"after words" is a program

with relevant guests host interviewing top nonfiction authors about their latest work . >> is my great pleasure to welcome nikole hannah-jones. to ask "after words" did to discuss the book version of thepathbreaking eye-opening inspiring , challenging for some exasperating, always controversial and multi-prize-winning "the 1619 project: a new origin story" which you organized and brought to fruition at the new york times in august 2019 and is due out virtually any day. i think within a week or so. november 16. so i'm very much looking forward to our conversation.

let's begin by backpedaling a little bit. you offer readers in the preface of the book really an excellent overview of the genesis of the project and what the book hopes to accomplish but i wondered if we might start by discussing your expectation of the responses as you move towards publication two years ago and then what has surprised you most about them. i'm sure you've been at this many times but i also think our viewers would be interested in hearing. >> thanks for being in conversation with me. it's been two years since the first project published and i'm excited for the book version to make its way into the world . i think what has surprised me most about what has happened since the original project

was both the month of excitement, the number of people who really embraced the project. this is a project on slavery. it is a project on one of the if not the most difficult areas of american history and one of the most divisive areas of american life. we can see what's happening in our countryright now and understand how challenging this is . everyone making provocative arguments that slavery is a foundational american institution and that we didn't vanish its legacy in 1865 or 1965. that we are still struggling with that legacy so i didn't know if anyone would obviously read it. >> you thought it was going to fall flat and that would be the end.

>> i did. i believed strongly in that the work we did was important and that the essays were beautifully argued. that there's a they would challenge us and really as you know the premise is based on decades of scholarship but as you also know the scholarship done in the field doesn't always permeate the membrane into popular understanding. so i just wasn't sure how it would land, if people would care and we are in a society where there's so much information happening all the time . you can do a powerful weapon of journalism and in a day or two it disappears so i was surprised by really the first thirst of this project and desire to engage with it. >> it sold out. >> yes and the night before we published icouldn't sleep . i was just like, i've gotten

the new york times to give all this these resources to this massive project and publish it and it landswith a thud and disappears in a day or two and no one cares . but i also find in life having more expectations is good. >> when you're pleasantly surprised. >> you could be surprised and not too disappointed but what surprised me was the massive audience for the project that the project sold out all over the country. it soldout of multiple releases. there were lines of people trying to get copies . the year 1619 and entered the national lexicon. i couldn't have imagined the project woodland like it would. >> or that it begins there as opposed to other iconic things. >> i come from a very working-class blue-collar town in and family and this

was the piece that actually reached my family. so that is very surprising end of course more surprising than that has been the pushback and duration of pushback and the otherness of some of the pushback . i expected critique. i certainly expected that there would be people who didn't like our arguments that slavery is a primary foundational american institution in so much of american life . i was certainly impacted by that but i didn't expect that two years later, multiple states would be trying to legislate against the project . that the president of the united states would have been castigating the project. that it would become caught up in politics the way that it has and that i was somehow become a symbol and not just a journalist who did

reporting. so all that has been really surprising. >> were you surprised by the academic historians, not that many of them but some of them who pushed back and have pushed back in kind of a demeaning way i thought. >> i wasn't surprised that academic historians pushed back. i'm not a historian but i study history and i study the field and i know that it is very common for historians to disagree with each other and to disagree publicly and to say that's not my interpretation or i think your argument maybe maybe gives too much emphasis on that and that is normal but what did surprise me was that there wasn't just an effort to say we don'tagree with this . but there was an effort to discredit the project. to argue and an open letter that this project was wrong and dangerous and children's shouldn't be taught it. that was very surprising to me.

