those jobs found in nearly every state, an important reminder that trade benefits the u.s. not just when we export. seafood trade also benefit farm states in two ways. 18% of all soy goes into fish farms, many of those fish farms in asia. and to the countries with which american farmers increasingly seek to send our ag products, are countries that export seafood to america. we cannot expect to open asian markets to u.s. pork beef poultry if we shut off access to our seafood markets. seafood safety. a strong supporter in word and deed. worked closely with academia to best implement. nfi works with the alliance for a stronger fda to urge congress

to for the agency to meet statutory obligations. as dr. sullivan fully described, i will not duplicate that discussion. i will close, though, speaking to results. results afterall, what matters. the centers for disease control analyzed illnesses from all foods. over the five-year period ending in 2010, cdc found that 141 of 122,000 that is 0.001156 or 0.12% illnesses caused by imported seafood. most of us love baseball. great day to be out for the nats game. but we recall going to the games with our dads. hoipg to clutch that mitt and catch that foul ball. unfortunately, we often came home crest fallen because we rarely ever did. the chance of catching the foul ball.

0.001156 or 0.12%. as an example of effectiveness of fda and while this is the hearing focus not only the fda captures program, i did want to acknowledge the leadership of senator shaheen and ayotte and others on this committee working in a bipartisan manner to eliminate a program that usda's own risk experts said will not improve public health. both domestic and imported has reduced illnesses to less than two per year. a safe product. it is because of the stringent requirements, a system required for both domestic and imported seafood. a system that requires problems to be fixed thousands of miles away from america not caught at the border. that congress exempted companies from some of the key provisions.

nfi agrees with congress' determination. thank you. >> thank you very much. and now we'll hear from mr. frank randall. frank, welcome. >> thank you, chairman vitter. there we go, again. thank you. and for the members not here. ranking member shaheen, senator carden. thank you for inviting me to testify about the guest worker program. the program is a vital part of the survival, is -- this program is a vital -- is vital. this program is vital for the survival of seafood processing, especially in louisiana and maryland. the program, this program -- excuse me, just let me go. >> sure. >> it's vital. i will submit my statements for the record. in addition to a number of

exhibits that will provide a use of reference for the committee. i'll now provide oral comments. i'm here to express my concerns for the future of my business and other small businesses that struggle daily. to succeed. i started at randalls in 1971, very small, one man, one truck. after four decades they're grown in size and scope, transitioning to the next generation. the future is in my sons that work my business allowing me to pull back. hurdles over the last four years were detailed by the commissioner. floods, hurricanes, oil spills, lack of product, imports from china. but the single most pressing issue has been the lack of labor. 1970s when i started my business i was lucky enough to have the refugees from vietnam come in. brought in roughly 40 to help us get through that time. over the course of the years came to the 1990s, that started

to wayne a little bit. we discovered the h2b program and started to bring in the guest workers from mexico. started with 40, dwindled to 30, now we're at 25. i'm here to talk about the h2b guest worker program. the legal, legal temporary workers. to support farming fishing, restaurants, wholesale and retail operations. the attached decorations i've submitted from dr. strain filed in our suit of 2011 against the department of labor gives an overview of the importance of the h2b program to the louisiana economy. h2b application process has been a growing and expensive challenge since took over the initial wage certification from the state in 2008, the process has become increasingly more time consuming and costly. initially, i did the paperwork myself. but now had to turn it over to someone else qualified to -- more qualified to run through

the governmental hoops. many people are using legal or international, international immigrant immigration attorneys. immigration attorneys. the stack of paperwork represents, was submitted on the application for the first cap. for the second, it'd be twice that stack. we missed both caps. our plant was scheduled to open february 2015, we're still waiting to see if we can salvage part of it. often we hear the remark, if you pay more money, you'll get the labor you need. we feel that isn't the case. it's more about the job than the money in our seafood industry. after missing the cap, both

caps, we tried something different. seven prison trustees after one day. one trustee said i'd rather go back to jail than peel crawfish. the warden picked him up, brought him back, we didn't see him again. the remaining trustees continued to shrink until after a two-week effort they were all gone. now union activity starts to increase and create problems for us. and, recently the nlrb has surfaced in getting involved. we have referenced this in documents that we brought as exhibits. we need urgently we need fixes to save the program for small businesses. congress has to take action now. lost opportunity to fix the problems last year have already done severe harm in louisiana. some louisiana small business will not recover, others may be forced to cross the border. as in the past, we need immediate congressional action

to block the new dhs and dol proposals of last wednesday. the workforce coalition submitted a statement we attached as an exhibit. in addition, we need to resume the returning worker exemption from the annual cap. we also have to return the authority of determining prevailing wages to the states. additionally, we feel we need a seat at the table with dol. just like the national guest workers alliance. the office of advocacy needs to be more aggressive in confronting dhs and dol as policy changes are being discussed. and, you know, part of what came up today as we listen to the testimony is what we have been hearing is that somehow what's

happening was caused by industry. we just don't see it that way. we're small people, but we do know no matter where it was caused or somehow, when something like this happens, if there's an error or whatever, people that make the error still have their jobs. but in our case, we're small. we don't survive. there's some got to give and take that's got to take place here. and that's really why i'm here. somebody had to come up and tell you about what's going on back home. the little guys that are having problems. some big guys have the same problem. hershey expressed these problems in 2007 on to 2011 when they decided to open up the monterey mexico. and most of the growth already funneled into that plant for their american chocolate is now the america's chocolate. we have one right here. we have one in louisiana largest employer. uses h2b. missed the cap.

and he's struggling. he's trying to make his orders for this year. small business. he's up against -- i'm not saying -- this is good chocolate, needs to stay home. i'd be happy to answer any questions you may have. >> thanks very much, frank. let's start with you since you offer such a great world perspective. i know you touched on it in your testimony. walk through the specific concrete impact to your business that the various recent department of labor changes and rulings have had. number one. number two, if you have any reaction so far. it may be too new, maybe you don't, but if you have any reaction so far of the new department of labor guidance moving forward on wage surveys. >> let me start, it's more of the same. as i see from dol.

we've reviewed this stuff. it's stuff that don't work. program rules, 75% guarantee. got to turn them back, got to pay them. that doesn't work in louisiana. as far as the parity, if i pay one person this, other person has to be paid the same. in the seafood, we pay for productivity. we might bring them in at entry level, but give the incentives through piece work. they accelerate, get better, might enter at a nominal rate. but a lot of people get up to these larger rates $12 to $15 an hour. peeling craw fish. that's attainable. >> just to take those two examples. as far as you know, is any of that mandated by statutory law? or is it just a creation of the department of labor. >> a creation. y'all write the laws, they

interpret the laws and we try to say that's not what you meant. you saw me up here in '06, it was easy to predict to see where we were going. that was when i first came to discuss this. the pain is in reality. and the pain to me, i feel it because i'm in it and i can't get out of it. we got through the process, missed the first cap. i've been at this for half a year trying to make a deadline. i can always start four months before i need them. four months, and i've been at it for six months. and i'm still not in the last step, which would gain me access in six weeks to bring them in. the real lifting at the border to determine whether these people really need to come in. you know, we've demonstrated we don't have the workforce here. >> frank, if i can interrupt, through the record ask miss wu. we talked about two specific requirements that you mentioned are flat out unworkable in the real world from your perspective. so if you could submit for the record any statutory basis that

requires the department of labor to do that. because from what i see, there is none. thank you. go ahead, frank. >> a lot of this stuff in the coalition paper. what comes to mind is open up a job order that starts four months out and you have to take it 20 days to where these people are coming inside of the country. and leave it open. normally, you know, we've demonstrated there are no people that want this job. but, you know, these are just some of the few. and what i've offered to dol is, the nga is apparently -- has their ear. let's let small business somehow be in the process so that we don't see the results of a mandate, but we have a team effort to try to move forward. when they impose these things, we feel the pain. a lot of people go out of business. >> right. >> let me ask, both you and dr. strain if you have any specific

reaction yet to their new guidance about allowing private, including state surveys. is it workable? is it not? is it reasonable? is it too narrow? do you have any reaction yet? >> the reaction i have is that we've been using the prevailing wage rate surveys. >> mr. chairman, we've been using the state prevailing wage rate surveys for many years. and when you look at the final rule, it says they will be used in limited exceptions. and so now we have several different methodologies to determine a wage rate. simply, let us continue to use the wage rate rule. if you look at the seafood industry and the crawfish industry, the state prevailing wage rate as determined by the lsu ag center and my office, $8.66. that's a floor. but they're also paid on piecemeal. and you have some -- you have workers that make $12, $15, $18 an hour.

