>> cox is committed to providing eligible families access to affordable internet to the connect to complete program. reaching the digital divide one connected and engaged student at a time. cox, bringing us closer. cox along with these television companies support c-span2 is a public service. >> next, book tv's monthly in-depth program with author and georgetown university law professor cheryl cassian, her books includes the affairs of innovation, agitators daughter and most recently white space black hood and contents government sections policies led to a geography based system in the united states. >> what is the path to becoming a law professor at georgetown university?

>> part of it i was born and raised in alabama and surrounded by engineers who came to huntsville with the man on the moon. common degree that people pursued i needed money for college. my activist parents were broke and vanderbilt offered me a vanderbilt offered me a scholarship and i am forever grateful. i love science and math. i use the logic of engineering in my writing, particularly i think you can see it in my most recent book for ma historian but i bring a systems analysis to the structures that create racial inequality so there is a connection there. it helps me to think critically.

>> that began in huntsville alabama and went through vanderbilt university and then oxford university. jd from harvard and clerkship with supreme court justice marshall. the clinton white house and finally authorship and georgetown university. cheryl cassian, you are only the second african-american to clerk for justice marshall, correct? >> no, i was the second black woman to clerk for justice marshall. he had a number a of black male clerks but i was his second black female clerk after his goddaughter. >> what does that experience mean to you? >> until i got married and had children, it was the best year of my life bar none. marshall was an icon but also a

wonderful human being. 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 within with his life evading an attempted lynching to meeting with prince hanging out with prince philip when they were drafting the canyon constitution when he was doing that to hanging out with langston hughes his fraternity brother and my grandfather's fraternity brother alpha phi alpha at lincoln university. so it was just delightful. i i devoted time to my work, but i also whenever i had the time to just sit with him and talk to him i took it and it was fabulous. your second book. the agitator's daughter came out in 2008 to family history. who's the agitator? and who's the daughter?

the agitator is my father dr. john logan cash and junior. 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 his own money into a political party for the benefit of dirt poor black sharecroppers who were down in the black belt the middle western part of the state in ways that caused a lot of financial turmoil for our 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 was going to 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 resident of residential cast 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 of the amenities that make life good in a fluent high opportunity settings and everyone else who can't afford to buy their way into those neighborhoods is getting a very different deal and everyone who's excluded is also subsidizing those places with their gas taxes with their income taxes sales taxes. the golden infrastructure and

amenities that they get that's opportunity hoarding a more concrete example in my first chapter, you know, the struggling people of baltimore carless people who need public transportation. we're denied a light rail red line by governor larry hogan, but the relatively affluent suburbs of washington dc maryland. suburbs did get a purple line, right and it's being built right? so as an example over investment and disinvestment. you also to stick with baltimore. you also talk about the high weight and nowhere as an example of discrimination. what is that? well, there's a picture of it in my book the highway to know where you can google it and see it. the black neighborhoods not just

in baltimore, but wherever large numbers of great migrants landed in this city, they were subjected to cumulative blunt force trauma of major public policies urban renewal displacing black people from downtowns in order to revitalize it for for a professional class. and then the interstate highway program you look at almost every major city that has a almost every major city that has black people, they tended to run the highways through their neighborhoods and in baltimore, a highway was run through the advocacy primarily former senator barbara, they were able to stop the highway from running ngthrough some of the white

working class neighborhoods and they stopped it and it was the highway to nowhere, black neighborhoods endured the trauma of it but got no benefit to travel anywhere from it. >> you spend a bit of time talking about what a ghetto is, the definition of ghetto but you call them government created. >> rights. the primary response to the great migrants, 206 million black people moved to escape jim crow move, north and west between 19 teens and 1970. the primary response wherever they landed was to contain them in their own neighborhoods so a series of policies in chicago, an example of the south side of

chicago black people near where michelle obama grew up her contained in 18 square-mile area with the density of people whites never had to endure. people living on top of people, nowhere else to move ... new puc 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 will live here. right?

