>> tomorrow we take a look at poverty in america, the demographics of who is living in poverty and how the face of poverty has changed since the economic downturn and how it is measure. we will talk about federal poverty related programs, what they are, how much they cost, and their efficacy in reducing poverty. >> from the chautauqua institution, political scientist melissa harris-perry discusses race issues in america. this is one hour and 15 minutes. [applause]

>> joining us today is melissa harris-perry, previously on the faculties of princeton university and the university of chicago, she is currently professor of political science at tulane university where she is the founding director of the cooper project on race and politics in the south. her belief in the classroom has a critical space for democratic reflection is reflected in the fact that she has taught students from grade school through graduate school. her interest are in the study of african american political thought, black religious ideas and practice, and social and clinical psychology. perth writing frequently appears in many scholarly journals and newspapers. she also writes a monthly column for "the nation." she is a frequent contributor to

msnbc. she is the youngest scholar to dubois the the e.b. did ww.e.b. lecture. she is the youngest woman ever to deliver the where dexter. she is the author of the unborn when the book -- barbershops, bibles, and be e.t. -- everyday talk and black political thought." donna brazil has described her most recent book, "sister cinema," as insightful and provocative. a must read for those interested in learning more about american politics. the title of her lecture today is "reconstruction lessons -- current u.s. racial politics and the lessons of the civil war." please welcome melissa harris-

perry. [applause] >> thank you for that lovely introduction. it is very kind. let me start by telling you a story. i am from the south. i grew up in charlottesville, virginia and richmond, virginia. i went to college and graduate school in north carolina. i live now in new orleans. at some point, maybe six, seven, or even longer months ago, i got the invitation here. it came through the woman who handles my lectures. i heard her say it on the phone. i typed and to my googol calendar, "chattanooga lecture." [laughter] this made perfect sense to me because it was about the civil

war. my daughter started fourth grade yesterday. -- at fourth grade yet today in new orleans. i thought, no big deal. i will pop up to tennessee, give the talk, and i will be home before the end of the evening. when she called me two weeks ago and said, "you have to book your flight to new york." i said, "new york? where am i going?" [laughter] i spent two weeks learning about this place. i am honestly a little nervous at the moment because i did not realize the stage to which i had accepted an invitation -- and i am truly, truly honored to be here, all those surprised not to find myself in tennessee.

[laughter] in addition to being a southerner, i amatpolitical scientist, not a historian. in addition to the things that made me somewhat nervous about today was looking at the speakers from this week. the speakers who have been here this week are the sort of thing one would get in a year or in a semester, but certainly not in four days prior to my lecture. and so, what i want to be clear is i will not be offering a great deal more on our original historical insight on the moment of the civil war. my particular vantage point as a contemporary political scientist is to make use of history, to take the work of architects and historians who are telling

stories about our past and make them part of the analysis of our current political moment the very first time this happened for meat was actually in graduate school. my best friend then and today is, herself, a historian. when we first met she asked me, "what do you study?" i studied african american politics. she asked a question that changed my life. "you studied black politics when?" that question just asked me to make something hysterically specific. to ask "when" has been an incredibly important to the work i do it in political science. we are always looking for the models of how the world works and not necessarily thinking about the historic contingencies of those models. but even as a political

scientist, i can say that i believe our contemporary political environment cries out for an urgent collective emersion in accurate american history, including its complicated interceptions -- intersections with race and racism. i have a fantasy where i imagine a quarter hour of every cable news program being devoted to a study of american history. [laughter] [applause] i can hear the ratings plummet. that only gets applause here. [laughter] what would happen if you were engaged in thinking about american history? what might happen if americans understood revolutionary war history? it might be considerably more difficult for the tea party to argue that their anxieties

about a president elected with 53% of the popular vote by an electorate that enjoys universal adult suffrage is just like or just at the same as the concerns of colonists who decried taxation without representation under the role of an absolute monarch. just to that small distinction -- [laughter] i honestly also think that no sustained engagement with the federalist papers could allow us to continue such narrow simplistic assertions about what the founders believed. the paragraph that i wish we were talking about in this political moment is that the american founding was "contested." it was, itself, a political process. it was not a divine revelation

that came down with agreement from all of the founders. the very thing we hold up now as our constitution is, of course, a political document that included all of the nature of politics, which is to say "compromise." [laughter] i think the ability to deploy the symbols and language uprear patriotism in the ways they are currently deployed requires deep and broad ignorance about american history. [laughter] [applause] i want to be really clear -- i do not mean that if we read the federalist papers or thought more closely about the revolutionary war that we would find that, in fact, all of -- all of the founders are secular, liberal peake, a humanist who are, of course, progressive and would watch