depending on production, this sets a minimum wage. let's not, if you look at what is in the interim rule there, it's complicated. we need to simplify this. >> okay. and dr. strain, i also wanted to touch on my imported seafood safety. we worked on it together, it would give states more power to increase seafood inspections for foreign imports. >> yes. >> in conjunction with the federal government. we've talked about this before, essentially empowering you to reinforce the effort of the federal government to put more cops on the beat. we do this in many other areas where the primary regulation is at the federal level. but related state entities can help enforce that.

what is your view on that? and how it could improve seafood safety? >> mr. chairman. the american public, when they go to the market, 100% of the proteins for beef and pork, and 99% for poultry, there's a special, a specialty thing for poultry if you have a very small amount, less than 10% chickens, you can sell them, it's very tiny. but all of those proteins are inspected. they are monitored from the farm all the way through slaughter, they expect that slaughter and tested and back traced. the american public believes their seafood they consume is inspected and safe at that same level. if you look at the cdc report and i'm going to quote the press release 2012, says we currently import about 85% of our seafood. reviewed outbreaks from the food

born disease outbreak surveillance system from 2005 to 2010. 248 illnesses were linked to imported food from 15 countries. of those outbreaks, 17 half occurred in '09 and '10. overall fish, 17 outbreaks were the most common source of implicated. foodborne disease outbreaks, followed by spices. nearly 45% of imported foods causing outbreaks came from asia. the american public assumes we are doing this testing. we know we're not. less than 3% of the imported seafood. 85% of the seafood consumes in the united states is imported and less than 3% is being tested. furthermore, when you look at that particular issue, if you look in a container of seafood there could be in the case of crawfish, there could be up to 20 different lots.

20 different lots, different origins coming together. so when you think that it's all a blended product and you take one sample and it is consistent with everything in the container, it is not. and when you look at the particular issues that we're talking about, we're talking about antibiotics that are banned from the united states such as clonefenacol. chemicals such as malachite green that are banned from the united states. so when you look at that, it is imperative we all be on the same level playing field. and when you start talking about why we need to test this seafood and you say, well, how are we going to stop port shopping, well, it's very simple. is that we need to make sure we have eyes on at the processing level in those foreign countries and i think some of that will take into effect in the future under the food safety modernization act. but that is somewhere in the future. and that container will be accompanied by a certificate stating it has been tested. and if that container comes in and you retest that container

and it is not what it says, then it can either return directly and be certified to go back to the country of origin or be destroyed on site. now, our department, i'm responsible, i oversee the department of animal health and food safety. we have a food inspection program. we also work hand in hand with the usda, animal plant health inspection service, to where we do joint meat inspection, we do state plants and we can work jointly on federal plants where those products can cross state lines. but i am not permitted to test imported seafood. now, i can look at the containers to make sure that -- and i as the commissioner of the office of metrology, weights, measures and standards, that if there's a pound of seafood in there there's supposed to be a pound. but we're not allowed to take samples and test it for contaminants. so just like we are having a working relationship and we have a cooperative endeavor agreement with the federal government to

do the other protein inspection, let us have the same arrangements where my inspectors who are out at those plants looking at other things and we do label inspections for the federal government as well give us the authority under a cooperative endeavor agreement to be further armed. we have testing labs in louisiana. we do half of the seafood tests. >> so if that were done, which i certainly support and am advocating through my bill, that would be fully consistent with the federal standards. it wouldn't be using different standards in any way. you'd just be additional cops on the beat, correct? >> that's correct. and what we do, our standards, our procedures are in alignment with the federal procedures. and we should have standards as high as the european union. they test and i believe it's up to 15% to 20% of all the products going to the eu. we should meet at least those standards. >> well, thank you all very much. we're going to wrap up. but in doing so let me also ask through the record if dr. solomon could supplement his

testimony with a response to this question. dr. strain mentioned the use of chemicals on imported seafood that are banned in the united states. why shouldn't that practice be presumptive grounds to not allow that seafood into the country? if dr. solomon could respond for the record. thank you all very much. i think this was very informative and productive, particularly focusing on department of labor activity and regulations and the safety regime for seafood imports. thanks very much, and our hearing is adjourned.

on the next washington journal, discussing sentencing and prison reform efforts. then jake horowitz talks about

trends in juvenile in cars nation. and then looking at racial and socioeconomic factors creating divisions in america's inner cities. those conversations and your calls, tweets and e-mails. the show live at 7:00 a.m. eastern, 4:00 pacific on cspan. thursday, we are with attorney general loretta lynch when she testifies about the budget request for her department. the senate appropriations subcommittee on commerce, justice, science hearing starts at 10:30 a.m. eastern. you can see it on cspan. here's a look at some featured programs for this weekend on cspan networks. saturday at 10:00 a.m. eastern, live from greenville south

carolina for the freedom summit. on mother's day starting noon eastern, remembering first ladies featuring daughters of jackie kennedy lady bird johnson, betty ford, laura bush. on cspan2 on book tv after word, jn krokauer. and then ann dunwoody. talks about her life and military career. american history tv saturday at 4:45 eastern on oral histories, remembering the liberation of nazi concentration camps with interview of curt klein who as a teenager escaped german persecution of jews by coming to the u.s., lost his parents, as

interrogate or for the army questioned hitler's personal driver. sunday at 2:00 the anniversary of world war ii in europe with dignitaries and veterans commemorating the event in washington, d.c. get the complete schedule at cspan.org. tuesday the manhattan institute for policy research hosted a forum on the future of america's black community. the event marks the 50th anniversary of a study on black america conducted by johnson administration labor secretary daniel patrick moynihan who later represented new york in the u.s. senate. this panel focuses on restoring the family. it is just over an hour. just want to keep things moving, if we could take our seats. we will continue with the third

panel, then we'll grab a bite. i hope everyone found the previous two panels informative. i certainly have. we will move to panel three, restoring the family. i will introduce the panelists. the moderator is kay hymowitz fellow at the manhattan institute, contributing editor to city journal. kay writes extensively on childhood, family issues poverty and cultural change in america, author of four books including marriage and cast in america, separate and unequal families in a post marital age. and liberation's children parents and kids in a post modern age. and again, kay will be moderating the panel.

the panelists are -- start with ron haskins, senior fellow in the economic studies program at the brookings institution, and senior consult at the anna can ee foundation in baltimore. in 2002 he was senior adviser to the president for welfare reform policy at the white house. he is senior editor of the future of children a journal on policy issues that effect children and families also the author of show me the evidence, work over welfare inside story of the 1996 welfare reform. and co-author of creating an opportune society. next panelist i will introduce is robert woodson. founder and president of the

center for neighborhood enterprise which since 1981 has provided training for more than 2600 leaders and community based groups in 39 states. mr. woodson is also the author of youth crime and urban policy, a view from the inner-city, and trial for joseph how today's community healers are refiving our streets and neighborhoods. and finally glenn loury, professor of economics at brown university. mr. loury also taught at boston university harvard and northwestern. he is recipient of gug enheim fellowship and carnegie scholarship. member of council on foreign relations, and author of several books including one by one from the inside-out essays on race

in america, race and incarceration, american values put out in 2008. on a personal note, i would like to say that both professor loury and bob woodson more than they could possibly realize influenced my thinking on many of the issues we are talking about today over the years. i discovered both their writings when i was in college. never thought i would be here today sharing a stage with them. just simply devoured their work in the early '90s, newspaper columns, books, and it is a privilege for me to have them here today. i want to say thank you to both of them for participating in this. [ applause ] and with that i will turn things over to kay hymowitz. >> thanks. and welcome to what seems to be the third panel on the family. for those of you here earlier you'll know what i mean.

