getting.

my name is chad helton and i am the new ceo and president of the enoch pratt library. thank you. it is a pleasure to join you tonight for the special of the brown lecture series featuring tennessee coats. i want to take a moment to thank our private who make events like this possible. we greatly appreciate it.

i also want to thank you all for here this evening and for the warm welcome that i have received ever since i've arrived in baltimore. so thank you all so much for your hospitality hospitality. this is day for me so i didn't expect on day three that i would be introducing a monumental figure in our community. but i'm so excited to be able to do that and it's really an honor. and i this library throughout my career and i'm very honored to be a part of this city and be a part of this organization. looking forward for the future that we're going to create together. so thank you all. now to our special honored guest, tennessee coates is the author of, the number one new york times bestseller, the world and me and, winner of the 2015

national book award for nonfiction. he is contributing editor, vanity fair and sterling brown, endowed chair of the english department, howard university. and his latest book, the message. he shares his thoughts on race, racism and equity and all of. you tonight have a copy of that book. so that's exciting. we are proud to welcome him back home. baltimore tonight. he will be joined in conversation with the host of midday on wypr tom hall. please join and welcome to a.c. coates and tom hall.

they're happy to see you. but. dantley wow, i'm able to see your. it's really great to meet you. welcome back home. for folks who may not know you grew up here. tell us about growing up here. where did you grow up? her. i was coming down. it's funny you ask. i was just coming from my mom's house when my wife and i was giving her a running narration. and after we turned off of liberty heights where i got my nike snyder burger going to and pass the girls in public library. i guess what it would be to branch it in our private public library and this is actually really important because god, i must have been. my mom taught me to read as well. he taught me to read was at

about four years older. so my mom was, a public school teacher, she's right here. she is. there's my mom's and and with a copy of sports illustrated. you know what is noticeable for sports illustrated? she taught me by that time we you know, we were on our way. oh, oh, well, you know, in the summer, my my parents, you know, they they, you know, i, i was never quite home on vacation and, you know, i mean, i had to keep your mind occupier's math problems to do is reading, to do book reports, etc. and so my mom would take me over to the, to the guys embracing, you know, prac lab and they had this game and i can't remember the exact contours of it, but basically it was like a race to reach. i read as many books as you can as quick as you can by the end of the summer. so we come back into the summer to get, you know, prizes as you finish rows, whatever. and i'll never the guy looked at my mom, the library and he said, your son read 24 books this summer, know how he's even

close. i think back say when did you think you could be a writer and i think back to that moment as i say i say like you asked me where i grew up. right. and in many ways to answer that question. but feel like in terms of what we're talking about tonight, in terms of the message i grew up here, you know, i grew up in the our library. um. and, and i can't imagine life as a writer without it. it's, it's just really important that i say this because we live at a time where public libraries are under attack and the people who are attacking them understand exactly what they're doing. they're trying to kill your faith in public institutions. they're trying to kill your faith in public imagination. and they're really trying kill, as far as i'm concerned, the next generation of people like

me. and that is the possibility young writers and young people who can, you know, have us imagine a different world than the one we have right now. it's a very actually intelligent. and i don't know that we'll always particularly wise and understanding its and its contours so and your mom is here which is and your dad, paul coates, i do want to send a shout out to him. he has but you are a national book award winner and the national book foundation is honoring your dad with a special lifetime award. congratulations, mr. coates. you're welcome. and you will present. that award, however, is going to down award way better. write a good. yeah. yeah. with this book this very provocative book you write that you set out to do one thing and

you kind of ended up doing another thing. what had you originally planned? where did you think this was going take you and where did it end up? well, there were a couple of things. the first thing is. the fact of wanting to write. i've been teaching writing now, actually, almost as long as i've been a writer as i'm writing the book, you know, our first, you know, writing workshop i led was actually our law in prison when i was at howard university. and i was scared out of my mind by teaching more proper in terms of like universities, that's, that's been like the past ten years or something. and i've done, you know, basically every year i've taught at institutions as diverse, as am i t nyu to cuny, you public system. and now, you know, coming back home to howard university, which was a particularly, you know, moving you opportunity and so on some level i this desire just to

kind of you know, condense and consolidate all of the lessons know that i would like to impart, you know, onto my students and onto my kids. but there was something else going on and that is. for the past, i would say ten or 15 years. we have lived in a time and i don't want anybody to take this the wrong way. but but we have lived in a time where we have felt like technology and some sort of i would say, almost crude understanding of the sciences and, what the sciences are, audiences to everything it's been popular to mock poetry majors, to mock french majors, to mock the liberal arts large, to tell people that, you know, stem is the way toward the future we tell that sorry about that you know we tell our young

