>> thank you, very much. now, to conclude this debate, we have a couple of further debates to come. i call from london -- i beg your pardon. >> thank you, mr. speaker. amir is a 22-year-old who has been unemployed for 12 months. daniel is a 16-year-old who has eight grade qualifications but has great personal skills. alex is a 10-year-old who does not believe in the beauty of her dream and will never be sure who she wants to be. mr. speaker, i don't need to stand before the this debate is about whoever is to become our next campaign. so it could be a normal chance to work with businesses.

we can get businesses to help us develop a national streamwork for quality work experience and why every young person should be entitled to it. could this happen in the campaign where completely different areas have completely different circumstances? not every area can say the same. how could we make this into a national campaign? maybe that's the point. no young person should be held back because of where they're from. that is something we champion as a youth parliament. why couldn't we champion this message of equality through a campaign? however, even if we did manage to get work experience for all young people, two weeks is no one's idea of productive. if we quit work experience in all schools we'd be condemning young people and not benefiting

them. it can be the reality of the work place. not everyone who comes out with work experience feels motivated and inspired the same way not everyone finishes a day of work feeling motivated and inspired. that is life. i knew that would get the support of the staff. see? that's life. it's essential to be honest with young people. you know when i was 5 i was called stylish and i wanted to be the next james bond but there was no work experience opportunities related to that. [ applause] >> so i decided i'd become the next speaker of the house. [ laughter] you know, young people are the

future because of the power to change their present. this is epitomizes after a campaign. help amir, daniel, alice, and rest of our young people. we can show you the path. only you can decide which way your vote goes. choose wisely. when applause] [ cheering] >> "q & a" has been marking a decade of compelling conversations by featuring an interview from each year of the series. today former congressman bob ney, the ohio republican resigned from congress in 2006 and pleaded guilty to conspiracy charges for trading political favors. he served 17 months in prison and wrote a book about his experience. that's "q & a" at 7:00 eastern. at 8:00 eastern conversations with astronauts and private citizens who have flown into

space. the program begins with walter cunningham, the lunar module pilot on apollo 7 in 1968. next, a group of authors discusses the current and future state of race relations in america. topics include ferguson, missouri and personal stories about experiences with police and the justice system. speakers include comedian and pivot tv host baratunde thurston as well as journalist and documentary filmmaker raquel cepeda. this was hosted by the brooklyn historical society. a programming note, this program contains language some viewers may find offensive. [ cheering] [ applause]

>> this is beautiful. what's up, brooklyn? give yourselves a big old round of applause. >> be careful. >> can i give the black power fist? >> white people be very careful. it's going to be all night. you signed up for the conversation about the conversation. i just -- i was hearing a beautiful intro. can we give it up for the brooklyn historical society? [ applause] raquel was backstage and was very glad to hear how her name was pronounced which is raquel sepeda. what do you think when they pronounce it wrong? >> it's very irritating. it puts me in a box like i'm

american. i'm very comfortable being american. i'm very comfortable being latino. but for me that00 -- that hyphen bridges me to both. when you say it -- i feel like i'm in a box and not here to be received fully. i am here to be received fully. so, please, if we meet outside or buy my book, please don't call me -- if you call me rachel i'm not even going to pay attention to you. >> and, tanner, just a question to you in front of this crowd, you wrote a book called "some of my best friends are black." how's that working out? >> yes. it's been great, actually. i have three four now. >> you've increased the number of black friends? >> it's like a 400% increase from zero. i'm doing much better --

>> how about latinos? >> sucking wind. well one. one. she's right here. i went on a date with a dominican girl 10 years ago. >> how come you hold on to that until now? >> i don't know. just came back to me. >> wow. okay. >> all five of you? you guys destroyed it by showing up. amazing. we're so glad to have you here. we really are. >> i want to apologize to c-span for the [beep] and [beep] we're probably going to say. >> we sent a crew out there and couldn't use any of the footage. waste of taxpayers' money. >> so for this evening we don't have a separate moderator. we're going to moderate each other, which has worked well in american history. [ laughter] >> we propose to address one

topic, which is right off of the news ferguson. some real life -- come to a solution like three minutes from now, and then many have noticed on your chairs there are chairs with topics you want to discuss. we've been looking at the hash tag on twitter, hash tag about race and we'll just kind of dip into that virtual hat or physical hat as someone will ask you to pass those to the aisle to hear what you have to say then we'll share the microphone with you and whear what you have to say. is that okay with you? >> and then you'll see on our iphones, totally on twitter. >> people who are not here. >> exactly. >> so, you guys ready? >> all right. ferguson. >> ferguson. >> about to jump off again maybe possibly. we don't know. according to the governor of missouri. >> state of merningy predeclared. >> a predeclared state of emergency. >> they're ready for whatever. >> and confirmed on fox. >> so you know it's true. >> you know there's some shit

going down >> did anybody see the former mayor rudolph guiliani on fox news recently? you guys love yourself. fwood for you. you didn't watch that. >> yeah. or just nod admitting it. >> yeah. insofar as fox news can be said to represent a segment -- a segment of white american society they are all primed for the next coming of huey newton to erupt out of this in ferguson. it strikes me as when i saw it i thought immediately of new haven, i was reading about it the other day -- bobby thiel was on trial in 1960, 1970 in new haven. there was going to be a huge protest. all the black panther radicals were going to come to the lawn at new haven and do a big demonstration, huge, violent demonstrations all over the country. and the governor of connecticut and president of yale were all petrified it was going to turn into something like what we saw in ferguson in august.

but the governor of connecticut knew wisely that the first way to set off the powder keg would be to send in and prime everyone. so they quietly assembled the national guard. they had everybody in assembly and just told no one. they just said go have your demonstration. and then nothing happened. >> yeah. >> they had the demonstration. everybody went home. then, you know it was over. >> that's not what's happening here. >> no. governor nixon in missouri is doing everything he can to precipitate what he says he wants to avoid in that he is getting everyone primed for the fact that black people are going to go crazy. >> could i ask you to speak for all white people? >> done. >> i am so relishing this moment. like is he basically just doing this for white people? is this like hey, white people, i got you. i know you're nervous. let me send in guns to protect us from what's be the to go down, these ne'er do wells,

rabble rousers? >> he is a politician and trying to cover all his bases. like the governor in 1969 should you have law enforcement standing by in case the whole thing goes sideways? of course. things could go sideways any time people are on edge like this. but he's setting up the whole thing, oh, we have to counsel with all the black ministers and we're going to talk and everything will be fine and we'll do everything we can to avoid this. but all you white people go buy hand guns just in case like that's the subtle message behind it, saying somebody got ahold of the budget appropriation of the ferguson police department from last month and it's just like $50,000 in rubber bullets $50,000 in bean bag guns, i mean, and they're preparing for all of this and, of course, you know we saw what happened last time. >> how are they going to miss all the white protesters? when they unleash the military on the community? even, for selling out? >> i mean, you know, they're just going to go -- who knows