i'm very pleased to be here because i've done a lot of work on the moynihan report, and it is such an important moment in american history. really a kind of hinge moment not only because moynihan recognized what was going on before anybody else in the black family but also because of its aftermath, that is the public response to the moynihan report. when moynihan first wrote the report he got a fairly good response from within the administration. bill moyers, senior staff with lyndon johnson was very excited about it yes, that bill moyers, and johnson himself was so taken with the report that he gave a speech very close to here at howard university for the

graduation of the graduate class of 1965, and he said the following. this is so incredible to hear these words and to imagine a sitting president uttering them. but he said the next and more profound stage the battle for civil rights, is the family. negro poverty is not white poverty. the breakdown of the negro family structure is the consequence of ancient brutality, past injustice presents prejudice. when the family collapses, it is the children that are usually damaged. when it happens on a massive scale, the community itself is crippled. now, let me put it this way. well when johnson gave that speech shortly after, he said he believed it was his greatest civil rights speech, but to put it bluntly, not many people agreed. there was tremendous upheaval

and push back from civil rights groups and feminist groups as well, so much so that moynihan was pushed out of washington. and johnson went silent on this subject. one response that i wanted to read to you was from an activist and author named joyce ladner who interestingly enough became president of howard university years later. this is what she wrote in response to that moynihan report. one must question the validity of the white middle class life-style from its very foundation because it has already proven itself to be decadent and unworthy of emulation. you get a sense of the tenor of response, and why this conversation went so underground

underground. in fact that prevailed, although people didn't put it in quite those ways. today the conversation about the black family is actually improved quite a bit for this reason. around the early '90s to mid '90s there started to be more research showing children of single mothers really were at a disadvantage. there was enough data at that point over a decade, over several decades to see these trends and to develop enough research that i am going to be quoting the late james wilson even soes ee -- sociologists had to believe it. there was a sense among family researchers, yes, there was a problem here, a genuine problem

but although the conversation has been somewhat improved it is still in many ways very reminiscent of that early debate that we had between moynihan and his critics. i am hoping that the panel today, i am nothing the panel today, our excellent panel will have interesting ways of thinking about that debate and hopefully have some solutions to this problem that continues to be so much part of our american discussion today. so i'm going to begin with ron haskins who will layout some of the numbers for you on where we're at. >> thank you. i'm a great admire remember of the moynihan report read it back in 1965. i was young then, just learning to read. i read the thing, was astounded

by it, and i was way more astounded by the reaction to it which was shocking as kay has said. so my job is to just layout some numbers about what our situation is. recall that moynihan was complaining primarily about black families and his these is was that because of weakness in black family structure, blacks would not be able to seize the opportunities that were coming available to them as a result of the civil rights movement. and i can tell you that what i am going to say to you is moynihan's concerns now apply to hispanics and to whites, to the whole country. and here are the numbers. i got these by i recently analyzed the censuses. this is representative of the whole country. here is what happened with family composition. first, marriage rates declined for every age group and every ethnic group every education

group, with one exception that's quite fascinating, declined in 1970 and 1980 for college educated women, but have been stable and risen a little for college educated women. i think there's a lesson in that. for every other group marriage rates have declined. now i'm going to tell you a fact demonstrated by social science. this fact will make it worthwhile that you came here today. sex did not go out of fashion even though marriage did. and when those two things happen, you have lots of nonmarital births. this was the problem that moynihan focused on the most. now we have nonmarital birth rate among hispanic and whites higher than when moynihan wrote the report and their level among blacks in 1965. so today 72 black kids are born out of wedlock. 53% of hispanic, 36% of white

kids. overall nonmarital rate in the united states was over 40%. if we put the marriage rates and birth rates together, and let's describe the change in the family constitution of females at 35 nice was to summarize what happened. in the last 40 years, married with children, that category the one i am always most concerned about because we are worried about kids has fallen from 78% to 51%. 35% of decline of women who lived with children and are living with children since 1970. single with children as you would expect has exploded, more than doubled from 9.3% of all children to 20.5% of all children. these figures at any given moment over a period of time figures are even higher.

this constitutes a revolution, and the next question to ask that the rest of the panel will answer, so what. so what. the answer is that first of all kids who live in single parent families are five times as likely to be poor as kids in married couple families, and they're very prone to ups and downs in the economy. nobody thinks poverty is good for kids. right there you get a hint of what about the next thing i am going to talk about kay mentioned it, research on single parent families married couple families. bear in mind, when this research started, they were convinced it made no difference. may have is hetherington, one of the most famous psychologists

came to the conclusion the kids will be all right, they'll go on and be fine. we know based on hundreds of studies accumulating all of the time, primarily professors doing this work including wilson sociologist, a famous one sarah mcclanahan. good memory. sarah mcclanahan who wrote the original book and has written several things since then including best studies of impacts being causal that kids have a lot of trouble when they're reared by female headed families. the fact that moynihan was write when he wrote now three times more correct, his conclusions apply to hispanics and whites as well as blacks. we are in for serious trouble. zblp glenn loury is going to

speak next. >> unfortunately the facts don't matter that much. that comment you quoted of james q. wilson, even a so the obviously gist could believe it is indicative of something really important about the state of our political/intellectual lives in this country. facts don't govern, narratives govern. this is about the story we tell, the conflict over control of the narrative has taken precedence over an if you will evidence based, rational implementation of policy. when you throw race into the mix, it just gets tough. i can give many examples not only about family and family structure, of course moynihan was write. he was right in 1965 about the condition of the african-american family and how it was changing right about the

implication that ron haskins mentioned to the effect that the consequence of this social transformation amongst african-americans would make embrace of newly opened opportunities more difficult. he was right to the extent he insinuated that this was a matter not only of the african-american social landscape but a matter of importance to the nation as a whole. of course he was right about that. those who had the hunch moynihan was not really a social scientist, but he was very effective policy intellectual with things to say and he had a hunch. those that had the hunch that the unraveling of the traditional family spelled real trouble for our society have been shown to be right. i just want to make a couple of points about this. so what, it has consequences, but what do we do?

cultural engineering is not an exact science, not something i would want to bet my life on. you can pull the string and unravel the fabric of social institution, but reweaving that another direction is a difficult thing to do. the tools that the state has available are welfare and assistance policies tax policies and so on are very crude. one is pushing against a guide that moved far from the '50s, restoring the traditional family. saw the title with respect to organizers, i almost laughed because it is such a futile objective. traditional family? i have a dear friend, david blank enhorn, runs an institution called institute for american values he's a good man. he wrote a book i don't know 25 years ago or more, called

fatherless america, in which he was lamenting denigration of the role of fatherhood within american culture, and david has embraced gay marriage and i don't criticize him for having done so not in the least, my son is a gay man for that matter, but he has done so in part out of the desperate need to find allies in defense of marriage per se. part of his motivation is simply they're for marriage, i am for them. out looking for allies for marriage, i don't see that many of them around. it would be easy to get ideological, wag my finger at leftwing feminist that wanted to destroy the family and so forth. i don't want to do that i don't want to lose the weight of what i am trying to say about intellectual political difficulty we wandered into amidst partisanship. as soon as i say that, everyone runs to their respective corner and put up their defenses.

