no, i'm good. i don't care how hungry i am, i am not eating in here. places where places where the stench of filth is so powerful that when you walk on the steps you can smell it. it smells like something is dead in the house. you have been to homes where people are squatting. they do not have electricity. you have seen this. you have seen it. no one understands the problems more than you. o one. teachers, for the most part, see kids in school, on their terms, and then they do not typically see them again. every other part of their life, you see them in, including the classroom.

and you learn about everything that is going on in their lives, things that they have never told a soul, and many of them, especially the boys, will never tell another person. so many of the young men with whom you work will be married fathers, grandfathers, holding on to the thing that you have heard. we hear this conversation about how we need to have health care, universal health care, universal health care, but we re not talking about universal mental health care because you are silent. the doctors are organized. the teachers are organized. the trash workers are organized. the social workers, you know, just being social workers. we are just out there doing the work.

i submit to you that if your interest is to transform the circumstances in which our young people and adults are living, then we have to work towards more political activism. a true social worker works with the society, not just with the individual. it is not enough for you to just serve your clients. it is not enough to just make sure that the homeless parents that you have get a place to live. it is not enough. t is not enough. you are not just solving the roblem for that community. one of my first jobs out of social work school was running a homeless shelter, back in my hometown.

so virtually everyone who was a guest in the shelter was a friend. one of the first people that i saw when i went to the shelter was a girl -- man, i used to like her a lot. a lot, a lot. she liked my cousin. you know, he was a drug dealer, he had money. you know. so when i saw her at the shelter, i just figured she worked there. i figured she was a caseworker. we both went off. i went off to college. i figured she did, too. but she was a guest. he was a client. and what happens over time is that we understand the nuances of how these things, how this problem, that when it was small could have been addressed. we know that.

we are not so simpleminded as to think that you just end poverty. i know that if we just gave her money, she would smoke it. right? you are with your friends very often and they walk by a homeless person and the first thing they do is peel off ones and you are like, hey, don't do that, you're not solving the problem. and you know that. with your acute knowledge that you have, we should be putting together policies and strategies to take care of tlanta's homeless problem. something happened. there were breakdowns along the way. we know that substance abuse is real. we know when substance abuse starts. we know it starts, for most people, in high school. the real hard-core ones, right

around 11. but for the most part, right around high school. and we know the people who are ost susceptible to it. we know there are family patterns. we know all of these things. yet still we are not pushing for programs or the supportive programs to do it. so then our programs are these little bitty programs that can serve a couple people. instead of us saying, well, substance abuse starts in the teens, typically. so if we did some programming in the high schools, not just the don't do drugs, those are bad for you, bring in the person, i do not have any teeth and i was on drugs. [laughter] because the kids don't make those connections.

you tell them. they're like, i ain't going to look like that. or the person -- somebody always wants to come talk to my school. i want to tell them my story about how i was broke. man, they have heard it. they do not care. you are not famous and they do ot know you. yeah, but i want to come in and help. you want to help? come up in here and work with the kids, build a relationship with them, talk to them about life. do not just show up like some messianic force and you are going to come in and lay hands on them -- i was poor once and i am not poor anyme. be like me. they have heard that a billion times and guess what? they do not believe it. they do not believe it. but you know how to put together a program that is meaningful, that is meaningful, not just an afterschool program that they

can drop in, but something more intense, that does not take away from their preparation from the state examination, but helps them be more prepared because their mental health is addressed. we know that people of color are the least likely to go and get the services that are necessary to help them, but the ost likely to need it. we know that men, in particular, are the least likely to go and get mental health support and are the most likely to need it. who are we identifying most as having mental health issues in early ages? men. african-american and latino men. still, those are the ones who are least likely to get it because we do not get it to them at a time when it is best. when the illness was small and curable. we know that so many of our teachers are so ill prepared to deal with african-american and latino boys that the first

