right and you could see that when you entered the voting booth. it was a banner above and below the party emblem the rooster so they founded a different party to enable particularly black people in the black belt of alabama not us to vote but to run for office themselves, and he headed that ticket trying to inspire people to do that and he would proudly say in that election particularly the election of 68 they in counties that used to be dominated by virulent violence backed white supremacy. they got people elected to county sheriff probate judge school board reconstruction return to those counties because of ndpa.

cheryl cashion in your latest book white space black hood you identify as a descendant of both slaves and slaveholders? well, that's the truth. i established that in agitator's daughter where i go back sixth generations of with cash and i descend from a guy named jane john cashion. who was a enslaver in augusta, but also, a very complicated man had an apparently benevolent relationship with a mixed-race woman and father a gaggle of children named cashion, including my great-grandfather. so i descend from that and then my mother's side of the family. i also did descend from enslaved people. and your great-great-grandmother was lucinda boudre lucinda boudre who you write about. right. she is the mick. thank you for naming her she is

the mixed race woman who had this relationship with john cashion in augusta. we could not establish for certain whether she was enslaved or free but i find her in philadelphia in 1860 the head of a household with a you know, something like six children named cashion by then john cashion her common law husband i think was deceased. and somehow this very brave seamstress mixed race woman was able to raise these children mary off her 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 institute for colored youth and i think that was the beginning of my grandfather's. not just education but radicalization. he there were a lot of leading lights of abolitionism and and civil rights. involved in that school and he goes from there after back south and within years of leaving that institute has gotten himself elected to the alabama legislature during reconstruction. cheryl cashin is currently 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 came out in '08 to memoir of four generations of one extraordinary african-american family. place not race a new vision of opportunity in america 2014

loving iterational intimacy in america and the threat to white supremacy came out in 2017 her most recent book white space black hood opportunity hoarding in the age. of inequality is there a thread? that connects these books. absolutely. that all of them are wrestling with the epic story of the american experiment and how and whether we are going to have a republic where racial minorities in addition to white people. have a union and have politics which enables everyone to be a citizen with equal access to opportunity and we've been in this dance and in the loving book.

i start from 1607 for in the for colonial, virginia i go from 1607 to the president and then my most recent book white space black hood i go from the 1890s to the present, but we've been in this dance the beginning between our values of beautiful values of universal human equality dignity and a competing ideology. unfortunately of white supremacy and one of the themes of the book and thank you so much again for having me in this having me be here and having to reflect on this body of work. i think is that i say we've had these structures of white supremacy slavery jim crow the iconic racial segregation that created the black ghetto but we're all trapped in it right? we're my theme is that all of us

of all colors are trapped in. that structures created by supremacy by supremacists and cynics and we have to figure out how to break free to be a unified country. well in your book place not race you write quote. 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? well, i believe in affirmative action. i believe that all institutions should endeavor to be racially and economically diverse and that and they're hiring practices in their you know, the looking for candidates. they should endeavor to do that, but when it comes to access to selective higher education it

just so happens that a lot of people endure structural disadvantage ie separate and unequal under resource schools and a lot of the practices in higher education tended to reify advantage, right? and so while i think 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, right and at the time it seems quaint now i wrote that book in 1940 and slip, i'm tired 2014.

you know, this is before trump became president, right, but there was a lot of backlash to obama a lot of nasty politics going on at that time, and i said particularly to progressives i said if we don't figure this problem out of bringing cohesion a cohesive politics where the vast majority citizens believe in the enterprise of democracy believe in the enterprise of government and see it as responsive to them in their needs. we're going to get an even worse place and when i was sort of rereading what i said, you know obama was still president. we had not yet had a resurgence of alt-right white nationalism. i feel like you know, it was a very intellectually brave book that was against my own children's interest.

but i feel somewhat. it sadly vindicated by what i said about, you know, we were going to be entering a very bad place in politics and it's gotten worse since then. so well, you are as i want to. have another quote from place not race and this ties into what's happening at the university of michigan harvard and some of the other schools quote the achievers in low opportunity places that rise 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 non-cognitive skills and count them as merit. this is something that's coming up before the supreme court, correct? right and what i said in that book is that it was time to take the lessons of decades of

affirmative action and apply it to the entire admissions process for everyone right? i said that we should scrub the admissions process of any practices that don't screen for what social science actually says is merit and for example, i called for making sat scores standardized test scores optional because what they most predict is the wealth. and socioeconomic background of the parents of the applicant. they're not even the sixth or seventh strongest predictor of actual performance in college. the most strong predictor is cumulative high school gpa and grit stick to itiness the willingness to put aside recreation to do the work which

can be predict can be screened for in a holistic application. right? so i also called for scrapping legacy preferences, right and i you know, i was a very i think almost all advocacy is somewhat biographical, right? you know, i was the covalictorian of a pretty good, but not stratospheric public high school sr. butler high school in huntsville, alabama, and i was very aware that there's a valedictorian in every high school. there's a striver in every high school, but what we what we begun to call merit was really a method of exclusion, right? so, you know, and i i don't take credit for it, but i am happy to see that the pandemic has accelerated some of these

innovations and that many schools now are making standardized tests optional, but let me be clear. i want to make this absolutely clear. i teach constitutional law. i am not saying and i have never said that the constitution requires. universities to to never consider race to be race neutral or to be colorblind. there's nothing in the constitution that requires that and indeed if you look at the framers of the 14th amendment who were some of my heroes radical republicans who were trying to reconstruct? the former confederate south um 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 where they were trying to overrule dred scott and affirmatively put a surround or give black people formally enslaved people all of the full rights of citizenship and access, so i want to be clear about the difference between the pending supreme court case and what i argued as a matter of policy design why don't we know more about the progress that huntsville alabama made prior to the very well publicized civil rights movement in alabama and some of the struggles. well, i think the images of birmingham. and water hoses and attack dogs being turned on the children of birmingham. and george wallace and his you know, iconic standing in the schoolhouse store and his rhetoric segregation today segregation mark. those are the things.

that got the most attention. most people don't know what they can read. the agitator's daughter that huntsville, alabama desegregated its public accommodations two full years before the civil rights. act was passed a year before. the water hoses were turned on the children of birmingham in you know, i bloodless transition in part and i i have a chapter about this. my my dad and mom and other civil rights leaders in huntsville came up with. amazing strategy, right they they knew that what the city fathers and they were fathers in huntsville most cared about was huntsville's image as it was trying to help get man on the moon.