pat moynihan was a friend of mine. i knew daniel patrick moynihan. i was in the audience in 1985 30 years ago when he came to kennedy school at harvard, and gave lectures, later published as his book family and nation in which he tried to defend his own intellectual contribution and at the same time defend the political program of a democratic party. he took a real shot at it. but it wasn't only family members, defining dfwian see down this was also pat moynihan. the character of our intellectual discourse, our ability to be honest with each other, to call a spade a spade, one might say with trepidation. look at the discourse going on now in the aftermath of ferguson, baltimore, and so forth. people are writing on op-ed pages of serious newspapers if

there hadn't been a riot there wouldn't have been justice, without any sense of self consciousness or irony. you me that's the way we get justice through riots? is that justice? people are saying that as has been mentioned here i think jason mentioned it are saying that the very evocation is betrayal of equality in the country. we can't even talk about it. i don't want this to just be a la meant, i am going to conclude with a suggestion. we desperately need leadership here. someone has got to push against the prevailing tide. somebody has got to have the courage to say something, even though they know that 95% my friend says you try to tell black intellectuals opinion writers let's restore the black family, maybe you get two or

three out of 10 to agree, if they write it in the op-ed they're snowed under by avalanche of reaction. they have to write it anyway. the president of the united states has to say it anyway. when the president of the united states is the first african-american to hold the most powerful office in the land he has to say it anyway. i voted twice for barack obama. i mean him no disrespect, intend him no ill will but i am so deeply disappointed that the events that transpired in the last six months have not called forth from him the kind of counter cultural leadership. when i say counter cultural, against the prevailing that wants to account for these matters in terms of absent opportunity, tacit racism, psychological impairment of police officers. there's absent opportunity, plenty of racism and some police need to be worked on but at the root is a failure now a

half century on-going of african-american society to be able to respond effectively to opportunities. you're not supposed to say this. people get on leaky boats and risk their lives to get here from every continent on the planet and by and large once they get off those boats they do pretty well. i think the system with its flaws is working pretty well. i think it is unavoidable the question, you people what's up. and that's a question that we people should be asking first and foremost of ourselves. thank you. >> robert woodson. >> i would like to speak to this from the perspective of a social act vis that spends most of my time in low income neighborhoods. i would say 80% of my friends

are ex something. >> but not ex-friends. >> no. they're ex-drug addicts, ex-prostitutes, ex-something. and i think that when i was active in the civil rights movement probably one of the few people when dr. king died, i hit the streets with ten neighborhood leaders and interposed ourselves between the national guard and the police and the rioters. the reason we could prevail is because the people i was with was respected and known by the people, not a single civil rights person not a single pastor was there but they were grass roots leaders and they represented what i call community antibodies. the sickest part of the body draws the healthiest antibodies. but we only call or come in in times of crisis. these are the legitimate leaders of low income people. it was after that that i realize that a lot of people who

suffered and sacrificed most in the battle for civil rights didn't change. it was about well educated people. that's why bill raspberry, when he was reporter for "the post" i think october 31st 1965 a banner headline poor negroes are not benefitting from gains of the civil rights movement, and the same kind of anger that we heard in baltimore was echoed 50 years ago by low income blacks then because the interest and poor blacks according to abate and switch game they use the demographics of those at the bottom, and when the remedies and money arrived it didn't go to them, it went to those that provided services to the poor. so we are in serious need of some self examination inside the black community. that's why i am calling for a

one year moratorium and whining about white folks. i'm going to absorb you all for a year. the high council of gave me the authority to absolve all white people for a year. [ laughter ] >> this gives us an opportunity to add a dress the enemy within the enemy within means that we need to stop pimping poor people that means we have to apply our values, old values to a new vision. yes, the families are but it wasn't happening if it wasn't racism or poverty. if that's true, during the ten years of depression, wouldn't a black family be disintegrated? it didn't. the marriage rights were higher than it was in the white community, even though the

unemployment rate was 25%, was 40% for the black come canmunity, we didn't decision grate and i don't want to talk about how the time that happened with others who began to, they wanted to disconnect work from income, and welfare became a right. we become to moral deregulation occurred, and where under john lindsey, we just and the governments just opened up offices and recruited people on welfare so the biggest spike in welfare was at a time when the black unemployment rate for black men in new york was 4%. and so it just went out of control, and they said if we disconnect work from income, families will decisionsinigrate and

america will engage in income redistribution and that's the answer to poverty. that's how this family went off the cliff we're on. okay, what are remedies? the remedies are and my criticism of both scholars to the left and right, we talk about the 70% of the black families that are dysfunctioned. that means 30% are functioning. so why don't we do studies of capacities among the 30% to try to find out what is going on in those households that can perhaps give us some idea of what are the coping mechanisms. that's what the center does. for ten years in public housing, right here in the '80s, women and mothers there said that our housing is horrible but we have to change it. so the residents, the mothers

got together and began to organize a management of public housing. kimmy gray, she was abandoned at age 21 with five children and divorced. got off welfare and sent all kids to college and in ten years enable aed 400 other kids to go to college. teen pregnancy rates were down, almost eliminated and it was on "60 minutes." everyone came to examine this success except researchers. [ laughter ] >> except policy makers and there are other examples where there are people taking responsibility who operate mediating institutions. no, we're not going to replace them, glenn, but there are alternatives that can help young people coaches are substitute fathers. we have a lot of ex offenders

whose lives have been transformed and redeemed who are coaches and surrogate fathers for kids. my point is we need to stop studying failure. you learn nothing from studying failure except how to create failure failure. they read like autopsy reports. we really need to do capacity studies and that's what we do is you have to go into low income communities, find out who is working, how can we begin to take some money that are going into people who are in who are professional service providers the that parachute in remedies. instead, we should take some of that money and give it to people indigenous and come up with innovative approaches. they are social entrepreneurs and in like any entrepreneur, 3%

of commercial entrepreneur crowa pa entrepreneur create 70% of the jobs. we need to begin to study success. >> thank you. [ applause ] >> so it strikes me that we're having a discussion i've heard before. although, very eloquently expressed and i'm wondering i have a feeling all of you feel that same sense of deja vu you referred to when we're talking before, glenn, that we've been doing this a long time and hearing the same stuff. so let's push a little bit and think a little bit more about is there, are there any new ideas out there as ron and perhaps both, all three of you know, the

government programs that started under the bush administration for promoting marriage were not successful or very disappointing and certainly when it comes to government initiated programs it's not clear what we have, other than some maybe some tinkers with the tax code to reduce the tax disadvantage for married couples, but, you know, i'm for one very skeptical about that. i want to push more to see what is new out there? more can we think about? >> i'm a little skeptical, too. i admit that. i completely disagree. i'm on bob's board for maybe another 20 minutes. social sciences about looking for successes. we have literally hundreds of important random assignment experiments to find out what works and we found out some things that do work. now, if you're expecting that we're going to launch a program

and we're going to increase the high school graduation rate by 80%, that's not going to happen. that may happen over a period of years, but we've got programs like small schools of choice in new york city. a huge experiment. random assignment. well close to ramndom assignment and the most disadvantaged neighborhoods in new york and bob, that's positive. that's a positive outcome. >> let me interrupt. what about with the family? there are schools that work -- >> okay, you want to concentrate just on family. the only thing i think we can say with confidence that we know is we can reduce non-marchital births. they are controversial. republicans are likely to the oppose them. there is a huge battle in colorado right now. >> explain what you're referring to. >> i think there is a lot of

controversy here and i think it's because many of the organizations are involved with family planning are involved with abortion and the that raises red flags with republicans but to be concrete about the situation in colorado, one of the people gave the state a lot of money to launch a larc, long acting reversible contraception. it was good social science, and they showed a big reduction, first of all, the mothers themselves, the women themselves, some of whom are mothers choose larc because it doesn't rely on memory. they get a larc, an iud is the most popular kind and it lasts for up to ten years. they don't have to worry about it. second the thing of course, it also reduces the birthrate and then most interesting of all, it

reduced the abortion rate. so you would think republicans would support this but no, the legislation is going to let the program die. they won't support the program. >> let's get feedback. >> what really bothers me is that in a book, was it james c. scott talks about thinking like a state. he talks the difference in practical knowledge and fit your model of understanding how to evaluate things and he describes it like a ship captain steering a ship across an ocean. when the ship captain gets to the port of baltimore, he or she turns that ship over to a harbor master because the harbor master

has knowledge how to take the ship out and in of port. it's like what grass roots people do. they are expert because of common knowledge about how to steer that ship all these principles in that environment. you could not take that same harbor master to detroit or some other seacoast and port. so we need new ways of evaluating these kind of interventions, and in our market economy, it only takes in every other way, if a doctor finds that operating on a frog and put it back into the vet and they heal and the wound heals in the presence of bacteria, we say it counterproductive. it's on the front page of the newspaper. if people are able to bring about their restoration and recovery of families in a given community that has 100, they are