thing they do is kick them out of class. when they come back to class mad about it, they kick them out again. when they get in class and cut p because they do not know what is going on, they've been out of the class the last 20 minutes, they say that something is intellectually or emotionally wrong with them. you know this. you know how it happens. you know how it goes down. there is one woman at the end of this long table by herself and it is us flanking her like a bizarre soul train line, telling her how bad her child is and how we hit her with very acronym we can. i am the principal. i have m.s.w. what? what? what do those letters spell? could i buy a vowel? [laughter] if i do not understand it, i

know she does not get it. and you know how that kid got there. you do. you know what the system did. so why aren't we social workers working harder with the education schools to get them right? why aren't we, as university faculty, not saying to the ed school, you have got to have at least 20% of your coursework be n social work? you are talking pedagogy. what is more pedagogical than understanding the human development of the people you are educating? what is more germane to teaching than understanding that you do not just feel sorry for the child because he is poor? that isn't something to feel sorry for somebody for. nobody responds, oh, we nderstand. oh, yes, he comes from a

home. and they always use the most bizarre outlier. mom works five jobs. they have 70 kids at the house and he has got to watch them at 6 years old. [laughter] no, his ass did not come to school today because he is lazy. that is why he did not come to school. and a social worker will get in a car and go get him. call the house. by the time i get there, you better be dressed or i will dress you. will dress your behind. you understand the nuances. you understand how this thing falls apart. you know why the kids are not paying attention and you know why the parents are so uspicious of us. you know that so many of our men and women need to talk to someone who is a professional, not just their cousin and them as a group.

we can work harder to transform the way in which resources are used in our community. we are spending in some communities on education and incarceration more than we are spending on anything else. we are dropping a lot of money at the back end. in some communities, $50,000 a year, to incarcerate. just imagine if some of these preventative programs that you mostly work in or want to start, just imagine if you had $50,000 a client. you could buy them a house per year. but that money is just poured down a hole because we allow the political forces that are going on in our country to come and say lock 'em up.

three strikes, you're out. and then wonder why they are vagabonds when they come out. cannot get a job. cannot get a student loan. can barely even get access to to their own children, and we wonder why the kids don't have anybody in their life. you see it. you see how this thing happens. it is a couple of small decisions that become big. why is it that our services are always the first to be cut? why is it that our programs are always the first to be cut? you hear people say, we need to put more money into schools. for what? most of the money that you put into the schools goes to the teachers and the administrators' pensions. the building and the nuts and bolts. it is not materials. you know this. it is not buying more stuff. you can go to some of these raggedy schools in the country

and they will get more money per pupil than some of the schools. if you had that money, what would you do? so many of our programs are running on $1,500 a client, $1,000 a client. what that does to our profession is it waters it down because these organizations have you as the m.s.w., that's you. they have a bunch of people who may or may not have a degree, right? and if they have one, it is definitely not social work. this person has an accounting degree and she is black, so they hired her. she must be able to talk to black people. and she is the one who is delivering the services to this very needy, acute need population.

she may be a nice enough person, a great mom or wife or friend, and maybe even really smart. but because we have allowed our work and resources to be the first that are dried up, that is what we get. we get one m.s.w. who works for the entire organization and you have to sign off on everything. am i saying it right? you are asked to come in and sign off on some fool stuff, treatment plans, where you think, i do not know if that is the way i would have done it. we need you to -- the state is coming in and the funds are coming in. that happens, that is happening, that has happened because of us. when you think of the fact that we work with some of the least desirable people and you have a lot of women who do it.

do you see how you guys get pushed off as a group and you are quiet on top of it? if social workers do not start to speak up, then we will disappear. we will disappear. from the professional ranks. we will be seen as old school nd outdated. i do not know about you -- i do not usually -- it takes a lot to offend me. it really does. but one thing that has always -- people call themselves a doctor and they are not a doctor. i have a problem with dr. dre. [laughter] but when someone calls themselves a social worker and they are not a social worker, i am always offended. [applause] because the only person who would do that is someone who does not understand or respect the level of intellectual