what's going to happen? >> well, you know, you sent me this link for the sean hannity show on fox. he was using this, did you see it? >> i did. it made my day worse. >> it was just crazy. he was using the same terminology i heard on the news especially fox 5 action at 11:00 with the explosive situation, you know, threatening violence. something's going to erupt. it was all of this really just scare people, right? and then gunal went on guiliani went on and said there were situations like this before. situations like these are not situations. they're the death of amadou diallo. he became the 9/11 mayor and made 2 million plus dollars on 9/11. >> right. >> but amadou diallo was going to be the legacy that he left behind. but he was talking about the situation, situations like this. was very dismissishive. and it brought up for me the

whole idea of the phrase that's been thrown around a lot as of late, "white privilege." i know you despise that term. >> yes. >> you have a good reason to. i want to get into that. >> right. well, you know, white people have tons of advantages in this society. you know, there are a lot of people like bill o'reilly on fox news who deny this exists and that white people have advantages, which is stupid. to me whenever you're talking about these advantages white people have you have to sort them into two different categories. one is ill gotten gains white people should not have and the other is things white people have that everyone else should be accorded also. >> human privilege. >> yes. so, you know -- >> start saying that instead of white privilege. >> you heard it here first. >> white people can walk around in this society without the fear of getting shot in the face every day by the police. some people would define that as white privilege. i would define it as citizenship. it's just a baseline of how we should be treated in this society. and so i feel like you get that

word attached, that word is very popular right now, you get that word attached to something like this and we start focusing on all the things tanner has that are bad because he has them rather than focusing on, you know, the true problem, which is what happened to michael brown. >> well, when you talk about white privilege, for me it's really not about white people. it's just a reminder of what being born nonwhite kind of confers. >> it's like a substitute for nonwhite disadvantage. >> exactly. just an easier, cooler, sexier --. >> white. >> white privilege yeah. >> allows you to project resentment on white people rather than feeling bad about yourself. >> i think it's a misnomer to think just because you're born white you're born with a silver spoon in your mouth. you are' part of the 1%. i think we should start looking into as we lack basic rights. for example we both are parents. i remember, you know, when i first held my son, first i was like wow. i can't believe i had another kid after 15 years. that was the first thought.

second thought was oh, my god. he's so cute. he looks chinese. had a baby with a haitian man. the third thing was, well damn. i'm going to have to worry at some point about him going to the store. that was my third thought. >> about your newborn child. >> my daughter is right there and she saw me panic. and i got so -- i had no post partum depression. i was really, really happy about him being born but i just started shaking and panicking and my husband and i had this conversation when everybody left like i have to think about people not respecting him or loving him the way i love all my neighbors' children regardless of what color they are. i have to think about him going to the store and not coming back. i have to think about teaching him actually, you know, to question what he thinks, you know, what he's being taught in school but at the same time don't go too far with authority because you can get shot in the face. so these are all the things, or in the back. so these are all things that kind of lead to the stress and kind of lead to resentment. i think this whole idea with

don't shoot and what's going on in ferguson is just like you said, it's about human privilege. it's about really people, just black, white whatever, being upset at what we don't have when nonwhites are born into this world. >> what i've seen when there is so much -- there is so much beauty in ferguson in terms of the creative response. i think the playbook, the government playbook is the same. right? it's like arma and threaten force and then apply force in disproportionate measures and kind of reinforce the status quo. but the response on the ground has been this black youth movement, this very much more gender open in terms of the roles people are playing. it's been artist driven in a way we haven't always seen before. and i'm like, it makes me feel old. i'm not -- i don't always feel that way but watching some of these young people in ferguson respond so creatively and so persistently, you know whether it's the ferguson october weekend, whether it's the

pretending to be dead and lying in the street, new forms of creative protest that kind of marry the internet with art. they're still nonviolent. but they're very persistent, very poignant. that's the new twist. the state hasn't changed but the people are changing. i find that pretty interesting. i don't see a lot of people talking about that. certainly not on fox news. >> what's the difference between what happened with mike brown and trayvon martin and oscar brand before that? and the response? >> i think there's been a little bit less coopting by traditional organizations. you have new fwrupes forming out of this. you have hands up united as a creative example. you have the -- let me check. he's always there. i'm not here to necessarily disdie-hard al sharptons because his heart is in a good place most of the time but it's not his show. it's not the reverend show

anymore. there's a whole new thing we haven't seen before. it's like it's rappers from st. louis who are on different mikes. they're starting newslers. i remember seeing i think deray mccasson -- can't remember his last name but there is a startup project called launch rock which tech companies use to launch their product. if you're interested in a cheaper way to get luxury car service sign up here. right? and this is like the 5% a lot of the tech is oriented to but the young activists were using the same platform to build their mailing list for a new movement. that is different. that's interesting. it's not sort of media designation or knighthood being bestowed on someone like let's go to obama and see what he thinks. the president is kind of incidental to all of this and i think that's good because he is not going to be the president much longer.

>> right. >> right. >> hum. well i'm sure that hannitys of the world and everybody else on the fox's and lou dobbs and even don lemons -- that was loo ick this inside thing. we always talk about the stupid shit don lemon says on "the daily." >> so what do you think is going to happen with the grand jury? >> well, i think he is going to be acquitted. >> yeah. >> yeah. >> we all agree. can we poll the audience? raise your hand if you think no charges. >> no indictment. hands up for no indictment. >> so there are people who think he is -- >> hands up for indictment. a vast minority. >> not deserves indictment. >> with your psychic powers. we're all americans. we've seen this play before. yeah. >> right. yeah. i think he is going to walk. >> do you?