i think it was beyond the norms of the field frankly and journalists often write about historical events but i haven't seen the type of scrutiny or effort to really discredit and even journalists sometimes don't get things right so that was not expected but with some scholars it was certainly expected. >> one of the things that has struck me about the responses was how much they were focused on you and the introductory, the big essay. and how little attention is devoted to the many other essays not to mention the poetic and prose form contributions which were really important and that sort of delved analytically as well as artistically with the many ways in which slavery and its legacies of

racism and repression have given straight to our society so i wonder how that was. especially when you go to the book and are reminded of the many essays that were big subjects. you wouldn't know. obviously some of the conservative critique kind of loved everything together but mostly it was about your essays, not what you didn't do. about what you got wrong. and so on and not much about the other things to suggest the way in which that experience and that history is really embedded in the world in which you live. >> absolutely. if you look at the critiques of the project, even the law against the project. you think i wrote the entire project and the entire project was an essay which is my essay on democracy . historians all essays five

days so i spent a lot of time over the past few years trying to understand that and i would think it's a couple of things. one, my essays on democracy. the two most critique essays in the project are the two essays that the pillars of american identity when it comes to this exceptionalism and that the essay on democracy and capitalism so i think because we placed such a heavy emphasis on that as being an exceptional nature of these two things that the two essays that critique the standard narrative about that are the two that have come the most under attack and i also think the packages of the person who made the arguments have made a difference to. that people didn't think i wasdeferential enough . i'm nota historian .

i didn't back down and i think all of that elicited a great deal of anger. as well. but who knows, i guess you have to ask those folks to get their motivations but i when i looked at some of the criticism, it's very very personal and it hasn't been just about the factual arguments or interpretations. >> who are you. >> exactly. she's not a historian. no one asked us if they could do this or consulted us on the project. and you know, as someone who's studied history i started studying in high school on my own. i have undergraduate degrees in history. everyone already knows that's all i read. i always thought historians should view history so that regular laypeople could understand the world and do that history but in this case it seems to have angered

people and i imagine it's because we write something like this for the new york times and it becomes part of a popular history. and. >> because they kind of felt personally attacked by you and i presume that maybe part of the nature of the response. one of the things for those who teach history may have tried to show undergraduates how history is a process of discovery and interpretation. you don't need a phd to do that so in some ways, it's kind of counterproductive to suggest that this is a person with a quote unquote interloper who's coming into the field. and you know, challenging many accepted wisdom's which are not necessarily accepted. they are contested. i think the rest of us would be interested to know the book is includes quite a number of new essays and some poetry and other fiction

writing compared to the times version so i wonder if you could talk about why you decided to expand it and how you chose both the subjects and the writers. >> the beauty of producing a project and then being able to take two years to think about whether the ways it could have been improved. what we wish have been stronger, what could we put in because a magazine had much more limited space and a book. and i'm very proud of what we've done. one, we did listen to good-faith criticism. so for those who paid attention to the debates around it , we did more research, consulted more historians. every essay was peer-reviewed by historians who have had academic knowledge of the area that we're talking about . so all the essays have been expanded but since my essay

ondemocracy is twice as long as what ran before . and it was a very interpretive, it's rare that you get a chance not to do it over but expand it and workon it . and i was so excited to read more and to think more and to sharpen our arguments. so if you read the original project every essay that you read in their is different than the original and i think people reallyenjoy that . and are holes that we always knew existed but because of either space or we didn't quite know how to tell the story in a way that fit with the arguments of the project. we didn't put them in there so unified now an essay that talks about the diaspora. there's an essay guide of alexander and her sister was a historian, lesliealexander on future revolutions and how that impacted american ideas

of recent fear . there's a new essay by kyle miles. that's actually not even the biggest gap in the original product was dealing with colonialism and now have an essay by harvard historian talks about slavery indigenous people and how of course you can't advance slavery. >> is very short she did some short pieces in the original project . but hers is actually one of my favorite essays and i think that's going to surprise a lot of readers. so we have an essay by carol anderson about the second amendment and slavery . you have an essay by andrea butler that talks about religion. so we're able to examine the project out to a much broader areas of american life in the way that i think is really beautiful. it's difficult, really but also inspiring. then we have more than double the fiction and poetry in the

book. and they're beautiful. >> i thought one of the things that is unfortunate about the responses that focus on only a certain number of things is that that tends to be entirely overlooked not only that but other artistic representations which i think really help us understand a new kind of depth. what this means and i hope in the book version because i think you put it together in an interesting way. it's much more clearly chronological and the poetry and fiction pieces or the other short form essays are very connected to the particular moment that the that you have over the course of the book and to the larger essays that work in and i found them incredibly powerful.