girls to learn how to code which i'm not against but we don't tell them to learn how to write, which i'm obviously. the ability to write the ability to write is the ability to communicate with clarity. and this is valuable no matter what you do. and the to understand writing, understand why people are able to communicate with clarity, emotional clarity, factual clarity, objective clarity, that's all writing is. and i feel and frankly, although i shouldn't talk too much about this and i'll only say this, you certainly in the era of air and chat tv t we have commercials where young girls in order to address their heroes, get to their deepest feelings are told that need to pour out their heart into a machine and the machine will then tell them how to, how to how to communicate clearly. i i felt even then that we were

losing something we were losing the great import of writing, which is a that, you know, would go so far as to say freed my people. frederick douglass was a writer, you see. i mean, he was he was of our greatest writers by way, you know. and he understood the power of that, you know, my heroes, ida b wells was a writer. you know, james baldwin was a writer these are important. martin luther king, by the way, was a writer actually a really good one to you know what i mean? so i don't know where we are as a people without books, without writing. and so i was motivated by a desire to, on one level, demonstrate craft and talk about the craft, but also talk about the practical application of the craft and how to craft shapes our world and how it shapes our life. and to, you know, put some emphasis on that. you write about all of your books, kind of like as your children.

would you mind reading that? it's on page 89, you have it. i got a book. i just to have a book. oh, beautiful. okay. yeah. oh, my actual children and my wife are not offended. um. almost of them, actually. okay. just to contextualize this. um, this is from a chapter where i'm going wild enough going to carolina to see my own book. your band, which was an interesting experience and it addresses the, the motivations of book banning with these adults are ultimately seeking is not simply the reinstatement their preferred dates and interprets but the preservation of a of of a whole of of a

manner of learning austere and authoritarian that privileges the apprehension of national dogmas over the questioning of them the danger we present as writers is not that we will simply convince their children of a different dogma, but that we will can convince them that they have the power to form their own. i know this directly. i imagine my books to be my children, each with its own profile in a way of walking through the world. my eldest, the beautiful struggle is the honorable, hard working son. he has that job my father once aspired for kids and a wife he met in high school. my second son between the world in me is the gifted one, or rather the one whose gifts are most easily translated to the rest of the world. he plays in the nba, enjoys the

finer things and talks more than he. i see we were eight years in power as the insecure one. born in the shadow of my gifted, and who has never quite gotten over it, he has problems and we don't talk him much. all of these children suspect that my daughter my baby girl, the water dancer is my favorite. perhaps. she certainly is the one that is most likely if a little better, a little confident, and a little more self-assured. i see my books this way because it helps me remember that though they are made by they are not ultimately they leave home, they travel, they have their own relationships and they leave their own impressions. i have learned that it's best to as much as possible, stay out the way and let them live their

own lives lives. so what do you think the message will up living while it looks like she wants to fight? yes. that's a good spike. what i heard that you are going to the ufc mean. i don't. i don't know. i don't know, man. wow we're going to see i mean, this is only day two. actually, it is over 48 hours. yeah, i've never seen anything like this. it's pretty incredible. between world and me is a letter to your son. right. and then this book begins with, the letter to your students at howard university. then we hear about a trip to senegal, a trip to south carolina. you mentioned about the book banning and then a trip to israel and mandatory panels in

the beginning. when you talk about writing, you say, it's never enough for the reader of your words to be convinced. the goal is to. yeah well that goes back to the center the central thing that i started with to communicate clearly you know writing is an abstract form. you know, the and not the actual thing, you know, see libraries and obviously it's not know a picture of a library. so the challenge that you're always trying to get to is. how can i use those words in a way it's you feel like the thing is right there, you know, and we have at our disposal obviously, you know, we don't have, you know, music and, you know, traditional sense, at least we don't have visual art. we only have, you. and so what we try to do or what what i try to do in terms of clarity is get it to the point where you not just you don't

just see what i'm talking, but you actually feel it. i think about books and articles and i think this is why, you know, books for all the prediction of them disappearing every generation reading lesson been hearing this all my life and yet here books remain they are enduring and i think that's because they are our most intimate form. you pick up a book and it's really just and you and it's not even just me it's not actually i'm gone it's the words i wrote and it's you and so and you perceive those words through your filter of experiences. you have you have you have your own with those words, it will be your, you know, little cousins experience. it will not be your arts experience, it will not be your mom's experience. they all may like the book, the images that are content in your are your own and see that that that puts a lot responsibility on me as a writer because you had to work to read write like you got it your brain is

working, you know what i mean? it's an interactive form. and so i have to do as much as i possibly can to bring to bear enough material for you to kind of those and make those images in. i am writing in a time is what i tell my students. i am writing in a time where you could be doing anything else you could be on your phone you could be watching the orioles tonight or you would disappointed it looks like you're playing video games you can you know be making love you could be doing anything better than spending your time with me and so i have to justify that i had to justify the time you're spending with me in a way i try to do it is when you get done. i want you to put that book down and say, --, you know, i mean, i yeah, i kind want you to, like, wander around like a little drunk almost, you know what i mean? and then maybe you pick it up and you look at it, and i see what's your thought? i saw, you know, and then your

