setting to engage with their students. >> gorbachev did most of the work to change the soviet union, but reagan met him halfway, reagan encouraged him, reagan supported him. >> freedom of press, which will get to later, i should just mention, madison originally called it of the freedom of the use of the president is indeed freedom to print things and publish things. it is not a freedom for wet we now refer to a sense that the -- >> lectures in history on american history tv on c-span 3. every saturday at 8 pm eastern. lectures in history is also available as a podcast. find it where you listen to podcasts. washington journal continues. host: as black history month draws to a

as black history month, welcome back to washington journal, professor eddie glaad who is the african american studies chair at princeton university and author of the new book, begin again, james baldwin's america and its urgent election lessons for our own. professor, good morning. >> good morning, how are? you >> doing very well. as we start our conversation, who was a james baldwin? >> well, he's one of the world's greatest literary artists. i think he is in many ways the most insightful critic we've ever produced when it comes to the question of race and democracy. the inheritor of emerson's legacy, crabs emerson by the caller and pulls him across the railroad tracks. and as insightful about democracy as alexis -- was. except for the entry, the contradiction that sits at the heart of this, and that's race. he's one of our greatest writers. >> is he --

is this the first book you've written about him? >> no, it's not first. yes, it's the first to write about him but all of my books have been in some way it's an engagement with baldwin. ivan, you know, the more academic or scholarly books. i've been in conversation with him in such a way that it's allowed me to be read the american tradition in light of a series of questions around identity and history an agency that animate baldwin's work and african american letters. so, this is the first book i've written on it -- with him, a rather. but he's always been my muse. >> the subtitle is, the urgent lessons for our own and part of what you read in your book is this, professor. this will demand a new american story, different symbols and robust policies to repair what we have done. i don't know yet what this will look like. and my understanding of her

history suggests that we will probably fail trying. but i do know that each element is important to any effort beginning again. restless goes underneath our politics now haunt openly. and a presidential election alone will not satisfy their hunger. a moral reckoning is upon us, and we have to decide, at once and for all, whether or not we will truly be a multi racial democracy. tell us a bit about the interesting phrase, they're restless ghosts. where were you alluding through there? >> yeah, i mean our contradiction around this belief that white people ought to matter more than others has left a pile of bodies in its weight. there are so many lives that have been lost, so many dreams that have been bashed because we've organized this society in such a way that people believe that certain people four others in advantage and disadvantage should be distributed it accordingly. so, those ghosts haunt.

i come out of the south, i'm obviously a black southerner and we have this view that if folk don't die right, they haunt. or you think about that moment in -- who won the national book award for literature in her wonderful novel, she has this moment on page two 85 and the paperback edition where she describes what is in effect, a tree of ghosts, the tree of the dead, all of these people we didn't deride, who continue to haunt. and so, because we have an resolve that contradiction, it continues to, how can i put this bill, it overshadows everything that we are doing. it haunts, literally in some ways. that's what i mean. >> do you think james baldwin's was as appreciated then as he is today? the >> things he was saying in his writing then, where they has appreciated and understood

as well as they are today? >> in some circles, yes. i mean, i think his genius was widely recognized that there were a series of assumptions made about the later work because, you, know the politics changed. so baldwin at the height of his power according to some critics and some scholars was, this was right before the run up to the civil rights movement, you think about the notes of the native son and then when you think about the students and the black freedom struggle in its first iteration soaking's march on washington and 63, you get baldwin's classic, or nobody knows my name in 61. but people didn't really want to hear that criticism. here he is prophetic critique post the assassination of king and in the context of reagan-ism. so by the time cancer ravaged

his body somewhere at least reading him as the old man who had gone bad. they didn't want to hear's prophesy but that's typically the way it is. you've obviously done a lot of research and study of james baldwin, i want to ask you about his unfinished manuscript prior to his death, remember this house. what was thought about? >> it was supposed to be an autobiography of sorts, organized around the death of malcolm x and martin luther king jr.. and it's going to be a kind of retrospective of what has happened in the country from his youth, from his vantage point. and it was in some ways a warning. and account of who was lost and why. a journey that is so distinctly american given baldwin's beginnings. he's born in august of 1924 in