restored, why don't we rush there to find what are the implications for taking it to scale? but you dismiss it. and that's the problem. the principles that operate in our market economy, we just ignore them when it comes to the social economy. instead, we say well unless what you're doing fits our model of evaluation that we can have 20% of the people doing it here and 20 more, you're forcing invasion that is based upon common sense practice or people to fit your model of evaluation otherwise it's not legitimate and doesn't get funded. >> put aside your response to that for a second while we ask if glenn has anything to add. >> i think this is a very interesting exchange and as a social scientist, i'm a professor of economics, it interests me greatly because of course random assignment

assessments of various policy initiatives has become the gold standard for figuring out quote what works closed quote and this is from philosophy 101 and this observation there the are other kinds of knowledge, okay, i find very interesting. i want to say something else. another argument for the mediating structures idea that bob is trumpeting here is that it can rely on sources of authority that are not available to government. >> that's right. >> religious authority, for example. it can speak to people in terms of what are we called by our god, however we understand that to do. what does it mean to be a good person in a full throated way? not in an abstract way. in a way that ties into narratives that are kid walks

buy and doesn't steal the candy bar. he can give two different answers, one it has to do with what the state will do. i might get caught or punished. another has to do with him not being a thief. i'm not a thief. our people don't steal. now where would that idea come from? who are our people? how do you instill that? that's callingen a different authority. if it's not there, it's not there. maybe that means the movement needs to be a movement of people who can get there to the place where they can authoritatively say that's not who you are, this is who you are. >> uh-huh. >> glenn i think eloquently describes that because i can take you to the an area 20 years

ago because of these war infactions. the police couldn't stop it. we have five grass roots leaders that have the respect of those kids and brought the leaders to my office. we negotiated a truce and as a result, and they went back to rebuild that community paid by the government housing authority and so what we did was we didn't have a gang-related murder for 12 years, and swoeo we took the principles we found and experted them to other places. what we learned from that, if you have a situation where there are 1,000 kids, controlled by 10%. if you come in and change the values and authority structures they then become a catalyst for changing the 90% and that's why. so what i'm saying to you is that there has to be a 60% of

apples' income comes from a product that didn't exist six years ago. why can't we apply that imagination imagination. >> have you seen interventions in the relation to the family you would want to tell us about? >> absolutely. my dad died when i was seven leaving my mother who was a domestic with a fifth grade education to raise five kids in a very troubled neighborhood. what i had to rely upon then are my fellows a group of men that i went around with who were my, you may call it a gang. we weren't predatory but they became a sure get of family there are other structures in these commune theityies to substitute. sometimes coaches. i know my coach i don't know my english teacher.

we got to come up and paul ryan is the same. his dad died when he was young. so we got to identify structures within those communities. if you were to ask me to select my blood family or my fellas, i tell you my fellas because my family couldn't get me to school safely. in other words, we got to appreciate other alternative structures can be as important to a youth as his blood family and we need to provide support for institutions that provide an alternative for families. >> wait a minute. >> so i'm going to give some advice to glenn. >> sir? >> because i'm exactly where glenn is. you wouldn't know this with bob because bob is so hostile against social science. i completely agree with bob. there is a huge place for the community. i would always go with the community. the first thing is to get

support from the community. i don't have any problem with that. where i draw the line is i have heard, rarely heard anybody as effective as bob is but i hear claims from people all over the country, all the time, we got a letter to save their child and say spend another billion on this or that and when you do a good study it didn't make any difference on average. averages are the key. we have, you going to move something, you have to move averages. bob, you get better use of evaluation because the government is going to insist on accountability and the things that we under take and pay for that you can show they were not with annicdotes. >> they studied our violence-free system. they did the kind of study and it's been accepted for academic

review review. [ laughter ] >> anyway, it's been acrecepted for academic review. we're not against it. take the time to come and study the things that work and instead of the things offered by academics academics, that's all. study the right thing. >> you have to figure a way to ingrate with accountability and good studies. >> i have endless examples that we have presented 60 minutes can find it cbs can find it the newspapers can find it but social scientists cannot. come where the solutions are, use your skill to evaluate -- >> now you guys have to behave here. >> whose the judge?

>> you've been perfectly fine. >> strong memo. >> so i'm going to turn the questions to you now and hopefully, they won't be about social science. so let's see, what do we have over here? >> professor lowry. >> sir? >> put the question extremely bluntly. you pointed out people come here from all over the world and seem to do pretty well and so what's up with you people? and i gather the question here, you people meant what's up with black people. now there are some people who have looked into that question pretty seriously and concluded that what's up with black people is partially at least genetic traits. is that something we should look into or was that unspeakible taboo? >> so my answer has two parts.

one has to do with whether we should look and the other has to do with what we have found. we should look. okay? the prohibition on inquiry in that area in my mind is a species of anti intel local. that is to say a bunch of people saying you can't ask that question. that's such a bad question to ask, you can't ask it. okay? so i really don't think i want to live in a society in which political mobilizations prevent inquiry into relevant substantive matters that are important. the second part of my answer has to do with what we found. i don't agree with the "bell curve." i've read it. i was on leave for a couple months in india when the "bell

curve" came out and got a bad case of discemetery and didn't have much else to do. what i want you to know sir, is they can't snow me with regression analysis and statistical manipulation. >> good for you. >> i'm a fellow of the esociety. my conclusion upon reading the "bell curve." the case wasn't established, the case being that inherited differences in intel twul capacity, social interventions aimed at promoting greater racial equality, you wouldn't be able to move the needle that way. i among the many critical reviews of the "bell curve" and many in the social psychology literature and economics and socialology and political

science, i remember one very well. the, i think it was arthur goldberger. i could be wrong about this. at the university of wisconsin said, the issue here is not whether or not i can account for certain proportion of the very variance of income earnings or whatever by reference to variation in genetics. among the things i can actually move, i can invest in education. i can perhaps change employment opportunities. i can do other things of that nature. the effect on the thing we care about will be significant or it will not be and we can't move. i mean, you know, it not a policy variable here. i guess i'm saying two different kinds of things. one is i'm not persuaded by the evidence as summarized in that literature that the claim about

the importance of racial differences and ininability is true. i'm saying we have many other instruments that we could employ to intervene in people's lives that could befect effective so we don't need to get to that. >> john has a question. >> bob, this is a question for you and i guess also for ron. i wrote a piece under the manhattan institute some years ago where i charged african american studies departments and by association professors of fields related to let go of the idea the proper thing to study was failure. i questioned why it seemed to be so unthinkable that you study success to identify what would help the black community as

opposed to chronicling the failure and the response to this actually rather surprised me. that notion was like science fiction to my critics. the idea that an academic pursuit would be to study how people have triumphed over institutional racism and what a lot of criticism was, it's interesting, you never know what people will come up with. it came off to black graduate students, for me to write the columns implied that i'm a snob. they thought that what i was saying was why can't people study how to become someone like me, and so they thought that's a bad idea because you're supposed to be studying ordinary black people, and i think that's an internalization of the low self-image for predictable reasons. that's what they thought. it would be snobbish to study success. that's the response of many

social scientists to the idea of studying how it triumphs over institutional racism. >> let me tell you this. the people that you talk to presume to speak for black people. okay? the moment you take it to black people like i did one night on black, it was broadcast went out to 12 states, all black news station then and the same, i had a moderator and guest attacking me for this and this. but when the phones opened up, the comments were 7-1 in support of what i was saying. so with what we got to do is allow the people in whose name they say they speak to speak for themselves and they will just undermine the authority of these people because i've had endless

times. of course, i don't get invited on anymore, but i can tell you, john, when you take, when you sit before an audience of ordinary black folks, and i've done all the time, they have a different perspective than the people at these black studies programs, so i would suggest just like i was on with five black mayors and they said bob, where do you get these ideas? i said from your constituents. [ laughter ] >> and so you know what i challenged them to do and maybe you should do this sometime i said i tell you what, mr. mayors, why don't we debate these issues in any public housing project in your district, the two of us and let's see what the people in public housing have to say about your views versus mine. see, when you set up a situation where you change the venue where

these ideas are being discussed outside the university and narrow minded students who are pampered but take them into the community. let's just take this venue and shift it and discuss this in front of the people and see what they say. that's what you've got to do. >> ron did you want to say anything? didn't you have a question for ron, as well? >> does he have any sense of what i mean among social scientists? because it seemed like you didn't know what string that bob was referring to, if you understand what i mean. >> i think i understood well what bob was saying. he made it clear. i don't detect anything like that in social scientists. social sign tipscientists are willing to study anything and be

controversial. some are not cautious. they have the same flaws anybody else does. i think if they thought that something might be a solution to education, to family to whatever they would with be more than willing to study it. in fact, they tried to get a grant to do it and make their name on it. don't you think that's right? >> i think that's basically right. i think however the universities as institutions are less open to free inquiry than they might be. i don't think that's statutory. there is not a rule against it. it's customary. it's a lot of social pressures but i don't think that extends to the community of social scientists taken as a whole. >> i did not say one sylabol to defend. >> think tanks are another manner.