wife comes in and don't you say, baby, got to read this. you know, i mean you go to sleep and and you think about it and then you dream about it the way i dreamt about palestine when came back for three weeks. i want you to dream about this. and then you get up, you know, in the morning and, you know, you maybe go to work and you say you, say to your coworkers, you must read. that's what it means. be hearted. that's how i when i read a great book, you know, and i'm not saying it, you know, obviously i always achieve this, but that's the goal. that's when, you know, you have really communicate with clarity and what we're always trying to achieve. we have a question from the we have some questions and index cards. i'll try to get to as many of them as we can does. baltimore haunt your thinking as you write about different works haunting you and, your readers, in terms of how you grew up here. yes, yes. i mean, you know, you're not going to get another childhood. you know, and your sense of

everything is is haunted by that. you know. it's so funny, like just how you process how we process things. you know, i was telling somebody this the other day, i was i had this very contentious, like the first interview for the book. and it's very contentious and you do have to do one on cbs. yeah, yeah, yeah. which is which is okay. it's okay. it's okay. suppose to be contentious. you know, i knew i know what i wrote, you know, i, i knew what i was doing, but i was a little right. i was surprised the person i was processing and then i like, oh, this is a fight fight. i guess who's trying to hurt me. yes, i signed. you know, at first i was confused and i started getting angry. right. i was like, i do something to me, you know, and one wanted, you know, a you know, i mean, maybe try to help out with, you know, she was trying to interrupt, right? i said, no, no, no, no, no. this is a fight.

do swallow me. and if you can't swing on me and, you know, try to break it up, he swung on me. so we to do this right. so right. but why do i it that way? why do i think about it go way. see, that's baltimore for. services for her because somebody else could have been like, well, you know, we just had a disagreement. you know, it was, you know, working out next time because i got like ten cards here. three of the questions are about that interview or this is i just have to give you so much respect on how brilliantly and eloquently you provided a history lesson and masterclass in moral clarity on cbs.

and the funny thing is, i was like, man, i should you know what i mean? i was thinking all the things i should have said because i think i'm, you know, honestly what happens. and and i'll this publicly because i actually really do this there is a way in which because of what the dialog is around black people in their accomplishments, because of the dialog around affirmative action and frankly because of the amount of racism in this country, people don't always believe you, you know, and especially people that maybe read a summary of your work but didn't actually read it. and so they they don't quite like they think people gave you the awards. i use a black person or they just of handed it to you. um, and so to say if we separate all your awards, then we did x, y and z. but you really should be asking yourself is how did he get those awards? because that's who's sitting

front of me right? that's the person sitting and then that would probably change your approach in, how you approach that, that person. but you know, i hope nobody's offended by this, but i was just talking to friend and he said, you know, my i didn't mean to put him on blast. he said, you know, white greatest weakness is they actually believe was stupid. well, actually i think they believe it and they think, well, i just kind of, you know, conjure this thing. i'm going to say this thing that i know is really, really, you know, extreme this bomb into the room. i haven't actually thought about it. you know, i haven't actually read it. i have it. you know, i talking to my dad about this, like the thing i always think back is like when jack johnson was sam nottingham jack johnson when jack johnson was champ right. and they decided their mind that this dude not who he was that jim jefferies who must have been ten years older than him, would somehow come out of retirement and beat jack like they convinced themselves.

and it wasn't really jack johnson, you know what i mean? and it's like one of these things where, like, you know they they don't really quite us, you know. i mean, it's i think a lot of that was you addressed me like that as though i haven't about this as i don't, you know, i haven't read anything and i haven't you know what i mean? like and you write your students that, you have to write with an emancipator mandate. yeah, i think the emancipatory mandate was certainly on display on cbs. yeah. no, it's and what i meant by that is, uh, and they had that, you know, i mean, i mean, i was on a beautiful things about the class didn't have to instill that they had that coming into the class class. we don't with clarity just for the hell of writing with clarity. you know, we we write with clarity with the intention of saving the world that that is our sense we write with purpose, you know, that clarity is supposed to be put to something,

you know what i mean? we don't believe that beauty and polity, you know, sit in two different places. you know, we don't in the in an apolitical beauty, you know, that this book opens with a quote from from george orwell, you know, call it from from a brilliant called wild. right. and it was funny. i was working on this book and orwell obviously is dead, you know what i mean? and i was reading this and i, you know, and this is like the amazing thing about literature and, you know, you know, talks about how if he had lived in another time where things were different, he would just, you know, just be pretty writer of prose. but given the events and the time lives in, you know, he has to elevate political writing into an art. and as a black person, a traditional black writer, like, i really felt that. i really, really understood that. and that's like, you, my kids, they they start with, oh, well, actually, they all start with that orwell essay. if they saw politics in the english language is beautiful in its own way. but that's something that we