the ghettos of harlem and the fact that he leaves and makes his way to paris in 1948 and will some self-into becoming this extraordinary writer and witness of the black freedom movement. so it was this kind of summarizing account and that manuscript, you know, david looming in some ways transcribed it became the basis of the critically acclaimed film, i'm not your negro. >> professor andy with us until ten eastern this morning, joining us to talk about his book and other issues as well. 2:02 -- the line to use for republicans, 2:02 seven four eight 8004 democrats. and all others, 2:02 seven four 8002. eddie, i think you when i spoke last week, your book was either just about to be published or was coming out at that time. a year obviously that saw a great deal of racial unrest and

violence in the u.s.. if you had to add an addendum to your book or some observation on what's happened in the past year and the election of the biden administration, how would you address that? >> well, the uk addition of the book came out in january and i wrote it and the preface to that version or that edition that we should -- i pray that we do not trade one faceted for another. the fantasy of donald trump was this belief that america must be a white nation. i don't want us to hold on to the view to believe this fantasy that somehow the election of the biden and harrison administration resolves to hand matter. that we ought to be an election puts a great forward republic back to sleep. i heard the last caller in the last hour say that she was sleeping well, i'm happy about that. but she must understand the

crisis in the moment. and the forces that are outwork i mean we saw this -- we're seeing this across the country, there are those who are insisting on america being, remaining a nation over determined by this belief and why people ought to matter more than others. so we're confronting right now building new rigorous. the new redeemer's. and we have to address them directly before actually wanting to move forward, seems to me. >> let me ask you about some specifics about that biden administration, the headline from npr late last month, biden white house aims to and racial equity with executive actions. we just saw this past week, i believe, one of the house subcommittees considering the issue of reparations for slavery, are these the right steps? >> and part, i mean look, reparations is a complicated conversation to have. if we're going to tell the

truth about what we've done, the truth becomes the precondition for reconciliation, reconciliation becomes the basis for repair. and repair of course involves the deliberate policies to address the deliberate policies that has produced racial equality. i've been traveling all around the country during black history month, all over the country via zoom i should say. and one of the things i've been saying bill is, we have to understand that racial inequality is interest simply a happenstance, it is the result of delivering policy, of course there was slavery, of course there was -- but when we think about for example the emergence of the american middle class, it happened in a post-world war ii era where you saw government engaged in liberal policy initiatives that led to in some ways this explosion within the country, african americans were systematically cut out from that. cut out in terms of fha lines, cut out and gi bo, right? even those who owned homes, our homes were devalued because of

redlining and you think about this in relation to dual labor markets, you think about this in relation to extended segregated schools who have access to the princeton's and the harvard, is the yields in the old misses in the uk austin and the like and how that would set folks up to actually dream their dreams and make them a reality. in other words, racial injustice, racial inequality in the united states is not a mistake in any sense that somebody who just randomly happen, no. people chose to do this. i never going to respond, we have to respond deliberately, with policy, directed. so that's a long winded answer to the question about reparations but in addition, i think we need to take think about student loan debt because that is forgiveness that will disproportionately impact black folks. we need to think by raising the minimum wage to 15 dollars an hour, that's a disproportionate effect black and brown voters. so, it's one thing to do symbolic things with executive aaron, but we need policy.

the genre is voting rights act, the just joined floyd from -- policy that can be long-standing and transformational. and you think both as presidency and this congress are a moment to get a lot of them done -- ? >> i think we as a nation or in a moment where we can get this done. you know, politicians inevitably disappoint. that's what they do, we just have to -- their only as good as our demands. so we need to keep pushing, we need to keep working hard. to respond to the crisis we faced as a nation at scale. we can't allow us to go back to normal, or what was conceived as normal and tinker ron the edges, we have a chance. the moment of crisis also moment of possibility, but it all depends on what we do now. >> i want to get to our colors here, momentarily. i did want to play the comments of james baldwin, c-span cover this event back in 1986 as the year before he died.