laugh[ laughter ] >> at least think tanks tell you where they are and willing to have arguments and universities appear not to be that way. >> can i say one thing in response to the iq question? >> sure. >> we know from a careful studies about schools, panels crime, education, we know that there are ways of improving the performance in schools of disadvantage kids through the charter movement and others. this fellow roland fryer who happens to have been a student of mine won a metal in economics, the most preknown economist and spent 15 years studying what makes the harlem children's zone work. what makes the kip acadkadcademyies

work. can we go to houston and reorder the education in those schools and with random assign the ascertain whether things are getting better. there is a problem with cognitive ability. this is what i wanted to concede. there is a problem with the intellectual development and probably has other consequences but not in their genes, i believe it's in the socialization and institutional processes of education and i think we can through social science learn more about how to make that function better. >> let's see i want to make sure, 30 seconds but we do have more questions. >> okay. so the typical black kid in the inner city has problems in the family, is in a dangerous neighborhood that seriously impairs his ability to go outside or learn and goes to the worst schools in the country and we're going to tribute the lack of success to genetics? it's crazy.

it's crazy. i think you should study it. >> they are also run by their own people. [ laughter ] >> what? i see a lot of these black kids are being destroyed in institutions run by their own people and we don't want to talk about that. >> now we have a lot of hands up. [ laughter ] >> okay. go ahead. >> hi, harper graduated from brown university. >> can you hear me? >> yes. >> the actor andwho graduated from brown university wrote a book called the "the conversation" about black relationships and the black family structure and the need for it to be a part of the overall growth and dynamics in the black america. i'd like to know your thoughts

about that because it was a best seller. it was very well researched. i read it twice. but i would love to know your thoughts about that. >> anybody familiar with it? >> i don't know the book. >> oh, no how could you not? >> i don't know this book. >> he studied economics there. >> oh. >> maybe it was before my time. i don't want to speak out of context. i don't know what i would be responding to. >> okay, sorry, we'll remember the book. okay over here. >> my name is ricardo bird with the national association of neighborhoods. i would like to panel to address the fact that we can look at baltimore as a success story that on a night where the police with drew from policing there was no uprising. there was no uprising. most black people stayed home.

they did not go to the streets. a few hundred people unfortunately, did, but the murder rate did not go up that night. there was generally no racial violence on a wide scale that night. so it shows that the black family is not as weak as some would like to claim because on a night where all hell could have broken loose, it did not. so maybe we're much better off than we think and others try to give us the impression that we are totally gone of moral character. that is not true. >> any response? >> nope. >> i agree with that 100%. i think the reporting about baltimore could be criticized from a number of different angles. i did see stories to the effect of the moralization at the grass roots level of people and of

people spontaneously coming out to affirm the right, the right kind of stuff there. so to think that the community is gone of moral resources is a profound error. bob's whole program doesn't have any traction if that's true, and it's not true that the community is berefed of moral resources, so i'll leave it at that. >> the real leaders come out before the rocks are thrown, not afterwards bowing down before the police, we're safe. you have these brothers out there, 300 black men on the scene physically intervening. they went into a store and they had the moral authority to direct the young people to leave the store and not loot it. those are the real leaders. >> we have time for one more question over here. >> this panel is discussing very personal issues. you're discussing issues related

to when you get married, if you should get married whether or not you should have a child out of wedlock or in wedlock and to a certain extent, i hear some frustration amongst the panels, the panelist in that a theme that comes out, not only in this panel but also in the previous two panels is but it's just the right thing to do. but it's just the right thing to do. and i resonate with professor lowry's example about the candy bar because you took us to the edge of an exempt and left it where you gave us the example of a child who refuses to steal a candy bar because of social psychological or social science reasons versus i am not a thief. >> right.

>> and that begins to introduce issues of right and wrong. and i know wherever we talk about issues of right and wrong we as academics have to defend our positions with data and i understand that, but you're coming very close to the edge, particularly with this panel of introducing issues of spirit and religion and i know a typical response of an academic panel is we need more churches to be involved in x, y and z but you're treating churches lick they serve social science and the reality is that churches particularly the christian church has it's own agenda and that's belief in jesus christ and the second carissue is whether or not it manifests changes of behavior. how should we as academics and social science folks treat this

issue? is this a taboo issue, or is this an issue that deserves conversation among us as academics and policy makers about the role of the church and spirit spirit in terms of reversing trends? is that off a limits or legitimate. >> it's a very dense question but if we can get a quick response. >> i think 80% of the effectiveness of the groups i support are face centered, not necessarily church centered. we must make a difference, and so what we do and what we say to people you don't have to accept the content of our faith but you should respond to the secular consequence of our faith. in my book "the try -- true umpiumphs

of joseph," the change that comes about is inspired by faith in groups that i serve but what we're asking people to support is the secular consequences and you can evaluate that. >> glenn, did you want to say something? >> i do want to say something. i do appreciate the question very much. tiptoed up to it and in my mind i got closer because when i said that the enter mediating institutions can draw on sources of authority that are not available to the state since the state can't take a position on a question of faith. we have the first amendment to the constitution and so forth. that's when i had in mind. okay? and the mechanism that would persuade this young kid that he's not a thief and that's not what we do in the african american cultural experience would not universally not only but would substantially be predominantly it would be a

faith-based set of relationships. so the, after the rodney king riots in los angeles in 199 2 i published a piece in "the wall street journal" that caused me a lot of trouble. it was called "the god in the ghetto." i was a better christian then and more coreurageous win because i don't think i would dare to publish a piece. basically, what i said then and this is not about me but i want to put this on the table, we can have our programs and debates and we should study them and do it but at the end of the day, there is no substitute for reaching that place inside of a person the spiritual place inside of a person that empowers them in a way we might not be able to forecast or imagine as

social scientists. >> i want to give ron one last chance to say something. >> i guess i agree with the other panelists that the church is a crucial part of this and i'd be perfectly happy if people were willing to join a church and follow it and incorporate it into life and i would be happy, bob, not to study it. [ laughter ] [ applause ] >> thank you very much. >> that is part of the problem. >> all right. i want to thank you-all for being here, for a very lively panel. thank you. >> thank you. >> thank you. [ applause ] on the next "washington journal" fred patrick joins us to discuss sentenceing and prison reform efforts and jake horowitz

will talk about efforts to reduce juvenile incar serration and a professor will look at racial factors creating divisions in america's inner cities. those conversations plus your calls, tweets and e-mails. our show is live at 7:00 eastern, 4:00 pacific on c span. after six weeks of campaigning, voters in the uk head to the polls on thursday for general elections. the race is currently too close to call it's suggested. we'll have reviews, analysis and the outcome of reach race. our coverage starts at 4:55 p.m. eastern on cspan. sunday night on cspan's q

and a a and a the people who worked there from the kennedys to obamas. >> who are the thicklands? >> nine members of the family worked at the white house and i interviewed james jeffreys who is the only current part time butler i got to interview. he's still there. he might be there right now. he works every week at the white house and nine members of his family worked there. his uncles were the headbutt butler, he said my uncles ran the white house and they brought him in when he was 17 years old during 1959 and he's still working there and he decemberscribes how he worked in the kitchen and he was skinny and they kept giving him ice cream. it's incredible he remembers what the eisenhowers were like. people that is a dying breed of

person who he remembers that and that's what i wanted to do was pay tribute to these people. >> sunday night at 8:00 on cspna prksp cspan's q and a. >> this mother's day cspn prkscspan remembers life in the white house. we hear from margaret hoover who reveals her grand grandmother lou hoover was the first first lady to invite an african american woman to tea at the white house. here is a look. >> unless you study lou henry hoover you don't know she was the first first lady ever to invite an african american woman to tea and it caused a tremendous scandal. it was called the depriest incident. she was the wife of congressman depriest who was elected from

chicago, an african american couple and it's the tradition the first ladies invited the congressman's wives to tea and they were progressive on this issue they knew it would be a scandal or it could be a scandal so they tried to handle it in the right way but decided to go ahead with it because it would be a good move for the country and it created an outrage, my great grandfather invited her husband to the white house. the first time an african american was invited to the white house publicly. >> join c span this mother's day for programs with the children and grandchildren with the first families paying tribute to the first ladies and life in the executive mansion sent at noon eastern on c-span.

