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conversation a new york times usa today best-selling author of more than 30 novels. novels werh her writing. marie benedict victoria is also have been nominated for numerous naacp awards for outstanding literature and she won that award in 2016 for her social commentary stand your ground. the first ladies was targeted. thousand and 22,000, 23 book of the year and five of mary's said deaf seven deadly sins have been made into lifetime movies produced t.d. jakes with almost 3 million books in print. victoria is one of the country's top african-american and contemporary authors. pamela newkirk. author, journalist and professor

of pamela newkirk is a multifaceted two scholar who has published a variety of works within the veil black journalists, white media a love no less and letters. black america spectacle. the astonishing life of osama anger and her most recent book diversity inc the failed promise. $1,000,000,000 industry pamela received pulitzer prize as part of new york newsday's reporting team for spotting news for coverage of a fatal subway. in in 1993 she joined the faculty of nyu and continue contributing articles to numerous publications, including the new york times, the washington post, columbia journalism review, the nation, arte news, essence and the civil rights blog to defend online that is pamela.

thabiti lewis perform double duty for us during the conference this year. yesterday, he served as host for our virtual scholarly papers presentation and back with us today to share his insights and breadth of knowledge. he is a professor of english and interim associate vice chancellor of academic affairs at washington state university, vancouver. he is also the editor of conversations with tony kaye bambara and ballers of new school race and sports in america. at and last but definitely least is historian kahlil gibran muhammad. he has served as director the schomburg center for research black culture in harlem in late 2015, he joined the faculty of harvard's kennedy school as professor of history, race and public policy. he has also he was also hired as

a suzanne young mary professor at the radcliffe institute advanced study. he released the condemnation of blackness race crime and the making of modern ah of of modern urban america. in 2010, which was awarded the john hope franklin publication prize from the american studies association in 2011, muhammad's contemporary on the commentary on the racial past of the united states and contemporary policing and criminality was published in the new york times, washington post, national radio and others. please welcome our guest. over here, which you also feel so disconnected. okay, so thank you all again for being here. so the focus of our discussion today is writers letters to america how black writers texts may be viewed as letters that

chronicle the history of america from what toni morrison calls black gaze. these texts provide insight into the monumental changes and pivotal events that have impacted the history palettes, civil rights achievements and of blacks in america the history. letter writing dates back to ancient civilizations. the earliest known letters were sent by, of course, the ancient who use hieroglyphs. a newsweek article written by malcolm james discusses how quote historians depend on the written record letters left behinds are invaluable evidence of how was once lived. gaps in the historical records have always existed as. american slaves were often illiterate, often by laws, and sometimes by laws that threaten them with death. the epistolary record to free

people. and in most cases that free white people. when reflect on how dearly we would cherish written by people in bondage or any people who through circumstances of history were voiceless, we begin to grasp the preciousness of the written word, end quotes. so to begin each of you personify the idea letters documenting, the changes, pivotal events, and courageous people offering, and a better understanding of experience in america. so my first question is will historians of the future be served by? our generation of writers and by your work in particular? how do you give voice to the voiceless through your writing and research? and pamela, i'd like you to start us off because your work a love no less, two centuries of african-american love letters and letters from black america

speaks directly to this question. and then, of course, i would like the rest of you to respond as well. i thank you, dana. and thank you for being here today. i first wanted to compile book of love letters. yes, i wanted to compile a book of african-american love letters because those letters had often left out of epistolary collections. are so many books, letters, and they almost always excluded the letters of african americans, and particularly letters that reflected romantic lives. and in that first book i began with the letters of the enslaved, because as you said, it was illegal right, to write letters in when african americans were separated from their loved ones, those who could write and, even those who could not would someone to help

them compose letter across, you know, plantations, states. and so they continued to communicate, kate, with their loved ones. so i it's an important a really part of our history. our our collective history to have the evidence of of that kind of bond. and it it does more than anything to to reflect full humanity because. these letters are not written for everyone. and to see their intimate reflections of emotions. and i think it's probably the the truest reflection of of who we are and of about our desires. so i hope that answered your question. yeah yeah. so you like i said, you got us started and which is which is great. so you know i would like to, to

toss that question out each of you. like how because you know the of letter writing is, is integral to our and is able to document our history our work the work that we do you may not be you dear john, but letters that we write are actually texts that we create and we look to preserve for our future. so when we think about, you know, our work in terms of the idea of which you led us off with so well, how do each of you, your work, give voice to the voiceless through your writing and research research? i'll take a stab at this in in my book ballers in the new school race sport in american culture. i was really looking at the turn of the 20th century and depictions of african-americans in popular and in sport culture.

you have this notion of heroes and people becoming familiar and the majority of people majority of people writing and recording and giving narrative are white journalists so those notions are violent thugs and different figures so as i interrogate this notion in the contract and how they function, i wanted to have a moment in the book where i write a letter to my cousin, inspired by james baldwin's letter to his nephew providing in a book that is a

challenging providing counter narratives in phase of stereotypes and polls notions. a real intimate conversation with my young cousin and talking to him about the power of education and what is possible and family's history and relaying abilities but giving voice notly only to him but to especially american culture so much anti-intellectualism. ... intellectual prowess.

and i want you to really lean into and and so kind of having a conversation back with him revealing my own engaging my own vulnerabilities but encouraging him. but it wasn't just to him. it was it's also a letter to to young black women and men regarding these this false notion of it's a letter regarding this whole solution that anti-intellectualism or sport is being the only way forward and just trying to outline to him what are the challenges that exist that we can overcome? struggling and he's done amazing things that was the impetus the book itself is a larger letter that there's a letter with an the text itself. >> none of my books have letters in them. i find fiction so i jeff: this stuff up.