endeavor that you have had to go through, the level of emotional space that you have had to go through to get to this place. they do not understand that a lot of times, you are reading the d.s.m. and you're like, is that me? [laughter] let me read that again. you are going through case studies and you are finding your family in them. it is uncovering all of this ugliness in your own life and how much you have had to go through in your own life and you are trying to make your life better as you're trying to make other people's lives better. in many cases, you are dealing with the same exact stuff. i used to refer to my refrigerator as furniture. because it would be of more use on its side, as a chair, because there was nothing in t. when your clients have more ood in the house than you,

when your client has got to cut a hole in their pocket to get -- apartment to get that 120-inch rent-a-center tv in the house, when you drive a kid home to a house with four cars in the driveway and nobody gets off their behind to come get this child, when you find yourself arguing with somebody about something that they did wrong, then you know what social work is really about. you understand that in order to get the level of understanding that you have, you had to go through some stuff. i do not know if any other educational experience that requires as much as social work. i do not know it. i do not know.

because the expectation is, from a social worker, that you are going to be on the ground level at one point or another. you are going to be there. and you are going to be in someplace that is dark and scary, whether it is physical or emotional. you are going to sit with a child who is 4 or 5 years old and draw pictures with her as she describes to you how she as brutally raped. and then that session is going to be over and you are going to go and do it again. and then that session's going to be over and you're going to squeeze a lunch in in between there, at your desk, and then you are going to do it again. and each and every time you do

it, you are going to feel a piece of your soul being ripped out. i remember someone saying to me that they had seen it all. i remember saying to myself, if ever i say that, i do not want to be a social worker anymore. ow could you see it all? you get to see people at their most vulnerable times, when fear is the only emotion that they can make sense of. you get to see people at a time and in a space that no one will ever see them again. you may be working with the elderly and you are looking into the eyes of a grandmother who is ready to pass and she knows it and she knows that nobody is going to take care of hese kids.

your problem is your effectiveness. see, because instead of you, a social worker, saying, you know what, there should be a program for such a thing and there should be resources for such a thing and there should be a rocess for such a thing, you just take care of it. you just go and take care of it. you see she is about to pass away, you start contacting first of kin, and then you realize that house, they cannot go to that one. then you finally find one. it is not the best, but you have got to get the resources of. now you get to the job training program. this is all you. you just think -- you just do it. ou just run into it and then your partner is at home like, can you come home, and you're like, i'll be home in a little while, i promise, i just have to go to this family's house, i have one more visit that i have

to do and after that i'll come home and you just tell your -- ear your little life up. you just mess your stuff up. when you come home, somebody is at the door like, you stink. where you been? [laughter] instead of us pulling back and saying, whoa, whoa, whoa, there has to be something in the ocial net for social workers to be able to depend on and it develops in society. it cannot just be dependent upon the skill of the social orker forever. we need to fight to get resources to the front lines, and i mean money. we need to fight to make sure there are programs that can take care of people at the

lowest point, because as social workers, you know we are all going to be at our lowest point, sometimes a couple of times a year. and people can pray their way through anything and they can shout and clap and do whatever they want, but at the end of the day, that bill has got to get paid, somebody has got to take care of that child, somebody has got to make sure that the grandparents get the services that they need. someone has to make sure that his addict can stay sober. so today, i submit to you that we have fallen short on our responsibility as social workers. it seems like an odd thing to say to social workers when all you do is work. but we need to be more vocal in the public sphere. we need to speak out. we need to talk about the things that we see, and we need to put the solutions out there, because you know what the solutions are. you really do. you know when they would best take shape. you know when the illness

begins. and you know how to stop it before it gets big. president obama has my brother's keeper, an education program, in many ways. should be a social work program, right? have you seen what they are supposed to do? if you read it, you think oh, that's a social service agency. i am saying that we have come to the point in the black and latino communities and in some of the poor white communities where we have nothing left. it's that bad. i don't have to tell you, right? usually, when i am in a group, they have -- i have to tell people that it is really bad. you do not understand it it is worse than you have ever imagined. we had a young girl, 3 years old, stab another girl in the face with a pencil four times.