msnbc. that is not what we would find. but i do think a recognition that there has been confrontation even from the beginning would help to set our current political crisis in some context. although i think we suffer from a deficit of historical knowledge in general, we seem to be particularly uninformed about the histories of marginal people -- black americans, non-white immigrants, women of all races, workers, and, of course, a gay americans. i also, by the way, suspect that if we had a clear understanding of those marginal histories that secession would seem like a less reasonable response to political disagreement. but if we carefully had a conversation, even for just 50 minutes on the evening news, about the civil war, we might be better equipped to recognize and

appreciate the consequences of the racial angst currently directed at president obama's administration. i am company that a serious study of labor history would make us more sober in our conversation about stripping workers of their right to collectively organize. and i have no doubt that young women would feel more urgent about protecting their reproductive rights if we were having more public conversations about the struggle for women's equality. there is no single historical truth that will lead all americans to conclude the same things about our future. history is, in many ways, the collective project of making meaning out of the events of the past. but history -- but history is more than an academic exercise. i think the texas textbook committee is very clear about how important history is while

they were to sanitize it. the tea party is incredibly aware of how powerful historical discourse is, which is why they point to a historic moments like the boston tea party or vague historic enemies light hitler and socialism. in short, i think the results of our collective historical ignorance are profound and that those with political polls on the left or the right might well invest their resources on accurate discussions of history just as much as impressing for particular public policies. it is in that context, that feeling about history, that i am excited, despite the fact that i am not a historian about the civil war, to have an opportunity to discuss the lessons of the 19th century for our contemporary political moment. for i want to consider.

there is no way i can do justice to all of these. my goal in this portion is to just be a bit provocative about how we might imagine these four aspects of 19th century history impacting our current moment and, hopefully, engage in conversation. i have been told the "q&a" here is often quite robust. [laughter] here are the four points of light to make. first is about the continuing structural, political, and economic legacy of our unresolved anxieties about federalism. i want to talk a little bit about federalism to the extent that federalism is the core civil-rights moment that we are continuing to work with. the second is about the power of confederate nostalgia in american political culture.

yes, i am going to talk a little bit about "the help." [laughter] third is about the civil war and which construction's legacy for black voting -- and reconstruction's legacy for black voting and how it is difficult to understand african- american's voting and political behavior. finally, the fourth, the lingering racial anxieties of the american south that find themselves into a broader political culture, which is also connected with confederate nostalgia in general. let's start with structure. the two immediate precursors of the civil war place the issue of slavery squarely within federalism. it is impossible to suggest that the civil war is only about one of these issues. it is obviously at all times

both about the question of intergenerational human chattel bondage and about the relative autonomy of the american states relative to the national government. the two, of course, that bring the final decade of stress that breaks apart the union or the fugitive slave act of 1850, which allowed an slavers to pursue formerly enslaved women, men, and children into free states and return them to servitude. the second is the compromise of 1850 that allowed territories to enter the union as slave or free state, which, of course, set up violent lobbying. it turns out people did not just get to make these choices, but, in fact, there was lobbying and organizing with these potential

new states. one might suggest that the bloody battle of the civil -- bloody battles of the civil war resolve these questions -- the question of 1850 through the fugitive slave act and through the compromise of 1850 once and for all, but once lincoln and the union when, once the union is preserved, it is clear we have established the primacy of the federal government. i think there are reasons to read "post-1865 american history in a way that does demonstrate the globe -- growing authority of a centralized national government. at a minimum, a recognition that, in fact, that government will be the primary site of citizenship identity. but it would be a mistake to think that those questions were resolved with the final truth. our contemporary politics reflect the continuing anxiety

rooted in this 19th century question about the appropriateness of federal government policy. "let's just take the -- let's just take the current debt ceiling debate. let's take just that moment. we can go back and do lots of others, but let's take the recent debt ceiling debate and look at it as a moment a civil war knowledge. remember that the civil war was the first time our country took on massive federal debt. i know it sounds nuts, but the president decided it was worth spending money we did not have in order to preserve the union. [laughter] seriously, look at that. i just want to pause for a moment. to preserve the union, it was worth going into debt. this notion that debt itself is not inherently evil, is not inherently bad for the state, but is actually a reasonable choice for responsible leaders

to make under the circumstances of the need to preserve the union. the civil war is also the moment of the imposition of the first federal income tax in 1861. that to fight a war, one my knees -- one might need to impose a tax. [laughter] [applause] where have we come to in america where you all would applaud "to fight a war is a need to impose a tax?" of course, the third that we heard so much about during the end of the debt ceiling debate, is that the great civil war amendment, the 14th amendment emerging in the spirit of reconstruction which established the american citizenship rooted in due process and equal protection. i think in a lot of ways, the