but that's an interesting question because i think in fiction i'm able to reach people in a way that doesn't feel as if i'm i lecturing them. do you know what i mean? i'm not telling them what to do. i'm presenting who we are and so in my novel under fiction if you are talking about a letter to america the majority of though they won't be the majority for much longer but the majority for now my books show people who we are. here we are, this is who we are and this is how you can get to know us and i can give you an example of what i mean by that. i took a class i took a lot of classes, at the university of iowa's writing program and there was nobody else among the 500 studentsha who had seen a book like mine and no problem.

in one of the workshops i had written my first chapter of my second novel and it was out a black woman and she stuck in traffic and she's in her bmw riding down the l.a. freeway in the first critique from one of the other 14 people inof the class, her first critique was i'd like to see her little black beautiful and then does she have to drive a bmw because this woman actually said i don't know black people who have a bmw and i just couldn't believe that she sat there and said that to me. but then i realized the majority is exposed to so little of us that our stories can be a letter

to them and indicating and saying this is who we are, i am here now get to know us. [applause] >> my stock in. is an historian is often letters to and as pamela has already suggested very evocative and expressiveve opposed the inferiority in the literary space that writers fill-in for us because we often can't know what people feel or think so they are precious to historians if youu' are able to find lettes within the archive for the research that you are trying to do and i guess maybe illustrate this when i was working on the condemnation of i took the approach that any archive that either opposed material going

back to the late 19th century are actual archives of organizations or individuals i would just do a needle in a haystack approach because i was trying to make sense of what wasn't obvious and by that i mean we knew a lot about of what was happening in the south but we didn't have much knowledge of what a black migrant or black person living in new york city at the turn of the 20th century when it came to criminal justice encounters. we knew some of this but i was interested in what were they ways in which black peopleio encountered it oppression vis-a-vis their criminal nature. one of the biggest archives it turns out to really get at this with the naacp records at the library of congress. they received hundreds of letters from people who were

encountering new york city's criminal justice machinery policing or in the state prisons around the country and naacp was headquartered here in new york which is why they were more prominently known at the time in this space. those letters were incredible for two reasons. one there was back-and-forth correspondence so yourrce had pe appealing simply for help. i need help. i've been arrested on up charges and i'mi' completely innocent. others were i did it but they are throwing the book at me and the guy did it with his getting off scott free so you can imagine the range of grievances that people were appealing to the naacp to for support but what was really interesting was the end of the late response and in that way the story that we talked about the future so for me as an historian the naacp

unwillingness to help people who were guiltye of something becae the issue was that innocence was the only currency that they were interested in investing limited and precious resources and. he will tell future readers of that work the degree to which the oppression that we have lasted longer in part because of some of the choices that we made in trying to manage our people to be respectable in light of the oppression that we have experienced. so that was it period black politics on steroids. >> on steroids right. letters for me have been incredibly revealing and we a lot of time not only preserving such letters in the correspondence amongst people

who are important to us asst our ancestors but also making sure that we curated collections of letters so people could really dive into an intimate portrait of people and i think that kind of exhibition work and archival preservation work is essential forso us. at some point none of us in this room will be here those who come behind us can learn. >> can i just add it's also essential not only for institutions to preserve these letters but for us to preserve the letters of our loved ones and people move or someone dies and they just go away when they should end up in a repository like schomburg or another institution because they really aren't irreplaceable relics of our history. >> absolutely. thank you for that.

just expanding on what each of you have said so far where do you see your work and your scholarship contributing to the canon of black history? do you see it at all as documentary? >> that's a trick question. yes. i will jump in there. i think when thinking about the conversations with capturing her voice really important black feminist woman figure and allowing the public to be able to hear her voice all in one space outside of my own commentary around what i think about these collections of

interviews. absolutely it's important to field. i also completed the documentary on the chicago black arts movement codirecting really capturing the very important moment so i think there's a troveve of stories that need toe told that as scholars i they say too often people are trying to up with really cute stuff that the work is right there whetherno it's examining a national black writers organization or the aac you and thinking about chicago in a particular project and it's more likely help placards were coming through chicago and moving to other spaces throughout the midwest andan the impact of

chicago for example on black dramatists organizations so i do see my work in some ways as engaging the documentary. >> for me, i became a journalist i became a journalist to tell our stories and to share those unrepresented facets of our identity and experiences so all of my books have i thought to contribute to our history, the books of letters of course are part of historical records but even my book about that was to eliminate a chapter of history in new york city and how black people lived in new york city and i how it was that this young

beautiful boy from the congo is being displayed in the bronx zoo house with an orangutan in 1906 and how it became this international sensation that was praised by "the new york times" so it shines a light on the history of black people at a certain moment in time and helps explain a lot about where we are today. and the letters werean very important. >> i will just add one of the things that i have become as i have matured and i turned 50 last year. is just a really rich

appreciation for the different modes of expression and culturee production that we collectively have and it's obvious and i'm not saying anythingng new for me in particular my engagement is an historian and as an academic, i a lot of time you know with social science either formally or journalistic science for my own attempt to make sense of certain kinds of facts whether they are past or present so what i have come to appreciate is just how much those facts show up in the work of creative black novelist and dramatist and musicians and artists and at this stage of my life i have just come to appreciate that we are all engaged in theen same wk and that we can say many