well if you have a policy where 100% of the people in the building have >> it is constructed. and then you could afford you could afford to live and shopper you wanted and then they start this business of racial zoning and to say we will contain all these black people there are too many coming. and the assignments and the zoning to push down into areas of concentrated black poverty overtime. the ideas about blankness one —- blackness historically

redline so why avoidance of your blackness is a entrenched so we live with that dilemma to this day. i encourage everyone listening to me google redlining and name the city and a map will come up and you will see the history of constructing black neighborhoods and systemic disinvestment. and to this day these neighborhoods and that they experience disinvestment and segregation. >> >>caller: we went to

congratulate alabama a&m for the hbcus over the years. in texas to the largest publicly endowed university of texas and the goal dollar and several churches and was enslaved patrick henry great-grandson here in texas have to realize the head of the republican party in texas by those lily white republicans because of the political advancement and

with the governor and look at mississippi it was republican but my point is if you teach at georgetown it is part of the 1619 project in the original 13 colonies. the original 13 colonies did not include much of the country as we know it today and georgetown in the jesuit priest and talk about william and mary college. >> what is your question? >> why are we allowing the policies as slavery and the

emancipation movement of african-american why do we allow those and the society dictate how the rest of the united states the territories why is our history beingnc spread like cancer to the united states. >> i think we have a lot to work with. >> . >> i didn't really quite get the question i want to respond what he said quickly i write about my great-grandfather participation and reconstruction. and mynd great-grandfather was part of radical republicans

and republicanism. so what i do in that the is a celebrate the era of reconstruction that my great-great-grandfather participated in and the area of the second reconstruction that my father participated in. and both of those examples you had biracial coalitions participating and agitating politics together with blackck leadership and they ought to be saying this six or 700 men of color for reconstruction. and this is a period of history that has not done so

well. it was f the first for the first reconstruction in the history of the world and certainly we're in this experiment were you have the quality and politics with everybody regardless of color is supposed to get to vote and it is not suppressed that this is the voting rights act and what that's about. so my hope and prayer is that we figure out how to have a functioning multiracial politics that people of all gendersra and races get to express themselves at the voting box and not have structures that suppress popular will. host: rhode island text

message. an entire generation ofn blue-collar whites who grew upg in boston during the policy disaster it's hard to have policies like perpetual admission set aside exclusively for nonwhites who are in the same social economic positions as the blue-collar whites. moreover any opposition to the true inequality racism versus 50 years of bad policy is what most people on the right are pushing back against. >> i want to make it clear that under the constitution and the decision of the supreme court that we talked about i am not aware of any university that sets aside slots for individuals based on race if they do that's

illegal. and actually when i wrote place not race arguing against consideration of race before reforming the admissions process to widen the pipeline so that working-class whites in so that people of color would have better chance and to get into higher education at that time only about 45 percent so the idea that there is a pervasive practice

to set aside slots for people based on race justice not true. it's not true under current law. and it's not true under current practice. but i will admit but the stoking of resentment and division based on the real economic strugglesdi of people, including the white working class has been central to republican politics for 50 years. from richard nixon, law and order, the clintons and super predator the stoking of division. and that is exactly what i was responding to in the entire

project of politics and government is declining. and that toxicity has gotten worse since then. my writing has been about how we create a functioning multiracial politics. so with that said, i just cannot support that killer brian constitutionalism coming from the right that says youer can never under any circumstance consider race when it might be necessary. i just don't think that's at the 14thrs of amendment had in mind. that's what we need to bring of politics. host: what is your opinion of

the effect of lbj great society programs and the effect of blacks and blacks families in particular? do you ever dialogue with other black conservatives and how do you feel? >> the great society program but theho whole project of the civil rights revolution which i credit lbj for responding to the social movement and

signing the civil rights act to 64 voting rights of 65. reforming integration to no longer discriminate against people from asia and then 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 three quarters of black people live below the poverty line the poverty rate was 72 percent. these programs and policies sand celebrate on —- so the rights o enforcement open an opportunity and the majority who are not poor. three quarters are not.

and then to bring black people out of the cast system and into citizenship but i view that as positive do i commiserate with thomas soul. now that i have been on panels with black conservatives. i'm not averse to that them open to ideas. i self identify as a progressive i believe in equality and civil rights enforcement i will keep advocating for it. host: calling in from pennsylvania you are on. >>caller: hello. the sheathing the black lives

movement has helped the typical black community? i live outside of philadelphia where there has been a significant increase in crime and homicide in i believe they are related because there was law enforcement and crime prevention. thank you. >> i am not intimately familiar with the state of reform or lack n thereof with policing. it's not my era of expertise. and the violent crime since 2020 since the pandemic. there is a lot of speculation and some people would like to suggest police have been hampered and cannot do their job there is a lot of economic

deprivation coming out of the pandemic so some cities that have experimented and that has achieved a decline in violent crime and i offer that example in the last chapter of my book. and the 20 cities the offices of neighborhood safety they are hiring former incarcerated people who used b to be caught