one of the regular press briefings speeches at the national press club, let's listen to james baldwin in 1986. >> i want to establish a modest proposal. white history week. the answer to these questions is not to be found in me. but in that history which we see these questions. it's late in a day to be talk about race relations, would you talking about? and as a result we have race relations, how can they deteriorate or improve? i am not a race and neither are you. no, we're talking about the life and death of this country. and one of the things, i'm not joking when i talk about white history week, one of the things which is to fix this country,

is white people they don't know who they are where they come from. that's why you think i'm a problem. i am not the problem, your history is. and as long as you pretend you don't know your history, you're going to be kept a prisoner of it. and there's no question where liberating -- we can't liberate yourselves. we are in this together. and finally, when white people, quote unquote white people, talk about progress versus black people, all they are saying and all they can possibly mean by the word progress is how quickly and how thoroughly i've become white. i don't want to become white, i want to grow up and so should you. thank you. >> that's james baldwin, the writer james baldwin in 1986. our guest is eddie, he's written a book about james baldwin. james baldwin's america, and it's urgent lessons for our own, begin again. eddie, what did you hear in that comment by james baldwin?

>> i mean, it's at the heart. in some ways it's a synopsis of in his. that the heart of baldwin's lighter is this radical inversion. that the problem of race in this country isn't a problem with black people, it's not a problem of black people. it's actually the opposite. it's this idea, it is this problem centered around white tennis, that we organize the country based on what i called the value gap. disbelieve that white people ought to be valued more than others. and that valuation determines the distribution of advantage and disadvantage. and baldwin is saying in this moment, in that moment right? race relations is actually a reflection of this sense of that the problem is us. the problem is not, as it never has been. the problem is this idea of whiteness and wet it has unleashed on the world. and what it has unleashed in the world until we tell ourselves the truth about that. until we leave behind this categories that that carried us, the categories that trap us

that somehow bind our feet. we will bind our selves in this, on this racial hands over and over again, as baldwin said months, i'm not the n-word. i've never been the n-word. the question is, why do you need the n-word in the first place? and i would say, until we figure that out, we will find ourselves in this moment, in this space, grappling with race over and over again. the problem isn't us. just think, he's got a year later. >> it's interesting in those comments, he talks about using white history weekend he gets the laughter from the audience. he always had that quality than of being able to shock and yet also in some ways, humor people. . there's always a range of emotions that to find baldwin's witness it seems to me. from rage to humor to love. and even when he's at his most

biting, in terms of his criticism, it's always saturated with love. there is this insistence that this nation. how can i put this? we are so intent on living in forever land forever. just lost boys and lost girls who refused to grow up. and what's so distinctive about never never land is the people who lived there don't want to be responsible. they don't want to be accountable for anyone. and baldwin is demanding in this moment, in that moment, in 1986 and in our moment, that we grow the held up and finally imagine -- let me say differently. do something that the modern world has never seen. and that is actually build a multi racial democracy. but with that look like? >> let's go to our first caller here, barbara in oklahoma city. good morning. >> hi. i'm so glad i got to speak

here. i just love mr. baldwin. he was so awesome. i want to speak on the fact that yes, this is horrible, we had someone in there for five years that just spoke so but black ripple, gets on minorities but most black, we have 165 people are trying to laws -- right now and people talk about the port about these immigrants, why have we never gone a show on the fact that this man had to pay 25 million to immigrants that he hires them every day and one comment about i heard c-span say anything about that? he also had to pay for the university that was in history era city, it's a total scam and you don't talk about those things about him. but these people, these republicans calling here every day and talk about how much they hate, how much they fear

the democrats and the democrats are the ones -- we don't have this fear for you, and i love my brothers and sisters all and i am so thankful for people like you, that get up here and try to educate people. this is horrible to be shot in the back with the knee on the neck. these things should not pass. we should stop it right now. and thank you so much c-span for letting this meant to talk. >> barbara in oklahoma. professor. >> i really appreciate barbara's passion and it is that emotion, that depth of concern that sets the stage for us to be otherwise. for us to finally break the back of this. every time a new america is

about to be born in this country, every time a new americas about the people, and the umbilical cord of white supremacy has been wrapped around it. choking the life out of it. and bribery's passion and commitment joined with others, we can become better midwives and finally give birth to a new way of being together. that's our path from this moment, i think. >> this is derrick unlikely in minnesota, go ahead. >> good morning c-span, can morning america. i've been watching you on morning throw for years now and i don't know what's up with the bubble there in princeton. i do know that princeton is the campus but, i want to just stick with what baldwin just said and that clip that you run. he said he was not a racist. i am not a race. i don't know why you were so upset with your skin color. it just by goals the mind.