>> i'm so glad you said that because they were always a big part of the project but as you said very little thought about an overlooked aspect of the project and what beautiful is these are not the greatest black american writers. these are the greatest american writers period and the timeline aspect of it is really so much of the history of black people prior to 1865 is not by black people because black people were forcibly made illiterate. so we don't have the same amount of documentary evidence of journals and people writing letters to each other people being able to talk about these moments in black american history. >> but we keep uncovering more we do. >> there's this process that it opens up that says we need to start at a much earlier point than we end and

therefore as a historian i always know that you get surprised constantly by what you're able to find. i know i was happy to see a contribution by greg harlow who was my colleague at the coleman center last year. and whose poetry i just absolutely love. so i think this readers will be i will very appreciative. >> one of the things that i thought a lot about in reading the book version, it's a point you make in one of your essays that's the last one. on arjun origin stories. and you know, you note that origin stories which work wherever you can find a and nations, most societies have them for those thatregard themselves as people have been . become mythologized. and you know, they serve a variety of political and

cultural purposes . and there and messed deep in a sense of belonging and non-belonging so one of the questions i got thoughtful about was if the alternative origin story because that's how youpresent it. that you propose to run some of the same risks . both now and in the future of mythmaking and creative remembering and this remembering, distorting as well as revealing and in a sense being no truer than the others. so i guess i want to ask about a couple of sort of possibilities. you know, the 1619 to the extent that it would embrace. as an origin story. you know, obviously it gets sort of apologized and reinterpreted. becomes kind of more and more dreadful. and i wonder if on the one hand, whether it makes

somewhat more sense to focus on potentially adifferent origin story . say although they could be made. say emancipation and reconstruction which coming off your essay on democracy as well as martha jones on citizenship really demonstrates the incredible difference that african americans made to the entire country. to everything we at least claim to value these days and i'm not even sure how much we value them but as a sort of the pinnacle of what the united states is meant to represent so that you have the second founding or a rebirth of the nation or however. that's one possibility but the other is whether we challenge the whole idea of origins and that they necessarily are so deeply distorted the nations or societies that it's almost impossible to come to terms

with what they conceal. so instead of searching for a new origin you kind of say this is one of our problems with origin stories. so i was bemoaning those for a number of days because i think it's a great insight on your part but it brings alternative interesting questions. >> i think it's all about provocative questions that we should be devoting in classrooms and in colleges. we call this area origin story. not the origin story. yes. i think that in a multiracial country, we have to have many points of origin. and you can certainly have a similar project looking at indigenous people and i should hope there issomething like that what would it be ? how do we think about our country if we look at it through that lens. so i think that if we are going to engage in origin stories the question should

be maybe or maybe not. there's a use for it but then i also think it's impossible to nothave them. i think culture as human beings , >> we almost always do. >> you could academically argue that we shouldn't but i don't think we will ever not . have the stories that we tell ourselves. about who we are as a people. i think that we do have to say that could never be one. this idea of an eight narratives in a country like the united states ithink is probably impossible . so why can't we teach multiple versions of origins and say it is raining during the course of these origin stories thattells us who we are . part of what the 6019 project has gotten caught up in his disbelief that this kind of product was intended to replace something. but it wasn't. what the project is intended

to do is to add. add to the history that we have. add a different perspective and hopefully challenge our society. schoolchildren to question, to be more skeptical and to say how many other perspectives. how are we better understand this country if we were hearing it from the lands of people who have faced it in different ways i don't think i would get rid of origin stories. i think that they can have a positive purpose. i just think too often origin stories have been manipulated towards a degree that they have skewed. that they leave too many of us out. and that they are less honest because they're trying totell a single version of who we are . and i think more honest is telling a much larger more inclusive version.