and they cared about that and so they they would stage incredible protests. like my mother taking me as a four month old baby to a lunch counter to get herself arrested along with an eight-month pregnant woman doctor sonny hereford's wife. martha hereford or having protests at the us the new york stock exchange saying don't investment for in huntsville is bad for business the city leaders decided, you know, we can't have this this doesn't look good and they negotiated. a desegregation. well, that was a quiet story. that didn't get told because you know other things violent things were happening in alabama that got more attention. before we leave the supreme court you were recently quoted in the washington post talking about the supreme court nomination. that's pending by president biden quote.

my guess. is that the dave biden nominates a black woman. 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 was it a mistake for president biden to narrow his search prior to conducting the search. why did i know you were going to ask me this question. it's too easy. okay first can i just tell our watchers that you're in one room in the studio? and i'm in another and that i'm looking at a just a camera. i can't see you. so i want to apologize to the audience in advance if i sometimes look off. it's it's a strange experience. just looking at a camera. you know, i'm just letting them know. but anyway. so no, it wasn't a mistake. it wasn't a mistake. i i defend what he did and what he's promised to do in part.

it makes transparent what has been going on with the court for decades, right? you know, ronald reagan famously nominated sandra day o'connor said he wanted to nominate a woman and he nominated her was it the case prior to that moment that the only qualified people to serve on the us court the us supreme court were men. no, what and and biden. let's be clear about when he first made this pledge. he made this pledge. he had lost in the primary twice. he was going to south carolina. he wanted to energize frankly african-american voters and it worked it did it was part of his pledge, you know and and african and in some ways, it's just an acknowledgment that there is a group of people who have been

excluded from serving systemically on the us courts who are his most loyal supporters and who re-energized politics in the south to help him particularly win in georgia and other presidents have done similar things to energize their base. they make pledges to nominate people who are pro-life the supreme court people may not like hearing this, but it's just true it is a political institution in that sense and the president is allowed to nominate who he wants right? it's not the same as a written policy for college admissions. all right, and then he's affirmative action as a general matter. it's designed it at its best to

force institutions to diversify themselves in order to be more legitimate in the eyes of the people and the only thing the supreme court has for its legitimacy is that we the people look at it and supported as legitimate and therefore will comply with its laws. well, you know having 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 receiving end of opinions by that court that they heartily disagree with so it's a long-winded way of saying i defend what he's done. it's uncomfortable i suppose but to have him say it out loud that i want to nominate a black woman some people wish he had just waited and nominated a black woman, but at least he's being

transparent about a history of exclusion on the court. it's long overdue. he said and i think he's right. well, good afternoon and welcome to book tvs in depth program where we spend two hours with one author and his or her body of work this month. it's author law professor. cheryl cashin. we've gone through some of her books some of her thoughts and we also want to encourage your participation. here's how you can do so you can dial in on the phone 202 is the area code 748-8200 for those of you in the east and central time zones, two, zero two seven four eight eight two zero one if you live in the mountain and pacific time zones, and if you want to send a text message to professor kashian, you can do it this way. again. this is for text messages only please include your first name in your city if you would 202-748-8903 now you can also make comments on facebook and twitter.

at book tv is our handle for those social media accounts. we'll begin taking those calls in just a few minutes. cheryl cashin, i'm going to spend a few minutes with your book loving which came out in 2017. july 11th 1958 2 am central point, virginia what happened? a couple of police officers burst into richard and mildred lovings home. they were newlyweds they were in bed. they had their marriage license on the wall above them and they were and mildred was pregnant and they took them away arrested them charged them with as felons. for the simple act of being in love and getting married. and that was the beginning of a

nine-year struggle on the part of that couple. to just live in virginia as a happily married couple and what we know about richard and mildred is that they were not. trying to make a point. by getting married, is that correct? no, um to his credit. a richard loving he was participating that they were in central point virginia, which was a small hamlet mainly of farmers that had had a habit of mixing what my father jokingly used to call nighttime integration. had a habit of mixing going back from colonial times. there was a fairly widespread common practice in that community of white men having a -- woman on the side.

and richard loving was unique in that he wanted to marry the woman that he loved the brown woman that he loved and he wasn't making political points. he just loved her and and wanted like other like everybody else to have the ability to marry her and and live and be left alone. 1967 supreme court decision unanimous. what did it say? so that was the war in court. it was an opinion written by. chief justice warren the author of the much more famous. i think brownby 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 non-white person

and white was defined. you were only white if you had 100% white blood which is probably impossible for most people and what the court said was. this 300-year history on the part of virginia of separating people this way regulating them banning them from interracial marriage and sex was a policy designed to promote white supremacy, and 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 used them twice white supremacy. to name the ideology behind the law and he said, you know under the equal protection clause and the due process clause of the constitution united states. this is unconstitutional and we cannot have it and so at that point there were 16 states who still had laws like this at one

point there were 41. and so that was the beginning of the that was the formal dismantling of one plank in jim crow the last plank in jim crow and since then in 1967 when 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 to 1967? it was fairly harrowing. they and i want to tell you that i just started hearing my self echo and my ear it hadn't been happening before and it's it's quite distracting. i just want to let you know that i'll get that fixed. okay? thank you. they fixed so. they agreed to be exiled rather than jailed because they had

very young children. so and this was not a it the judge who oversaw their case convinced them to leave the county and for 25 years and not come back. and in fact that judge wanted to do that rather than have a precedent on the books that might ultimately be challenged and happen and have what exact ultimately happened so they moved to washington dc richard mildred. richard was a bricklayer. he did construction work here. they were very unhappy 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 and she wrote. attorney general robert kennedy for help at the suggestion of a cousin and robert kennedy.

referred them to the aclu and two young aclu lawyers who were recent graduates of the law school i teach at georgetown law took up their case. and for the next you know, like i said nine years they were in and out of court and but they persisted they persisted this quiet couple that did not like publicity and they started opening up their life. there's 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 and particularly mildred who had been very quiet. she started there's a documentary about them you can watch and so they became the ordinary people who became advocates for themselves and for other people. let's take some calls for cheryl cash in first barbara in new

york city. good afternoon to you. good afternoon, peter. good afternoon, professor. kashian a professor in your 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 didn't want to give obama the opportunity to replace her potentially with a black marriage. i i couldn't hear the last part. she wouldn't didn't want to replace her with woo. i didn't hear the black american barbara. where where did this train of thought come from? on this trainer thought came from the fact of how many black in clerks justice ginsburg had in her over 20 years on the court compared to how many for instance a jewish clerks that justice marshall gave an opportunity being a clerk for a supreme court. justice is a big boost on a