a, the child showed no remorse. and, b, the mother said, i do not know what you all are doing t that school. we need help, folks. and you are the calvary. you are the delta force. whatever knowledge you need to use, you are it. and you know it. if you do not know it, i hope you know it now. you should understand that you need to get involved politically. you do. a little social activism with our social work, please. adding some clarity to the public conversation that is so

muddied by politics, recognizing that sending people to prison is not the answer. institutionalizing the others is not the answer. you see it when it is small, folks. you see it when it is small. every single issue, you see it when it is small. i bet if i were to ask you whatever population you work with, whatever region you work with, if you had those solutions, every single one of you has them. and i bet most of them would work, especially if they were one on a larger scale. but we keep on with all these little things. i don't know why this fire won't go out. i keep throwing a glass of water at it. this is our time and this is the only time we have. our profession is being watered down by individuals who are not

social workers, coming in and taking what are literally referred to as social work jobs. they get the job and they are called a social worker. that is insane. someone can come into an agency and be called a social worker y title? wow. no one else -- you cannot be a plumber by just being called a plumber. you cannot be an electrician, ou cannot be a barber. and here, after two years of a master's program or four years of a bachelor's program, in some cases, whatever number it takes to get your ph.d., someone comes in and they call hemselves social worker?

this is us, man. this is our time right now. it is our responsibility to step out front and start putting what we know in front of everyone and start to solve the problems. we actually can solve a lot of these issues. they are actually solvable. you have seen it. you have seen, on a micro level, where some of these people have access to some of these services, how their lives be turned around. they actually can be saved. i don't know what your faith is but if you believe in redemption change, forgiveness, you have seen it happen. you have seen people from the depths and bowels of poverty, from the most disgusting circumstances of violence, you have seen those people stand strong because some of you are hose people. i can tell, just because you got your hair done, just because you have a nice little suit on, you ain't slick. we all see the markings.

you had a mayonnaise sandwich. [laughter] i know you did. you had a sugar sandwich. [laughter] you know what that block of cheese tastes like. [laughter] you had cereal that just has "cereal" on it. [laughter] you have done that thing, it says "expired by," but the doughnuts ain't got no mold on them. [laughter] you know that we can make people's lives better. that is what you were called to do. your story -- thank you -- the thing that called you to this, is evidence that the problems can be solved.

that the problem can be solved in your life and people can be called from the depths of our community to the highest highs of clark university school of social work. then there has to be more people behind you who can be saved too, right? none of us thinks that we are so great that god only did it to us, right, that this is something that he reserved just for us because we are that good? we are in this to save thousands of lives. i am always amazed -- it is usually entertainers, but people say, if i could just touch one life -- then you would be fired. [laughter] one? that is a low threshold. one total? one by ten? one? right, yeah.

you should make people laugh or do something like that, but those of us who are real social workers, we do not think in terms of ones, we think in terms of hundreds and thousands, entire communities and nations, cultures and genders, we think of exualities, entire swatches of an entire nation. we think of demographs that need to be change. if that is how you think, then you have to act that way. if your interest is in an entire group, if you care about black men and latino men, gay girls and boys, the transgender, the poor or the wealthy, if you care about women, whatever the thing, you cannot think that working with them one at a time is going to solve the problem. you become part of the problem. you need to find the place in politics for yourself.

i know, social workers, i get it. we hate it. we hate it. more than anybody. the problem is, we need to be the ones who are there. so i will close here, and then i want to answer some questions. [applause] if you shout out your question, i will answer it as quickly and completely as i can. es, ma'am? >> sometimes the biggest obstacle that we have is our clients. i worked for years with seniors n home care. in new york city, the mayor wanted to stop the sugary drinks. >> yeah.