>> you think that's part of the pushback of fear of being excluded or a fear of being diminished on the part of people who expected to be favored and privileged? >> absolutely. i think also is not even an intentional way of thinking. i talk about this also my preface that there is of course history is what happened on what date and who did it and history is what we've decided to remember about what happened and how to interpret what happened. and so often history is about the production of power. so this fear that 1619 was replacing 1776 was not about historical facts . that was a fear about are we losing something, are we saying that we can't consider these men to be great? are we saying we can't

consider our country can be exceptional because 1776 is about exceptionality . 1619is about something else . these are arguments about facts and history, these arguments about the utility of history and who gets to decide how we think about ourselves as americans and for the vast history of this country only one group has been able to shake that narrative and here comes that woman at the new york times who is challenging that narrative in a way that often historical texts don't. and i need to be careful that historians are not taking that as demeaning the profession because i could do none of what i dowithout the work of historians . but it's hard for a historical text i think to really permeate society and that way and this is where i think the work of historians and work of journalists can be aligned which is we can take that work and translate

it to a massaudience . i love history. but. >> that's the part of what's been troubling about some of the pushbackparticularly from historians.for me, if you want people to understand why history matters , if you want people to study history and to use the history that you're making, then you can't be so exclusive as to how that history is ultimately used. to have schoolchildren telling me i wasn't interested in history because of this project is about the present, it helps understand this is what i need to know about what happened in 1865 because this is how it's shaping the society i live and now that is what the power of what we tried to buy also where opposition comes from. >> 1.2 make is that if we ever have any question about whether history was important . it's pretty obvious that you know, whoever owns thepath

owns the present . there's a lot of truth to that. history telling is a form of wielding power as you suggested and therefore it's very contentious. i think another point that you make in your democracy essay two is not to denigrate the founding ideals but to demonstrate that you know, african-americans were among those who cared deepest about them and who fought the hardest to put the most on the line and had the most expensive sense of what democracy might in fact mean was the least exclusionary. i think you make references during reconstruction and the radical constitutional conventions inthe south . african-american they were the least likely to want to punish former confederates. it was the white unionists who wanted to punish them there was sort of a remarkable sense of inclusion so maybe mistakenly but

nonetheless it seems to me that you take the ideals and you demonstrate that it has fired the imaginations and struggles of people who were not included but who nonetheless were the ones who took it really seriously. so it seems to me that's one of the things that excites students and others who read this and recognize that it's not necessarily an alternative but it's a deeper history of how the country came into being and who we are to back for it. and one thing that's really impressed me right from the beginning was the extremely ambitious chronological arc of the project. i mean, 400 years is a long time for historians who tend to live off relatively limited time period. and re-readers certainly

learn how deeply embedded slavery and its legacies are. but i wonder if one of the potential dangers is that we and up or we can end up with something of the history without history which is to say that nothing really changes. that their struggles for change whoever wages and however heroic, they might be they don't really count for much in the end. one of the things that i got up to his back though wilkerson's recent fairytale of the book the past. it strikes me as it's a version of this. there are you know, analogies that are kind of a historical and what you're left with the end is this sense of hope for the imagined change of heart.

for which there is no basis in the past. so i guess i don't think that the 1619 project is to that extent but there is kind of a sense in many of the essays and in some ways excluding yours and martha jones in a couple of others where it's sort of you what's explained is how problematic things are. how deeply the challenges weare rooted in the past and you kind of come away and think i don't know. where are we? what is history teaching us except not much happens. we're sort of in the same place. >> ..