resume. so i'm just curious as to what we can make at this point of justice ginsburg. i i have find. feelings about justice ginsburg. i clerked on the dc circuit when she was a judge there. what i would say is i think the reason she didn't retire was not because of worries about being replaced by a black person. i think she might have even welcomed that she if you look at her descents in the affirmative at and some of the affirmative action cases the voting rights cases. she's a strong advocate for racial equality. i think what really what was going on is that she had hit her stride. she was the i guess in some ways. she was the most senior of the liberal wing and i i think she

felt that she still had a lot of work to do. i don't think she thought she wa die when she did. i wish she had stepped down too, but i don't think she had any bad intentions around it and i'll leave it there rosalind is calling in from las vegas. good morning, roslyn. good morning. thanks for taking my call. very interesting conversation. you mentioned about your father helping start a new party for blacks to be. elected to get candy selected. i think the candidates they want to be elected and can you talk anything about the progressive democratic part? i think they're forerunner to blacks joining the democratic party. my grandmother's from south carolina was a member of that found some documents where she was a secretary of it at one point, and i know that they went to a convention in the 1940s and kind of bombarded their way into it. i don't think they wanted them to be heard because most at that

time most of the blacks were still republicans. so can you talk a little bit about that for me, please? thank you. well, i don't prefer i don't know the history of the progressive democratic party that you mentioned. i'm sorry. i can't offer you specifics. i will say though that my father's party or the ndpa was similar. to a party an independent party in mississippi. that's better known the mississippi freedom democratic party. although that was really a caucus right but there's been a history of black americans experimenting with alternative parties. stokely carmichael and started the black panther in lowndes county before ndpa was started,

right? so there and and yes. most many african-americans including members of my family had been republicans. my great-grandfather had been a radical republican. so there have been examples throughout american history of black americans and others in moments trying to participate in democracy through third parties, but i'm not familiar with the progressives example, i will say that the pressure ndpa. 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 i ran to be a delegate under the

regular democratic party ticket and went to my first convention as an 18 year old is an alternate delegate to jimmy carter, right? so i'm sorry. i don't have specifics though about the movement you mentioned well from the agitator's daughter quote. dear diary daddy is running for governor. i don't ever hardly get to talk to him still. i am his only daughter and i support him august 11th 1970. now you referenced this cheryl cash in a minute ago the effect. of your father's activism on the family structure. did you ever resentment against some of the money he was spending and what it it did to the family unit. not until i was a rebellious teenager and trying to figure out how to pay for college, right? i mean i always was proud of my

parents. my mother was a deputy director of a community action agency, you know spent her life in addition to civil rights activism. helping poor people and so i was proud of them. but yeah when and and you know, i i today i appreciate a lot more like the city of huntsville took my father's dental office by imminent domain and put a parking lot there, right? i write about this in the book. there were two my father had his own private plane and there were two attempts to sabotage the plane and he crashed in it. once he fortunately he wasn't harmed. so like the whole world the irs investigated him, right the whole world came down on him and as a teenager, you know teenagers think about themselves

a lot right? i was frustrated by this, you know, we had been a very affluent family, you know, and i was i we had experienced this tremendous change in economic station, and it was in so i was resentful an angry, but i got over it and the writing the book would i really it was like my private therapy right writing. that book helped me understand the costs and consequences of being an agitator and there are many other families. that endured worse than we did, you know the bombing of homes and all this stuff and ultimately i'm very very proud of them and and the final thing i'll say about that is as i say in the book my parents gave me everything i needed to be

successful in this world. i inherited two very very emotional legacies one was a commitment to academic excellence, you know, both of my parents were very very bright people who did well in education and my father in particularly distilled in me that i was excellent and i was capable of excellence so, you know, he had been a valedictorian. i became a valedictorian and then the other creed was this agitator's creed that the only value that mattered to them was that you spend your waking life advocating for people particularly your people who had less than you and i you know, i i have that. i'm not out in the streets, but i've used my platform particularly in this most recent book to do just that so that's my contribution. david's calling in from hobe sound, florida. hi, david.

hi peter, nice to finally speak to you again. how you doing? earlier professor cashion said that the admissions to universities taking race into account as a positive was a constitutional decision. actually. it was a concurring opinion by justice powell. mr. backing now doctor backy god admitted to the university that discriminated against him because he was white and now we have a case coming up to the supreme court where asians are being discriminated against because their asians and because they're doing well. they've done well in high school and can't get into the

universities because there's ineffective quota as there was for jewish students in the 19. 20 through to the 1950 through the 1950s, so not a constitutional decision. all right. that's david in florida professor. kashian. so baki was discriminated against in within a system of racial quotas. that's what justice powell said, but there's been subsequent cases decided by the supreme court. most recently in 2016 in the fisher case. there's fisher one. there's fisher two 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 baki case made that clear but as one factor among many in order to achieve for all students. the educational benefits of diversity. so yes, it is unconstitutional to have a rigid quota like existed in baki, but ironically powell in that concurrence cited the harvard plan and it's more modest use of race as one factor of among many as constitutional and so the supreme court has said this multiple times that 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 and the lower courts who've looked in that at the facts of the harvard case have found in favor of harvard and said that they don't see evidence of intentionally excluding asians or anybody else based on the race their race, you know, the fact of the matter is harvard and other places of selective higher education most people who apply don't get in. i think a mid-rated at harvard is now like three or four percent. nobody is entitled to these places and what counts as merit is is you know, they're trying to get a diverse class where they have people from all kinds of backgrounds and no one person because can say i i'm entitled

to that spot nor can you really say realistically in a system where there's a very modest in reference to race as a plus factor in order to achieve a real racial diversity. you can't honestly say this person was excluded because that person was included. so i agree with you our analysis of the concurrence in powell, but i disagree with your analysis of the facts of what is going on in harvard. let's let's hear from cornelius and alexandria, louisiana cornelius. good afternoon to welcome to book tv. good afternoon, peter and i want to bring up to quick things first miss cash it i want to thank you for taking the questions. i haven't been african-american here from alexandria, louisiana and our lieutenant governor named billy nun. gessner has going on the civil

war civil rights trails and stuff and recently at camp beauregard. we had the 761st they were called patton's panthers and they fought very heroically in world war two. so we just honored them this wednesday here in alexandria, louisiana at camp beauregard and stuff and i told the call screener if you ever heard of them or would you do a book about him? i know kareem abdul jabbar has this my second thing. i grew up in the 60s. i'm 61 years old. so i grew up under segregation and integration and i know you you didn't think we did well to a certain extent i agree with you on that because there was more discipline in the segregated schools and once we became integrated, we lost a lot of that discipline and stuff like that and the supreme court has really messed up when they took the bibles out of school