up in gun violence and people who are intimately familiar with gun violence particularly in poor black neighborhoods. andd hiring them to be disruptors and proactively. they know that the kids in some of these neighborhoods that are most likely to pull a trigger. and to being interventionist with these young people. and wrapping them in services. richmond california tried that approach and reduce gun violence by 55 percent. and then massg incarceration. and i don't believe in defunding the police. but i do believe we cannot police or incarcerate our way out of the endemic problems of

high poverty neighborhoods. we need to be innovators. even to see people engaging in violence for those that are capable of transformation and then just to have a universal basic income in a high poverty neighborhoods and not alone has lessened gunne violence. and another city tried moving from public housing to the concentrate poverty moving a people into higher opportunity areas and that help to reduce gun violence. so what i call for is set aside the stories we tell ourselves constantly about

certain neighborhoods in the black family and to bring an attitude of care to certain neighborhoods. >> so 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 are under threat of being stopped at somee point during this period. wasn't not successful in your view? >> no it was not successful. imagine if you are the parent of a black senator you are the black person. what difference does it make to have a policy where 80 percent of the black males in the entire city get

stopped? just being on the sidewalk? i teach law at georgetown. i had black male students tell me about their experiences. he kept ae' running count he had been stopped 19 times and he was a law-abiding citizen. think about the distrust that blanket approach where every black male the lens presumed that is applied to them over presume to citizen so they overinvest in policing. a lot of wasted time and resources. and then you create distrust of policing their less likely to cooperate and i cite a study in the book they are

standing $851 million per inner-city block every four years to incarcerate people almost $1 trillion almost $1 billion. every four years to incarcerate to that make them violence go down in chicago?? know. so focus on communities high poverty communities and to see the people there as citizens particularly the people who are potentially engaged in gun violence and giving them an alternative to the life they are leading that's what richmond did they are creating

a piece make on —- peacemaker village only those that were doing the shooting they brought and then change her dlife around. you need behavioral therapy, drug treatment, job, training, get out of here. and they help them develop a life of transformation. it worked. it worked. >> the next call comes from portland oregon. good afternoon. >>caller: good afternoon. thank you for taking my call. professor, i want to say thank you for your leadership and writing your books it allows those of us who do not follow politicsal closely with that

intellectual dishonesty. so thank you for your leadership my family is from birmingham and i have a question with a reference to the political structure in the south. do you see any thoughts how that could change with that democratic thinking to the finishsh line over the past ten years and they have had a systemic leadership in being the purveyors of racism?

>> can you give an example of who you are referring to? >> thank you to c-span on social issues. >> but thank you tell them. i appreciate your kind words. >> don't you especially social justice commitment to your art are you showing your arts now? y[laughter] >> is a somebody who knows you? >>t.t. one of the things i do to

heal myself and take me away i am a practicing artist and in the zenith gallery. i didla a series of collages a black womenan of including breonna taylor and things that i felt that she deserved and try to heal her and heal me and then focus. >> iou think we just showed an image of serena williams? can we go back to back?

>> i was so inspired and i made a collage. because i thought she deserved it. that the lawyer in me under the council of my husband made sure that i added my own art to it and did not appropriate the image. >> is your husband a layer. >> yes. he just stepped down as general counsel and with a series of tech p companies.

>> and the zenith gallery how long? >> i think the show because the 25th or the 26. go on the website to see it. >> . >> in the last two years i heard about critical race theory. i've never heard about that before i wanted your thoughts on it those that are resigning left and right over the issue. and those being hurt getting

thefe feelings hurt can you give me your thoughts on that. >> thank you so much for that question i thought peter would ask me. so first, critical race theory was developed by legal academics. to the extent in higher education in law schools mainly in the idea the two main tenants of critical race theory, one is that systems of racial disadvantage and racial disparity and disadvantage and

equality are embedded in our legal structure. that blacks have to live here. separate water fountains w for. and those consequences and you can read my book white space black hood andas we have a system the very separate and unequal neighborhoods. and that is the first tenant. the second is the civil rights revolution that we had which was mainly and antidiscrimination to pass laws that discrimination against individuals and housing and employment, et cetera. that was not up to a task of

eliminating the structural systemic systems of racial inequality. and it teaches particular law students to think critically i'm not a critical race theorist at on. host: my classes but it is part of b the inquiry and the systems that have been constructed also harm other people. that's a way to teach people critically that's what it is. it is not taught in k-12.