we already multi racial democracy. look at the united kingdom. there are lots of multi racial democracies. so i just think it's disgusting -- discussing most of the things that you say that just, it's not very happy and it's not love. thank you. >> well i completely disagree. actually, i'm saying it out of love. and it's precisely because he used -- that you think that it's not functional. baldwin is trying to make an argument and i'm trying to make a claim. that these political and moral positions have tangible effects. and you are denial of that fact allows you to live in a country that has enormous inequality and that allows you to presume a certain kind of innocence, i will not allow you to try to place it on me. you are ugliness is yours and yours alone. don't try to displace it on me. in fact, i'm trying to help you see you.

and it's your refusal to see that fact that has in some ways helped produce this country and brought us to this moment of now. don't try to put that on me, that's you. >> robert is next up. o'rourke, indiana. >> yeah, professor, i've got good colored friends -- thurgood hard working honest people. as you guys would put, you are educated, you are successful and yet you want to run people down, all you do is write books, books mean nothing. working together, loving one another, taking care of our country, our children that are hungry, that are homeless, that's what we need. we don't need these racism stuff. >> eddie, you response? >> i would agree with that.

we don't need this racism stuff. that's for sure right about now. we don't need that and we need to in some ways take care of all of our children, all of our children! we need to ensure that folks have -- if they're working 40 hours a week, they're making a living wage. we need to make sure that people have health care. we need to ensure that every community is safe and secure. your denim right we need that, but i'm not colored. neither your friends. right, i think we also need to be honest with ourselves. and let's understand what is really holding us back in this country. greed and racism is holding us back, creed and some ways this insistence, this instance on the superiority of human beings. oh my god, we have to file the uprightness at some point. i'm not colored and neither your friends. -- >> i want to ask you about the pandemic itself and obviously the pandemic has struck

communities of color much harder than other communities. what do you think will be the long term effects of it? >> moreno bill, just as of late, just imagine during the obama administration, we cannot have a conversation about -- it couldn't even breakthrough mainstream political discourse and look where we are. we're actually talking about aca. we know that our health care system is broken and covid-19 has revealed. it into the political body, and we see where all the illnesses are located. the virus has missed that the size in the fissures of our society. and it's not simply over 500,000 americans and that black and brown a native peoples and disproportionally represented in that group, poor black and brown people and white people are disproportionately represented in that group, poor people and so i think it's really important for us to understand that what covid has revealed is

how broken our public infrastructure of care actually is. we are spending as much money as we're spending trying to respond to the crisis, precisely because we have not been placed in the kind of infrastructure of care to echo heather mcgee, because you know, we are afraid that we are going to be giving out stuff to undeserving people. and that usually maps onto the pore and the black and brown. so i reveal the contradiction at the heart of the country. but this is to hope we have the courage in the fortitude to respond in time. >> why do you think there is not enough unity and commonality, between poor people who are black and rural people who are poor and similar conditions why over the course of history have those two populations have completely and seemingly different political outlooks on things? >> that's a wonderful question,

and there been moments of extraordinary fusion in politics. we saw it in the context of reconstruction, we saw it but you know moments of this in the mid 20th century as well. but for the most part, race has been the late stewart hall, british cultural studies intellectual, he used to say that race is the modality through which classes experienced in the united states. not always but most of the time. so at the moment you have the free soil party, it have abolitionists, and those two don't come together in interesting sorts of ways. and has everything to do with once proximity to whiteness. how or to block this rather and how does this hierarchy always interrupts possibilities of solidarity. but we are seeing moments in our current time and let's hope we can finally break this racial racial ideology that keeps us so separated.

>> next up is maria in atlanta. >> good morning professor. >> good morning. >> i really have no respect for america, how can i have respect for a country that is fighting that you know over giving somebody 1400 dollars, how can i have respect for a country with minimum wage of seven dollars. no free health care no free education. and this is the greatest country. i refused to vote and refused to pledge. you cannot live in peace with this country. i'm so done with america. america will send your blood pressure up, and it's almost you know being in america it's almost like a domestic violence situation. the more you try you know the worse it is. >> i told you? >> i am 59 years old, i have worked three jobs, and america this is one greedy country,