when i think about this book i think if we want to be helpful that we can cage our society and make progress. has to be built on honesty about what happens and we have to acknowledge that the past does shape where we are in our society. so the second to last essay in the book is on progress. i think it's a very -- it really speaks to the lack of urgency that we have, of course this progress. my dad was a sharecropper -- board on a sharecropper far. i was not. when you look at incarceration rates they've increased. there so many measures i think it would be counterfactual to say there has not been progress i think the argument is also

should we be satisfied with progress in in a lan that wen in 400 years? wind we not need to mark progress? what's puzzling to me about the book though is, my ending essay on justice offers us hope because it says okay -- >> host: another direction. >> guest: you understand what happened, why, you understand the party we see is not natural, not in it. was constructed. now we understand we can do something about it if we choose. there's nothing that can't be done. the sense of helplessness comes from the belief we probably won't do what is required but that we can, we can become a far more equal country that really does live up to the majestic ideas of our founding if we

choose it. we are not and a particularly hopeful moment in a country that. >> host: hope and optimism are different things and to think there's not a lot of hope for optimism but hope it something else that can be embedded in the history as it is experienced. but again, there is sort of one of the things that worries me and i know in teaching in university and talking to other audiences is that there has been this sense that there was the experience of enslavement and, of course, then it is followed by this awful experience of repression, of jim crow, of sort of almost unrestrained violence against formerly enslaved people here and so that the line between slavery and everything else evaporates. that's what i mean about martin

luther king used to say stephen edwards was the bible of the civil rights movement. what he meant was whether he agreed with the analysis or not he was basically saying jim crow and racism has a history, and if it has a history it can be defeated, right? that's what i kind of mean about history about history is i read a lot of things these days which written by people who are powerfully committed to a more just society, to defeating the burdens of racism and asleep at of the past. but sometimes in a way of doing it and demonstrating again and again and again that some things have changed but a lot of things remain the same. you kind of independent position of how do we get out of here. >> guest: yes. i think that is something that

we struggle with as a society is how do we? i'm not sure any of us have the answers and that's what's so difficult because the laws have changed, the civil rights understood hearts and minds matter but now the laws have changed. i don't know and i think that what is so -- >> host: also progress is that there is this kind of sense and to think can be kind of puts his finger on it, kind of this naïve sense an american historical writing and thinking that somehow or other it's the redemption story. we have seen in the past but somehow or other we have recognized our sins and with committed ourselves, and so barack obama gets elected president and now we're in a

postracial society, amazing how quickly bookpeople grabbed on to that and up quickly it was demonstrated to be palpably false, so that i think the need to interrogate, that formal optimism as opposed to hope which is that things just do get better. you just have to be patient which is i think some of the pushback because the 1619 project and others is about urgency. it's that -- you know, we can see, be patient, you can't do everything, the reaction on the part of people who are in power. one of the things apart ask you to raise issue about multiple origin stories, is that clearly one of the push backs against 1619 was this feeling that it was too much of a television, although slavery, about racism, about african descended people. what about native people? what about other people of

color? what about ethnic working-class poor people? i know that you know your view is not, that that doesn't matter and you had an objective and judge limited space. you dealt with 400 years and you can't write about everything because needless to say there's an enormous about to write about. so when addition to the simplicity suggestion that there can be multiple origin stories, i think you're interested in kind of constructing a new narrative, right? so how does the narrative that you are constructing both in the original and in the book version, how do you see this kind of opening up, it can be more inclusive and that other groups of people who had their own kind of sense of what their experience was, what their histories of been either in

relationship to enslave people or to people of african descent, or not, how can open up so they can feel, you know, we have something, there's something it for us to join the process of doing that? >> guest: such an interesting question and i find that critique -- i guess in some ways i don't quite get it because this is a story about african slavery, and intentionally, explicitly. so we were not going to include every other story. you don't have someone who's writing a book about the civil war why didn't you write about every other american war, or every other -- like we understand -- historians have an area of expertise and a focus on an area. this is a project to commemorate