different truths through different means of which historians of the future and artists of the future will mind our words and our ideas in the breadcrumbs of our lives to make new meanings for future generations and is this is very exciting. it's a way for uss to know that her legacy will live on. >> when we think about, when we look at any era through our history, the history is documented by the artist so that's where you'll definitely find that everything so the work that you all are doing in each of your capacity is this so important to that documentary of our lives. toni morrison famously opined that the lives of black people explored in literature with reviewed by the mainstream as havingea no value and not censod

pure gates. so how do each of you in your own work repositioned the vision to reflect the black gaze and what does it mean too? you? >> that's interesting because as a novelist i'm known as the black novelist. as a historical fiction writer i'm just known as a historical fiction writer because with the majority, the mainstream, mainstream has a difficult time to accept reading or believing they can get anything out of our novels when we write because it doesn't have anything to do with them and they don't want to know and they don't want to learn and they can't learn from fiction. i guess that's what they believe

as i am writing historical fiction i'm no longer a black writer and i see the mainstream has totally accepted and are embracing me now and i think it's because they can relate to black people in history better than they can relate to black people today. i have not figured that out yet or why but do you know what's? i'm using it because now i can communicate with them through my writing. and i think what some of it is that historical fiction allows them to step back so they are saying well that's not us being racist. those are other people being racist and i don't like them being racist but i can talk abouts them because it's not me whereas when they read my contemporary novels they seee themselves in that mirror hints

so i've been able to change the gaze and the genre. the same stories, i'm the same writer i have always been but now. suddenly i'm just a writer telling black stories great i'm not a black writer. >> i think it's fair to say that we all engages encounter narratives. we are countering the historye and depiction of black people. i don't know to what extent my writing changes because of my idea of the gaze. as a journalist i just try to tell the truth and as a writer of nonfiction books i think i've done the same thing. i have tried to document whether

it's history or more contemporaryt issues without really being mindful of the gaze because i think the gaze can kind of mess youou up. >> thinking what someone wants to hear in the way they want it delivered instead of just telling the truth. so that is what i try to do in my work. i try not to concern myself so much with the gaze and more with just the truth. >> a lot about a course comes from your journalism background. did you want to add to that? >> i really like this question because one of the things i consciously did in the condemnation of was to well let me set up a framing comment when i was a grad student in the mid-1990s making my way through the history program my

mentor was david lever and louis so i was trying to figure out how to situate my voice within a field where black studies had entered a much more mature space. it was not new still, still growing and developing around departments and granting in that sort of thing. most of my colleagues are really invested in black resistance and the story of the structures and the ideologies of racism receded to the background. it was assumed, it was obvious they were the targets of all this resistance but there was no

dramatization of the problem and for some reason and i don't know to this day why i made this choice but i made it quite consciously that i wanted to research awake black resistance in direct conversation with protagonists and looking back on this now from toni morrison's position wanted things and playing in the dark that she calls out is the need to explain the distortions of racism ofl people. and to some degree i felt without having full consciousness of the valorization of our heroes in the work of black freedom studies whether it was 19th century freedom fighters are late 20th century civil rights and black power activists it was all about the celebration of that former resistance that somehow we were letting michael

off the hook because you could read this resistance to some degree as if they were able to pull it off it couldn't have beenen as bad as it seemed and i wasn't interested in that at all. i was interested in showing just how systematic just how thoughtful just how innovative racist intellectuals really were and to the degree to which they were actually responding to the agency of black people. m it looms to some degree in the resistance.nd the state is always there and you can see a lot back-and-forth in thee work but the ideas in te debate over the ideas and coming back to the boys -- dubois he was so powering in his intellect that he was everywhere. when toni morrison talks about the presence of is some thin

literature even if no characters are named in no-win names races this thing in american literature and dubois hunted these folks. for me that's how i dealt with this gaze issue which was essentially to use black historical figures to point out in very specific ways the ways in which people were active agents in the moment theyth were living rather than an abstraction do we are in the background. >> i don't care about trying to speak to a audience. i don't care. i'm speaking to black people, young black people and i'm documenting a historical

malfeasance as well as the contemporary response that are the same thing and i'm showing a history of liberation and resistance and then articulating and holding up that very much maligned hip-hop culture, post civil rights, black power and the hip-hop generation of her presentation that is not trying to be engaged in respectability politics. people who like to wear suits and that would be me. the charity yourself. be you and be who you are and why is that so fearful? what i'm really speaking to do that generation and challenging them but at the same time if you are in thehe white culture and u

want to understand white supremacy and how it functions in the theories they used tools in which to understand this racial contract and how it's happening and why the way you are carrying yourself the same as -- and whose deciding who frames what is the way if you will. so just creating tools to say look at the way with which we engages music and films and journalism and who tells thehe stories. so to arm people with the tools to fight back againstt. that and even if you consider yourself progressive and liberal to be able to read that working go i don't want to be a participant in those socioeconomic what have you got a spouse these very things so when i read charles book i was like i don't care

about sports that we live in a society in which this is the vehicle like right now what's going on? the basketballll tournament. just trying to use that to have this conversation because this is the greatest space where we have seen progress. so i don't care what they think. i'm speaking to the populace so if you like a cool and if you don't you know move on. >> what i love about many of the letters that are compiled in my book and other works is that this whole idea of the gaze i'm writing this letter to my mother, to my daughter's and i'm writing this letter to a friend, to a faux so the idea of a gaze disappears and that's what make it so profoundly intimate and so