end of rationalizing the 14th amendment both because of the context in which it emerges, but also because of the use to which it was put in the 20th century. the fact is the 14th amendment provides a national citizenship definition for all americans in a critical way for the first time. as we have learned and the recent debate, it also established the full faith and credit of the united states in this clause that the validity of the public debt shall not be questioned. it was that phrase that many suggested meant that president obama had the authority, if he wanted to come not to simply and the debt ceiling fight, raise the debt ceiling limit as a result of the requirement of the 14th amendment that the validity of public debt shall not be questioned. i want to pause here because these moments, the willingness to take on debt, the imposition

of the first federal tax, and the question of whether or not the president has a right and responsibility to raise the debt ceiling were all core questions 15 minutes ago. 15 minutes ago what we were talking about were questions of the 1860's. that despite the fact that they have been resolved, are clearly not resolved at all, are very much up for debate about whether or not the country of three primary responsibility is to get out of debt or to preserve itself. whether or not the federal government should be appropriately bringing in more tax revenue and whether or not the president has certain kinds of of party under the 14th amendment relative to the economic power of the nation -- certain kinds of all authority

under the 14th amendment relative to the economic power of the asian. the incompleteness of reconstruction means that the tension of states' rights remains. localism is, of course, the painful consequence of this. before the debt ceiling debate, the central debate around localism and the federal -- and the power of the federal government has been the health care reform act, maligned as "obamacare." will not -- renewing the anxiety of nullification and the power of the federal government to act as the preeminent policy making body. i want to be careful as we think about nullification because i want to suggest that northern states, free states, were actually engaged in a nullification of their own. their refusal over and over again to abide by the fugitive slave act of 1850, the

resistance against sending back formerly enslaved persons, where the kind of localism that said "you cannot come here into this free territory, into this restate, and take people away and back into slavery." it was, in fact, the confederates, despite the language about localism, who insisted that the power of the federal government be imposed on the local choices of three states not to respect the fugitive slave act. there is not just sort of "southerners like localism" because they are yokels and those yankees in the free states like government, but just like we see today, there is the waxing and waning about the power of the central government to act in one interest. issues of market -- issues of marriage to equality, abortion,

and other social issues demonstrate that often those who make claims on states' rights and on localism are actually very willing to use the power of the federal government to impose a single set of ideas nationally when those ideas are consistent with their radiology. that is certainly true on both sides. -- consistent with their ideology. that is certainly true on both sides. the war between the states, the war of northern aggression -- [laughter] -- is not the war that settled once and for all the question of federalism. we continue to be dead -- in that conversation today. the second is less structural and more cultural. it is a question about confederate nostalgia.

again, i grew up in the u.s. south, which means i know the confederate flag very well. and i want to be very clear that the confederate flag truly does that -- truly does have multiple meanings. my husband is the most aggressive civil rights advocate i know personally. i know there must be others in the world, but personally, the one i know, who spends his time working to bring about questions of racial justice. but he is also an eagle scout. he and i camp. not in these shoes, but he and i camp. [laughter] we can mostly in the south -- mississippi, louisiana, and the florida panhandle. my husband has a camping out

fifit and it includes the shorts that i try to burn on every camping trip, but it also includes a hat. the hat has a pit bull and a confederate flag on it. [laughter] i have many pictures of him in this hat. i tell him if i ever run for office again, i am going to put it out on the internet that here is a civil rights guy wearing a confederate flag. we are keenly aware of the history of the confederate flag, but we are also keenly aware of other things. wearing this hat makes us safer in southern camping locations. [laughter] [applause] that is absolutely true. there is a way in which it

signals a "i am not mad at all. it is fine. we are just here to have a good time." >> but the other thing is it actually does have a kind of resonance for our childhood. we really did watch the "dukes of hazzard" growing up. we really did listen to the band alabama. we really are southerners. we are not something else. we are both black and southern at the same time in a way that does not necessarily always cause double consciousness. that said, the effort, the work of trying to get african- american southern stories back into the center of our stories of what it means to be southern are blocked play a continuing refusal in confederate nostalgia to recognize the roles that african-americans played.