the 400th anniversary of the first africans being sold into the colonies and looking to the legacy of that. now, whether areas we could've gone into that we didn't? could have talked about that struggle more? yes. i would argue 1619, biracial class struggle hasn't been that successful, that race has broken apart many class movement. i think i'm not about -- this role black americans have always been asked to play, which you have to fight for everybody, speak for everybody and black americans have taken up that role often if you look at always about expanding rights for all americans, understanding if you

are on the bottom anyone to better their life it will cause you to lose your rights, and it's okay for us to just focus on our history and what that means for america. i would push further to say as americans we are always taught to see ourselves in stories of white americans, right next when we talk about the mayflower or when we talk about the founders and we talk about these great documents, we are all to see ourselves in that story. i'm saying that we could also see themselves and black freedom struggle, that this is a story of americans, americans who are black but americans. whether you are indigenous, whether you are clear, whether you are white, the fact that black people saw the words of the founding document which many -- great new book argues a black

man who turn the declaration into liberty document, but took that founding stands at that we ought to define the declaration which is really a cataloging of complaints as a liberty document. that is everything -- every american can take pride in. we'll have to dilute the story of slavery or black americans to do so. to me it clearly means let's make space for all of these stories but let's not force one story to be everyone's story. >> host: there is this way in which a lot of concepts, america, americans, i teach often the history of the south, they use the term southern, southern. they mean white people. it's coded that way. it seems a part of what the project, struck me, was trying to do was kind of to break that.

it's that easy to do because it's so deeply attached, but nonetheless the challenge is really, really important, exactly where many educators are interested in doing it. i wanted, the volume inns with your very moving and disturbing essay called justice. in which you focus on the enormous wealth gap between african-americans and white americans and white americans and different social classes. social transformation needs to take place and that reparations need to be sort of centrally a part of that. i couldn't agree with you more. but since you kind of a knowledge such a transformation demands the adoption of bold, thank yous who word bold

national policy reparations being an example. you know, the future will not only go through social and political struggle but alliances of social groups that had their own understanding of why we are where we are and groups who were in many cases experience their own forms of exportation and degradation. i wonder how you see the 1619 project in relation, obviously it's not fair for you to be asked to take on the burden of transforming our society but clearly you see the project as part of a process and ambitious goal. how do you sit in relationship to this larger political -- because i think it really is important to end the book that way. you are its visionary in that sense. i am looking forward, i kind of, this is what i think needs to be done but the question is whether

the kind of logic volume gives us sort of a sense of, i cannot trying to say here to answer the question of you are not a sort of political organizer per se, you're not a practice come you're not sort of advising or consulting -- practitioner but your own since it to me you recognize the challenges that we face, and how your representation of relationship of past and present which is at the center of the book gives us some way forward in a world in which some kind of collision all politics are going to be necessary. >> guest: yes. i believe that there is a segment of america where matter what happens we never go forward. but i believe that large numbers

of americans of all races simply don't understand enough about this history to understand why something like reparations is necessary. we are taught this history very poorly. we are not taught to think about as an institution of economic exploitations of jim crow being about economic exploitation, of all of i call it the dragnet of discriminatory laws and actions and policies that led to the wealthy gap. we are also taught very poorly about the civil rights movement and what it could accomplish. and so my work as a journalist is to say is not enough understanding to get us to where we need to be coming to try to reach those for whom they are not opposed -- they're not oppose because of understand why we would need something like that and that's because they have been taught this history

well enough to understand why we would need a policy of redress for black americans. so i have to believe that my work is in getting people, helping people and pulling on other people's work but to get an understanding of what led to the country that we live in today here why are black americans earning, have $.10 of wealth on the dollar to white americans? y in every aspect of american life are we and indigenous people the two groups of people who didn't choose to be part of america on the bottom? and then what then do we owe for the conditions that so many fellow americans lived in? i've been doing this long enough where i heard every argument. >> host: i bet you have. >> guest: that essay very is potentially speaking to every single argument that i've heard with facts and data.