prayer out of school and stuff like that. so so our biblical cornelius integration is not something you support. is that correct? but he has gone but i think that's what he said when it came to education. did you hear that as well professor? yeah, so i i black americans well and integrated schools, he attributed that to me and i didn't say that in fact all the social science shows that black americans tend to do better in integrated well-resourced schools than in segregated lower resource schools, and i did well in well-resourced integrated schools the caller and i are basically the same age right? i was fortunate huntsville,

alabama. i went to enter me and my brothers were integration pioneers in the early early years, but each year for 12 years of public education the schools. i attended became more integrated and they were rel. such that i was able to leave those schools and get go to vanderbilt and compete and graduate summa cum laude in electrical engineering right that said the high school that i graduated from sr. butler high school became very impoverished after i left racially resegregated so impoverished and segregated that they closed the school down and that's the story right? we had i feel fortunate to be middle-aged in some way where i got to go to school in the south at a time and in the 20-year period when it was most trying

to give effect to brown v board, and we've since kind of retreated from that work and the average black or latino child in public education today tends to be in a school in which a majority their peers are minority and at least half of their peers are poor and it it does not serve 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. cheryl cash and i want to spend a little time with your newest book white space black hood opportunity hoarding and segregation in the age of inequality. what do you mean by opportunity hoarding? opportunity hoarding is the over investment and exclusion in a

fluent high opportunity places that tend to be very and increasingly asian. and the disinvestment and containment elsewhere an exclusion of people elsewhere, right? that's the dichotomy white space black hood and what i argue in that book is that we have we have a system in we have a system of residential tcaste. these two are at the extremes, affluent majority white space, concentrated black and brown poverty. in between there's a lot of difference but what i'm arguing is that society over invests in infrastructure, schools, all the amenities that make life good in a fluid high opportunity setting, and little else who can't afford to buy their way into those neighborhoods is

getting a very different deal. and everyone was excluded also subsidizing those places with their gas tax, with her income tax, sales taxes for the golden infrastructure and amenities that they get. that's t opportunity hoarding. a more concrete example in my first chapter, the struggling people of baltimore, people in the public transportatio' were denied a light rail redlined by governor perry hogan, but a relatively affluent suburbs of washington, d.c., maryland suburbs, did get a purple line, right, and it isgh being built, right. so that's an example. overinvestment and this investment. >> host: you also come to stick with baltimore you also talk about the highway to know where as an example of

discrimination. what is that? >> guest: well, there's a picture of it in my book, the highway to nowhere. you can google it and see it. black neighborhoods not just in baltimore but wherever large numbers of great migrants landed in the city they were subjected the cumulative blunt force trauma of major public policies, urban renewal, displacing black people from downtowns in order toal revitalize it for a professional class. and then the interstate highway program. you look at almost every major city that has a critical mass of black people, they tended to run the highways through their neighborhoods. and in baltimore highway was ron but to the advocacy, primarily of former senator barbara

mikulski, they t were able to sp that highway from running through some of the white working class neighborhoods and they just stopped it. and it was the highway to nowhere. like neighborhoods endured the trauma of it, but got no benefit to be able to travel anywhere from it. >> host: he also spent a bit of time in "white space, black hood" talking about what i i t it is, the definition of ghetto. but you call them government created ghettos. >> guest: right. the primary response to the great migrants come 16 million black people moved to escape jim crow, moved north and west between like 19 teens in 1970. the primary response to them wherever they landed was to

contain them in their own neighborhoodshr and through a series of policies, you know, and chicago, give an example of the southside of chicago, black people near where michelle obama grew up, were contained in 18 square-mile area, with intense density of people that whites never had to endure. people living on topop of peopl. .. which i just mentioned hundreds of thousands of black people were displaced from their homes because blacks a lot often lived very strategically right near downtown. so they in the name of slum clearance their homes get mowed down. where were those people moved? lots of moved into new public housing projects in chicago in particular high-rise dense public housing projects and what

happens when you have a policy where? and it's assigned on a racially discriminatory basis white people in public housing will live here black people if you have a policy where il 100 percent of the people feel they have to be black and poor, overnight intense concentrated black poverty is constructed. in baltimore, at the time of the 60s lacks s were scattered throughout the hecity. you could live where you could afford to live. you could try on the clothes, shot where you wanted but in the teams they start this business of racial zoning and saying we're going to contain all these black people. there are too many of them coming. they use violence, zoning. to push them into areas as i

said, concentrated black poverty overtime and what happens is ideas about blackness are associated with neighborhoods that are historically redlined. historically this investedin . and so white avoidance of living near black people becomes entrenched. and we kind of lived withthat dilemma . the same neighborhoods that were redlined, you look at the maps, i encourage everyone listening to the. google redlining gand name the city and a map will, and you'll see the history of constructing black neighborhoods apart from white neighborhoods in systemic disinvestment of them and to this day those neighborhoods eight decades on, a fed study says they to this day experienced disinvestment. >> john is calling in from

cyrus texas, please go ahead. >> cyprus texas. >> thank you. >> thanks to the professor and we want to congratulate alabama and m, university hbcu, doing great things through the years. in texas we have two of the largest publicly and down universities. university of texas which was promoted by the late reverend jacob fontaine as one of black newspapers and the founders of several churches here. he was patrick henry's great-grandson in texas and we also have to realize the head of the republican party in texas, the black and tan that was working for the

republican party by the lily white republicans because of their prosperityand economic politicaladvancement . look at louisiana , the first black governor, a republican. mississippi, first us senator was a republican but my point is you teach at georgetown. georgetown is part of the doctor jones who is 1619 project talks about virginia. the original 13 colonies. the original 13 colonies did on it did not include much of the country as we know today and when you talk about georgetown, the jesuit priests there slsold in slave africans to plantation owners in africa and you talk about william and mary college. >> host: don, what's your question? what do you wantthe professor to respond to ?>>.