i take no where with the power of this confederate nostalgia clearer than when governor macdonald declared april confederate history month in virginia. in his declaration, the better macdonald called on the virginians to "understand the sacrifices of confederate leaders, soldiers, and citizens during the period of the civil war." leaders, soldiers, and citizens. by focusing on these three categories -- leaders, soldiers, and citizens -- the governor refuses to of knowledge the existence of black people in the south. sure there were some black soldiers that offer the confederacy, but the vast majority of african-americans contributed to the confederate effort through violently and forced unpaid labor, which was part and parcel of the experience of dehumanizing

intergenerational bondage. macdonald and seems to think that particular history is unworthy of remembering. it is a kinda erasure of black life, suffering, and struggle. on my father of three side, we have traced our family tree as far back as we could to a black woman sold on the street corner of churchill in richmond, virginia. my father and his siblings grew up in that neighborhood. they attended racially segregated schools and despite being nearly starved for school resources by the state, my father and his twin brother went on to become college professors. my dad becoming the first dean of african-american affairs right there at the university of virginia. [applause] when i grew up in virginia and attended school in the late

1970's, my teachers still report -- still referred to the civil war as the war of northern aggression and the war between the states. i did not hear the words civil war until college. my interracial family experienced harassment and abuse during the decades we made our home in the commonwealth, but va is also the place where i made lifelong friends, found spiritual communities, and was educated by many tough and loving teachers. i have seen political consciousness in virginia. i recall many of the phrases of a dog wilder's inauguration address -- doug wilder's inauguration address of the first african-american governor. and my favorite moment in 2008, just moments before obama was elected -- virginians turned blue. [applause]

i share this personal history i cannot because it is exceptional, but precisely because it is not exceptional. we are, african americans, southerners. data shows we are increasingly, once again, southerners in the kind of reverse migration that has been happening in the last decade. va at history is my history, but when the confederate nostalgia emerges from governor mcdonnell, it propagates and profits to from a history that is recognizably alien to me. a narrative of virginia that laments the end of slavery, that itorist izes tra actions against the state and sedition. my problem with the confederate flag is not about racism. it just is not. i have seen the confederate flag flown in indiana.

i s in the confederate flag flown in michigan. i guess in the confederate flag flown in upstate new york. i have seen the confederate flag flown in california and the kind of places that have nothing to do with the civil war in the context of being former confederate states. my problem with the rebel flag is that we have decided that it is an equally patriotic flag to fly as the american flag. the issue here is not about racism. the issue is about a willingness to allow a revisionist history about secession to be part of our profound american understanding so that to fly the akaka confederate flag is to make a claim towards a history that is about breaking the country apart, yet we continue to think of it as an equally

patriotic choice. [applause] i think we do this because we were in a rush at the moment of reconstruction to seal the fissures of the country. the civil war was exceptionally painful. one of the key elements of that feeling was to allow former confederates to tell the stories of the former past of slavery in a way that recognized them as the center of those stories. " birthth the wind ," of a nation," these are the remembrances that affect our understanding of what priest-

civil war america was. the moonlight and magnolias. the version of southern history that erases black suffering in order to tell the story about a time when things were simpler, better, and when black women made us pancakes. [laughter] mammy and her various formations as aunt jemima remains madison avenue's most powerful marketing tool in all of history. it is can jemima. it is mamy. her ability to sell domestic products by recalling a time when the white domestic speer

was undergirded -- spheer was undergirded by faithful black women who contributed their magical capacities to make sure that white households and families were supported. now, mammy did not exist. she is not real. yet, it was almost troop that she would have been standing right next to martin luther king on the national mall. just a few years after women got the right to vote in the 1920's, the daughters of the american confederacy proposed a mammy statue to be erected in the shadow of the lincoln memorial. it was a tribute to all the -- let's be clear,

these women saw themselves as creating a tribute to the sacrifices of the african- american women, the maid, the help -- who served them. this statute, they suggested, would be erected there in remembrance of all they had done. the senate, which had repeatedly refused to pass the anti winching bill, in the exact same sentence was willing to appropriate funds for the purpose. when it got to the u.s. house of representatives, african- american leaders, press, church, and individuals stopped and kept it from happening. it is possible that enshrined in granite right at this moment, there could be a mammy statue on the u.s. small and it would be right there next to king. i try to think about because

insult i would experience at that existed, how i would feel about going into washington d.c.. one of my favorite runs is the national mall. the idea of what it would need to run by a statue, not of an actual person -- thus the very clear -- mamy did not exist. but she existed in confederate nostalgia that even at this moment, "the help"-- first the book and i tried to pretend was not happening -- and now the film that is hailed as a reconcile of racial and continues to reproduce this notion that african-american women are, primarily, sort of magical creatures capable of not only simultaneously solving the problems of women who have far

more resources than them and, without question, always loving the white children who are their charges, and never experiencing sexual violence or violation by the white man for whom they work, and always embodied in bodies that could never invoke sexual anxiety of any kind, and capable of ultimately walking off triumphantly into the jim crow south unemployed, and we applaud. that is what happens in "the help." , a woman walks off unemployed in the jim crow south in a made uniform and the audiences go wild. -- in a maid uniform and the audiences go wild.

this is the core of our unreconciled anxiety about the end of the civil war. the third -- contemporary african-american politics. i will move quickly to the next two so we can be in conversation. when barack obama was elected to the united states presidency, he was elected with about 95% of the african-american vote. that means that about half of black americans who typically vote for the republican party showed up and voted for barack obama. it is typically somewhere between 87%-9% of the african- american vote goes to democrats. i totally think condoleezza rice and shelby steele voted for president obama. [laughter] i am pretty sure: powell told us that he was planning to.