evocative. of course you do have those letters that are new to be read by the public. when the most most famous letters an african american letters is a letter from the birmingham jail which he wrote back in his cell on a napkin and he knew that letter would be read by millions and maybe he didn't know it would be f read forever until the end of time but it was a public letter and their other letters like that like the letter you cited james baldwin to his nephew. he knew that letter would be read and to a public audience but the idea of the intimate letterse you learn so much about people because you don't have that self-consciousness that you have when you know them there's angh audience. it's just from your heart. >> and can i say just that in this day and age anything

digital can be discovered so justt be mindful that your private thoughts are not always private. >> just a funny story because right get most of the information is from letters that theyha left behind. i just finished a novel about the black woman jesse whitman faucet who was involved with w.e.b. dubois and after reading some of their exchanges and his exchanges with other women i told my daughter he gets no money from me unless you make sure that every e-mail, every text everything i have ever written is gone somehow. some way or she gets nothing from me. because like you said they are very intimate but that's how i was able to write a deeper book.

i just don't want anyone writing a book like that about me.th [laughter] >> for real, intimate as ever. let's talk a moment and kind of continue on this expanding idea. the importance of excavating the pieces of who we are and the long-term implications of your work as an accounting of black humanity so how do you approach that idea in your work or do you? is it intentional or is it instinctual? so victoria if you could, because you straddled fiction could you talk a little bit about intense?st >> that's a good question because i rowe 30 contemporary fiction novels and i did not think about the characters and the people. i thought about the story more

and iri do think every book i he ever written and every word i've ever written i think of it as a legacy that i'm leaving that people will read this in 50 or 100 years and what do i want them to see and what i want them to know and how do i want to represent us a way to think about that but in writing historical fiction i do think about the people. all of the peopl' who have been erased from history. jesse redmon faucet was one that i discovered her as a black female writer another black female rider was talking about jesse redmon faucet and he discovered all the writers and i had never heard of her nightstand on her shoulders. when i'm not thinking about the future as i'm writing historical fiction i'm raising up these voices who were erased from history for various reasons and

then hopefully they'll stay alive into the future. it's something that i think about and they choose the women that i write about very carefully. >> can i jump in? he said something that was a trigger for me raising up voices and you know for me this book "black people are my business" i want people to appreciate and pay attention to and explore the liberation impulse that it's very easy to create art that teaches people how to know and become. this is a person who is a community worker and a writer and is interested in cultivating relationships between women and

women and men and women and youth and elders. so the legacy is for me how toni morrison was talking about how a good friend was a writer who in her works she is literally cultivating an engaging black culture andan black people on so many different levels. whether it's her first collection of short stories where she's interrogating interactions with elder and youth or young girls with other young girls in black women and black men and how do we become whole and begins with the self

the self and the self and from there close relationships with others in the community and in nations. so i found myself over the years writing this impacted me as to how i fathered and how i partnered with my wife in raising her children and shaping a model for what does it mean and the question is how do we go forward? i think the work is important and that kind of way on the issue of rolls that really shapes the entire tenor of what you are doing from the collections of short stories to that i think what they see as a

scholar and as a writer is that legacy of her work provides a model for us to think about how we might live our lives but she reminds of us of black blues gospel, very true. and the short story the seven principals so without saying it in without worrying about who i'm riding to and it's interesting because she is with mainstream appeal. >> which goes back to the long-term implications. >> in mining the archives like you i'm trying to shine a light on the dark crevices of our history.

rediscovering people who have been forgotten. finding people who we didn't even know existed and also what i found most interesting in doing a spectacle in the letters going to the archives at the bronx zoo you could see the officials saying one thing too the public and in a letter they are telling the truth and they are saying what they are really doing and how he's trying to get out of the cage. then they are telling "the new york times" oh he's there performing. so by mining the letter she could get at the truth and away if i just look at newspaper accounts that would not have been able to do that so you see this tension between what was said publicly and what is said beneath the radar.

>> very briefly i was interested in two explicit acts of excavation. home of the contemporary history of our presence. history of often changes precisely because the presence changes and our kaleidoscope shifting in one direction or when the gray that often exposes new insights and colors and for me i was. so very interested in trying to make sense of the ubiquitous presence of punishment vis-à-vis the mass incarceration in the country was purported values of freedom and the sort of thing were in direct contrast withth that reality after that movement and although we probably don't need to sayat this audience we were my two people that mass incarceration was not always a thing. the distinction could be made between criminalization which

was certainly asa thing whether itst be the story of postbellum. it was never the point of it all. so what i was trying to excavate is what was the cultural ideological framework that allows stop-and-frisk to exist in a much earlier period than what we associate with the era of mike limburg and great kelly and the cities and so on so forth. the other excavation was with a particular intervention of a writer or scholar's intervention and that is that people who want to reform whatever often enter into those moments with very little historical understanding of people who have tried to make change in the same space before

and that's just the factsor particularly in a world where we often have doers and thinkers and doers don't have time to do muchch thinking. the thinkers are often allergic to the doing. so you get stuck with them partial knowledge and it can be deadly in the absence of people having this thoughtful understanding so what i was trying to excavate with the second was to show just how many black people weighed in on these various punitive regimes and had actually found answers that were systematically ignored so while the story is being ignored as part of the analysis i was really interested in just showing over and over and over again that black people didn't needed saving because they didnt have ideas. they needed power in order to effectuate that.