>> and she confronted me with i amily who -- [inaudible] visited her year after year and she refused to understand. [inaudible]you know why you do not see many large people over 65? because they have gone. sometimes our biggest challenge is our clients. >> i would say you are right. but that is why they are our client. if they could fix themselves, we would be out of a job. i was told the school of social work that i went to, that we were supposed to work ourselves out of a job with that particular family. they should not need us forever. and we can pinpoint the behaviors causing the problems that they face. we can line up the solutions. but the reason why they are in this situation is because they are in this situation.

everyone knows that drugs are bad for you. it is not one of those things you have to work real hard to sell to someone. but that is not the answer. we have to touch their hearts somewhere else. >> thank you so much for your talk. what do you recommend to assist us in recruiting young black males into the profession? i teach at a program and it is one of the biggest obstacles i have. our students come in, criminal justice majors they want to go into criminal justice, they want to do psychology. when i start talking social work and they do not get it until their junior year. then they say maybe that is what i should have done. >> right. you are looking at the only black male graduate from the university of pennsylvania school of social work in 1995. >> oh, wow.

[applause] >> i don't know if that's audable. there would be a joke. like if i was in a car, couldn't get in an accident because there would be none. i think one of the things that has to happen is we need to ntroduce it earlier, and i think a way to do it, especially when you have teams on campus, is to talk to the teams, the football teams, the track teams, the basketball teams, where you have a lot of boys on campus. alk to them. >> i deal with a lot of young men. somehow or another they tend to fall in love with me and love me. one, because i spoil them. but i also treat them like men.

but they feel in their minds that no one listens to them and i know that there are men, their fathers, their foster fathers, who don't listen to them. they always feel that they come to me or go to any other woman, they listen to me, they hear me, but they don't listen to the male, they don't give the males -- >> right. that is a complicated question, and i will tell you why. there are profound differences between men and women. i know this comes as a shock to some of you. i'll just break some of them down. i will give you one. if a man sees another man having trouble, he will wait to see if there is an opportunity for him to go up to him and say anything. if he does, it will be something really simple. you good? i'm good. that will be the entire conversation. hereas a woman does not wait

at all and does not just say one thing. she talks and talks and talks and talks because, in many cases, from a gender perspective, women talk their problems out. they think out loud. you and your friend talk it through. i would submit to you that there are very few men in this room who have talked their problems out with another man. in the same way that women o. and so some of what especially teenage boys are going through, s they are going through a transition from -- and i am putting labels on this. if my feminists could hold on for a second and hear what i going to say -- hey are going from traditionally feminine character statistics in their

earlier ages of talking -- like little boys, that is why mothers fall so madly in love with their sons, because they are just the sweetest, tell you how beautiful you are every 40 seconds, ma lip lative little people that -- manipulative people that have ever been born, right, so they're going from a time when they used to talk a lot to a time where they do not talk as much because they are practicing being men. and so there is a transition period for a lot of boys and men, where the men, in many cases, do not know how to talk to a young man. other than to say shut up, stop crying. that is stupid. that is what people say to us. so there's that. the other part of it is there is an intersection of values. there was a time in which children were meant to be seen and not heard.

then there is a group that wants to only hear them. and these polls are killing s. because there is a lot to be said in the old school, wait your turn when grown folks are talking, be quiet, sit at the child's table, all those. there is a lot of really rich, important, learning how to respond to authority stuff in that that we have cast aside. there is another side where hildren have an opinion. when i call home as a principal, the mother says, that's your side of the story. like i have a side of the story and the 8-year-old has the other side. so some of the listening or not is caught up in some of the values, especially children of color. one of the problems that we as african-americans in particular have, we have very violent

parenting strategies. they're violent. there's a whole -- there's a pretty significant undercurrent of violence in the way in which we communicate with our children. even our compliments are not really compliments. you think your so smart. -- you're so smart. yull hear parents describing their son, in particular you ask, how's your son? bad as hell. right? and it's a compliment. sort of, kind of. being bad as hell is a compliment. so, my point is that, i said it's a complicated question because it's not as easy as just put more money in their lives who are going to talk to them. one of the things i find is the best way to engage many boys is to get them involved in groups that are sports or otherwise oriented. headed by a male. because boys actually have --

feel safer in a group because they can deal with some of their issues differently without actually having to put themselves on front street. there's a safety in that experience for a lot of males because the coach can set expectations to make you do certain things that you if you did them yourself, you'd look like a punk. coach would say, you better in school tomorrow otherwise you won't be playing. when your friend says, come chill with me, you say, i can't because i won't be able to play. so when you involve them in these activities, what happens is it gives them a safe place to do good. and it also allows them to build a are a pour with a man in a way that makes them feel comfortable. the last part of this is here. especially in the black and latino community, black community i know better. we have real homophobic issues.