>> caller: why are we allowing the policies that was regional in scope as far as slavery and the emancipation and freedom and movement of thought of african-americans. why do we allow the original 13 colonies universities and intellectual society if you will dictate how the rest of the united states, why is our history being spread like cancer through theunited states ? >>. >> host: we have a lot to work with their, professor sheryll cashin . >> guest: i didn't really got quite get the question. i want torespond to a couple things you said quickly . i write about my great-grandfather and his participation in

reconstruction. he mentioned the black and tan's versus the lily white. my great-grandfather was part of radical republican black and catan republicanism. and what i do in that book is i celebrate the era of reconstruction. my great-grandfather participated in and the era of the second reconstruction that my father participatedin . and in both of those examples , what you had was biracial coalitions participating in and agitating and politics together with black leadership and you mentioned some famous or they ought to be famous black people who served. 700, six or 700 men of color

served in thelegislature during reconstruction . and this is a period of history that's not known so well or celebrated. it was the first efforts, the first reconstruction, the first effort i believe in the history of the world and certainly we're still in this struggle or experiment. when you had the quality and politics where everybody regardless of color is supposed to get to vote, supposed to get to run. compete for ideas and if not suppressed. it's destroyed really quickly. tbut this is what the voting rights act was about. and my hope and prayer is that we how to have a infunctioning multiracial politics in which people of all genders, races get to express themselves at the voting box, get to run and

not have structures that suppress popular will. >> paul, portsmouth rhode island. for an entire generation of f blue-collar whites who grew up in boston during the first busing policy disaster, it is hard to have policies like perpetual admissions set aside 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 policy is what most people on the right are pushing back against. >> so i want to make it clear that under the constitution and the decisions of the supreme court that we talked about, i'm not aware of any university that sets aside

plots for individuals based on their race. if they did itwould be illegal . and we've actually always, when i place not race in 2014 , arguing against consideration of race admissions but for performing admissions processes to widen the pipeline. so that working-class whites and 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 percent of private universities will still were still considering race so this idea that there is this pervasive practice of

setting aside slots for people based on race is not true. it's 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 but that has been central to republican politics. for like 50 years. from richard nixon, law and order.ronald reagan. the clintons and super predator. this is stoking up division. stoking of resentment and that is exactly what i was responding to in writing place not race.

i said we're in a very bad place.y and we're getting to this place where trust in the entire project of politics and the entire project of governments is declining. it's fallen off the roof nc since then. the toxicity has ygotten worse than. my life and my writing has been about how we can create a functioning multiracial politics. and so with that said, i just can't support the colorblind constitutionalism coming from the right that says that you can never haunder any circumstance consider race when it might be necessary. when it might be necessary. ti just don'tthink that's 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 up division out of politics. >> if you can't get through on the phone lines and you want to make a connection you can send a text message. include your first name and your city to 202-748-8903. and those are for text messages only and linda in santa barbara sent in this text message . what is your opinion of the effect of lyndon johnson's rate society programs and their effect on black and black families in particular. do you ever dialogue with thomas soul and other black conservatives. how you feel about their point of view. >> so the great society programs are often lambasted. but the great society is the

whole project of the civil rights revolution which i credit lyndon baines johnson for responding to the social movement and supporting and signing civil rights act of 64. voting rights act of 65. reforming integration to no longer discriminate against people from asia for example. being able to naturalize and live here. the fairhousing act .r that was a social revolution. it was one generation we went from a country where two thirds, maybe close to three quarters of black people live below the poverty line. 1950 the poverty rate was 72 percent. these programs and policies and civil rights enforcement's "opportunities and in one generation a

majority of black people are not poor.. three quarters of black people are not poor. so that, the johnson administration did a good job . of bringing black people into out of a caste system and into civic solutions that we still have a struggle but i view that as positive. do i commiserate at all? no but i've been on panels with black conservatives. you know, i'm not averse to that. i'm open to ideas. iself identify as a progressive . i believe in civil rights and civil rights enforcement and we'll keep writing and advocating for it. >> host: george's calling in

from king of prussia pennsylvania, you're on with author sheryll cashin. >> caller: i'd like to ask the author if you think the black lives movement has helped the typical black community. i live here outside philadelphia where there has been a significant increase in crime and homicides and i believe they are related because now there's less law u.enforcement and crime prevention. thank you. >> host: professor. >> guest: i am not intimately familiar with the state of reform or lack thereof with policing. that's not my area of expertise. there has been admittedly a spike in violent crime since 2020, since the pandemic. there's been a lot of speculation about the why of it. some would like to suggest

that police have been hampered and can't do their jobs. others are speculate that there's a lot of economic deprivation coming out of the pandemic and that to 22 i don't purport to know the answer to that but what i would say is i study some cities that have experimented with strategies outside of policing that have achieved a decline in violent crime even in this nperiod where it's going up and i offer that example in the last chapter of my book. i want to celebrate richmond california and the 20 cities, 20 odd cities in this country that have open offices of

neighborhood safety. what are they doing?they are hiring former incarcerated people o. 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 and are hiring them to be disruptive . to proactively. they know that kids and their kids in some of these neighborhoods that are most likely to pull the trigger. and being interventionists with these young people and wrapping them in services, being mentors to them. richmond california catried to approach and reduce gun violence by 55 percent for a fraction of the cost of mass incarceration. and i don't believe in defunding the police . but i do believe that we can't police our way out or

incarcerate our layout of some of the endemic problems in high poverty neighborhoods and we need to be innovators . and so the way to get there, first you have to see people even people who are in gauge in gun violence. umas three-dimensional human beings are capable of transformation . it's if given the chance. other cities have innovated just with giving a universal basic income in some of these time poverty neighborhoods and that alone has experienced, adolescent violence. another city tried moving some of the public housing, trying to be concentrate poverty and moving some of the people out of public housing entire opportunity neighborhoods and found that help reduce gun violence . so when i call for is setting

aside the stories we tell ourselves, some of the dogma we tell ourselves constantly. about certain neighborhoods, about the black family and free ourselves up by bringing an attitude of care rather than predation to certain tneighborhoods and once you do that you can focus on evidence-based strategies that may make theproblem better and cost less to taxpayers . >>. >> host: in white space black hood you spend time with the new york city broken windows policy. 80 percent 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 wasn't successful. imagine if you are the parent of a black sonor you are that black person . what's sense does it make to have a policy where a percent

of the black males in the entire city are get stopped. often for just being on the sidewalk. i had a teacher at georgetown, i had some black male students tell me about these experiences. one of them told me hekept a running count at the been stopped 19 times . and he was a law-abiding citizen.and think about the distrust tat that kind of blanket approach where every black male the lens of thug is applied to them. a lens of presumed versus presumed citizen so the state over invests in policing . a lot of wasted time and resources. didn't necessarily reduce crime at all.

you create distrust. of policing. communities are less likely to cooperate with the police to solve crimes. i cite the study in the last chapter of the book where in chicago alone there's been there spending 851 million dollars per inner-city black ever for every four years. $1 million per inner-city block every four years to incarcerate people . almost $1 trillion. talmost $1 billion every four years to incarcerate. as it may the gun violencego down? no ? so what i called for is just again, focusing on community. 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 and giving them an alternative to the wife their leading. that's what richmond did. they created what i call a peacemaker fellowship . it was only two dozen young men who were doing the shooting or likely doing the shooting so they brought them in and said you need to change your life around. you need behavioral therapy. you need drug treatment. you need a job. you need training. you need to getout of here . they just help them develop highlights for transformation. and it worked. it worked. >> next call comes from kelvin in portland oregon. good afternoon. >> good afternoon. thank you for taking the call. i just want to say that i want to thank you for your leadership in writing the books. and your narrative