-- colin powell told us that he was planning to. this is a story about african- americans desirous of race -- of representation. that is not a bad story to tell the era of reconstruction was a moment when african-americans had an opportunity to hold office. to recall how extraordinary that is, what it means to enter into citizenship from a state of servitude and move immediately into office-holding, happened more swiftly for enslaved black men than it did for white women who had been free for a very long time, but once they got the right to vote, there is a little bit longer lag in the states for white women becoming officeholders. it happened incredibly quickly between the mid 1860's and the unholy compromise in 1870 of hayes-tildon.

there is a deep and profound yearning among people of color and other marginalized individuals, not only four substantive representation of political interest, but also for demographic and descriptive representation. it is a reasonable yearning. it is one i am not quite sure i know how to describe except that there has only been one time where i felt an absolute feeling of the double-consciousness, the notion of what it means to be black in america, to be both black and american in the struggle that seeks to rend you apart. the only moment i felt it was not the inauguration. for one second, it seemed like there was no contradiction between the identity of blackness and the identity of americaness.

by january 20, it was all over. [laughter] but there was a moment where this could go together. there is also something potentially problematic that descriptive representation is so powerful that it might overcome substantive representation. these are the anxieties currently being expressed by some of my former princeton colleagues who believes that president barack obama's physical blackness is overwhelming is policy orientation vis a vis black communities. but i want you to remember that african-americans were republicans for 100 years. the republicans for 100 years long after there was little reason to be republican anymore. they were republican in numbers approaching 80%-90%. and a republican because of

lincoln. the civil war cemented african americans to the republican party for a century and in near totality. the clarity with which that struggle created a sense of solidarity for african-americans could only be broken by the second struggle, which was the struggle for full equality in the context of civil rights. then, in the matter of -- in about a decade and a half -- is starting with the new deal -- new deal, but was cemented with lbj -- became democrats. the became democrats with the same percentages and the same level of solidarity. race is part of that, but this is also for african americans an act that is responsive to the reality of the civil war and reconstruction. the notion that political power is actually not best wielded by

splitting the votes between two parties and becoming a swing vote, but rather in rewarding a political party for its willingness to stand up for the fundamental freedoms and rights of the community. [applause] as we look at how african- american voters behave, i think we have to be careful not to begin to denigrate black voters as somehow under the spell of a black president because a longer view of history shows us this is representative of how-to african-american voters have been made. my very final peace -- the way in which the civil war continues to give us a legacy for white racial politics. since the election of barack obama, exposed profound

anxieties about american citizenship and its intersection with marginal identity. when i teach race in american politics, the first thing i do is say to my classroom, "race is a social construction. it is not real." they nod their heads and they think to themselves, "she is not its." i can tell white people from black people from brown people. social construction, whatever. on saturday when i have to get my hair done, it does not feel like a social construction. if it feels like a biological reality because i cannot go to white hair salon. i have to go to an african- american hair salon. whatever on social construction. the 2008 presidential election was such an opportunity for me because i could actually show the hyper-social construction of a candid it.

it was like those film strips from third grade where it would show an apple tree grow in like seven slides. it goes really quickly. that is what like watching the social construction of barack obama's race was. it began in the primaries with the language of "barack obama is not black enough. he is insufficiently black. people with white mamas and african-american daddies are not sufficiently black. who goes to harvard? that is not black." [laughter] use of many americans say, "he is black. he was so white he could pass into the coup collapsed plan and gather intelligence information. by the way, he had a black daddy and a white mommy. all of that is very black." but then, of course, jeremiah

right appeared on the scene. suddenly, barack obama was a way to black. he was so black. he was black, black, black, black. he is not a black like that. most blacks are angry. he is not really angry. he is black, but not angry black. [laughter] [applause] but then, because we were in a post as 9/11 america, pretty soon the anxiety shifted from the question to inefficiently black to a question of islamic identity. he is a secret muslim. again, not only do we need educational history, we also need, perhaps, a religion lesson. it is not possible to be a secret muslim. [laughter] it is, in fact, possible to be a secret christian. all it requires is a profession