yeah. >> the problem is that, you know nothing that happened that day justified the shooting of michael brown but there is this brief interval inside the car that we don't know exactly what happened and any time there's that sliver of uncertainty it goes the cop's way. that's just what's going to happen. so the question is, what we do with that information once it comes out. >> the governor -- what i'd love to see the governor do is just show up open mike like the british prime minister does, and just take it. right? just physically have -- hear the people. because he seems to have been so tone deaf and so much of what is needed is grandiose and systemic and requires funding and negotiation but so little of what is needed is just the knowledge that you're being heard. i feel like if he sat in a room like this and just took it for

like five hours -- [ laughter] right? i just -- and just hear people. it would be beautiful press for him. >> i don't think he cares. i think -- he is coming off like another slightly less evil version of guiliani. i think there may be violent reaction. but on the positive side if you can glean something positive from the situation i do see a new political movement happening. i do see what you were talking about the other day which is what libertarian and liberals coming together so i think this whole democrat republican thing is nonsense. i'm from harlem but my parents are from the dominican republic. there are dozens and dozens of people from different political parties. we may be kind of close and i'll just start my own party. that's what's happening. i think we need to is it stop looking at things in boxes as americans are just obsessed with cramming ourselves in these boxes. >> one person lightly agrees

with you. >> okay. but on the positive side we are seeing alliances. i mean you see a senator from kentucky, rand paul, you know, he was saying some shit that i can rock with that he actually, you know --. >> what are the new activist organizations asking for vis-a-vis ferguson? >> to stop shooting black and brown men. >> there is that. >> there is also representation in terls of the disconnect that was very strong about who the police are versus who the populace is. >> right. >> you see there is a very per verse relationship between how the government is funded and the imposition of fines, petty fines on people which encourage the cops to basically have a stop-and-frisk type attitude and get paid for it. that funds the whole court system. there's cameras on police a pretty specific request that came out of this that's gone far beyond ferguson. >> right

>> probably seven other things. i can't remember. many of you in the audience probably know off the top of your head. >> i thought it came out of garner staten island, the whole thing about equipping policemen with cameras. >> yeah. but similarly timed because we don't have footage. >> so a question of what happened. >> right. >> the main thing i have a problem with what the activists are coming at in the representation angle is they're saying oh, this town it's majority black but a white city council, white mayor, white police. we need more black representation so we control our own destiny. to me that is a false premise because they're not questioning the basic premise underlying this. this was explained by the principle of my old high school because i lived in one of the inner ring suburbs of birmingham atlanta. the reason cities work is you have a broader tax base. you have old people paying taxes but not using the schools. you have young people paying

taxes but not using medicare elder services. you have businesses paying taxes but they use the roads and bridges but they don't use the schools. you have a broad and varied tax base but not everyone is taking advantage of the services. in these little towns and fifedoms and suburbs you have no industry. you might have light retail tax base but your primary tax base is property tax. some of these fees and stuff. but meanwhile instead of this varied base where people use some city services but not all of them everyone is there for one reason, to exploit your most expensive public service which is good public schools in the suburbs. it is a completely untenable system because the only way that works is if you have extreme wealth. the bronxvilles, mountain brooks in birmingham and these really wealthy places with exorbitant property taxes, they can afford to keep the world out and not have any retail, not have any commercial industry, and support an

excellent public school based on nothing more than property taxes. it doesn't work for nib else. it doesn't even work for middle class white people. doctors and lawyers, people who don't have accumulated wealth, those systems are unstable which is why those suburbs continue to expand and sprawl and acquire more land to increase the tax base. so these places like ferguson, it's a completely untenable model. and yet black people are coming in saying, well, we need to run ferguson. well, once black people are running ferguson, you think white people don't give a shit about ferguson now wait until it has a black mayor and black city council. then white people are going to really be excited about it right? once it's an all black city with black leadership then the tax base is going to shrink even more because white people are really going to be done and city services are going to decline even more. yeah you got white police. no more darren wilsons and that is great, an advancement but essentially rich, white people have designed a game that's rigged and black people are saying, we need to win that game. it doesn't make any sense.

the only reason black people need to gain political control in ferguson is to say we want to be annexed by the city of st. louis so we have access to st. louis taxes and services and infrastructure. these little fifedoms, the little city states we have organized, are the problem. to say black people need to take charge of ferguson is to misdiagnose the problem. >> it can't just be a black body. it has to be the right black body. look at allen west, michael steele. george zimmerman, you have people that have this, you know, they're not the right people that get pushed into these jobs. >> right. here's another -- you went to the system of money and borders that are that different -- there is another thing i haven't heard talked about

enough with ferguson and that is the police and the ideas in their head. there is this very protective wall around police officers as if they are holy figures, almost saints, and they can do no wrong. they can do very much wrong because they have guns and badges which allow them to get away with wrong. >> right. >> a friend of mine, ron j. williams, who is from brooklyn, he drew this map which i wish i had sketched out for you. basically a cop that has a bad day can get away with killing you if you look like me. maybe if he looks like you. probably not if he looks like you. >> no. probably not. >> if you're super drunk and no one is looking, maybe. >> maybe. yeah. >> he'll get slapped in the mouth. he is not going to get killed. >> their perception of your threat and their mood determines your life. that's a really flipped up equation, c-span. >> that's really -- >> right. >> that is a really bad set of math. and part of -- there is a psychologist out of ucla, and i try to promote his work as much

as i can on things like that because his point, he basically studies racism in the brain. he is a little bit of neuro psychology, a little social psychology. it's very tempting to think cops are racist. >> right. >> but they're not. not aggressively. not explicitly. that's out of fashion. it's not really cool to be out with hating black people. you can't walk around just shouting those things anymore. but the implicit thing poisons all of us. the association of black people as less than human, animal threats, seeing 14-year-old boys as 30-year-old men or 10-year-old boys as 30-year-old men that is all programming. the media has done a very effective job. the thing he found in one of his studies the greatest predictor of if a cop is going to shoot a black boy or man or brown boy or man is not their racism but their implicit sense of masculinity. basically, cops that are weak in their own manhood, they got to flex. right? if you challenge them, in any

way, they got to put you down. because they don't know how to carry themselves as grown men. >> and that's why, at least in my community, where i've seen many friends victim -- victimized for the cops, the thing we were always taught to look out for was black and latino cops, because of the sense of being emasculated. we haven't dealt with ptsd in our country. we are very young in our country. we are products of the trans-atlantic slave trade. we carry in our memory, part of our d.n.a., ptsd. part of that, with black and brown boys, is emaculation. i've heard a lot of my kids in my neighborhood became cops. i used to hear them like i will f somebody up if they look at me wrong. a lot of times i had to be careful, more so, with, you

know, people who look like me and my family members. so there's a lot of things from the bottom that we're not dealing with not only in the penal system and with cops, but also just in our community that we have to deal with. and i think that's at the bottom of all of this ptsd. then you look at -- i think ptsd is even kor do correlated to black-on-black crime and brown-on-black crime. how are you going to stop committing acts of violence on other people when you don't like what you see in the mirror? how are you going to start liking other people if you don't like what you see in the mirror? i think a lot of that stuff is really at the bottom of this, how we're not talking about race, and thank god we're here, and these kind of things in our society a little more openly. without being afraid right? >> the most interesting thing i've seen in recent months regarding sort of the implicit biases people have is a guy in