that do not care for people. and people that vote, they continue to vote and complain. i have not voted since president obama. they get rich off my vote, they get health care of my vote, while me and others continue to struggle. >> okay thank you for your call. >> any comments. >> i think we need to understand that this conclusion, make sense. i mean i don't want to urge folks not to vote, i don't want to assume that you ought to throw your hands up and give up on the possibility that this country could be otherwise. but we have to understand it. we have to understand why she is drawing those conclusions. what does it mean the richest country in the history of the world, that we want to pay people seven dollars 25 cents an hour? what does that mean, the richest country in the history of the world, that we can't

even enter into a social contract that says, if you get sick no worries we got you. it makes sense. that people are losing faith because the american ideal is in trouble. and the question for us or at least task for us is to give a voice or much more of a just conception of who we want to be. and convince her to be engaged in a different way. we have to make the claim. we cannot tinker around the edges. there are so many more out there who are disaffected, who don't think that this country is working on their behalf, but it is just working for the rich and treating everyone else poorly. we have to understand that because we have produced it. the country has produced that voice. >> in a similar vein, i want to read your comment on twitter from diana, she writes this i worked as a nanny, i found that my job was excluded from many labor laws and protections.

based on racism when drafting these laws, domestic workers who are due primarily black or deliberately left out. and this legacy must end. all wage all workers deserve a fair and decent wage. >> that goes back to my earlier point about how any question of discussion or repair, has to be delivered and targeted. they're explicit they are there are explicit exclusions. and that particular side of the labor market, it has everything to do with keeping black folks out of that. we need to understand racial inequality is not just simply the result of happenstance. it is the result of policy. and it will require policy to remedy it. >> let's hear from lynn in arizona. good morning. go ahead. >> hi thank you good morning professor eddie, and i'm so glad that you are on today. i follow you as well, and i

think the problem is when trump got elected i needed to understand what is it what is agreed. i felt like my experience, uniquely qualified me to understand. i grew up in the beltway. maryland my father was an army colonel, and except my parents are buried at arlington national cemetery. and now i live in rural arizona. but i grew up in the seventies, and we were a middle class black family, but we were in a school with poor white children, that lived in trailer parks literally. and there was this resentment, that you don't me and my girlfriend, we are the only two black kids in the class, that there was underlying resentment that we felt even as children at five years old, that we were not supposed to be doing better then the white people that we lived amongst. there was a serious resentment. and i think that is what is

spread today. that we are not acknowledging poor white people who are struggling just as much as every other poor person that's out there. and when i started to kind of do my research, the fear of demographic change somehow it is the minorities when they become the majority, then white people are going to be put on the back of the bus. you know that kind of notion are feeling. that they are in a ratcheting up in people, and i think the bigger issue is we have to do a better job of acknowledging that there are some very poor white people out there struggling. i think a lot of times, their grievances is while we talk about the disparities amongst african americans, and native americans, which i see clearly now. i have not even experienced a native american experience. and i'm like you know they still live on reservations, you know i was shocked. but the bottom line is, i think it's the grievance that they

were made to feel guilty for being poor, you know but there's a lot of poor whites on welfare, but they were made to feel bad about it and feel shame about it and to hide it. and they put their poor people in the backwoods trailer park, and i talk about black people but it's that denial, because they are poor people of all races in this country. and it is greed. >> absolutely absolutely. >> thank you and appreciate that. >> i think lynn has spoken such a fresh word this morning, and i think you know i take a look at what reverend barber and reverend harris are doing and they are taking speaking directly to people and to your point. they are trying to organize across race, and across regions, and really understand the depth of poverty in this country, and you know what that means. but in focusing on property, we cannot lose sight of how race car intersects with poverty and

many interesting sorts of ways. we have to ask ourselves that question. we have to grapple with it. but you are absolutely right, you're absolutely right that greed combined with this value gap, has produced the country we live in. and now we have a body of literature built, whether it's charles murray's work on the white poor, or hillbilly elegy, and now there is an attribution of a tank trouble pathology to poor white folks. that they don't have the values to succeed. all of this is in the service of an economic system that continues to extract on behalf of the top 1%, and the top 10%, and allows and in some ways stokes the sense of scapegoating for others. so it seems to me that lynn has hit the point head on. head on. we need to understand that she is absolutely right in this regard. >> she mentioned the phrase,