next the future of america's black community. speakers give us someries of problems and potential answers. this is 30 minutes. good afternoon. good afternoon, everyone. and thank you for staying with us for this final discussion. my name is robert and i'm the editor we give the best ideas from across the political spectrum and the issues raised in the report reinserted

themselves this morning's panelist gave us plenty to think about on crime, on education on family. and in this last event, we'll take a broader perspective asking where the nation can go from here. you-all already know jason ray lee raleigh, author of "police stop helping us." joining him is the president and ceo of the thorough good marshall college fund representing 300,000 students. mr. taylor's accomplishments are many. in 2011 he was named to "ebony magazine" 100. before becoming president of the their marshall fund, helped compass group, paramount pictures and a graduate of the university of miami and holds masters of

honors and doctorate of jurisprudence. america is facing key decisions in a wide range of policy areas and right now two of the leading thinkers will discuss what path the nation should take. join me in welcoming jason riley and johnny taylor. >> welcome. >> good to be here. >> appreciate it. >> glad to be here. >> i'll let you start off. >> wow, puts me on the spot. >> yeah, first of all, i want to thank you-all for giving me the opportunity. i would have been here all day. i was invited at the last minute. i'm a stand in for the real guy right? [ laughter ] >> so like saturday night i'm like can you come? i said well, who couldn't? that's why i'm here.

in any event one of the things that you couldn't have asked, talking about gratuity, you couldn't have thought for a better time as we're dealing with the issues from ferguson and baltimore and chicago. you name it. one of the things i hoped jason i always when i see something on the news, i say i wonder what jason would think. i literally do because i respect his thinking and read his book and have a great appreciation for how thoughtful. several years ago, i was just assuming this role and run an organization of historically black colleges and universities but didn't attend a historically black college or university. it's an interesting role. i wanted us to engage in crucial, critical conversations within our community. too often the conversations that we're hosting people get together and they affirm some of the same stuff that we are all, you know, we're used to seeing.

whether or not they are true or not, we keep saying them as if that will make it true. i did one of the most daring talking about courage. i invited jason riley to speak to the country's public historically black college and university of presidents. shortly after he had written an article in the "wall street journal" questioning, leave it to me to do it. i called him up cold. i didn't know jason from the man of the moon and said i would like you to come. he said no way will i do that. do you remember that? i called him cold. >> yes, yes, yes. >> i said i'll provide security i'll do whatever i can. we'll pat them down at the door. it will be okay. finally, i said i'll protect you. you'll be fine. you're my guest. the point is he joined us and we had a good conversation. you could have heard a pin drop in the room because he laid out facts. we took the emotions out of it.

we took the rhetoric out of it and there were real conversations that wasn't pointing fingers but saying this is what it is. let's now have a dialogue about what we're going to do to fix what is. and it was just really a great conversation. i've been trying to continue that dialogue in our community because while hbcus are a small subset of the institutions in higher education, 3% of all of america's higher education are hbcus we still out perform 20% of all african americans that earn under graduate degrees receive. it's a conversation that needs to be had with a critically important community. with that, one of the things i was going to ask jason and open up the conversation is the baltimore conversation. we have three hbcus in the baltimore area. morgan state university, coppen state university and buoy state. coppen state is literally in the sort of ground zero in the

baltimore market and then within 45 minutes, you have howard university, the university district of colombia. there are five hbcus. one of the things we challenged ourselves is the president yesterday went on about my brother's keeper and the alie lens. head count is down at hbcus. so there is no shortage of seats. there is no shortage of dorms. so i'm not so sure that i buy into this notion that this community doesn't have opportunities. the tuition is about $7,000 a year. that's less than my daycare bill. so i mean, seriously. so i challenge this notion that education is not accessible or affordable. ultimately, there is a question about one's interest and real commitment, the valuing of education. jason? >> i would agree with that and

thanks again for doing this. yes, you were the second choice, not the third or the fourth choice, we got cancellations but i appreciate you stepping in. i think professor lowry said it best earlier where he said a lot of these issues, the facts don't matter. the only thing that matters is the narrative. that dominates the news cycle these days and when we see these events flair up, whether it's baltimore or ferguson a narrative takes hold and the powers that be control it, particularly when it comes to race and if you dooefeviate from it you can get your head handed to you. one of the narratives has to do with access to education as a cause of the problems and some of these poor black communities or access to jobs is another

narrative out there both of which i don't think hold water, don't hold up to scrutiny. with respect to jobs there was an article in the washington post last week i believe, about baltimore where the reporter went to the a construction site and there was an older gentleman there and he said you know, i see 30 or 40 young black men pass this site every day. only one or two stops to ask if we're hiring. so is job availability an issue? certainly but there is also a question of a work ethic. even if the jobs are available, are people interested in them? and it reminded me of something said a few months ago by the mayor of soma, alabama during an interview with mpr where the reporter asked him about i think, it's about a 80% black now and the reporter asked about

job availability. he says we have jobs here. we don't have people with the skills or interest in taking these jobs. but there are people here who want to hire. but, you know, again the facts don't matter. the narrative hatters. it's about jobs. and it's really hard to talk about baltimore without talking about ferguson. because certain narratives came out of ferguson. one of which was the racial makeup of the police department was supposed to be a huge deal. tensions between law enforcement and the black community. we were told those tensions stem from the fact that a white minority, whether it was the police department or political leadership was oppressively running a majority blacktown and that's why you had these tensions and they ultimately exploded. well, you go to baltimore. you've got black police chief black mayor black city counsel. yet, you have these tensions.

>> all democrat. >> all a democrat and it, you know, it suggests to me that maybe the racial makeup of law enforcement, the racial makeup of the city leader ship is not the issue. maybe this has to do with high black crime rates and police responding to where the 911 calls originate. >> it's funny. clearly that makes sense and we kind of know it. there is a point at which you have to look at the man in the mirror or women in the mirror and might not be pleased but that's how you begin to make progress is an acknowledgement of what it is. to that point, i was asked to go on to one of the talk shows shortly after baltimore and i pointed out in my preinterview that, you know, baltimore is second or third, has the second or third highest spending in k through 12 space in this country and in 2013 it was only behind

new york. i said so you can't explain this. i was uninvited again to another show, you know, my pr direct tomorrow here was like my god can you just get on tv please? but it was a fair conversation. it was like so i get it. what would you have these people do? i mean, i'm not sure. i don't know who these people are because your mayor is african american, the police chief is i don't know what else you want. so by the way if there is an answer, our community has to come up with that answer. i'm convinced that the solution lies in the african american community only sort of not gra gramatically correct, only we can correct us. >> the problem is the inability to have an honest conversation what is wrong. there were a number of speakers on the panel today who talked about things you're not allowed to say. we titled one of the panels reducing black crime rates.