north carolina or the south -- does it matter? >> whoa. sorry if any of you guys -- >> i'm from the south, so i can. no. but -- [laughter] >> some of my betz best friends are from the south? is that your next book? [laughter] >> this video went viral. cop pulling the guy over, black guy. guy hops out of his car. totally like hey, what's up, officer friendly? >> because he didn't get the talk. >> and he's like hey, what's up, officer? he says, i need to see your driver's license. he's like, hands up! and he shoots him in the gas station, because -- just because he reached into his car where he couldn't see his hand. he's like, excuse me. you asked me for my driver's license. i'm getting my driver's license. but the tape kept rolling for like the next hour. a few days later it came out. it was audio recorded, the this officer explaining to his boss what happened. if you watch the video

literally the guy just pops out of the car, like hey, what's going on? and the cop's description of this was like, he lunged at me ." the question is, was that cop lying, a, to cover his ass or was that his actual perception of what this guy was doing popping out of the car going hey. that just speaks to what that guy's perception of the experience was. it was like the same week, there was the incident with that plaqueblackactress in l.a., detained by the police because there was a report that there was lewd behavior in her car. she goes on facebook and she posts this huge martyr statement of, you know, my rights were violated. it was so horrible. it was disgusting. and just this diatribe. all these civil right rights leaders get behind her. it's racial profiling, the way

black women are treated in society, blah blah blah. then theland the lapd releases the tape. the officer is totally civil, plays by the book. ma'am, there was a call about a disturbs. i'm sorry. i don't want to be doing this. at one point, he says to the boyfriend, look, if she just showed me her i.d., i'd be gone right now. she's like a spoiled brat. she actually says, a, do you know who i am? and b, my daddy wants to talk to you. she tries to put her daddy on the phone with the police officer. in that instance, her perception of it was that she was just going to be the next trayvon martin and was the greatest victim of all time. the cop was like, ma'am, i just need to see your i.d. and then i'll leave. so people -- these encounters between minorities and police are so fraught and so loaded at every instance, whereas i never had an encounter with police in my life.

a guy gives me a ticket and i leave. that's it. >> i get tense when i drive especially out of new york. i start to shake. i'm always afraid something is going to happen to my daughter or son, even though he's two years old, if any of us step out of line. it's scary. >> it's not an unreasonable expectation. i heard a story from my older sister. my mother, my oldest sister, belinda and me. my father wasn't really in the picture. he didn't live with us. he was killed and i was very young. i have a handful of memories of this guy. my sister was in the car with -- you know, actually my -- yeah, my sister was in the car with my father. the cops rolled up. this is washington, d.c. circa 1976. and the cops roll up. they decide they're just going full force. he was doing something they didn't like. and principally talking back to them. they grabbed him out of the car beat the crap out of him.

take him away and leave my seven-year-old sister in the car alone for hours. and so a random lady on the street rolls up and convinces my sister to roll the window down. are you okay? she remembers something about her address. and she's able to get home to my mother who is livid, obviously at the time. so yeah. your concern about your small child isn't totally misplaced. >> to protect and serve. that's what they do. >> yeah. yeah. >> and, you know not to belabor this, but you just wrought brought up another memory. when i was in labor with my daughter i was living in the bronx. we took a cab to lennox hill. the cops stopped us out of the blue. when they opened the door, they wanted to prove i was in labor, even though my stomach was out to here. my husband said, please don't touch her. the guy said, get the f out the car. and basically i had to fall on my knees, on my stomach, and beg

them to stop. without telling them, you know who i am? i'm a writer. they didn't care. they were white cops. they have their badges covered. and the license plate to their vehicle was turned over, turned down. and i was, you know, really young. so i really wasn't thinking about, okay, what next? i was thinking about now. so finally they took my bag, my overnight bag, and searched it for drugs and just threw it at my husband at the time and said, "have a nice night." when i got to the hospital i almost lost her, because of the stress. that is what we live in day in and day out. and it doesn't matter what the hell you do. it the don't matter if i was in "12 years a slave." doesn't matter. that is what i think people are getting fed up with. i think that people of all backgrounds and all races should be fed up with it, as our country and your grandchildren are becoming more and more

non-white. by 2043, it's over. >> we're still gonna have a lot of the money in 2043. >> is that a promise or a threat? >> it's just a fact. just a fact. >> we have like .111%. >> we have a lot of money, so it's going to take a while to move us out the door. >> with the voter i.d. laws especially. >> those were my ideas. the thing about the police is there is a phenomenal arrogance. it's a cultural problem. i have a friend who is a cop. he explained to me a lot about how it works. the nypd was notoriously corrupt, even up through the early 1990's. all the crack years. so many cops were on the payroll. and so -- but when bill bratton and ray deal came in, under -- kelly came in, under giuliani, as bad as they were for the

racial profiling, in terms of corruption, they went in, arrested the top corrupt people, marched them out, took away their badges, and said, anyone else does this, you're fired. of course, there's still some corruption in the police department. but that systemic deep corruption we remember from the 70's and 80's was largely rooted out, because the leadership said no tolerance. if the leadership of the nypd said tomorrow, anyone who commits a civil rights violation is suspended without pay for the first one and fired for the second one it would end rather quickly, because it's -- whether it's steroids in baseball or corruption in politics, when there's a cultural change at the top that says this is not tolerated, things do change, especially in a paramilitary organization like the nypd. >> yes. and -- >> yes, and -- >> where are my improv people at? thank you. i knew it. front and center, of course. and if it's paired with the training, because i think we

also expect -- like we make broad statements that are not backed up by our intrinsic behavior. and we're like, i don't see color! but we do. like i see it. you know, and i don't want to but i am trained by the same stimulus that has trained the rest of us. so i am also racist right? against me, because i've been conditioned. >> don't do that to yourself. >> i don't want to. i look in the mirror and i say, ah, you could be so much more handsome. but there's a level to the ptsd. there's like a mass therapy. we skipped some steps. we've got great words in america, really beautiful florid language about equality and the rights of men and women too now -- congratulations, ladies. from time to time, you get heard. but our nature and our socialization and our habits have been built up across generations. and the statement from the top of the police force saying this

won't be tolerated needs also to be supported with some psychological retraining efforts beyond, you know, conflict resolution diversity training. there's -- our heads are messed up, you know. we've been really psychologically violated all of us, whether you're the oppressor or the oppressed. and that's going to take some doing. i thought about this. i made a chart. i like charts. that you're not going to see. and i -- because i got frustrated with our own impatience. i think we expect so much in so little time in the great sweep of just american history. several hundred years of legal disenfranchisement segregation dehumanization, and socially acceptable versions of that, 300 years, 400 years. so we're 50, 60 years post that and we still have a deficit. we have a deficit of good will, of equality. so we've got to project out to like maybe by the year 2300 we

can talk about things like equality and equity. but it takes some real like time investment. time is part of the currency here. >> it does. i remember when i was researching my book, i came across -- i think it was in time magazine -- >> perfect segue, time magazine. >> about like why there were no black executives on the boards of fortune 500 companies, why there are no blacks in the boardroom. this is 1982. it's like, because we're 17 years out from the end of legal apartheid. that's why. when i think about sort of my own life in relation to america's racial history i'm actually not -- i'm just poor white trash. my great-grandparents were southern louisiana share croppers. there you go. my grandfather got to leave the farm and get a job and got some v.a. benefits after world war ii and, you know, we built up and built up.