have, you know what i mean? like they have that spirit. and it was one of the beautiful things about, you know coming to hollywood to teach, because do you write about you say, i don't really care so much about hearing both sides are opposing points of view so much as i care about understanding literary tools deployed to advance those views. i mean the writing really matters. thomas mann once said that a writer is someone for whom writing is really difficult. yeah, i've heard that. i've heard that. is that true? you? yes, yes. yes, it is. and this one was like this hurt. me like this book hurt. i it's this this. it really, really did. and i think it's not just that it's difficult, but that you accept the difficulty because it's difficult for everybody. but for some reason you just say, okay, this is going to hurt and you just let it, let hurt. like you're compelled to, to let hurt and try to figure out what what is. on the other side of that pain, you write about early in your

career, you saw yourself at a certain level having a kind of focus that stood in abeyance is of the empirical. yeah. and then i wondered if the travels you write about in this book, south carolina, israel is a kind of a return to that's a great point. that's a that's a great point point. it's kind of actually a return sort of focused in many ways in some ways, you know, you know, it's some. you know, i grew up in a household reading was very, very important. right. and acquisition of knowledge and specific knowledge and your ability prove a point and argue and debate was very, very important. but there is a way in which our politics, when people want to do things, other people, where, you know, they deploy books, facts and figures as though those

things somehow stand. in contrast to a kind of basic human morality. so i want to take something from you right and unless you have read five books, you can't really understand why correct in wanting to do it. and then i do redefine books. you actually need to read ten books, but the bottom line is, i want to take something from you. you know what i mean? and there are so many instances in this book, and this was not the first time i found this in my career. i mean, i always talk about like, you know, going back like with case for reparations. i mean, part of that was, you know, me and a good friend of mine, you know, who was raised similar circumstances. we talk about how, you know, be in a barbershop and somebody would tell you, hey, you know, this whole country is built to a slave and you say, well, that's that's too simple. that can't be true. you go out into the world and, you know, go to college and you read all this complicated stuff and you read all these books and, you know, you say and then you realize this country is

built on slavery. yeah yeah. now you the facts. you know what i mean? where is that person that had the facts, but the conclusion is the same and they know something and they know something and you know not to you know you know get to this it was you it's kind of one of the frustrating things about the student protests, you know, last year, i mean, these kids, i mean, do they have the right language always know? do they have of the facts at hand? no. you know, you have all the geography at no. but they're you know, the quote names of all their souls are intact, like they know something they know something. and i have to tell you, i mean one of the things that, you know, i ended this book on thinking about that i didn't quite get resolved is how you can have all this all of this science, all of this knowledge, all of these facts and figures, all this education? but if it leads you to doing wrong, well, what was it for it

in like? i have a very practical sense about now it's like, okay, so then what like i like i'm one i like acquiring knowledge too. i enjoy that. but it is going to lead to bad. i'm sure what you were doing. you know this is a question for all of western at this moment, by the way. yeah. because the things you write about learning. when you went to israel palestine, you talk about the elevate of complexity over justice. yes maybe it's not as complicated as it looks. yeah. you were there for ten days in may. right. the spring of may, may 2012, 23. so this is six months before the attack by. hamas, the people just assume, well, the middle it's complicated. it's really it's rough. it takes a lot to understand it. but you had a different response to it when you went there. well, i mean, all systems that operate in our world are

complicated system of slavery in america was was actually quite complicated. you know, it was all sorts of economics, you know, toys that people had insurance on slaves, you know, they, you know, use slaves as financial instruments at the same time to use them as labor. i mean. it was complicated action. it was complicated some slaves were allowed to, you know, go and work and make some money. and it was save that money, you know, and so that different types of, you know, enslaved. it was quite complex it actually the morality enslaving people is not complicated it's not complicated at all you know and so this is very, very simple for me. and these these are facts these are facts right here. this is a country in, israel, in which you have half the population that is there are, you know, fully enshrined and invested. and the other half are varying tiers, something less that not democracy. that's just that doesn't meet anybody's definite sin of democracy. you have an on the west bank

since 1967. we seem to have had the power to choose who rules over them and how they abroad and what laws are. you have one group of people that live in one place and they are subject to the civil justice system, all of its rights and its privileges and. assumption of innocence. and then you have another people, people that are subject to a military very just i'm giving you facts i mean, these are not my this is what it is. these are not my opinions. and i saw it, you another group of people that are subject to a military system where you can be arrested and nobody has to tell your family what are charged with. what is democratic that what is moral, that that's easy. i don't need to read ten books. i understand. you know what i mean? and so like people like -- like these facts and these figures and these complicated sins. well, you know, you know, the palestinian is detest they the suicide bombed here they did here and it's like since when can apartheid be justified by