. i believe that it allows those of us who don't follow the policy and politics closely to dispel the intellectual dishonesty and have that done is really fantastic so thank you for your leadership in writing these books and i am my family is from birmingham alabama. and i have a question to you professor, a reference to the archaic political structure in the south and do you see or any thoughts on how that can change to push more democratic thinking. to the electoral finish line. because over the past 10 years some of the folks that have run have had a systemic leadership in and being the purveyors of racism and yet they received funding year after year and have been on

the frontlines of finishing. >> host: can you give an example of your referring to? >> i don't want to preface what's been done to african-american men so i won't do that other folks. just keeping it real general and just say that i want to thank c-span and the professor for her analysis on social issues. >> going to leave it there, thank youfor calling in . anyresponse for that color ? >> i want to say thank you. your comment makes me feel good. i appreciate yoursupport and your kind words .>> text message, no city, no name. edon't you express your social justice commitment through

your arcs?are you showing your art anywhere now? >> guest: [laughter] >> i know this person is. one of the things that i do to just heal myself and take me away from the troubles of the world is i paint. i'm a practicing artist and i have, i'm in an exhibit right now at the zenith gallery in washington. we just had the opening. i did a seriesof collages of black americans , black women dsurrounded in nature including breanna taylor. i just wanted to surround her in things i felt she deserved and i was trying to heal her and heal me. and just focus on beauty.

>> host: we just showed an image of serena williams. we go back to that image? yeah, here we go. >> guest: serena, if you're watching i hope you don't mind. i was so inspired by you on that wheaties box and i made a collage. i just wanted to surround her because i thought she deserved it. she's such an inspiration but the lawyer in me under the council of my husband made isure i added my own art to i . >> serena chance, how to avoid a copyright infringement. >> host: is your husband also a lawyer? is he a professor? >> guest: he's just stepped

down as general counsel at texas city in baltimore. he's worked for a series of tech companies. he's an intellectual property owner. my wonderful husband. >> host: how long will it be up ? >> guest: the show opened on the fourth, it's up through the 25th or 26. you can go to the zenith gallery's website. >> host: for author sheryll cashin, gary, fort worth texas. >> caller: professor, in the last few years i've heard about critical race theory and i'm a rater and i've never heard about that before. i wantedyour thoughts on it . the superintendent of education here in texas are resigning left and right over this issue.

we have nine retiring just in the dallas-fort worth area and especially in the area of the white student being hurt, getting their feelings hurt or feeling inferior because of teaching critical race theory. couldyou give me your thoughts on that please ? >> thank you so much for that question. i thought peterwas going to ask me thatquestion so i appreciate you brought it up . first off , critical race theory was developed by legal academics. to the extent it was taught at all, it was in higher education dmainly. in law schools, mainly. the idea are 2 main tenets of critical race theory. one is that systems of racial

disadvantage, of racism. systems of racial disparity, racial disadvantage, racial iinequality are embedded in our legalstructure . we have laws that may be on face neutral, not like jim crow where blacks have tolive here, separate water fountains . but they have those consequences. they have consequences of structural inequality and you can read my book white space black hood and the show we have a system of residential cast where we have separate and unequal neighborhoods despite having spatially neutral laws. the first tenet. the second is that the civil rights revolution that we had which was mainly an antidiscrimination. we passed laws that banned discrimination against individuals.

and housing and employment, etc. that those words up to the task of eliminating this these structural systemic systems of racial inequality. that's basically what crt does and it teaches particularly law students to think critically about our system. and the third thing i would add and i'm not a critical race the rest. i don't teach critical race theory in my classes. but the third thing i would add is that i think is part of this inquiry and it's always been there is that the systems that have been constructed that are oppressed racial minorities also harm other people. so it's a way of teaching people to think critically about our systems . that's what it is. it is not taught.

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

not crt . so i think it's important unfortunate and i think that what happens and i'll be honest. the previous president, he brought it up. during the election. we're going to scrub crt from everything and now it's like so many other things a point of dividing people. and upsetting people. i don't know plabout the specifics in texas but it is troubling just to hear that school superintendents are resigning over this. i'm not aware of any curriculum that been taught to children that's designed to make white children feel bad about themselves. for example, i teach a course race and american law. when i teach about the era of

slavery and the laws that existed, i'm not trying to make the white students in my class feel bad about themselves and there's 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. so 748 eight 200, if you live in east central time zone and you want to dial-in 748 8201. for those of you in the mountain and pacific time zones can't getthrough on the phone lines you want to send a text message . 202748 8903 is the number two text into. pleaseinclude your first name and your city . stephanie is in deerfield beach florida, you are on with sheryll cashin. >> thank you. wonderful, thank you so much professor for your just so

many topics and i appreciate it so much. i want to ask you your thoughts on i guess i appreciate what you said about biden being just transparent about the policies he made that he wanted to select a black woman for the supreme court which doesn't seem that radical but apparently set everybody's hair on fire but i wonder your thoughts about what's clyburn made he was suggesting in his support of michelle childs that academics diversity is also important and that it would be really wonderful if biden chose someone who was obviously intellectually qualified and in character and just in every way but was also from a public university which i think even scalia said we need to get away from a supreme court made up of

justices from harvard and yale. i wonder your thoughts on that and if that's would be like a bridge too far if biden were to choose a black woman who wasn't from ideal college. >> absolutely it would not be a bridge toooofar . first of all thank you forthe question, is an excellent question . part of the problem with the way we have gone about collecting supreme court justices is we very much narrowed the pipeline. and some of that has to do with the politicization of the nomination process aand how it makes it very very hard to nominate anyone who has a paper trail whose remotely expressing an opinion about anything. in a gridlock congress so what they tend to do is

nominate almost exclusively now court of appeals judges, circuit court judges. who you know, the only paper trail for the most part they have of weight is judicial opinion. and as you say, a lot of people that get nominated with the hard detail, i am proud and have enjoyed it very much thank you harvard. but it creates this perception that anybody else who doesn't come from the very same distinct pipeline is somehow to use an unfortunate phrase is lesser than. as if experience in different walks of life isn't relevant to the project of judging when it very much is.