and now i'm this, you know, upper middle class white guy in 2014 who kind of gets to do whatever i want. i'm not rich but it's kind of because i chose not to be rich because i chose to do something that doesn't pay me any money. but i could have chosen to make money. but that process start to finish, was about 80 years. so if it takes 80 years to go from share cropping to upper middle class total freedom and opportunity and privilege as some people would say, it takes 80 years if you're a white man. >> yes. >> so, you know, we're only like you say, 50 years out from the end of legal apartheid. where should we be? and since -- my dad was also incredibly lucky and we worked hard and did everything right. since 1968, plaque black people have been kind of unlucky. >> i think that non-white people

in america should do what they do in the caribbean, what 14 nations do, which is getting together, having conversations and suing their former colonizers. [laughter] and even though we all know that nobody is going to win and the good that comes out of it is conversation and dialogue. when i actually read in the papers that they were talking about ptsd, i just couldn't believe it because i hadn't seen, before i said it so brilliantly, that ptsd was something that we carry in our memory as people regardless of what color we are, who are new americans. and i also think that because especially in new york city, we're so die diverse -- i wish there was another word -- >> awesome? >> no. if there's any word that can take the place of diversity, please tweet it to me. but anyway, we are so -- >> colorful. >> colorful and transnational

and multicultural, that we should be looking at our community as larger than just north america. we should be looking at ourselves as americans. if you want to look at yourselves as americans and you're latino and you feel like public enemy number 1, for example, pat yourselves on the back because america started in the east of espanola. it was the first quote successful -- however you want to define that -- european settlement, where there was indigenous american slavery. so that's why we're so racially ambiguous, if you will. we have to start looking at ourselves, i think, not only as an insular community, start seeing what other people are doing and start that dialogue. i think in numbers we're more powerful. was that a little -- i hate -- sorry, c-span. >> for those of you who wrote things down on cards, if you could send them to the aisles,

we have a short -- >> peacefully. we have military outside. >> send them in. we'll collect them. bring them up here and try to dive into some of what you've been asking. lost track of time on that one. i don't want to talk about taylor swift. >> okay. that's too easy. too easy. >> so -- no. that's the brooklyn historical society tweeting. is steph here? yes? so you tweeted "i feel what's missing from the national race conversation is the traumatic paranoia experienced by the offender and the offended." thank you. we touched on that a little bit. but i appreciate you tweeting that in, because also, like the idea of chasing victimness and especially on the conservative side, it's like, yeah, but not in the way you think, like offenders are also victims of

the system. did you, in your book, did you come across any of this idea? >> to call white people victims is, to me, ridiculous. >> but what is the -- >> what i think -- i think we are all products of the same system. therefore, we are damaged in different ways. for people of color, there's this ptsd, this feeling of, you know inferiority and everything else. to be white and a product of that society, it's kind of like growing next to a lead paint factory. you're a little dense slow. and, you know -- it's amazing to me, because i've now sort of gone through the looking glass. i'm no expert about race, but i know what i don't know and i sort of know a few things. i was listening to this podcast and very intelligent mart political comment -- smart

political commentator. one of them mentioned she had read an editorial by a black film maker that there was this renaissance of black t.v. with the hughes brothers and that it diesdied off and turned into the upn and friends and seinfeld. it's only now with the return of films like "dear white people" that black people are having a cultural voice again. and they were totally shocked by this. they were like, i can't believe that. is that true? >> and then you said, data! >> and i was like -- i don't fault them for that, because four years ago, i would have said the same thing. but having been in media and for doing my book, i understand it. i see it. but i was like, wow. you don't see that? like how can you not see that? but they don't. and like with the -- it was a

parody in the dear white people thing. white people having these black-faced ghetto parties. and black people are on twitter they're deliberately trying to defend us. and it's like no, they really are that stupid. they really are. >> actually don't know better. >> and i know, because they're my people and i come from that place -- [laughter] >> can we just send you to talk to them? you'll be the ambassador of reasonableness and decency? >> and there's a fear of approaching this issue. like i love my wife. she's a lovely person. >> but? >> but -- >> be very careful! >> it got to be funny, because i wrote a book that was inspired by the fact that obama -- that we had a black president but i didn't actually know any black people. i was like well, that's weird. we've accepted a black president but i don't know any black people and my friends don't know

any black people. what's up with that? everywhere i would go, i would say i'm writing a book about why i don't know any black people. that would make people very uncomfortable and it would start a conversation. my wife, whenever she would introduce me at parties, she was like my husband is tanner colby. he's writing a book about racial integration. she would never say i'm writing a book about i don't know any black people. she was nervous about being that forthright and dutching dumping it out there. i single out many i wife, but all my friends do that. they've read my book. but whenever it comes there turn to talk about what they like, they clench up and have a difficult time with it. what they don't realize or what white people in general don't realize is the first phase of dealing with race, you either get -- you go one of two days. you either become bill o'reilly and become very defensive, what are they asking for?

they just need to shut up. you either get in that angry defensive mode or you get into the hard-core i've got my white privilege and complain about being white how terrible it is. so it's really kind of disingenuous. and so white people don't approach it, because they don't want to go there because it's a very uncomfortable place to be either with the anger and denial or with the guilt. what they don't understand is if you go deep and long enough, you get through that and you get to the other side. and talking about racism is like talking about whether or not you like this beer. and you get comfortable with it. all that white guilt and anxiety, it's gone. and it's so -- >> is that the white promise land? >> i think it is. >> can i get a -- >> i have been to the promised land, white people! it's going to be okay! [laughter] >> honestly, when you -- >> ha ha ha! >> the white promised land, only

blacks exist, because i'm seeing the -- i saw "dear white people." i loved it. i especially loved your beautiful face on there. it was amazing. you were like the hottest thing in there. but there were just -- and i wrote it down -- three mentions of latinos in passing. and so many of the experiences that i saw being played out from both sides, were things that i really identified with. i just felt like inadvisable kind of sort of but not really. >> we're so obsessed with each other, we forget about you. >> yes. we have to have a conversation. i thought about barack obama, becoming president. i thought it was going to open a dialogue that wasn't so binary. i remember when he ruz running and people -- he was running people would stop me and say, we gotta get him in, right? >> i was like, yeah, yeah. yeah. and my daughter was like who is that white lady talking to you? i was excited, because i thought we were going to start having these conversations. but we haven't.