>> when we think about the excavation and the work that we need to do in our writing in scholarship and making an accounting of a black humanitarian we have this onslaught of banning our books, our history, our story is being retold andnd how do you, or we, combat thatt censorship. we talk a little bit about this earlier. how do we combat the censorship and make the narrative about who we are as opposed to it being relegated to the untold story and khalil if you could talk

about that. >> i'd a lot of time with this problem in my head. i think this may be counterintuitive i think we are in the worst, we are facing the worst threat that we have faced as a set of legislative assaults in this country certainly since the civil rights movement and i don't want to be too hyperbolic and this goes back to the 17th century but the reason why i think collectively we have not come fully to appreciate it this war and truth in education which is also a war on democracy is threatening is because it's really the first time since literacy was illegal in the context of that we are essentiallyer rendering learnina crime and we can understand

certainly in the context of the trans-atlantic. and the domination over people of african descent keeping them from reading to make the system work and what is peculiar in m this movement is that we all have this history of progress that we are working from. the scripts in their head about all the things that we have done and accomplished and overcome we can't erase the history of overcoming. so if we are literally going backwards legislatively but think we live in better times because we have overcome that we can't actually explain the dissonance and sort out the contradictions because that's illegal in many parts of this country i am really at a loss for what the long-term consequences of this will be because it we mentioned the

problem of anti-intellectualism which is not just the white people problem. it's a national problem. it's a global problem and anti-intellectualism is a consequence of oppression and subjugation in a divestment. when you add that back into the equation i worry that we are late to fight for our rights to tell our own stories which we are losing. let me keep saying this, we are losing thater right. their black teachers in this country right now and half the states who cannot go back into the classroom and say what happened here right now. cannot show whatever version of c-span the black writers conference appears on television out of fear of losing their jobs. this is uncharted territory. black people as my colleague has written a wonderful book called

fugitive pedagogyen have often held up the black curriculum when white people weren't looking. but the notion somehow that we are back in that space and it's actually illegal and not just dangerous. it's two different things. it's one thing to say crichton is dangerous and the other thing is that it's against the law. i think we have the organize around this issue in ways that in some ways exceed or certainly managed an urgency voter suppressionn laws. if you were to map onto the states that have been legislative activity to ban knowledge of one kind or another onto voter suppression maps you would see all the same places lived up in bright red. and i can just say to finish that mobilizing traditional civil rights leaders around this

issue of a warren education has been very, very, very, i can't say too many very's difficult and it's perplexing and again it only adds to the worry that i'm expressing. >> i think education has always been the battleground for race in this country whether it was black people fighting to have schools, whether it was fighting the federal government at this idea around what black schools could teach or we have to be mindful that all of these black inferiority theories that have taken over in a society they have filtered down from the top from harvard, from princeton and from yale and were taught. none of those schools have

apologized said oh we are sorry we didn't mean it. and all of the consequences of those teachings are still very much with us. in some sense i see it as a continuation of race and education in this country where it has never been a safe space for african-americans and we have always had to fight to be able to tell the truth, share that truth. blackn newspapers even frederik douglass who was the most famous black journalist at this time his -- was burned down and ida b. wells was chased down for telling the truth so this is a continuation of what black people have encountered her at history when we tried to tell the truth.

>> what are we going to do you all?ki just expanding on that idea of you know the idea of censorship across-the-board do you feel or experience a sense of censorship when you approach your topics considering what the reaction to your work may be or maybe you don't. and why is that? i don't know about them. i'm, surprised every time i gea book on track. did they read my last book? i think it's always more difficult for us that somehow those of us here have found ways to be published so i don't feel that my work has been censored in fact i'm a little insulted

that none of my books are on the list. >> i don't feel a sense of censorship at all. the reason we have contracts with men to work anymore or liberal industry. publishing is much more liberal than some of the other industries i've worked inve andy time so i don't feel a sense of censorship at all if my editor thought she would want it to be stretched out she would be too scared to say it. >> you mentioned earlier, oh i'm sorry go ahead. speaking about a wrote an essay with my colleagues about tulsa

1921 tulsa for the neh magazine and we are at a point where it was very contentious regarding whether this essay was going to get published because of a battle over the holocaust regarding this atrocity that took place and it makes me think about andy tuck aboutce censorsp , you know in some ways as i'm looking how does intellectual bodies of knowledge situate it? who is controlling the neh and who are the people that are on the board and what are they saying? in the course you all know me. i was lucky don't have to do it. my position has always been all take my ball and go somewhere

else which is why i'm not in some spaces and that's fine. myo- co-writer found a middle ground with them and as long as he was okay with it. if it had just been me he may not have seen it over this one wordi so i think in a lot of was censorship israel. i think it's important we are in the spaces where you are able to have an impact on ideas but in the words of walter mosley we are always outnumbered and always outgunned. alone is not enough really understanding how these ideas are propagated in the cannot give up your guns and

reconstruction. weue must continue so i just wanted to make that point. >> i have three examples of censorship and one of them i rowe forf the 6019 project rigt now to a class i teach at harvard on racism called out by the congressman from virginia and north carolina who oversees the committee on education that is pence painting harvard and held a hearing on december 5 the brought down the president. that is certainly an attempted form of censorship. i'm tenured so i won't be able to teach the version of that class. currently the core class and it's quite possible they will decide we don't want this to be -- in the third quick example is i've been writing more on this issue than normal and i've