fear of demographic change, and i want to ask you about that. certainly in 2016, maybe less so in 2020, certainly a portion a small portion of african american voters, supported donald trump because of his tougher immigration stance. so that broader fear of demographic change. how does that tie in to this? how do we resolve? that >> well i mean look, i would say let me be let me be very clear, white folks don't have a monopoly on agreed. nativism has been a feature of half of american politics for generations. and we have to be clear that, just because folk are black or brown or native people or whomever, that we don't want to treat them as if they are a homogeneous blog, in by virtue of their ethnicity or their race that we hold all of them over the same political positions. so part of what we have to do is really interrogate the ways

in which these demographics these shifts are bringing pressure on certain section of american life, and some view this country as a white nation in the vein of old europe and some are worried about our competitive pressures in an already contracted economy. the where these migrant workers will depress wages and low come in and work for less, and although that no data seems to suggest that that will impact black voters in any specific ways. but we have to understand this and we are excited you know at the same time we are experiencing the global pandemic of covid-19, and at the same time we are experiencing a racial recognizing, we are suffering from and epidemic of selfishness. where the last over the last 40 years, we have been transforming citizens and others and self interested persons, and put him in competitions wooden rivalries

with each other. people don't even want to wear down mask now. no mask think about that. think about america in the broader sense. about being open to immigrant communities. we stood by and watch for 40 years in this administration, and even prior to this administration the ababa administration, the separation of children and parents. you know, exporting reading the country, millions obama was called the porter deporter in chief. so selfishness has overwhelmed the land it seems to me. so we have a lot of work to do. we have so much work. >> the we have roy in austin texas. >> good morning gentlemen how are you all this morning? >> fine thank. you >> good so i just wanted to touch on something, and i'm glad you clarified yourself when you said the last four years, this is been going on you know i'm 57 years old and this is been going on for many many more years than just the last four, so quick blaming

donald trump for it, because it's been going on long before he was around. the reason why called is that you brought up about the house bill for reparations. i have a distinct problem with that, i know my history, i know where i came from, my mother is a genealogy just so i have a clear clue from where i'm from. and nobody in my family, has ever owned a slave except so i have a real problem. with them wanting to do reparations. you know i think back we did reparations for the native americans, how is that working out? we still have reservations that are below poverty. as the people that were here before we got here, we treat like a door mat. but we never hear about that. >> okay let's get a response. >> well i think we do hear about it, it depends on who and what you're listening to. i think i would agree with you, that this is not a donald trump story, not only.

donald trump is kind of the exaggerated form, he is a caricature of what we have experienced in our politics for generations. i think this is the logical conclusion of reagan-ism. and donald trump is a caricature and version of it. one is a hollywood be list actor, and a reality show actor. and both of them use the phrase making america great again, which is really about exploiting white fears and white grievance as it were. and let's be clear, just because your family didn't own slaves, didn't mean you didn't benefit from a slave holding society. let's be clear, we need to be honest with ourselves. just because your family did not own slaves, does not mean that you roy, did not benefit from a society that is organized along the lines that white people are to be valued more than others. you are 59 years old, what

school did you go to? >> did you experience a segregated school, did your parents experience that? in texas? how were state taxes distributed in texas? did you benefit from a system that tracked black folks? just be honest. grow up. the grow up america. my lord. the >> here in buffalo new york we have tasha. >> good morning, i just have a question, to the previous color, i just want to say to him, your tax dollars go to israel, did your family have anything to do with the holocaust? so good morning doctor, so my comment is that this is the last month, of black history month and the white media, for the most part, they love celebrating doctor large dr.

martin luther king and the i have a dream speech. which is fine. but my question is, one of the show the totality of dr. martin luther king, where he started speaking on reparations, and economic justice for black people. why do they deliberately leave that out and celebrate the i have a dream speech? thank you and i will take your answer off the air. >> thank you so much for that question, i think it's not simply the mainstream media, i think we see celebrations across the country, even within black communities that tend to reduce king to a caricatured version of the march on washington in 1963. we may come into a santa claus figure. one who loves, us as opposed to even understanding the march on washington, about equal economic justice. were king was arguing for what was the equivalent of a 15 dollar minimum wage in terms of

real dollars at that time. and dr. king has often been used, and we picked his bones clean over the 50 the 50 plus years that he has been dead. >> so what we do know that he was talking about the triple evils, of materialism, and racism in his last work where do we go from here? we know that he was organizing the poor peoples campaign, to engage in extraordinary nonviolent action to bring the nation to attention. with the attention to the fact that poor people across the country, and he was not just talking about black pour, he was organizing and appalachian,