crt with a label has been eweaponize and now we have screaming matches at school board meetings and people are asking for books. and some are just being attacked. and on alabama and.com a session where the superintendent was telling people it's black history month having a curriculum that teaches black history is not crt. i think it is unfortunate and what happened and i will be honest the previous president

brought it out during the election. we will scrub crt from everything and now like so many other things it is a point of dividing people and upsetting people. and about the specifics in texas. that is troubling to hear that 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. i teach a course race in american law. when i teach about the era of slavery and the laws that existed.

and there is no reason they should. >> we have a half-hour left with our guest. >>caller: thank you so much. but i want to ask you your

thoughts about biden being transparent and then to select a black woman for the supreme court apparently that set everyone's hair on fire but talk about how clyburn was suggesting that academic diversity is also important and it would be really wonderful if biden chose someone who is qualified and in character inro every way. and even scalia said we need to get away from the supreme court but i'm wondering your thoughts on that and if biden

was to choose a black woman not from harvard. >> . that's an excellent question. part of the problem the way we have gone about selecting supreme court justices and very much narrowed the pipeline. and the politicalization and makes it very hard to nominate anyone who has a paper trail who expects an opinion about anything and so what they intend to docl is nominate almost exclusively circuit court judges.

it is judicial opinions. of the people that are nominated at harvard law school that it creates a perception that anybody else who doesn't come from that very distinct pipeline is someone is lesser than. as if experience in different rocks of life is not relevant when it is. and those wen. should just be looking at harvard or yale or

man or excluding women or women of color but also district courtrt judges. they try cases they are there with human beings. i cannot remember the last time. and then to expand the pipeline toti institutions and with that public university the' are wonderful public institutions out there.

genius everywhere in this country. i applaud that. so this particular person i am forgetting her name who is nominated to the court of appeals but now i lost my train of thought. >> you were talking about the court. now i apologize the court rape loyal the supreme court. >> that my point is there is genius everywhere. that is that particular person nominated inevitably there will be snarky on the internet.

and commentary like that. i'm not endorsing anyone in particular in opening the pipeline tons institutions whether higher education or c-span or any university to people from all t walks of life to be a more cohesive country. >> san mateo california go ahead be 14 good morning. >>caller.

>> can you hear me. >> do not look at your tv just talk and we can hear you. >>caller: good morning again. my i question is i found it most intriguing and what they need and those are well educated and graduating high school and i don't agree with dumbing down but not too dumb that

down. and they cannot make it and i don't understand that. >> . >> and the dumbing down of education. >> i thought she was talking about scrapping standardized test that the psat and sat. >> any way that you want. >> that's what i thought. i want to be clear that my advocacy was for colleges focusing on the predictors of success then to focus on that.

and then to forgo recreation to do the work and i visited like detective work and you can see the evidence from recommendations what you find out about a person how many hours a week are they putting in network? i graduated back in the day with four.zero i had in a in every single class i only got a b in one class. my sat score was okay. not stratospheric they would not have predicted that i

would graduate summa, body in electrical engineering but if anybody paid attention when i got to vanderbilt i would be in the library on friday and saturday night nobody else was there. i am not an advocate of dumbingta down take the most challenging classes available. i cannot speak to k-12 education dumbing down. black and latino children in public schools today tend to get his soul killing wrote education teaching to the test rather than the liberals vstimulating inquiry that other students tend to get which is

unfortunate. host: what was that be in vanderbilt? >> advanced last semester digital electrical class now i've conveniently forgotten. n[laughter] >> hello. thank you so much for this wonderful and exciting conversation. i feel like she is so knowledgeable so we need to have these discussions and i heard somebody ask you what do you do to get this in the back of your head to enjoy yourself

i know you have to escape from it but you have been kicked out. host: tell us about yourself. >> i am a nurse i have taughtt in eastern north carolina. there are so many things. i do believe education is important and i do believe we have racial discrimination and it is very hurtful when you go into nursing institution to care for people in eastern northns carolina how do you

continue to not be an agitator and to help upcoming nurses to get into and institution using those abilities and to not be distracted by the inequality even of advancement even with the institution of nursing. >>ea your words mean so much to me i don't know you but your words and intonation remind me of people that i love ackerman alabama. thank you thank you for being a nurse nurses are having a very difficult time they are on the frontlines right now with the pandemic with 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 black american you sound like one to me but as you struggle and institutions and how can we advance and help people and not get distracted by whatever else is going on institutionally that is a challenge for a lot of people it's a difficult time. personally i am a christian, baptist, i take sustenance with daily prayer forer strength to read the bible

and then i go to bed everybody has to find a way to make it in this country but having an attitude of the other is not the enemy i teach common-law the first years i people have all intellectual interest in political commitments. and i try not to have an us versus them attitude for those put before me. even when i engage with intellectual approaches that i don't necessarily agree with i think we all need to take it down to the t human level and not see people we are dealing

with and is bad or evil people take it down to the human level and meet people halfway. if you can agree on something and perhaps you smile and say have a good day and keep on going i hope something i have said is useful. host: for every author we ask for their favorite book and what they are reading now there is what cheryl told us.