of faith in your heart. you can profess it and simply walk around. [laughter] is long, you actually cannot be a secret muslim. it requires per split -- certain public acts. if you are not engaging in those public acts, you are not muslim. of course, it is very difficult for us to have that sort of conversation. if we felt these moments beginning to emerge, but birth tourism brought them to their fourth run. maybe he was not to black, is visibly black, muslim, or not muslim, just clearly not american. not a citizen. this, i believe, is the reconstruction moment. this was, for me, the moment the reminded us that at the core of reconstruction was the definition of american citizenship. i dismay disclaim about the 14th

amendment being the definitional moment for citizenship for all of us. -- i just made this claim about the 14th amendment being the definitional moment for citizenship for all of us. i am not making a claim about whether or not printed at obama is a good president or a bad precedent, whether or not he is effectively wielding power. i am only pointing out that the central anxiety that emerged within weeks -- i want you to remember that the april 2009 tea party rally in texas where the front runner, rick perry, suggested that secession was appropriate was april of 2009. barack obama was inaugurated to office in january of 2009. he might be a horrible precedent, but he was not in april. he could not have been.

there was simply not enough time. he may be an exceptional and great president, but he was not in april 2009. the speed with which the secession response and the birth their response -- birther response occurred means it was not about substance and policy, it could only be a reflection of the human being, the body that embodied the american presidency. remember that from the end of civil war in 1865 until the hayes-tildon compromise, blacks enjoyed power sharing. blackmun voted, held offices, organized as laborers and farmers, and there is a fragile political equality made possible only by the determined and -- determined presence of the

federal government. when in 1877 the federal government abdicated its responsibilities to new black citizens and removed itself from the south, it allowed racial terrorist organizations to have a monopoly on violence, force, and coercion. the very definition of the state for nearly 100 years. the current tide emerging in 2009 of racial anxiety and secessionist sentiment feels like that moment that southerners call "redemption." that taking back of the south. in "birth of a nation," the film that princeton president, woodrow wilson, showed in the white house -- the film depicts a racist imagination that is currently at work.

a kind of bigotry that assumes that no government could be legitimate if it is embodied in represented by black bodies. so, those for. -- those four. engagement with confederate nostalgic, the ways in which african-american voting is responsive to the realities of the civil war, and out rationalized anxieties directed toward the president have their roots in a reconstructed moment about what it meant to share power with the formerly enslaved. drawing parallels between the civil war in this moment does not mean that that moment = this moment historically. change across time is true. it is true for alan west to say he is the.

tudman of the republican party. it is not true because it says black folks in the republican party are on the plantation, it is because he is not enslaved. he is not subjugated in the ways slaves were. it is important to say "this is not that." when you look at images of lynching, remember that you can almost always see the faces of the lynchers. people in the public lynchings did not need to turn their heads from the cameras. they were not ashamed. there is a moment of progress when people turn their face away from the camera. it does not mean it did not occur, but shame over racism is, itself, a kind of progress that is worthy of marking. freedom is not slavery. the current prison industrial complex is horrible and not jim-

crow. it is something different and worthy of new theorizing. but all of that still requires us to note the historical moments from when we emerged. jim crow points to a particular way of engaging this estate. the states -- not because the current prison not -- prison and a show complex is jim crow, but because we learn something about it from studying jim crow. we are not in reconstruction. we are not in redemption. there is an african-american president. i can give this lecture without fear of reprisal. those things are real, yet to remember that our country comes from somewhere, i think, is a critical moment in us engaging in this critical moment with more history. thank you. [applause]

>> those of you who have to leave right now, please do so quietly out of respect for the people who stay behind for the questions and answers. those of you who do, the ushers will be around to collect your questions and we will do the best we can to represent them. if i could take the privilege of this, you mentioned governor mcdonnell and the celebration of this session. .

secession period. he issued an apology for at his statement. my question to you is given all the misstatements of fact and rosie recollection, are there enough players at play and is there are enough right that there is a response to these things that has effective traction in the public consciousness? >> this goes back to my point about the ways in which this moment is different and needs to be celebrated and recognized as different, even as we remain in struggle around these questions. the fact that we are appalled by it, the fact that it makes national news in a way that leads so many americans to pause and say, "wait a minute, it is inappropriate for us to talk about fighting for the