in the borderlands and that the rio grande. that poverty threatened the foundations of the country as well. and king is often and all say this quickly, because i know we have more colors. king is often invoked as a rear guard action, detained radical politics in this country. and in order to do that, we must in some ways killed him over and over again. freeze him in 1963, and not look at the entire arc of his witness and his life and his sacrifice. >> some people are seeing a fictionalized version of mac malcolm ex, a in the movie one night in miami. but what is his influence on the discussion today on race relations? >> i think malcolm was a complicated figure, you see the award winning biography. and there's a sense in which there is still a lot of interest in malcolm, because there's a kind of truth telling. a willingness to say explicitly, what is the problem and to

challenge white america directly. to challenge racism directly. but we know that the last few days, and the last 300 plus days of his life, he has been trying to figure out how to speak to the complex issues of race in this country. and we see he's looking for critique of the capitalist economic systems, and he is trying to speak to a broader international politics. and he offers i think you know i think your question is wonderful one, he offers what we might think of as a beginning point, for us to understand the complex ways in which black people have responded to the reality of white supremacy in the united states. it's not just singing we shall overcome, there is a long tradition that includes many people, and a range of folks. and i think malcolm is a point of entry into that solution. >> okay we have chuck in florida calling next go ahead.

>> yes, this car you have on, claude or whatever his last name is, it is he joked about white history week, and we had a white history months, all hell would big would break loose. but if we have black history month that's okay. but they don't even teach who the first slave owner was, it was a black man who owned white slaves. do i get reparation for that? no. i didn't buy any slaves, you can buy any slave, he wasn't a slave. >> okay chuck i will let you go there. if we have the independent line out of the question. >> the first time i saw this person speak, he spoke on the power of the black smile. but i want to ask how dumb the and dangerous it is to use

socialism as a fearmongering. so the conservative media is pushing this fearmongering. and social justice, is real and satanic pedophiles are not. so you can take it from there thank you. >> thank you, so isms are short hands, and some way for short-circuiting critical thinking. you could use the shorthand of socialism, and have a whole host of issues, to keep people from listening to the particulars. it's like you know i'm against obama care, so what do you think of the bulb aca. they know if you have obama's name attached to something then they disagree with it. but we don't need to return to the isms of the early 20th century, the 19th century, we need to imagine a different way of putting together moving forward through the 21st century.

and elements of socialism will be a part of that, and we know that we cannot keep doing the same thing over and over again. that's the definition of insanity. and we have to do exactly what i think we need to do, name the problem for what it is. >> the columnist for the wall street journal, jason riley, had a piece earlier this month and the headline was the progress was put the racial equity squeeze on biden, and he writes about, that i want to get your response to what he had to say. if history is any guide, but he said what's blacks most need from the government is to get out of the way. to get stopped forcing black children to attend failing schools, stop increasing or soft not having a can increase to the minimum wage, and policing is more than violent

crime in poor black neighborhoods. >> i do not know what to do with that? the argument is in such bad faith, because it does not match up with the data. so all of those were the tropes of the last 40 years. reagan-ism has proven itself to be bankrupt. there is nothing about that, that matches with anything that is consistent with reality. i am so sick of people lying. and those lies, we have to bear the burden of them. that is a lie. and he knows it. and he knows it. and i can respond in a reasoned and deliberate way, but that is a lie. but we know that policing, in this country is saturated with racial bias. we know the reason why america has never decided, you don't we know the reason why america has refused to educate all of its children.

we are clear about that. and we know the barriers to black folks being entrepreneurs. of course they're regulatory barriers, but we also know that there are issues in regards to racially biased banking and the right. we know this stop lying. and so i get so angry, because we are right back where we have always been. and the country feels like it's going to hell. but anyway. >> took a couple more calls, and we will hear from denise in florida. that democrats line go ahead. >> good morning, as a black woman i am 53 years old, and i'm frustrated with america. i totally agree with everything you have been saying, and my experience has been that every time i elevate, i get knocked down. if you are outspoken in this country, if you bring to white people's attention how they

treat lacks at work, they will find a way to black value. even though i have more education that a lot of the people that were in leadership positions, they would not promote you. if they don't feel comfortable around you, as a black person, if you are not white enough, they are not going to promote you. and they're going to try to get rid of you, or tried to make you frustrated so you leave. so you know i totally agree with you, and america is greedy. it's all about greed. and i don't understand about the 15 dollar per hour when these companies are millionaires and billionaires. it's like slavery, you know like you said the greed part, they will go as far as not to pay american workers, because it cost too much to run a company or to have human resources in america outsource their work. because they are greedy. so when is enough enough?