had a veryry difficult time getting published in the times or the "washington post" or the atlantic. >> in that respect it's always harder. >> but it's something else because the anti-semitism and the palestinian crisis in my opinion no question is leading editors to shut down certain ones right now. >> if i counted the number of essays that i could not get published. that's the book. and this may be, i think it i would like you to tackle this

one. what do you say in your work that white audiences need to know or understand or not and was it a choice? >> i may be repeating myself a little. >> we don't care. i don't care. >> if you also want to understand the politically if you will here is an explanation. i also want them to understand that you are creating these narratives historically and in the contemporary moment in here is evidence that articulates

where that has happened and continues to occur. so yeah that would be what i want them to understand that here's the truth you have to continue with. >> and for me it's correcting the historical record particularly where many of the lies are not mistakes. they are intentional, intentional deception and often by people and institutions in high places. so i'd like to put that on the record. i just got the high sign but i really want to ask this question because my mentors in thehe audience so as writers

practitioners of history and just as we are here in conversation with each other who are you in conversation with in relation to your work your inspiration and informs what you do so if you could each do that quickly. >> they are mulling it over. >> i always failil at these questions even if they are packaged seductively. so i would self describe as a bit of an intellectual historian and i i'm always motivated by understanding the ideas of where they come from or stories of those ideas and to some degree i've been really interested in a lot of conservative black

conservative's. thomas sowell right now is very much in my head because if you fall in aa dark abyss of racist ideas that white people are making popular right now you'll find his fingerprints over many of them and he is some ways the godfather of modern black conservatism so while i'm not taking inspiration for it i am thinking a lot about how from shelby field to john mcwhorter did when bowery george skyler a young guy coleman hughes right now is a recent columbia grad and how so much of their popularity which is her markedly popular in an alternate

particularly social media space. i remember being in a dark and being read by -- all the time and i have the sense that this was forgiven -- for bid in knowledge for white elites because it was like if you fill this room with all of us at one thomas sowell maybe not at this conference to why people would say this is the black person you really need toto read. >> thank you for that. because we are close on time i would like to close with asking this one question based on your own body of work and your contributions to scholarship what would your letter to america by?

and what do you see as the long-term applications of your work. >> when you put that word scholarship in their -- i'm goingt to let the people at scholarship answer first and then i will does kind of mull it over. >> what would my letter by? i would just say letters from black america. that's probably the forward expression. if the myriad portrait of my people that i had the good fortune to have the opportunity to work with reviewing thousands of letters written -- written over centuries and feeling even closer to our people to that experience. >> thank you.

>> i think is t a scholar my letter would be, it's okay to excavate and embrace the arcane, the familiar of black life and culture and don't forget the every day people because that's what really has an impact on the creation of culture ifil you wil and artistry etc.. but also it would be don't be afraid to just be your authentic self.at i think that is, that would be

my statement. don't be afraid to be your authentic self and don't be afraid to resist. >> my letter i guess is a continuation of the theme i've been talking about that ideas really do matter and as a person who has straddled this world as i've described is thinking and doing i'm always struck by how impatient people can often be with ideas like what are we going to do about it? i've heard so now what do we do so as a person who identifies as a writer in the thinker i'm often challenging people to remember that if the ideas are wrong and you are running into a burning building and won't

survive so i'd like to model how important it is for people to get their thinking together before theyct act. >> i guess it's my turn now. you know i think i would quote alice loeffler i think i would quote her with the words that my letter to america would simply be i am here. i am here. i am here. see me, hear me but i am here and that's what i try to do in every single book that i write for people who are leaving it as a contemporary work to black and white because i do know that there are that are open and i want to reach those ears. and just, i'm here.

>> thank you all so very much. [applause] i think we are open now for questions from the audience. do we have questions? there is a mic over here. is there one over here as well -quex. >> thank you for this great dialogue. i just wanted to ask one f question. are all those persons of the panel that said we have all these -- why not come together and do an anthology? any responses? >> we left, right? >> technically it's not my first meeting post but i did recently just for this reason because i've had a lot to say. >> you have had a lot to say. you should follow khalil on any

of thehe sites because you have been posting amazing material. >> thank you for sharing. you misquoted joyce chen said you spoke of folks not wanting to publish some of your work. i wonder why did you feel? >> you know i don't think any of us do this for a hobby. it really is what we do for a living and i have nothing against people self-publishing but i don't have time and i don't have the resources to spend. it takes years usually to write a book and i can't do that for free. >> but all the pieces they don't want to put out there. >> i think they there was something i really, really, really want to publish i to find a way to get it published either on a.

one article i had a really hard time getting published but he was finally published by "the new york times" after it was rejected by those that i thought would be obviously able to publish as i think if you are determined to publish something -- i did an article about african-americans in paris and why they were so celebrated in paris unlike any other place in the world. and no one wanted it and then i sent it to the times and they published it so go figure. i think for all of us you have two sort of like just keep doing at' workaround. it's not an easy thing to get work by african-americans who love to african-americans. it's not always easy to get that published in the so-called mainstream i think we all find a way to find a platform that will

function. >> i'm sitting and looking at miriam and i'm thinking about of the project the history of black writing. these are important platforms where absolutely and i'm not saying this stuff can get published elsewhere. i've taken things their first because how do we continue to create a place for what needs to be heard in people have blogged about this other stuff. the restrictions are there as far as the ideas being out there. it's matter of you deciding where you will be.