someone not exhibiting hyper morality since when is it okay do something to somebody because they don't meet your moral threshold. what like what that and in fact if we as black folks take a moment and think back on our history, we know that that argument has actually been used against us because if you go back and you read the history of enslavement, thomas jefferson has a quote. i always think about, you know, he would talk about slavery. he says you know, we have the wolf by the ear where the wolf where the wolf and what he says if i free you might do something to me. you know it's a statement on you know we are and his ability to to justify what was the main argument desegregation and the civil rights what a violent criminals don't know what they'll do let's look at their crime rates as though that can justify you plundering and you taking things from me. it's a very, very familiar argument. but the morality of it and maybe

you know i've learned certainly over the past few days and before that there are people who disagree with this. there are people in this world who i guess believe that apartheid can be justified. i'm one of them, you know. and so, you know, this is pretty simple to you. and when you say that this book was tough, that comes through particularly in this last section of israel palestine, because you you beat yourself up your hard on yourself about how you in visiting these places, having that experience a rethinking some of the most famous ideas know that you've you've come up with i mean you say you got your first adult passport the same year that you published the case for reparations. so then you're in senegal. you're in israel, palestine. you're you're understanding things in a way. and you're you're rethinking your whole approach to case for reparations and other things that you've written that that's

going to be really difficult i mean, yeah, but it really back to what i, what i, what i said earlier, do you are asking people to invest their time right like they could be doing anything else. so are you going to be honest or not, you know like how can i, you know, ask you to, you know, sit back and put everything away and read a book and then, you know, excuse my language, but i -- you. you know what i mean? i respect your time. i know that it's precious and you're giving it to me, you know. so i am a responsible little to give you everything can you know and. i think that's just, you know, like i like i think that's right. i think that's correct. and it's okay because that that maybe was not as hard as like the admitting of fault the reckoning with fault that that wasn't that you don't have to be a hell of a writer, you know, to try to be ambitious and do

things at a high level and never up like that. this is not many like them, you know what i mean? that just kind of comes with the territory you know what i mean? now, you know, if you want to be a kind of person that justifies sitting. you really screwed up case for reparations. yes yes. yes because there's the opening of the book. one of the things i say is i try to get, you know, my young students to themselves at the edge of a field you know, and walking through the and seeing all the geography. i'm sorry. it's actually a world and it's not a field. seeing the geography, seeing the hills, seeing mountains, seeing the trees, seeing the and ravines. and then to capture that and the argument i make is you can't do that unless you walk the land. so there's a huge section in a case for reparations where i have walk the land and it stands from everything else. you know, it's one of the questions i get about this book. why isn't this in there? why i said i walk the land like that is an essential message of

book. you know what i mean? to know what you don't know. and this idea communicating with clarity like it comes from touching things, from touching places, you know, from having direct experience, not from being so brilliant and so smart. you know what? i mean, you're you're you're brilliant, you genius. it cannot, you know, compete with actual direct experience. how about the dimension of fame in your case, when you write about going to senegal and a young woman there who and it's your first trip to africa, first time you've been you meet a young woman there who's doing a thesis on, your work, realizing that your work preceded you physically that land in 2015 a year after case for reparations. toni morrison says you are the intellectual to james baldwin. what and boastfully yeah the

real but it what kind of pressure does that put on you what kind of what kind of you know result comes from from that part of it. i i guess i don't really experience it as pressure you got go do the -- thing like you just say okay well this is what she told me to do. you know and so like this goes back to your question, right? of you know, doing all that and putting yourself through it. but somebody says that about you, you know, like like you got to feel it. like you got to really really this book. like, you know, i cannot have my now departed say sade as it me not do all that i can do to make that real you know, to make her look like a prophet. and i happily accepti happily accept that i'm i'm glad it makes me feel good talking about being in south carolina

with a ap english teacher named mary wood, who's defending between the world and me because it evidently offended some white kids who, you know, felt embarrassed about being caucasian or something. i don't think it offended. well, whatever reason they cooked up, you know that was the reason they i don't think it was the kids right exactly exactly. but i mean there has to be kind of surreal going down there, especially, you know, a book that was so widely and, you know, beautifully to walk into this town where they want to ban it. what was that like? oh it was incredible. i mean, i had this notion i put on a t shirt and i had i was going to sit in the back and watch like i had this idea, like everybody is saying, i'm going to make a scene. it's just like it's a wild thing to see, you know what i mean? and again, that goes back to, you know, the message that the the book i had read about that i've seen articles about it, but just really wanted to see it up