confederacy as an equally patriotic choice as fighting for the union?" it's inappropriate to erase the lives of black americans or to pretend that slavery was not a part of this. i want to always be careful about celebrating resistance in and of itself, because the resistance is there as a requirement over and against the challenges, but i do think that we are clearly in a very different sort of moment of empowerment now than we would have previously seen. that said, elections matter, and although a news story like mcdonnell's april confederate history month gets exposed, the fact is that the sort of daily grindings of the general assembly often don't, and those mindsets are not exclusively cultural. they have very, very real policy implications that we often don't pay as much

attention to, so the election of someone like mcdonnell, the revelation of that sort of confederate nostalgia in mcdonnell's own perspective, then ends up having an impact in the sorts of policies that govern a state like the commonwealth. >> can you respond on why the south perpetuates the civil war nostalgia, i.e. keeps fighting the civil war? it seems to this person, as a native new yorker who's adapted the wouth as their home, that this is what's going on. >> a couple of things. it's definitely not just the south. i mean, the south has an engagement with it that is more both imminent and more visceral. when you say, "the war" or "after the war" in most places, you mean world war ii, but when you say "the war" or "after the war" in many parts of the

south, you are referring to the civil war. that's sort of part of the cultural rhythm of the space. i have been most frightened when i have seen the stars and bars, the rebel flag, displayed in indiana and in downstate illinois, actually more afraid when i see it there than when i see it in south carolina, in part because in illinois or in indiana, because it isn't part of any historic moment of specificity -- it can only be about a kind of aggressive, racial statement. when my civil rights husband is wearing it, he is wearing it with all kinds of mixed, difficult, messy meanings, but when it's flying out of a notre dame dorm room, then it just really feels like it's about one thing.

the sense for me of the need of the south to think of the confederacy as an equally patriotic choice, i believe, is about shame. post-world war ii germany is a fascinating study in how a defeated nation with a moral and ethical dilemma addresses the problem of national shame. we were in germany during the world cup last year, and people kept apologizing to my husband and to me for flying the german flag. they were saying, "we don't normally behave this way. we don't normally fly the german flag this way. don't take it as an act of aggressive nationalism. it's just about the world cup." of course, americans are pretty aggressive flag wavers and usa chanters and that sort of thing, so i hadn't noticed it as troubling or problematic, but for my german hosts, there was still a sense of what it meant to be shrouded in a kind of national german shame in a post-holocaust, post-world war

ii europe. part of the way that the defeated confederacy dealt with its collective shame around the loss of that war was to revise and rewrite that history as though they had in fact not lost it, or if they had lost it, that >> or if they had lost it, it was a great injustice to have lost the war. it is part of why slavery gets written out of the story because you don't want to say to a really too bad you are not my slaves anymore. instead, you say this, really too bad we no longer have this place where recant celebrate this particular culture. for me, it is about a profoundly unresolved regional shaming that continues repeatedly. we keep shaming the south.

it is one of the reasons i started the new center in the cell. >> if it is west of the hudson, it might as well be california. eenglish part of it is that weakened behave though the backwardness is occurring in a cell. but we don't talk about that as a midwest problemeenglish what is wrong with those midwesterners, but we certainly continue to shame this out in that way. >> there are several questions having to do with hayes-tilden. could you give us some of the familiarize people, what that conferences about?

>> from the end of the civil war until the election of 1876, the union armies were occupying the former confederate states. in their occupation of the former confederate states, they were ensuring the black citizenship was protected, that black men could vote, hold office, and even some integrated populist political movements were beginning to occur in the late 1860's and early 1870's. there were many white, poor workers who did not benefit from the system of slavery. in the new context of freedom, begin to imagine economic solidarity with formerly enslaved people.

in 1876 you had basically something equivalent to the bush-gore election of 2000, a contested election with the question of who had truly one this. had the republican won it, or had the democrats want it? in this case, the democrat is the party of the confederacy. the republican party made a choice at that point to compromise and allow that as long as their candidate, hayes, was allowed to accept the u.s. presidency, they would do so under the condition of ending reconstruction in the south. in this moment, it was not clear who had won. the republican party could not -- cut a deal. the deal was let hayes take the white house and hayes will withdraw union troops and let you return basically to estate

of jim crow. from 1877 on, the end of that project of the union armies in the south, you begin to see the imposition of jim crow. it does not start in the 1860's , it is really in the 1890's we begin to see the imposition of jim crow laws, these local, former confederate states pushing to see how far can we go, how far will the federal government let us go in rolling back the voting rights and economic rights of these new black citizens? it's why you end up with plessey versus ferguson at the very term of the 20th-century defining separate but equal, which accelerates this process of jim crow so that by 1905, in most of the u.s. health, you have a