that has been part of the tradition. we have to do it for ourselves. my black arts work that the impulse. >> thank you for the talk. like my hampton sister victoria i would say about that experience at the conference as a free writer of the american institute i was told by characters that it would be perfect for disney if they were up and coming but they are black and middle class and live in a nice house and i'm like yeah and she a said if you're going to ue them as black casters with. >> it sound like american fiction. >> she's like i can't make that

connection for you and i told that story. it talks about censorship and in the idea that i believe i have the sense of my artistic self as a writer. i've gotten the contract and i've worked for years. i'm aware things like editors sometimes it doesn't matter they are still sold into something elsese so they are a couple of consciousness that we had to be aware of. there's also the business side or the site was asked about self-publishing it's very real as a form of income. i'm sure there's a self-awareness. >> publishing is one of the least diverse professions in the

world. so when we talk about that it's important to talk about sure the work itself may be a good thing but as the business person that's what you are when you're putting something into the marketplace. you have to be aware of that censorship and how does that inform your work. >> was that a question quick i didn't understand the question. >> i thought it was a comment. >> you mentioned censorship he didn't feel it. also the idea that being my authentic self and my writing and i don't worry about the gates. >> when i say it's interesting that i don't worry about the gates. my gaze and the story

want to tell i shift it so when i wanted to reach a different audiencei i just shifted genres. so i do worry about it. i m self-published and that's wt got me in the door to the and then ipublishers found a pretty good publish -- publishing company for 10 years where we published about 50 or 60 authors and i was one so that was wonderful for us. but that's tough. the profit margins are small. to sell a book is hard. seriously to sell one book. >> it's not for everyone. it's just tough so the business part of this is hard because i

don't want to say easy. it's sitting home alone and writing in getting out there for the a people and all the people black and whiteto are going to tell you i'm not going to spend any money on this. the only thing i can say is that this is really what you want to do just don't give up. i know that sounds like a clicée and i know that the you have heard it like come on, give me a better answer than that i've been writing for 25 years. it took me 24 years for people to know my name. i always thought about the times i wanted to give up along that path and if i had given up i wouldn't have achieved what i

achieved.of in one of my books they talk about -- and you never know how close you are to that gold. i looked at all the things that have suddenly come down on me that would have happened if i had given up. his a i hate to say that but i agree. my first book my agent i think we got two rejections and the 11th was as, yes. my second book bolted right out of the gates and my third book, you don't know and i don't worry about the gaze that my books are not fancygh ones. they are many publishers who would never publish my books. i just need the one that does so right. i totally agree he just had to keep working at it and looking

at other publishers or whatever you are trying to do. >> thank you. right overri here. >> thank you so much to everyone onve the panel especially about the letters. this is a question. i recently wrote an article entitled anto open letter to blk andho latino men who are -- writing it was like almost writing for my uncle. my question is what are some of your strategies and addressing our folks not just the classic dubois conception but how you look at yourself in the third stage which is how you look at others in the world and define your ideology. are there strategies? >> for that particular letter i

would look for the platform or you think black and latino men go to. >> i mean the platform just to get it viral. i'm not talking about words published that the actual writingof strategy paragraph by paragraph and how do you set up our own folks who have internalized white supremacy but have done it in a way that they didn't realize it. >> this is in some ways the book i'm working on. that's why these ideas arere so powerful. we have overestimated the antiracist sensibilities of our own communities and we have looked back on social movements

in the past and overestimated the level of participation involved. and personally i am living throughmo a moment of some despr because as i said earlier i'm not sure what people think oppression looks like. i mean you know we die from lack of access to health care and third way too many of us dying at the hands of the state because of either police violence or slow genocide. none of that has changed, none of it and get our ability to mobilize in the face of this is not only, but we have documented evidence of people were treating to the enemy's side. we have always had people who have been traders said the speak

and i'm not trying to call people uncle tom's i'm just saying they are always folks who are incentivized to literally tell our business and put us in moral peril. but we just now have a good old-fashioned polling data that tells us that black and latino men are voting for fascists. and that in some ways is the consequences of how our own ability to educate our own to fight againstou colonized formsf education have been over the past four decades and isa would say our leaders are mainstream leaders in particular have failed us in thisve regard. we have bought hook line and sinker this notion that all of the business of inequality in america was largely a failure for the people you are writing

for. that includes their bad choices that have accumulated. this was the dominant thread right up through the obama years. it's only in the face of the election in 2016 that people began to talk much more strenuously about structural racism and diminished life chances so the framework of ideas that hover over the choices that we make as individuals to decide how to ease their agency we have do we fight and externally or do we fight internally or satellite power and self-identify with the oppressor? we haven't been having these conversations are teaching these frameworks at scale. there's a whole bunch of teaching that goes on and i'm not saying it's a desert out there but we really dropped the ball. we absolutely dropped the ball and we will left the hype of the

american dream and individual of this take off like wildfire so we shouldn't be surprised some of our own and trying to get paid and if trump is handing out checks that to him with. >> haunt the -- handing out checks and sexism. >> thank you. right over here. >> good evening everyone. i'm an air force vet and i'm also pastry chef. thank you all for your time. i do not speak for everyone. i'm very grateful for your intellect and you sharing it with me today. my question is once we get past we have our agent and we have our book deal and we got it out there and we are trying to get ourselves are you encountering navigating kind

of this phenomenon of outward critiquing and what i meanis by that in my community i'm seeing some readers that are putting reviews on our books as black authors and i'm like i can identify. and basically it'sle scaring the people that it's intended for a way. like maybe i shouldn't read this book and one girl was talking about on tiktok. she was speaking about it and she basically was like okay i'm going to get it for myself and she got it and she said it's amazing. she went and saw the reviews she realized it was all white readers putting down this book so i don't know if you guys have a recovery team or how you are doing that.