close. and i kind of went down like ready for war, you know, thinking anything could happen. what i found actually was the opposite, you know. i found a ton of support. i found a ton energy. a lot of people who, you know, may not agree even the politics of between the world and me, but they believe that it is in the interests of their children to be exposed to literature that challenges them, you know, and that's always my message about i am ultimately i am trying to convince you but i'm kind of not, you know what i mean? it's like if you my book and you're moved, you say it's actually interesting question. i know which i prefer. do i you to say you're not moved but i agree with or you moved and i don't actually i know what i prefer. i rather how you be moved or not agree me you know what i mean? like because like that's what we're ultimately going for. i'm supposed to be opening doors, but it is so self-evident

that you would want to be exposed to views that come from all around the spectrum. mean how how do you how does not self-evident clearly not. i mean there are i think it's hard man it's like you you have your children. like we're all going to die someday. and part of seeing that is looking at your children and how different they are and watching the world change and. watching them change and watching them having different values and different things and maybe even realizing that some of the values that they have have in fact supersede each on that they understand things that you do not. right, that that's hard to see that's really, really to see and to cede control love. it is 16, 17 year old kid you know only a few years ago, you know, you were in control. everything about this child. you know what i mean? and now you kind of have to back

up and let them, you know read this dude. you know, i'm you sang these things about cops and they're asking you questions about cops, and you know what i mean questioning the flag and maybe they, you know, you know, going through also and you got to deal with that it would be so much easier if they were just like you. you know, and you had these discussions, didn't have to, you know, if they just accepted you know this kind of, you know, white, macho world view, you know because it was real smooth sailing with him. right? yeah. you know, i mean life life is know much easier in that way and i think you know it is accepting i was accepting that, you know, that it changes to the challenges and everybody doesn't want to do that. the same perhaps could even be said for your ancestors being in senegal at this place got a. how did that experience change you. well i'm my family is from the eastern shore of maryland.

yeah, i guess i see, i see some people from the eastern shore here. oh, and we're, you know, from an area know around this little town called berlin. we were always in that area, just around that area. and when i was young. you know i have great memories of going, you know, out to eastern shore with my mom and going to ocean city and just sort of, you know, wading out into the water and you i would think about when i was over there. how like i was at the edge of america, you know what i mean? like i am in the ocean, at the edge of my village next africa. i don't know if i got the trade winds right, but that was, you know, how imagined it and how i thought about it. right and and i get to and i don't know, i didn't think about this but the hotel i was staying it was like on the water. so you open the door and there's the water right there like atlantic is literally right there, right. i got and i came outside and i

mean, of course it's the atlantic ocean. it's beach that people vacation in. and i was like, where y'all doin? how we are vacationing. you know, i'm just kids running around and you it's a pool. on the side is a guy making drinks and everything and i'm like, what is going on? i don't even know why i'm processing this this way because it hasn't occurred to me quite yet. but i just knew this is not very comfortable. whatever is happening here is not where i'm at in my heart right now. and i went to sit down to have dinner outside and the restaurant was on the edge of the ocean every day i was there. i somehow ended up back at the water anyway. and i'm looking at the waves and i'm like, this is it. i'm at the tip, i'm at other side where it started you know what i mean? next stop, berlin yeah, you know and there was something. amazing about it was something deeply sad about that, you know what i mean? because this is the opening or is this this great epic, you

know, this is the blues, this is hip hop, is slavery. this is every thing, you know, i mean, like it all, you know is it's this is the launching point of it all. and. i thought about all of the great, great, great, great grandmothers who are me, you know, who as my wife, you know, told me when i, when i told her about this, you know, when they would take in who dreamed of getting back home and never did. but they're home to me, right? like i'm sitting there with me. they are literally in my flesh here, you know what i mean? and i just has so many moments like that and it was such a powerful experience that i actually feel like i didn't see scar, like i didn't see the people who live in dakar, you know what i mean? i ghosts. i saw ancestors, you know, walking with me. there were a few moments, you know, towards the end where i felt like, you know, i was achievements. i'm sort of interaction with the

actual. but, you know, i was in mourning that entire trip. and you write about in relation to visit to israel palestine, which happened like four or five months after you went to senegal. and i would have been september of 2022 with senegal. i go in may 20, 23. okay. yeah. so about eight months later, since i guess i read this, i went to israel for the first time in february for ten days, as long as you were there and i knew i, i went with two jewish friends with two rabbis who were my next door neighbors. i'm a goy from jersey. i mean, i'm not i'm not jewish. so i, you know, and my wife and i the just the four of us and they speak hebrew and they had studied there and they took us all around. so we drove in there first. first thing i realized is israel is the size of new jersey, you