>> yeah i mean look, i think we have to figure out, how to be together differently, stuck there is a piece called notes of the native son, and it's a fascinating piece. he assumes the narrating voice of a white person, and he says in effect that black people have to make themselves blank in order to wash away their guilt. as if the precondition for entrée into american society, is to leave the particularities of who we are at the door. that we cannot be our full cells. not in these moments. and my passion in the last dance, was a reflection of my full self, and i know that some people are out there thinking he is full of rage, and he's a princeton professor how can he be angry? but what does it mean to bring the fullness of who we are to the table. and have that contribute to the

greatness or potential greatness of the country. it seems to me that we have to figure out how to be together differently. that's why keep saying this. because we are walking mysteries to each other. we do not know each other. stereotypes that do all the work. assumptions about who we are do all the work. and we have to get past this. we have to be honest and true and try to respond to the crisis of scale. >> i have a text from ralph in new jersey who says, how do you believe we can have a more truly integrated societal fabric? things like the roomy rule have not yielded better results. if it did those who benefit from white privilege claim from reversed racism. thank you to speaking to the rutger's university captain. >> i think heather mcgee's book speaks to this. she uses a metaphor that it used to be that white children

all over this country, had access to these public school pools, and they could swim and enjoy their summer's. but the moment in which we integrated those pools, you know and there's a story about someone swing and one of the pools, and all the kids jumped out and they empty the pool while he was in it. now all of these pools were emptied out. so before we integrate, before we extend the benefits of the country to everyone, they will take the benefits away from everyone. and that zero sum game, that is devastating. it has devastated and it continues to devastate who we are. we have to act different. >> a couple more calls here we're go to butler indiana except as walter governing. >> good morning thank you for taking michael, and i was raised in new york city, i had friends in harlem i used to go and visit, and i didn't find to quote the racism that you're speaking of. i know it's out there. but then i got to serve the

united states military, and i shared canteens with black and brown and latino, and we all got shot at. here's an idea from a white man, you guys came here, he didn't come voluntary, so you could never fix that it's never going to go away it is what it is. but how about this. get rid of all the abortion clinics in black neighborhoods, force the dads to stay with the wife instead of splitting them up because the government says that we can only give assistance to a single woman, which destroys it, and teach the children to pull their pants up, stop selling drugs, stops thinking that the world owes them something and raise the bar as individuals. the same as white people. there's bad white people all over the place the same as the black people. >> we'll let you go there running out of time. >> professor you have any final comments. >> donald trump was just a symptom, and he was just an indication of the rock at the heart of the nation. we've heard a lot of the

discourse, and the assumptions today. that in some ways takes us to the heart of the problem. we have to dare to be otherwise. we have to begin again. and that is going to require an honest confrontation with those ghosts. and i hope we can, i hope we can grow up. >> his book begin again, jim baldwin's america. and it's urgent lessons. glad you can join us this morning, thank you for being. here >> thank you for having me take care and be safe. we saturday a pm eastern, american history tv on c-span 3, go inside a different college classroom and hear about topics ranging from the american revolution, civil rights and u.s. presidents. to 9/11. to a virtual setting to engage with their students. >> gorbachev did most of the

work to change the soviet union, but reagan met him halfway, reagan encouraged him, reagan supported him. fema threats, which will get to later, i should just mention, madam person usually called it freedom of the use of the practice and it is freedom to print things and publish things. it is not a freedom for what we now refer to institutionally as the press. >> lectures in history on american history tv on c-span 3. every saturday at 8 pm eastern. lectures in history is also available as a podcast. find it where you listen to podcasts. next, on history bookshelf. lane cheney and former presidential adviser karl rove reflect on the george w. bush administration. they spoke at the 2020 rancho mirage. author and -- he's the moderator.