it's like being -- everything is just black and white. and that's not how this world works. we're living in gray. the promised land is gray, gray. >> well, it's both. >> quote of the night i'm calling it. >> in terms of the racial dynamic, you're absolutely right. there is totally a multiethic dynamic, all along the spectrum of race that needs to be dealt with. it is also true that baratunde and i have shit to settle that doesn't involve -- >> it does involve -- >> so -- that is why it takes such primacy. it shouldn't be a binary conversation. but black and white defines the continuum, rightly or wrongly along which the rest of the conversation takes place. >> but latinos, being latinos are black and white. so you're staring at the solution. but you guys are like pretending like you don't see anything. [applause] >> thank you for being here, raquel cepeda. >> thank you for having me.

thank you, thank you, thank you. >> so what i -- we have a pile of beautiful and somewhat illegible thoughts here. >> ha ha! >> to the twitter plan. this is a question that -- no names on these, so pollings for the lack of -- polings for the lack of citations. do you think there's an overall anxiety about the change in demographics? i ask because rules are changing so fast to allow certain powers to amass so much influence that they don't care anymore. so you mentioned the demographic 2040 2043. somewhere. by 2060 safe to say we'll have some changes here. but also the gloacial the goacial global nature of shifting power. what's the anxiety raquel? >> we should be anxious, because we're so busy sending our kids to war, we're falling behind

what everybody else is doing. i think scandinavia is going to rule the world. >> i'm going to call you on that one. >> i think so, because they're investing in their children, putting in a lot of money. they're into -- their vikings. >> ha ha! >> it's that d.n.a. it's that d.n.a. they're spending a lot of money on technology, schools. the crime rates are low. but maybe it's because people have born -- >> i don't think it's going to be scandinavia. i think they're too small. it's a wrap. but i do think -- i agree with you on us wasting time. whether it's sending our kids off to war or making a binary conversation -- >> it's our inability to deal with our internal demographic problems that leaves us vulnerable to the challenges without. >> because other people are getting it together. we are building -- like we need immigration. we need it to stay young.

technically. america will be like italy. italy is physically old. their population. the young people can't support the young people, because they stopped having sex. the pyramid is all inverted over there. they've got super anti-foreigner. they have no new blood, no new ideas coming in. what sustained the u.s. through all of this drama is that by force or by lure, people kept showing up. >> right. >> and now we're threatening that, you know. i think with respect to what's happening around the world, we're risking sending amazing talent and amazing ideas away, saying, your brilliance isn't welcome here, because we have this short view that we have to maintain some idea of what america is, even if it's just black and white and doesn't include you in that. >> my read on where we're going to be in 20042 is -- 2042 is i don't think it's going to go the way people think it's going to go. think about it. in 2042, white people will only

be half. that's a still a lot of white people. >> but we can contain them. >> right. >> we'll build more suburbs. >> no, because white people will still have a whole lot of money. all the valuable downtown real estate, white people own all of it. and you also have -- so white people are only going to be 50%. but what percentage of mixed race and minority people are going to be assimilated in the middle class and more identifying with the power-holding majority than minority populations today? i think the whiteness is going to split in two. two kinds of white people. one, the kind of old school white people who really hang everything on being white and are scared and nervous and retreating further and further into iowa and west virginia. and they can't -- >> the mountains. >> yes. they're going to go to the mountains and be hill people. then you have other white people, like myself, who are like whatever. whatever, you know. i don't see integration as any

kind of threat. if my son marries anyone of a different race, i don't really care because i'm already in the upper middle class. this is true. working class white people are -- upper middle class are more tolerating, because you can't really threaten us. we're going to be okay. i know my kids are going to have access to the social and cultural and financial capital to remain in power regardless of how many other people they associate with. >> but you're assuming that this imbalance can persist for another 30 years. and i think at some point, the system itself breaks, and -- >> it is going to break. that's what i'm saying. >> you're going to have a break which is you have one portion of white people who are going to break off and go off to idaho and be lonely and said. and you're going to have one group that's going to partner with the mar assimilated and consider the more simulated and

educated, to be a beige majority. and then you're going to have a faction of every immigrant group who doesn't want to assimilate and they're going to be in the corner being angry that they don't have access. beige is going to be the new white, is what i'm saying. >> ah, i don't know. >> you don't know? >> we should move on. >> should we keep it going? >> it's up to you. >> i don't necessarily agree with that, even though if race is a social construct, maybe even before, let's say latinos would say -- i guess the next white man is the black man. you're talking about assimilation. out of all the groups that are immigrants, we're probably -- what's happening is that immigrant groups are selectively acultureating.

they're taking what they like about the old country and what they like about being american and fusing that together. so there's no such thing really as assimilating. to what? we have to redefine all of that. >> it's the gold standard of assimilation. it's not going to be that anymore. but there are still a lot of white people with a lot of money and a lot of job openings. to the extent that you want access to those industries and you have to conform a little bit that way, even if you don't go as far back as 50 years ago where they angloizeed their names -- >> we'll move forward. we got this on twitter. is jazz toilet in the house? [laughter] >> riffing on the toilet. how do i have a meaningful conversation about race with a

white liberal friend with a black friend who has -- do you want to clarify that? >> a white liberal. like, oh i have a black best friend. >> so they think that gives them license to be ignorant, like a racism insurance card? >> it's like, i can't have any kind of meaningful conversation with them. >> because they lean back on that friend as an excuse? >> or just like, oh, i already know about it. >> they think they know everything, because they have one person in their lives. is that it? >> just tell him a, never to say that. and b, that it's just not true. i mean, i don't know your particular friend -- >> i don't mean my particular friend. just -- >> is it you? [laughter] >> ha ha! >> that's an amazing costume! >> i just think, you know, like

white liberals who are like, oh, i already know about all this. you know, i took ethnic studies. i read all the articles. we don't need to talk about this, because i already know. >> so the thing -- >> so there's no conversation. >> the things that pop into my head, and it's based on no study. fake science coming at you, real strong. shift the category. would this person say that about north carolina versus south carolina? would they say this about scandinavia versus norway? would they say this about baseball versus hockey? you can know one thing and somehow make it present to them that that doesn't mean they know everything. like i had a hot dog and i know how hot dogs taste. i've eaten chile, so i know how mexican food tastes. that doesn't follow. you're like this is true times a thousand of that, because

they're talking about human beings, and there's no box that categorizes all human beings. like if they know one homosexual person do they think i know all gay people? if they know one woman, do they think they know all woman? remind them there's uniqueness and diversity. there's a spectrum everything. you can't know one thing and think you know everything. that's my fake science gut. >> so peter peter holden. i love your tweet. instead of diverse, how about... >> proposal! >> i like it! >> amalgamagical. >> ha ha! >> that is awesome! >> amalgamagical? it's a mouthful. but it has -- i see sparkles. i see a rainbow with sparkles. it sounds like -- >> it's like the promised land.