i think we should just be looking at people who went to harvard or yale. we shouldn't just belooking at men . we shouldn't just be looking at, we should be excluding women were women of color that we also should be thinking about district court judges. district court judges, they try cases. they're there with human beings seem the justice system in action. we rarely, i can't remember the last time we put nominated someone for the court who came from the trial experience. as i believe this justice, this person you mentioned would. so just as i said in place not race i think we need to expand the pipeline to institutions and absolutely. having someone come from a

fine public university, they're wonderful. public institutions out there . rithere's genius everywhere in this country. everywhere. so i applaud that. and they will be inevitably if this particular person that you're talking about , i'm forgetting her name but she's a judge from south carolina. who is nominated to the court aof appeals that their thinking about holding it, we'll see what happens with her but i lost my train of thought. >> you been talking about the court. i apologize to you. the court right below the supreme court. >> my point was there's genius everywhere. if that particular person gets nominated inevitably

there will be some smart particularly on the internet. it's too much snark on the internet . people noprojecting that yes, get a black woman and she's from a lesser than institution and there will be acommentary like that but we need to resist that. we needto resist that although i'm not endorsing ianyone in particular . but i am endorsing that project of opening up the pipeline to institutions be in higher education or c-span or any university to people from all walks of life to enable us to be a more cohesive country. >> angela san mateo california, go ahead . >> good morning, thanks for taking my call. i wanted to address going back to psat.

can you hear me? >> we're listening, please go ahead. >>. >> host: angela, don't look at your tv. turn down the volume on your phone. just talk, we can both hear you. >> thanks ever so much, good morning. my question is i found it most intriguing that people who intend or want to dumb down education feel that it's not necessarily the need to go to a university. it usually comes from people themselves who are well d educated and have gone to universities. when you graduated high school it was a difficult time. high school today, it's a very difficult time i don't

agree with dumbing down to the black children. if you don't like the result, it takes a lot of things to do that. but not to dumb it down because they're too stupid, there to black, they're too poor, theycannot make it . i don't understand that. >> host: thank you ma'am. sheryll cashin, the so-called dumbing down of education. >> guest: i thought she was talking about scrapping standardized's test and saying that wasdumbing down. i thought she said that psat and sat . >> host: take it anywhere you want. >> guest: 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 and again, it's cumulative high school gpa and the willingness to do exactly what the caller was suggesting . to forgo recreation to do the work.. and you know, admissions is a bit like detective work. but then you can see the evidence from recommendations and from what you find out about a person about how many hours a week are they putting in? but cumulative gpa, i graduated back in the day with a 4.0. i made an a in every single class i took. i only made o1b in 4 years and i went to vanderbilt as well.

my sat scores were okay. they weren't stratospheric but they would not have predicted that i would have graduated summa cum laude in intellectual engineering. anybody that interviewed me or paid attention, i would have realized when i got to vanderbilt i was going to be in the library on friday and saturday night. when no one else was there. i'm not an advocate of p dumbing down and i say that to people, take the most challenging class that's available to youno. i can't speak to what she means in terms of k-12 education, dumbing down.i will say black and latino children in public school today tend to get the kind of soul killing wrote education, teaching to test rather than

the liberal, stimulating kind of inquiry that advantaged schools tend to get which is unfortunate. >> what was that be at vanderbilt? >> it was some kind of very advanced electrical class. i conveniently forgotten it. >> cheryl of woodland carolina go ahead. >> hello to you and thank you so much to this wonderful, exciting conversation. i just feel like she's so knowledgeable. we do need to have these discussions. and i heard someone ask you

what do you do to kind of get all that stuff in the back of your head and enjoy yourself. i know you have to estate from it because it's so much but you have been picked up for such a time as this. and ithank you so much . >> host: could you tell us a mlittle bit about yourself ? ur>> guest: i am a nurse, i h have a masters degree in nursing education. i taught nursing in eastern north carolina and just so many things. i do believe that education is important. i do believe othat institutional racial discrimination and it is hurtful when you go into a nursing institution to care

for people in eastern north carolina. that you run into these situations but i wanted to ask her how do you continue to not be an agitator but to help upcoming nurses to get into an institution using their academic abilities and not be distracted by the inequality even of ntadvancement in the institution of nursing. >> host: thank you ma'am. >> guest: 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, you like the people i love in alabama so thank you .

i want to thank you for being w a nurse. nurses are having a very difficult time. there on the front lines right now with a pandemic that killed close to 900 million people. have a specific answer about nursing itself and how individual nurses. i assume you're a black american. you sound like one to me but as you struggle in institutions and you said how can we anadvance things, help people and not get distracted by whatever else is going on institutionally or in colleges institutionally. that's a challenge for a lot of people. it's a difficult time. i personally i'm a christian.

a baptist. i take sustenance with daily prayer. i prayed before coming here today. i read the bible before i go to bed. everybody has to find a way to make it in this country but i'll say this. having an attitude that the other is not the enemy is helpful. i teach, 101 first years and i have people from all walks of life, all intellectual interest , political commitments and i try to not have an us them attitude about these wonderful young people who are performing and with when i engage intellectuals approaches to things that i don't

necessarily agree with, and i think we all need to take it down to the human level. not see people that we are dealing with or not dealing with as somehow bad, evil people. and take it down to a human level and try to meet people halfway. if you can't agree on something, perhaps just smile and say have a good day and keep on going. i hope something i've said is useful to you. >> every author whose on in-depth we ask for their favorite books and what they're reading now.erhere's what sheryll cashin told us. favorite books, mercy by toni morrison, fire next time i james baldwin and narrative of the life of frederick ydouglass, an american slave by frederick douglass . currently reading as you mentioned the bible, new international version.

harlem shuffle, the sweet flypaper of life by roy, and langston hughes both for delaney and james baldwin to the unusual door. sling time by zadie smith and the price of the ticket by james baldwin. ms. baldwin's name came up three times on your list . sheryll cashin, why is that? >> nobody beats james baldwin as the 20th century writer for me for the power of his language. for the truth telling. and his own emotion and passion to just jump off the page. i've worked very very hard with this book to be a writer . and to be a good writer.

i have literary ambitions s and i find myself going back to baldwin and he was also a writer who was engaged with the civilrights movement, engaged with the civil rights struggles of his time . i tried to be, so he's inspired me on so many levels . but on a nonfiction writer. and he's for me among the best of nonfiction writers who are commenting on nwhat i perennially comments on was the circumstances of race, the african-american experience of trying to engage folders and. so i never get enough of him. >> i've been rereading baldwin myself and he's one that you've got to turn off the tv.