like real, real deep, poisonous, frighteningly scary homophobic into molestation issues. which makes me believe that a lot more black men in particular were sexually molested than have ever come forward. i would venture a guess. [applause] i'm going to be honest, five, 10 times what we know. easily. easily. easily. and so we have these issues, you even hear the boys saying, no homo. we have such issues, even -- i'm telling you, even grown men , the learned among us, struggle with how do you show -- because a lot of times brothers will come up to me, you know, like i love what you do, but i love what you do, you

need to understand, there's a whole disclaimer, like there's a 20-minute disclaimer. because i have a wife, you understand what i'm saying? i used to hit mad chicks back in college, you know. like -- i got you. i appreciate you too. but i'm just saying, i'm letting you know. i really appreciate what you do but i'm saying, like, i ain't gay or nothing. [laughter] that's a really bad suit, like, it's nice, but it's not -- i mean, i'm not saying like, you know, like i like your suit, like, like it like it, but i'm just saying that's a nice suit. we have such deep-seeded issues around sexual assault within the black community -- sexuality within the black community, especially black men and this complex is so deeply embedded in us. we just don't know what to do. it really -- we're really a mess over this. and so we don't want -- you

want to be able to talk to a young man but you don't want to be put in a situation where he thinks you're trying to come onto him or -- and it's just -- you guys don't think about these things because you don't think -- like, this is a real thought that we as men have to think about on a regular basis because of the versexualization of black men. so even after all those other systems are in place, the last thing a man sitting down with a young boy -- if you're not -- if you don't have a title, right, if you're not his coach or his father, folks start so look at you like, why you got these boys? like, what are you doing? >> right. >> why do you have all these boys around you? you like having boys around you? what's that all about? so the boy can't really talk to anybody because of all these things, right? and he's to the point where now

he's becoming a teenager, he doesn't really want to talk to his mom like he used to. because he knows that she's -- there's a point at which we learn that y'all are girls. like oh, my god. mom's a girl. [laughter] holy cow. then when you marry one you really realize you're girls. it's different, right? you have these conversations. and so in that little bitty space, i mean, i make jokes about it so it helps it go down a little easier, but in that space where you have a 12, 13, 14-year-old boy, he's right. no one is listening to him. he's right. and if he's unaffiliated, if he's not connected to a team or omething like that, really isn't. and because nobody will let him go to see a psychiatrist or a social worker, he's just trying to pack that stuff in. he's trying to put it all in his pocket and walk with it. just so that he looks normal.

because he doesn't want to be crazy, like you're crazy. you went to talk -- you're crazy. it's a challenging thing and it's something that so many of us as social workers, especially you as women, dea with. because the boy wants to talk to you, but he's not going to talk to you like he would talk to a man who he felt comfortable talking with. and you'll recognize, especially in the modern black community, most of us as men who do have a role model, it was someone who was a professional in our life. a coach, a teacher, not a ather. you know, we've done ourselves in as a black community. we've hurt ourselves pretty bad. we've done some real wicked stuff to ourselves and we don't always want to own it but it's real.

we really poisoned the well on a lot of places. i'm not saying we did it by ourselves. i want to be clear. but slavery's not the reason why a man in 2014 doesn't take care of his kids. [applause] >> my question is i heard you talking about working on things on a micro and macro level. what are some things more recently that you're engaging in to address that? >> on a macro level, one of my pet projects is working to make sure that children have school choice. and the reason why school choice is so important to me and to us is because we know that an effective teacher and by extension an effective school is the most important factor in a young person's development. and moving on and moving up out of poverty.