know, i mean, it's not big, you know, but you write about this wonderful phrase, the sin of which you chide yourself because before you had walked the land and you spent half your time with jewish guides, half your time with palestinian guides, you were there for a palestinian literary conference that abstraction. i mean, that that you had in your head before, you went, what some of the things that change what are some the things that got much more concrete once you were actually there. the food is amazing. yeah. no, no, i. i'm not playing. the food is amazing. and i'm not saying that in a light kind of way. i'm saying that because sometimes when you outline all of the systems of oppression, those are that you forget people in that and start like seeing

like what done to them, you know, and that so you asked this question about the state of abstraction, right like people can become the thing that is done to them, not the thing they do. i was in. a small, i guess, you know, hamlet, what you would call it called a tuba, the south, hebron hills. and i was with this of palestinians whose ancestors lived in what we would describe the word that they use actually is caves and i'm hesitating around that word because cave kinds is a certain thing was not what i was seeing. i imagine a home is dug into the ground, into stone that's improved as bathrooms as kitchens, as everything you would normally in a home. it's just that it's dug into the earth and they live that way because this an area in the south hebron hills was subject to extreme weather variation. and so you might get heavy rain. you actually get snow sometimes, you know, and and this area

protected them them. these were people who were being evicted out of caves. okay. because somebody else wanted their land and it telling me about this and it telling me about the experience of this in a process is and i'm sitting there listening and and horrified and and one guy says, okay, so now we're going to have some lunch and he brings out his spread. he's like, i still can see it was like yoga, this incredible omelet, this flat bread, these potatoes. and we just, you know, we were all kind of like laying on the floor and we just kind of eat what i had. and it was just this beautiful experience amidst probably the most visceral oppression i've witnessed my life. and so i bring in the food part of it because you don't want to forget that these are human beings, you know, who you know,

whatever they're subject to and they're subject to quite a bit, you know, they they have not lost that. i've told story repeatedly of going to the old city of hebron, you know, and how, you know, my guide how i had more freedom in the old city of hebron than than my guide. and i saw something that, i think to any black american would be incredibly shocking. i saw people who are nominally black. and israelis lording over blind and blue eyed people. and this was like a confirmation of something i often say in my in my own writing, you know, the racist construct, you know, racist the child of racism, not the fact that they come to the ideology comes first. but to see it was like, wow you write that you've never experienced the of racism anywhere other than in israel. absolutely. and it was it was weird because it wasn't me like it maybe that's part of it it's like when

it's directed at you, you know, you're kind of like light is blaring in your eyes and you, you see it for so long, it just becomes a part of existence. i have never watched it directed somebody else like that, not like that. i mean, i was, you know, you kind of you can see it if you go to europe, you know, you can kind of see it, you know, i mean, directed at other people. but like where the society was, in fact built on that that that racism it was into the of it. no, i'd seen anything like that in my life. you write about the connections between israeli of the palestinians and american segregation. yes. so in thinking of it in those terms, what we glean from that, what do we what we understand both about american segregation and about the situation, israel-palestine, you mean how how how does move the conversation? so just i want to say something before i answer this question.

you know, i understand this is a very, very difficult conversation and there are probably people, this audience who are hearing things that perhaps they experience painfully and. i'm really sorry about that. i, i actually mean wanted hard things about writing this book was realizing that part my responsibility was to say things that would be hurtful. i regret doing that. i don't apologize for having to do that, but i do understand how difficult it might be when. someone is trying to force you you. if i may be so bold to see a little differently, i don't know if that sounds empathetic, but i'm working at that and i want to acknowledge that and yet still say what i have, say this is our fault this is this is this 100% our fault. and it's our fault in ways that i don't think we understand. it's not just the jim crow it which was like my first our

fault, meaning america. america is 100% our fault and if you'll just indulge me for a moment here, gaza, where i did not, is a densely concentrated strip land filled with human beings. the horrors of october seventh cannot be diminished. i we were also interested in the horrors of october 6th in gaza. i just think that's important. and i don't believe in either or to do that right. we subsidize a military that pin people into that that piece of land. what do i mean by that i mean that if your father, for instance, earned the aunt earned his living as a fisherman, he could only out so far to fish, or he might be shot.