>> amalgamagical. thank you so much for that. yeah. okay. good. >> is there a question there? >> no. we're just giving some love. we will use for the balance of the evening, we will use amalgamagical in lieu of diversity. we can't speak beyond that. >> so this is a question of us about y'all. is the race, gender and age diversity or lack thereof in this audience what you would expect, concerning, or in the way of real progress? so what do we think of you people? >> hmm. >> and when i say "you people" -- >> i'm really impressed by those people, because i was expecting it to be um, a little bit more like -- okay. like girls on hbo. ha ha! >> she was just in brooklyn. >> no, no, no. >> she has expectations of brooklyn. >> i would say my conversation with raquel a couple weeksing

ago, and we were talking about brooklyn. she used to live in brooklyn. she's like, yeah, i just got tired of brooklyn. i had to leave. it was getting too white. >> i said, when did you leave? she said 1997. >> it was actually 1996. but i'm in brooklyn heights. but i was expecting honestly, like older white, not cool, not hip. i'm seeing older white faces but with a lot of hip outfits. so please stay! and a little less um, amalgamagical than what i'm saying because of where brooklyn has gone. >> if you are -- if you identify as male, raise your hand. all right. hands down. if you identify as female, raise your hand. ladies night apparently. you got a discount, right? it was tuesday night at brooklyn

historical society. wednesday night at brooklyn historical society. if you identify as neither male nor female and you want to raise your hand. all right. so much more -- i don't know. it's like 3/5 female by my fake math. and then -- i didn't have expectations to directly answer this. i remember looking around the corner from the green room over there, the closet, and we -- [laughter] i just thought, wow! like there's a range of hair styles. really! >> i will just say this. it is better than giving a talk about race in vermont which i've done. there's a distinct phenom phenomenon. this is much better than being a white guy standing at a podium, explaining how racism works. but when i have done this, i

have a good mixed awed audience. but if it's a majority white audience and there's like three black people there and the black people just aren't feeling it, then none of the white people will have permission to enjoy themselves at all. everyone will just sit there like this. and it's horrible. it's like i've never died as a stand-up comedian, but i imagine that's what it feels like. >> i don't know why you're looking at me when you say that. i've read about this, not doing well as a comic. i don't know what that's like. i've seen it on wikipedia the first time. that was a painful, tragic experience. >> i give this audience a thumbs up. >> yeah. i give you two. um, i feel like we're not talking about intersectional oppression. >> hmm. >> all right. >> i feel like somebody busted out some fans.

>> well! preach! >> so a it's it's a two-part question. intersectional oppression. why have we failed? to overlay these issues. >> you want to define "intersectional"? >> it's the idea that there is no single -- fake science coming at you not the wikipedia definition but the intuitive definition, that race, gender, sexual orientation, these things are inseparable and they play out in different ways depending on where you are in those spaces. so you can't have a solo conversation about race if you don't take gender into account, for example. so how does the intersection of these things play out? >> i think we did talk about black male, brown male bodies. and -- >> i've only been doing this for like an hour. >> and we talked about privilege and being born white.

i'm presuming if you're born you're either a woman, a male or somewhere in between. i think we did, but maybe we're guilty of not going in-depth. i don't know. >> i also feel like this is, you, you know -- it's very difficult to have these conversations because you can never please -- this is such a broad topic. there are so many different opinions. and there are so many intersections of this subgroup or that, that you can never please everyone. and part of it -- i think part of the reason people shy away from these conversations is people -- you know, i wrote a 2,000 word article about a subject. and i got barraged about tweets you didn't talk about this, or that. it was 2,000 words. i picked one thing i to talk about, and i didn't talk about the other things so... >> all right. we're going to talk about white

people. this is a two-page comment. someone actually wrote "page 1". [laughter] they put a page count. >> you got that on a card rather than a monologue. >> then they scratched out of page 2. soams to me that white people, unless they're surrounded by people of color, do not realize how much whiteness is not talked about when they're not around. i wonder how important it is to make the significance of whiteness more public. ie, let's not be afraid to talk about whiteness in mixed company. hope that makes sense. thanks. it just jumped off the page. hope you don't mind my interpretiveness. so yeah. i mean, you spoke out, raquel very clearly about feeling inadvisable in this black-white conversation but there's also another line that's drawn

between the people of color conversation and whatever white people do. and like, what is that? and i guess, instead of asking questions, i'll throw out my own thoughts. i think we need to talk about whiteness. maybe we don't call it privilege. maybe you have a problem with that word. but it allows us an escape hatch to walk through the world as if color doesn't matter. and on my show recently the person did the whiteness project, this documentary film project in buffalo, new york. they sat a bunch of white people down in front of cameras and just let them think out loud. and there were some thoughts there. there were some definite thoughts. a lot of resentment, why are we doing all these things for the black people. the resentment comes out very clearly, intersecting with class heavily, especially in a city like buffalo. so i would love to in some ways, not pass the baton but share the baton a little bit

more on what a race conversation is. that's part of why you're here is because you did some of this work solo for yourself. >> what i found is the power of white -- i think white supremacists understand whiteness the least, because -- >> and they understand grammar the least and -- >> and history and math and -- but like white supremacists are these people who bought into the promise of whiteness, that there's this pure white race that's been endowed with all the superiority of the other races which is all nonsense. but they bank everything on the purity of the white race and keeping the white race speur pure from all contamination. i don't think that's actually where the power of whiteness comes from. the power comes from the fact that it can mean anything. and i think i saw a brag once --