and so the reason i find myself squared off against the teacher's unions is because they want things to stay the way that they are. and i don't. we're in atlanta and i'll be honest with you, atlanta, this always trips me out, you have probably more black college students per square inch than any other place outside of the continent of africa. that's not a statement, that's fact. nowhere else on earth are you going to find so many educated black people and you have one of the worst school systems in america. [applause] i'm confused.

you have five colleges in the a.u., right? how many colleges are in atlanta? four? four colleges and just beyond here, some of the worst neighborhoods in america? i'm confused. y'all can blame white people all you want, i'm going to give white people the day off. [laughter] this is a mess. i don't get it. atlanta, y'all -- every time i come here, i just don't get it. i'm confused every single time i come. meet all these buffies all over the place, you know, talk about their travel and the things they do and the lifestyle they have and the car they drive and the housewives that are not housewives. airport married to nobody. -- ain't married to nobody. anyway, so. i don't get it.

i don't understand. i'm lost. i'm confused. you've had -- you can't blame white people. you've had black people in every single position, the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker, you have black judges and mayors. it would be a shock if you had a white mayor. people would be like, what? how add that happen? black people must have stole some money. [laughter] the only way you're going to get one. from now on. you can find the coolest white dude but he's going to have to work his behind off to be the mayor of atlanta. we're in every position of power that there must be. i'm saying, school choice should be the order of the day. why keep letting the people who have been doing your kids wrong another shot? put your head in the lap of a man that has a noose, it's not his fault that you've been hung. this here is on us, man. school choice. i don't understand how you have so many people with ed kate --

people who are educators and educated, why you don't start more schools? you have churches, though. walk 45 steps, boom, run into another church. with more -- with so many churches there should be more saved people. so many educated people, there should be more people who educate people. y'all in fraternities and sororities and easter stars and golden crust and everything else you're in. i mean, everything -- everybody -- jack and jill, every damn thing. you got all the markings of the middle class but here, let me put y'all onto something. middle class actually takes care of the rest of the people. this is not middle class. this is something else, man. we've bastardized the movement up through the middle class in such a way that we have our own -- we remixed this thing and we messed it up. we still left it in its original form. the greatest african-american minds of all time have studied

in this city, in this city, in this city, of all time. in this city! and y'all got the worst schools. i mean, really, my grandmother used to say, terrible. so bad everybody wants -- yeah, you got people cheating -- i never seen such! and y'all just walking around like, don't you get it? this is not ok. this is not normal. this is so abnormal. i'm telling you, i bring you greetings as your brother from the northeast. i'm telling you, up there a lot of people look at you guys down here and say, man, i'm moving to atlanta, you know, black people are doing it, i'm going to get my, you know, and i'm going to move down. that's right, this is what happens. but then they get here and they're going to send their kid o some other school.

it's not ok. so the macro thing that i'm working on is, one, education, and, two, tell the black people, cut it out. we gotta stop. [applause] es, sir. >> i volunteer in the fullsome county juvenile court as a copper volunteer, working with kids in the foster care system. exposed to some stuff, stuff that i never managed was going on in -- imagined was going on in our community. a large number of kids in foster care in georgia are in fullsome county. they cannot be served by the current system. so i'm wondering, what is the future of those children who are caught up in that system? >> bleak, brother. it's bleak. >> some way out, some hope?

>> it's bleak. we're just going to be honest. we're going to be blown people for a second. bleak. those particular children, it's bleak. one of the reasons why i rescinded my or stopped -- i just didn't pay it again -- my membership to the national association of black social workers, was because of the transracial adoption thing. i can't -- or interracial adoption, i'm sorry, interracial adoption. i can't co-sign that. if a white family wants to take care of a black child, give them the child, man. that's the worst thing that they are is white? that's their crime? then i'm cool with that. i'm real cool with that. but the black people who created the child don't want to take care of them and somebody else does? i don't care what part of the world they're from. [applause] i do not care if they are gay or if they are straight.