for the argument well, my ancestors were irish and they suffered. yes, but that does not -- >> host: responsible for this. >> guest: right. or my family moved here in 1910, so what what do i have to do with that? i am trying to get us to embrace a collective history. i see this all the time. if you take pride in things that america's den dr. salmon sisters didn't personally to come we also have the obligation for things that the stations than that your ancestors didn't personally do. i have to bleed as a journalist, again if you can inform people that you can change minds, that so much of the reaction is just a cover-up of what slavery and jim crow really was. i think a lot about, i talked in essay about the history of the reparation struggle which again most americans have no idea so

when you hear well, everyone who was enslaved is dead. people who were enslaved try to get reparations and couldn't come right? callie house --, who almost no one has ever heard of. >> guest: right. and diane's book, which is amazing, so we just don't know enough. you know this as a historian. most americans know so little about the past. >> host: when i started teaching i had all sorts of grand ideas about how my construction of u.s. history was going to influence and change their minds, and i discovered very quickly that that wasn't true. they were willing to tell me whatever i wanted to hear, or whatever they thought i wanted to hear, and you know what i can to recognize is that people's political views changed in the process of political struggles that take place. that's how you learn about

stuff. so we are in this situation now on the one hand, 1619 has been widely adopted in class -- i mean it's extraordinary because at high school and college levels to some extent middle school levels, educators have embraced this and i try to incorporate this into the classrooms not in the way it is usually being portrayed but we also know, so that's really extraordinary. we watched over the past year and a half and amazing mobilization. not only on the part of african-americans but many, many allies against the enslavement,, symbols. i never thought i would ever see a member of the military high command talk about the confederacy as traitors. i said i've been trying to teach this for ages and no, not even

my sister university of pennsylvania when i was -- would buy the stuff. so that's incredible. we also see now an incredible push back. the invocation of critical race theory which of course no one,, they had no idea what it is and so i guess my question is sort of, and we will have to wrap it up a little bit. where are we? on the one hand, it's been amazing. one couldn't imagine when you the original version came out in the summer of 2019 that we would see this upsurge. and the change in taking down monuments and other symbols of what it always been married to our past, some reconciliation was a key to the game and every record is the people treated can reason -- committed treason against the united states. i think where part of that. this is what is happened but now

we are potentially facing desperate where are facing a bit of a backlash and one that is discombobulating a lot of potential allies who feel like again, you have kind of overstepped your bounds and now it's going to happen is there going to really go after you. i just wonder if we could finish with some thought you could have about that? >> guest: we're in the midst of the struggle that was initiated in 1619, which is who are we going to be as a country? the 400 your argument is important and we have to understand that you do not disembed these tensions, these feelings, these divisions in a summer of protest, and that in some way what we are saying is

the most expected thing in the world, which is intense struggle towards racial progress and intense backlash. i hope with the 1619 project does is offers a bit of a roadmap, that we can see what is happened, understand we are and figure out we have a choice to make and i think one gets lost in myth about that what gets lost, 6019 is about a choice but we have a country founded on these amazing ideals. we have never lived up to them but we can and we had the power to make that choice here but you won't live up to them by pretending what is happened as a tablet of attending the impacts of that cannot be seen in our society. so we're in a scary period retina. i don't even know what democracy looks like in a couple of years, but i hope that come and do believe that the majority of

americans are open to understand more about our past and that we can build a broad multiracial coalition that finally decides we are going to make wrong some of the, try to make right some of the wrongs we have done. we will see. i also learned never make predictions. i try not to. >> host: we will have to end on that but i do hope that the book will be widely read. >> guest: thank you. i i do, too. >> host: i know you do. it both gives us a sense of the scope of the problems and challenges but i think also at the end offers us some sense of the way forward. i congratulate you on its publication. >> guest: thank you. >> host:

the plight of christian communities in syria , egypt, iraq and palestine. >> janine has been with us is 2018. she's a columnist of foreign-policy and award-winning author and journalist . she has dedicated her life to courageous work in war zones and humanitarian crisis around the world. she has reported extensively on the front line