mr. baldwin's name came up three times on your list. why iss that? >> nobody beats james baldwin as a writer for me with the power of his language for the truth telling and his own emotion and passion i have 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 is a writer who is

engage with the civil rights movement and the civil rights struggles of his time so he has inspired me on so many levels but i am a nonfiction writer and for me he is among the best of those who were commenting on ms. the circumstances of race the african-american and experience to have gainful personhood. i never get enough of him. >> i find myself rereading baldwin himself and i have to turn off the tv you cannot be distracted. and then absorb it at, little bit. >> that's why i i read.

it is healing at the end of the day no devices but there's nothing more intimate to me than reading it like the author speaks just to me. i don't know why i'm soge enamored that im. >> what is your opinion of gentrification is to spend a lot of time in atlanta going up w in alabama i haven't spent much time in atlanta for a while g but from what i hear

about gentrification have to go on what i hear and what is going on in other places. there is a lot of displacement of black people so people are discovering they want to be back in the cities now. and housing prices are going through the roof and a lot of desired cities so they are discovering black neighborhoods are more affordable. so that's it they are alluding to. that is part of what i talk about i don't engage with that i did not see this yet but i say the three main have been

to be anti- black keeping boundaries opportunity hoarding and stereotypes which people are familiar with if you're watching h the videos it just so happens the surveillance of back bodies tenses spike in gentrifying neighborhoods where new group is coming in and they may not be comfortable with those who have been in the neighborhood. i tell a devastating story of a 105 -year-old dominican man playing dominoes on his sidewalks for four decades in spanish harlem having the police called on him hundreds of times so he finally stopped doing it. that is an aspect of

gentrification that is troubling. >> i cannot speak to what is happening in atlanta but it sounds like formerly majority black neighborhoods but i don't have specific knowledge. >> i just want to thank you for having me on today and i just want to talk about this situation i don't know if she had thoughts on the matter but affirmative action that we are dealing with in my opinion is ae good tool and we have the

situation in the nfl where we look at a black guy, and head coach that's overlooked not because of his qualifications but apparently has to do possibly with the ownership of these teams and who is in position to make these decisions so it's not affirmative action. in a perfect world we don't need these but since we are not we need something to eliminatee these scenarios where people are qualified the ones we are talking about a number of situations to the supreme court looking at the qualifications of these women in their well-qualified to be inti this position so what is

your thought on that? >> as i said before. and then to diversify institutions. i'm not particularly knowledgeable the headlines of this particular coach you talk about that america is a b will edaringly berserk country it is incredibly diverse. and that makes the experiment exciting and the vitality and research shows that companies tend to do better with a diverse workforce when youou have people who have more

different perspectives brought to bear you get a a better decision so affirmative action not racial quotas, but it makes institutions better and puts pressure on institutions to widen the talent pool and to break out of habits that tend to give advantage in the same old networks and expands looking for talented and qualified people. i am not aware of any african of affirmative-action who says we should be hiring unqualified people it does whenne properly designed to help institutions find qualified

people who historically have not been in the pipeline or considered. host: syracuse new york go ahead we have one minute left. >> i have a lot of questions can you hear me? >> go ahead. >>caller: i am a baptist also but did she stay a baptist quick. >> i stayed and i have been dumped in the water. yes. ur[laughter] absolutely. >> i want to read text from cummings georgia i am enjoying the conversation i have to say

i cannot takeou my eyes off of your necklace. it is absolutely gorgeous and reflects your artistic sensibility. >> thank you for noticing. >> and related to the conversation. i want to t close with this. the possibilities for integration could be enhanced if more white people and middle and upper-class people in that overwhelmingly dominant the point of integration is not to pursue for itsts own sake and the point of integration is the same as the core motivation of the a civil rights movement itself then and now is the best to equal opportunity for everyone. the author of five books the

most recent white space, black hood a opportunity in the age of inequality our guest for the past two hours. thank you for being with us. >> thank you for having me.