i mean, that there was a wall on the other side that marked the land. and in addition that wall, it was what they called a buffer zone. and buffer zone which encroached the land of what was gaza was moved and relocated. will so if your mother, for instance, used to go out, pick the olive trees and that was really important, she might one day wake up to find that that was part the buffer zone. she was no longer allowed to do that. and if she tried, she'd be shot. this this was an actual thing. if you had a little sister. who maybe has cancer and needs to be, you would find that you had to go through a barrage of bureaucracy to, figure out how you could get her out of gaza, because the equipment that is needed to treat cancer in gaza is not allowed because. it's technically dual use, which means it can be somehow used for arms that's that's the logic for it. so you have to get her out of gaza to get her treated. you may or may not be successful. so we subsidize the army that

was making this possible, the 2000 bombs, 2,000 pounds bombs that i'm sure you've heard that have been dropped on gaza. it is not just that we provide the bombs it is that every single fighter jet that drops those bombs comes from america. those are our planes. this is our war. this is our this is this 2% of the population that's been wiped out that could not be made possible without. us and then there's the question of the larger society. you're correct. my first, you know, interaction with this when i see, you know, roads that certain can go down and other people cannot. when i see street, some people can go now people cannot houses. some people can have other people cannot water. right? some people have some people do not. jim crow is the thing i that i think about. but when i came back and i started reading the history, i was shocked at how many references there were to the quote unquote, american indian

indian. so it is not just that we subsidize what is happening right now? it is that we provided the blueprint. you know, you see it in some and i quoted in the book, again, these are facts, see it in some of the earliest zionist writing, you know what i mean? where the palestinians are compared to the american and what america done to them is what the zionists will then do to the palestinians. please, you know, pick up the book and see the quotes. i just i don't want you thinking i'm like throwing stuff out or just trying to, you know, slurs somebody or whatever. and on top of that you will see our own american officials making those comparisons. people like henry wallace saying like, oh, the british are just trying to stir up the palestinians the way they start up. you know, the cherokee here. so it's like we providing a blueprint for genocide by the genocide that we have done and by not having reckoned that you know, one of the greatest laureates, you know benny

morris, who i quote in this book, who is lauded in israel and is, you know, done some decent historical work, you know, when he asks what is to be done with the palestinians, he says something, a cage has to be built for them. and as he says, how can you say this? he says, listen, even the great country that was america would not have been made possible without the extermination of the american indian. he's citing this positively. this is us. this is us. we provided the prototype the example, and yet we have the nerve to go around the world. and you present ourselves as this kind of font of democracy, you know, as this place that was improved by emancipation is this place that was improved by the civil rights movement. martin luther king is our patron saint. why we are subsidizing apartheid right now? right now. these are not my words. these are the words of amnesty, a national. these are the words of human rights watch. these are the words of the

israeli human rights group. these are the words their own prime ministers. ehud barak looks out on israel and says, listen, we are headed to a high tide. ehud olmert looks down. israel says, we are headed to a kind of south african struggle. and then i come over here and, i see some kids up at columbia say that. and folks, well, they should be suspended. what world do we living in and what the road forward what's the solution there is a very, very easy answer to that. i was on tv, on cbs. and honestly, in every other interview i've been this week and every other i have and i should not be there. i shouldn't be on the stage right now. talking to talking to you there should a palestinian sitting here, you see to. everything i just outline

instructions. i just thought that what that requires is you to not and this is why i took myself to test so strongly with requires is for you not to see a people as as human beings. and in order to not them as human beings, you can't let speak. you can't let them narrate. you can't as the great edward say said, you can't let them articulate for themselves. i got so many notes, man, from some of my, you know, palestinian and sisters, they said, and really my arab and sisters and john, i said, thank you much for doing that. we could never it it's just it hurts my heart every time i know it's true. but it hurts my heart. part of the reason why that conversation went the way it went this is nobody had ever in space to say something that you know what i mean? and you ask what the solution is the first step? the first step is to actually hand them to the people that are enduring the system in the first place. think about this. when is the last time i want you

i want you ask yourself this. whether you watching cnn fox some of you all make. msnbc or wherever you watching. when is the last time you saw a report on what's going on in lebanon? what's going on in iran? what's going on in, what's going on in palestine and saw a palestinian american narrating that. i can't think of it actually i was one of them last night and they took his -- as quick as they could. he happened to have the, you know, dysfunction of being on october seven and being the anchor when they got him off of quick as they could you know. i can't you know remember i don't look i'm in journalism. this is my field. i can't name for you a single palestinian bureau chief in jerusalem or tel aviv. why what is that about? in order to do something to somebody, you've got to push them completely out of the frame. you can't look at them within the boundaries of, humanity.

and so when it was time me to write, that's like job to try to restore that that that humanity to let you know if those bombs are being dropped on people who are sat with who made me lunch, who are hospitable to me in way that i had never experienced, you know, and we ask ourselves the first step is the first step is probably for people like me to not be posed with that. question no offense to you, obviously, you know, but for people like me not to be in a position to to have to answer question. i, i'm getting the sign that we are out of time this has been a success. my fault went along with that answer my bad my bad apartheid ticks me. by for me to stick around but i don't know about the cleave i don't know why they're telling

me that know time's up. but it is you write the things that we need to think about. it is a difficult conversation to have a lot of time and you give us such a great springboard for that conversation. congratulations on the book. and thank you for being here. thank you for coming home tonight to go to.

on about books. we delve into the latest news

ab