i don't care if they're white or black. i just want good people taking care of our children. so, one thing that we as black social workers have to do is we have to dial back some of the foolishness ourselves. we always have to start with ourselves first. i get the goal of black adoptions. i get that. i really do. but i'm always compelled to say, but how many kids are you adopting? show me how many live in your house. because if you don't have a good crew, shut up. [applause] the other part of it is, and this is where we really as social workers need to open up our shirts and show the s on our chest, many of those kids are deeply fractured. deeply fractured. everyone says a person is proke -- broken. that means there's no hope. but they're deeply fractured. and the data tells us that they

will be in the system for much much their lives. this is going back to the point that i was making before. there are no easy solutions in this one. the real solution is that we, who know better, start to put systems in place to make sure that we work harder, to make people who are white in particular, who want to adopt and who are going to go to russia to get a child, that we make it seem like, hey, man, we got you. we put supports around them. this is true, and i know you know what i'm about to say is true, i'll hear black people say, they don't even know how to do their hair. well, help them. i mean, really. look, i feel the same way. i see little black kids with little knotty heads i'm like, come here. i'll take green grease out of my back pocket and i'll put two corn rows back, you'll be straight. i had a bunch of girl cousins.

everybody's got to learn how to do hair. i don't know about you. i don't know how much of a man you are, but if you're in my family, you had a younger girl cousin, better be able to pull it back in something. otherwise you're in a heap of trouble and you could jump double dutch. what we have to do first as social workers is we have to rally around the families who want to support these kids. both the ones who are going to take them back and the ones who are going to receive them. and encourage them. we should be leading the charge. we should be encouraging people and then providing supports so those families who are from different ethnic groups, who do decide to take an african-american child. support them. really support them. put the supports around them. don't make them feel bad about the decision that they made. they made the right decision. kids, have to -- these in particular many of them need intense mental health support. intense. they have some of the most acute issues of anyone that

you're going to find. right? as you see, like i've seen, these kids who find themselves in those situations have the most acute issues and they're the most challenging. so they're going to need mental health support as well. folks, i thank you sincerely. i really do. before we clap or anything, i know it's plight to do, i want -- polite to do, i want you to hear me say thank you. thank you for doing what you do and hearing what i'm saying, coming to you as your brother, and being real with you about what we need to do. we can't look outside of this room for what the people in this room need to do. and we can't look outside this profession for what the people in this profession need to do. this is really on us right now. so thank you so much for all of your attention. [applause] [captioning performed by

national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2014] >> this labor day, on the c-span networks, on c-span at 5:30 eastern, an education department summit on bullying in schools. at 8:00, bill nye the science guy and creation museum founder ken hamm debate evolution. on c-span2's book tv, at 7:00 eastern, congressman james clyburn talks about his life from his youth in the jim crow south to his leadership position in the house of representatives. at 8:30, authors sylvia dukes morris on her book about playwrite, diplomat and congresswoman. and at 10:00 p.m., michael lewis, author of "flash boys" discusses the hidden world of high frequency stock trading. on c-span3's american history tv, at 7:15 p.m. eastern time, american artifacts looks at declassified documents related

to the 1964 gulf of tonkin incident that led to the escalation of the vietnam war. at 8:00 p.m., president warren harting's newly released love letters. at 9:45, the life of nobel prize winning economist milton friedman. find our television schedule at c-span.org and let us know what you think about the programs you're watching. call us at 202-626-3400, on or email the #c123 us @comments@spee -- at comments@c-span.org. >> tonight on c-span, q&a, with second circuit court of appeals judge robert a. katzmann. that's followed by british prime minister david cameron making the case for why scotland should continue its political union with the u.k. and later, ohio senator rob portman seeking to business

leaders about the politics and breakfast in new hampshire. ♪ on "q&a," our guest is the chief judge of the u.s. second circuit court of appeals robert katzmann. he talks about his new book talksng statutes," which about his approach to interpreting laws. his thoughts about on televised coverage of courtroom proceedings. >> chief judge robert katzmann of the second