>> if you find one, let us know. >> and how you are sidestepping that obstacle and how are you getting through that challenge? >> i have no strategy for that in fact i think you take in a lot of toxicity when you do that. i just tell a the truth as bests i can tell it and i move on. i don't read comments. i just don't. if someone writes me a letter i will read that so few want to ride maine a letter i will read that. if you want to write a letter i will read that anyone can say anything on social media. i just don't bother with it. >> it will affect how you ride make your next book and

everything so i've heard of one situationth like that but i haven't heard that was happening a lot but there was one going around by an author who is sabotaging other authors. it was an author. i hadn't heard about that so just do what you can and stay away from it. >> i have one bit of practical advice although it's probably not free to you there black influencers who can be contracted to promote work so you can fight fire with fire if you can afford i it. >> thank you for your time. >> betts pr recovery. [laughter] >> pr recovery. >> good evening everyone and thank you so much for sharing your wisdom and insight. it's very full. this is a question more about strategy something that was mentioned earlier. i had a conversation with a good

friend andle we were talking abt letters and how we like to exchange letters and most things are digital these days. i thought this would be the perfect people to ask. how can we preserve the thought that a facebook status space forever granted eventually these platforms to fall apart. i'm just wondering your thoughts with regards to how can we make sure our stories are what we wish to share or don't wish to share make it into the future and i to question with regards to s strategy about sharing your -- iowa and a response to your work. was wondering for those who decide to go into masters programs in creative riding how do you deal with how do you strategize when someone is not getting what you wrote and it's

an institutionit now. so the question about strategy. >> i want to ask -- enter enter the cycle and frisbee whenever i go into a workshop i go in there knowing that i'll take the good and throw away the bad. so as a writer i have too learned how to separate myself from things in so it was amazing that she said it and i was glad that she said it so i have a story to tell but it did not affect me but i got some really good things out of that class. that just wasn't one of w them. so you take the good and throw away the bad. >> thank you and you should look into the hearse to writers retreat in washington d.c.. >> thankel you. >> with regards to maintaining a record ofof their work things tt

we do. >> i think that's a good question for khalil because that is going to be a challenge for future historians with letters of such it important part of the retelling of history and i think a lot of the record is going to be lost in the digital space. >> i've been out of the archival business for eight years now so i can't say this is state-of-the-art archivists are gaining the ability to collect what we call born digital material and to some degree even that version of it that i'm aware of is collected from people's heart drives. they may not be collecting people's passwords as archives are handed off particularly when people voluntarily give them away.

you can change your password to the things that are present to protectnd privacy in the present toe give away a password to things better in the past because a lot of people feel particularly writers will connect to an archive while they arell still alive. when people pass away the family has a deal with it no question it's a big job. a lot of written words and it's not clear how much of it can be safe. the other side of it is that there is likely much more that gets captured because there's so much more writing activity for laypeople. >> and not the private letters. in the correct the public square in ways that people use to have phone conversations.

it could be a wash. i don't know what to say about what's's happening. >> thank you. >> the last question. >> racism and the attack on black folks in this country i believee they are about the demographic changes in this country and fear. again at chicago studies the folks who were arrested january january 6 any of them came from counties that white people are becoming a minority. can you talk about the impact of the demographic change and the attack not only on literature andnn book banning that overall because we don't talk about the change. that's my belief.

professor mohammed if you could talk about it. >> is called fear of the black planet. i think you have the art he laid out evidence for us. we know that the global majority and the people who exist a majority population here in the so-called united states and likely many parts of europe will shift over the next two decades, two generations. that being said i think, i would say two things they won a lot of backlash isn't obvious isor more about the millions of white people who stood up forl racial justice even in a brief moment in the summer of 2020. but the sheer the sheer scale of

white people taking some stands against violence suggests to the fascist republicans that they only have one h last shot to control how these people think and behave which is why they basically have said we have got to shut it down. i think what is more when it comes to the question about black and latino men is that there is no guarantee that as the united states population of nonwhites become the literary population that any of this will change. >> exactly, south. in the 20 largest cities have been so-called minority majority for years and so what? and it doesn't change who has theu power. >> that task is on us to

diagnose it, to write about it and organize around it and all of that. >> it is dangerous. i live in portland oregon so watching as the majority, three or 4% of the population watching young white people out there being conflicted in response to the police around those bodies was interesting to me going out and observing and all within the throws -- to talk about anti-and told -- anti-intellectualism but it's important for people to read. the offense or 500 words now in magazines or newspaper articles. everything is shorting quick so people aren't questioning or challenging it so when you don't

have distraction, entertainment you have football baseball basketball hockey to keep the populace distracted and entertained than they actually have time to maybe think about what is really happening. just put those things together. you can't be distracted. it is important to say okay. i mean it is, it is an intro era. it's like when obama got elected people started asking a repost race? it was like shut up. you're making this up. the messages you cannot -- and i'm not talking about shooting anybody.

i'm talking about your intellectual guns you cannot put them down and he cannot stop. >> thank you all so very much. thank you. [applause] it is really a pleasue

craig here and his family. zirin it's gr it's a pleasure to have craig here and his family. good to have you and your children and grandchildren so your wonderful applause perhaps now is a great moment. it's a