that itself is provocative. we don't talk about crime rates in this country. black crime rates in particular. we talk about incarceration rates, as if, incarceration rates have nothing to do with black crime or black behavior. that you don't talk about black crime rates. you don't talk about black culture. if you're the president of the united states who has gone to black colleges and spoken to black men, graduating and said to them, you know, i grew up without a father and it's made me all the more interested in being there for michelle and my daughters. you know he said to those men at those schools, we have to be in the barbershop with the less fortunate and in the communities and in church pulling them up teaching them what it's like to be a man. he gets his head handed to them when he talks like that.

i'm convinced why he doesn't do it more often. it was interesting. what you can say and what you can't. you know, we had others john was talking about just being a commentator on television and in newspapers and what you're allowed to say and what you can't and the backlash you will get. part of this conference is just about trying to have an honest conversation about a the problem, and people want solutions, but we won't even have an honest conversation about the problem is where things need to start. >> and i caught the tail end of the conversation on family, and it really does resonate with me that it's particularly in the academy, the conversations. i can't tell you the number of times i've sat down with universities trying to select their commencement speakers and it's like no no no because this person is too controversial. or it has said one thing in

their entire life that a group of students go rally and raise hell and you lost a potentially really provocative and interesting commencement speaker. again, you're right and we're therefore creating a culture, a new generation of students who believe if i don't agree with you, then you can't talk to this group and that's problematic so we want ever, i had some hope frankly, when i joined this space out of industry that the real future were these ma millennialsma len millennials and they didn't see color the way those of us who came through the civil rights and my god, it's absolutely the opposite. >> you're right. they obsess over it. >> right. >> and they have been taught to obsess over it. they have the micro aggressions now. i don't even know what -- [ laughter ] >> i wonder what martin luther king would make of micro

aggression if he heard a term like that. you're right what happens is ferguson goes down, baltimore goes down and we start talking about effects instead of causes. we talk talking about poverty or the racial makeup of law enforcement. and those are the wrong conversations. you can't talk about incarceration rates or these flairups without talking about black criminality and that is a huge problem in this country. blacks are 13% of the population and responsible for half of all murders. in some years majority of blacks arrested in two to three times the number of population for violence crime and property crime and white collar crime. until you address those high black crime rates, there's going to be tepgss between police and the black community. young black men will be viewed suspiciously. if you want to change the

perceptions of young black men if you want to ease those tensions, we need to be talking about the behavior that's driving those tensions. >> not just viewed by white people that way, but all people. i was trained the other night, had my 4-year-old with me, and the door open, and i see people talking about profiling. i decided these three kids could be students at georgetown, but they are long dreads, gold teeth, and pants were sagging. news alert we were not getting on the train. it is what it is. you have to have honest conversations with our young people. the police stopped you, your job is to arrive calm. if you were wrong, let's deal with it. there's a classic example. the star if you don't know, this television fox series called "empire," and so her son

is arrested in los angeles, right, and usc or ucla i can't remember -- ucla. police stop him he's not arrested, by the way, but the line is they stopped my son, this is an example, you know, i'm hollywood star with, you know, oscar nominee et cetera, and if my kid can't walk around in los angeles, that's an example of how horrible america is. whoever made the comment, by the way, about the people who like, get in boats that have holes in them to get here, my god america's a good place. it's not perfect. i don't think of any other place i'd like to go by the way, and most of us here would say that. in any event she goes on a rant, goes on talking shows, she's the talking head talking about how horrible and racist america is in a great city like los angeles with all the diversity. imagine the surprise when the videotape was released and man

was stopped by a very very nice caucasian police officer who found marijuana and other items in the car, did not ticket the kid, did not arrest the kid or beat the hell out of him. where did this come from? meanwhile she's trashed the lapd. it's just no truth to it and so you have to ask yourself, you know, to hell with facts, i mean, that's the reality and so what happens is that narrative takes on its own life, and the -- that gets perpetuated in the barbershops and churches and young black boys walk in the world believing i'm just doomed so we do have to change that. >> the ultimate narrative, the one that's out there at 30,000 feet is that white racism is primarily responsible for all these blackouts. that's the narrative pushed. if you is a political agenda, that's what you want out there.

if you're al sharpton jesse jackson, that narrative keeps you relevant. that's what you push. regardless of the facts on the ground. one of the problems, however, particularly with these antipolice narratives push, is that damage done in the communities as a result. if the police are viewed as some sort of occupying force, if they then result to less effective policing of the communities the black body count rises. this focus this myth that we face an epidemic of cops shooting young black men, it is unbelievable. i mean, police shootings of blacks are about 2% of shootings of blacks. if your goal is saving black lives, reducing the black body count, should your focus be on police shootings or non police shootings? >> to be fair about it we just

saw yesterday a poor new york city police officer assassinated at the end of the day by an african-american. i mean, we got to have the dialogue. if you're going to start engaging in this race conversation, you got to be prepared to have it. now, we dare not get into that because that's a longer conversation, but i want to tie the conversation about unemployment. well, so the unemployment conversation, the root of it is in not being prepared to take many of the jobs, you made that point. okay. so that's thinking about someone who spends their life now in higher ed and the hbcu world, we just received a very big grant from the apple corporation. tim cook gave the historically black college university community well over $40 million. that amounts to a month and a half ago, but that -- they wanted really two major components. part of it is to help solve the lack of -- sort of diversity challenge in the silicon valley everyone talks about. it was interesting beginning the

conversation. the apple executive said we're not racist. the fact that we don't have engineers here of color, particularly african-american engineers, is not some grand design to not hire black people. the reality is we have a really tough time finding them. to the extent you know where they are, here's money. find them. bring them to us. it was a real ah-ha moment because i went to the community and said, believe of believe it or not, people want us to be successful and willing to invest, not gift, but invest in solving what they understand as a problem. here's the challenge. i ran human resources for fortune 500 company that included a big dot-com, group of companies, one which was s.com, headquartered in oakland, california, not in the valley proper, but close to it. as the african-american head of human resources, i caught hell finding black engineers.

that's the reality. the head of apple globally the head of human resources for apple, is an african-american woman who graduated from an hbcu. this is not some plan. she's been with them 21 years. this did not start yesterday, who is trying to find it, but she goes in, and they are just having great difficulty finding people -- and this is not just qualified to do the job, but people who are willing and able to at least enter into some of the roles. we, again, changing the narrative to say that white america does not want to hire you. >> but the narrative out there is that silicon valley is racist -- >> and sexist, by the way. >> and it's -- so you have a jesse jackson going out, shaking down the valley pretending the low number of black hires has to do with bias and not the pool of

people that apple or google or whoever is hiring from, and the fact that blacks are under remitted in that pool of people. we can do something about that problem. i mean, if jesse jackson really wanted to do something about the pool problem, which is what it is go back to shaigchicago, devote all his time to getting black kids to stop shooting each other. pull up your pants, finish school, take care of your children. if he could -- if he could address that issue this pool problem over time takes care of itself. i mean the -- the -- one of the tremendous things you learn about looking at black history in this country from the period after slavery to the period before the civil rights movement began in earnest, the modern day civil rights movement up to the beginning of the 1960s, the

amount of progress that was being made in black america is really under appreciated by a lot of laughblacks. you know, black poverty in the country fell by 40 percentage point between 1940 and 1960. that's before voting rights act, when you could discriminate openly against black people. blacks were entering the white collar professions at a faster rate prior to affirmative action than they were in the decades following affirmative action. between 1940 and 1970, the percentage of blacks entering the white collar profession queue drupeled. no affirmative action ever matched that progress. no great society poverty program ever matched the reductions in black poverty that occurred prior to the existence of that great society program. yet, these programs are given all the credit for any increase

in blacks entering the profession, any increase in reductions in poverty. it's an undeserved credit they are given. that tells you that a lot of what's taken place in the name of helping blacks has stalled progress. you know, progress continued after the great society. progress continued after affirmative action, but at a much much slower rate. >> fair enough. i want to point out in the spirit of fairness, all is not well. the notion that there is not a pool of qualified people that somehow jesse jackson could solve this by going back in the communities and encourage them to educate, that's important, but one of the things that we learned, for example, at at ppple, when you tell me there exists no pool that tells me you are fishing in the wrong pond. if you're at harvard, no wonder you're not yielding what you want, because, you know only so many