fully segregated by law system that does not get overturned, at least in the courts until the 1950's, and in practice, really until the 1960's. >> property and voting rights for women, black and white, took a backseat to abolition in the civil war, understandably so. women played a major role in the anti-slavery movement as frederick douglass did in the women's rights movement. how to women's rights and civil rights in iraq historically and politically? >> it is so interesting to hear the question phrased in quite that way. i have talked a bid of bell the double consciousness between blackness and american is. they never imagined -- and never

talk very much about class or geography or those questions. not that that is completely fair. no one's hands are entirely clean and the question of the intersection between white women's rights and black rights. i don't want to call a civil rights, because that is a broad category. rights -- women's rights or civil rights. it is just that the civil rights movement of the mid-20s sentry created a discursive statement where we think civil-rights focuses exclusively on race. at every point -- this goes back to my point about the federalist papers. we are engaged in political processes. they are not pure, it logical

movements -- ideological movements were coming forth from the minds of good people are new policies. at every point, white women in their engagement for suffrage were trying to think about the arguments they needed to make in order to get suffrage. there were points where they may profoundly troubling racial and racist arguments in their efforts for suffrage, saying how dare you give the vote to these beasts of burden and not to your daughters and wives? it is sort of a reasonable argument, but troubling, right? and similarly, those who were fighting for universal male suffrage often made those arguments in language that on one hand, we wanted the extension of that universal male suffrage, but was made in these anti-woman language around

suffrage. this story about how the 15th amendment becomes an amendment just to extend suffrage -- universal male suffrage and not women's suffrage, is also reflected in our current politics around the painful process of the hillary clinton- barack obama primary fight, and the ways in which the hillary clinton-barack obama primary fight forced us to ask this first, whose turn is it, who is next? [laughter] and we just never imagined, let's just deal with all the white guys. no return for them. there is consistently in notion there are these limited resources that all the marginal groups have to battle together.

a quick point about the supreme court here. please tell me justice o'connor has gone. [laughter] a do a little thought experiment with my students. we are doing this in the context of the presidency. when i was doing radio this morning, i was asked if i ever thought there was a black president. i had never really dreamed of a black -- a black president. i had thought about it, but my fantasy was around the supreme court. it will tell you about where art limitations on imagining these issues are. i just want you to remember that the supreme court operates on a basis of decisions now always have to reflect it back on previous decisions. that is the fundamental theory of the court. it means that when we think about the course, we cannot think about in its contemporary

moment. the court is always the entire court, going all the way back to the beginning forward. that is the accumulation of all those decisions. if we were to think about gender parity on the court, gender parity cannot be achieved by half the court being female. gender parity would have to be the entire court being female for 100 plus years. [applause] and i make no assumptions that and all lawman court would have any particular ideological viewpoint. -- and all woman court would have any particular ideological viewpoint. women are as diverse as men in their interpretations, but the very idea that we could leave women alone in the room with no

grownups to make decisions about the constitution. i am going to push to, because i am not going to allow you to leave this court in your mind as a court of all women. i want you to make everyone on that court black and latino. in your head, i want you to imagine what it would mean for 100 years to have a court of exclusively women of color, and then i want you to make all .hose women gavy if that seems like the craziest, and ugliest thing you have heard, i want you to remember that our current constitutional -- rests and reside on decisions made by all white male heterosexual americans. our inability to do other than imagined that as sort of a stunt -- funny thought experiment is indicative of the fact that we

are not quite prepared to say that where remnant of color -- queer women of color are capable of exercising citizenship without oversight. [applause] >> as tempting as it is to end with that, there is a point here that i think does require some clarification. the question is, are you suggesting the 14th amendment gives the executive branch of the federal government the unilateral authority to incur debt? >> i thought president obama using the 14th amendment to raise the debt ceiling was an impeachment battle waiting to happen. i assumed that the goal was to get president obama to do that so that impeachment proceedings could begin.

when president clinton, who i respect for a ton of reasons, came out and said i would not hesitate to use the 14th amendment, i was like, of course you wouldn't. whatever you think about president clinton, you have to appreciate that this man was impeached and did not leave. he was like, so what? [applause] i work here. [laughter] i actually assumed that if -- there was a lot of call to be tough, but i assume that had the president done it, impeachment articles would have been brought by the house. i don't think he would have been removed from office by the u.s. senate, but it would have allowed more weapons of mass destruction so we would not have been talking about jobs or those kind of things. i believe whether or not the

14th amendment grants that power -- what i would suggest it's that clearly what part of the 14th amendment is doing there, even as it is defining citizenship for american citizens, it is also making a claim about the responsibility of the state regarding debt. it certainly says that the state, our collective identity, has a responsibility to pay its debt. >> ladies and gentlemen, melissa harris. [applause] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2011] >> tomorrow on "washington journal," we take a look at poverty in america,