you can't but be distracted by other things because of the language. you want to absorb it a little. >> that's what i read. for me, reading is kind of healing at the end of the day . no devices other than my kindle. but there's nothing more intimate atto me than reading and trying to get what authors say. it's like the author is speaking justto me when i'm doing it . and then i don't know.y i don't know why i'm so enamored with him but i am. >> text message, something you write about in white space black hood and this is from christian in simsbury connecticut. what is your opinion of ntgentrification especially in? >> i used to spend a lot of time in atlanta growing up in alabama and i worked for two

different law firms. i haven't spent much time in atlanta in a while but what i hear about gentrification i have to go on what i hear and is going on in other places. there's a lot of displacement of black people or what people are discovering, people want back in cities now and the housing prices are going through the roof in a lot of desired cities so people are discovering that black neighborhoods are more maffordable. so we are getting i think that's what they're 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'll say that okay, so i didn't say

this yet. and i'm not plugging this book today but i say that the three main processes of residential caste happen to be anti-black narratives. keeping boundaries, opportunity hoarding and stereotype driven surveillance. which people are familiar with if you've been watching the videos and things like that. it so happens that the surveillance of black bodies tends to spike in gentrified neighborhoods where a new group is coming in. and they may not be comfortable with some of the cultural norms of people who've been in the neighborhood. i tell a devastating story of a 105-year-old dominican man been playing dominoes on his sidewalk for four decades in spanish harlem having the

police call on him hundreds of times till he finally stopped doing it. tthat's an aspect of gentrification that's particularly troubling. but i can't exactly what's happening in atlanta as i read that sounds like a lot of what's happening in terms of formerly majority black neighborhoods turning over but i don't have specific knowledge. >> leon, lincoln nebraska, please go ahead. >> i just wanted to thank you for having me on today. and appreciate you taking my call. wanted to maybe talk about the situation and i don't know if she has any thoughts on that matter but on affirmative action in which

we are dealing with and it has been i think in my opinion and a good tool. we have a situation in the nfl where we're looking at a black guy, i head coach that has been overlooked not because of his qualifications . but apparently has to do with possibly the ownership of these teams and who is in position to make these decisions. so if it's not affirmative action, in a perfect world we wouldn't need these types of things but since we're not in a perfect world we need something to emanate these scenarios where people are qualified, just the ones that were talking about there's a number ofsituations . even to the supreme court, you can look at the qualifications of these women which i think they're

well-qualified to be in those positions so we're having the conversation of if there qualified why we're picking so on and so forth so what your thought on that? >> as i said before i support affirmative action as a tool to diversify institutions. i am not particularly knowledgeable about the nfl. i sort of skim the headlines of this particular coach you're talking about . but america is a view willingly ridiverse country. and i say that in a positive way. i shouldn't have used that phrase but it's an incredibly diverse country. and that's what makes the american experiment exciting. it's what brings vitality to this country. and the research shows that

companies ctend to do better with a diverse workforce. when you have people who have you know, more different perspectives brought to bear you tend to get a better decision. so affirmative action, well-designed affirmative action that's not racial quota but it makes institutions better and it puts pressure on institutions to widen the talent pool. to break out of habits that tend to her read the fine advantage. that tend to redefine thesame old networks . and expand looking for talented, qualified people. i'm not aware of any advocates of affirmative ioaction whose saying we should be hiring unqualified people.

what affirmative action does when properly designed is it helps institutions find qualified people who historically have not been in thepipeline. historically not been considered . and that's a good thing as far as i'm concerned. >> host: joseph in syracuse new york, we have about a minute left. >> caller: ti have a lot of questions, can you hear me? >> host: we can hear you just fine, goahead and ask your priority question . >>. >> caller: i have a lot of es questions but the one that was answered was she is baptist, i'm a baptist also but is she a saved baptist, i want to know. >> guest: i am saved and i've been dumped in the water. yes.

absolutely. >> host: in our last minute i want to read a text from wesley in cummings georgia. i'm enjoying your conversation. i have to say i can't take my eyes off your net necklace. it is gorgeous and reflects your artistic sensibilities. >> guest: thank you for noticing that. >> host: this is from the failures of integration, professor sheryll cashin writes i think the possibilities for eintegration could be much enhanced if more white people and more middle and elupper-class people could become more comfortable with not always been overwhelmingly dominant numbers. integration is not to pursue it for its own sake although it has its own inherent as a point of integration is the same as the core motivation of the civil rights movement

itself. integration then and now is ethe best route to equal opportunity for everybody. that's what she wrote. sheryll cashin is the author of five books, the mostrecent is white space, black hood, opportunity hoarding and age of any quality . she's been our guest for the past two hours on in-depth . thank you for being with us. >> saturday, april 30 trevor noah headlines the first white house correspondents association dinner since 2019 . president biden is expected to attend making this the first time since 2016 a sitting president have made an appearance. coverage begins at 8 pm eastern on c-span. sights and sounds from inside the ballroom and passed dinners and had a speaking program.

coverage on c-span.org and the c-span video app begins live at 6 pm eastern where you can watch celebrities, journalists and other guests walk the red carpet . the white house correspondentsassociation dinner , live saturday night april 30 on c-span, c-span radio, c-span.org and the c-span nowvideo app . weekends on c-span2 are an intellectual feast. every saturday american history tv documents america stories and on sunday td brings you the latest in nonfiction books and authors. funding comes from these television companies and more including charter medications . >> broadband is a force for empowerment. that's why charter has been upgrading technology, empowering opportunity in communities big and small. carter isconnecting us . >> charter communications along with these television

companies port c-span2 as a publicservice . >> at least six presidents recorded conversations in office. here many of those conversations on c-span's new podcast presidential recordings. >> season one focuses on the presidency of lyndon johnson. you'll hear about the 1964 civil rights act, the goal of tonkin incident, march on selma and the war in vietnam. not everyone knew they were being recorded. >> certainly johnson's secretaries new because they were tasked with transcribing many of those conversations. in fact they were the ones who made sure the conversations were tapes as johnson would signal to them through an open door between his office and their. >> you also hear some blunt talk. >> jim. i want a report of the number of people assigned to kennedy

the day he died, the number assigned to me now and if mine are not blessed i want them blessed quick. if i can't ever go to the bathroom i won't go. i promise i won't go anywhere else . i'll stay behind these black gates. >> presidentialrecordings, find it wherever you get your podcasts . >> next it's book tvs monthly index program with author and historian allen guelzo. books include gettysburg, fateful lightning and robert e lee: a life. our biography of the civil war general who commanded the army innorthern virginia . >> allen guelzo, let's begin our conversation with your latest book. robert e lee: a life. who was he before the civil war, what was hisreputation ? >> robt