if you look at the definition of whiteness, versus what this definition is today, it's completely changed. that is sort of why i think what i do about the year 2042, beige being the new white, whiteness will be whatever it needs to be to stay right where it is. and that is the enduring underlying power of that idea. it's a horrible idea, a bad idea. communism is dying. white freedom supremacy just marches on year after year. it's so infinitely flexible that it can be anything. in the french revolution, you had 40 families who had all the money. you said, that's the aristocracy. then we killed them all and we have a new regime. well, white people are the ruling class this america. who is white people? it's whoever we say it is. okay. how are you going to behead that

aristocracy? it just mutates one year to the next. now it includes catholics. now it includes jews. if we need to kick out some white trash whiteness will do that -- >> i apologize to the people. go ahead. >> i'm going to come at it from a transnational space. i visited the dominican republic often, where whiteness and blackness, if you look at the whole island, is defined really differently than what we even think it's defined as. if you listen to gates, he's leading you down the wrong path. he looks at racism in the dominican republic through a white supremacist lens. so, for example, i ran into a doctor dentist, who typically looks like a shorter version of michael jordan. one of my mentors said, you know that guy right there? i was like, yeah, he's considered white here. it's almost like in brazil, if

you look at pele, the soccer player. he bought his way in. he became white. and some people stopped referring to him as being black. in the dominican republic, it's that way. there's areas in -- also in haiti, where the ruling class there is considered white. and that ruling class is very close to the ruling class in the dominican republic. so they look at basically power race. what you look like has nothing to do with it. it's like how much power and money you have. i look at the caribbean and i look at where america started when i want to gauge where we're going here in north america. maybe it's another way of saying what you were saying whiteness blackness is fluid. >> and i don't know if i wonder or i just simply hope for it

instead, the perseverance of whiteness. i still feel like that's temporary. i want it to be temporary, for sure. i'm also looking at people who are so bored with the program they have to leave. have a great night! i'm just kidding. i know you gotta go. you talk about transnational and someone mentioned india and china. like china in particular, like there are things that are going to change in such dramatic ways that i think are happening audz of even the -- outside of even the bubble of this conversation. the power of culture as we've seen, american culture, been riding on black culture for so long yet still within a white power structure, all these things like hip-hop are being sold as american all around the world. but what happens when the internet is mostly in mandarin? what happens culturally when the world power keeps shifting away

from traditional -- >> china is huge. and it's going to challenge us in huge economic ways. a friend of mine is a linguist. the interesting thing about english, whiteness and english rose up in the world contemporaneously. the interesting thing about english, english sort of took over the world at a veried a very advantageous moment. english came along with the typewriter with the internet, with the computer and all these forms of technology. english has the advantage of being infinitely flexible. the frerchl french are very rigid with their language. we put omg in the dictionary. english is a language that can expand infinitely to be, you know, whatever it needs to be, whereas mandarin and chinese are very inaccessible, very

difficult. they're trying to change that. they're trying to make mandarin easier so it can be more of an international language. and to that extent, is whiteness going to be like english, where it will just continue to mutate and expand and adapt? like a virus. i don't know. but -- and that's not to advocate for whiteness. i'm just trying to predict what whiteness is going to do. >> when you're talking about language, you're talking about american english or -- >> well, that's my point exactly, is that there's british english, american english international, you know, spanglish forms of english. it can mutate. you can spell honor in like three different ways. >> there's more in the pile. we don't have a plan exactly. but we want to save room for -- let's do the mic thing. let's hear some of your voices

too. thank you so much. why don't you start where you are. this brother with the hat and scarf -- are you cold? very zipped up. very tight. let it go. let it go. >> hi. >> hi. >> this is great. yeah. so i just want to maybe expand on why you wouldn't think that intersectionality -- i asked that question and the second question, about privilege, which i won't go into. but if we could maybe talk about why you wouldn't think it's important to maybe have this be a really like intersectional conversation? only because, going back to what you had mentioned about how like race is a social construct, why not like include all other social constructs that equally effect our perception and our projection of what is race?

so if you could just expand on that. >> i'll give you a quick answer. ferguson was in the news. yeah. that's just -- we picked that. >> yeah. it wasn't -- >> it wasn't intentional. >> it was not a conscious effort. i think, in some ways, probably for most of us, this concept of intersectionality is baked in. it's not like we're going to have an intersectional conversation about race. we just kind of open sourced it up. to give you a quick background, to why this is even happening -- >> oh! >> words were said and printed in books. and so i wrote this book, "how to be black." i met tanner because of that book. he wrote "some of my best friends are black." i was asked to blush it. i said, why would i do that? what would a dude named tanner know about race? turns out there were a few things worth sharing. so we wrote these books.

we kind of blurbed. did a live event. we thought about going on tour together. we couldn't do that, because it takes a lot of work. but we did do one live event almost exactly a year ago, in manhattan. you're a much better minority. and we called it our national conversation about the conversation about race. me and tanner and soledad o'brien. we were experimenting with this format. can we talk to each other and to a group? raquel and i had met on cnn many years ago, with one of her favorite people, don lemmon, to talk about obama and race stuff. and we wanted to continue this conversation and expand it. so that it actually isn't just black and white. so we reached out to raquel. we said, are you down? we had a lot of lunches and we're honing in on this event. so this came out of an attempt to expand the conversation we were each having or expand out of the pigeonholing that we have been put into to like "represent your people."

talk about what latinos think about. immigration. and then not want to hear when you want to talk about something else, as an example. this was like the second iteration of that live event. there is no conscious effort to like avoid intersectionality. but i think we're accepting that it is necessarily a part of the context of the discussion. but we all have like "race" in the titles of our work and have been called upon to explore race as like a primary variable, you know, in identity. is that -- do you want to add something? >> we wanted to talk about the podcast and -- >> oh, yeah. we're trying to do a podcast. we were like oh, this can be like a testing. do we fight all the time and no one wants to hear that? >> we're going to actually bark at each other the entire time. >> shirt man with the hat. >> hello? >> i wrote the first question about the anxiety. the reason why i put that

question together in a sense is i'm just thinking that it seems like, you know, we talked about obama and the election. what brought me to that was we came together. we elected. but it's the process that we took to elect president obama as far as little donations. it seemed like the whole community got together. and as soon as he came into the white house, citizens united, the supreme court just took that power away from the regular american. you know, to make the smaller richricher, foreign donor, all that type of stuff, come into politics and really just -- really rewrite the direction where america is going. so i just want you to -- because we're talking about race. but i think there's a lot going on that is really taking away our entire definition of what being american actually is.

>> here -- here. i don't think -- i think it got ratcheted up after president obama's election. i think that rewrite has been ongoing from the deploreeous statements -- glorious statements in the founding documents which were never intended for many in this room to benefit from. american democracy has been like a really good sham. it lured a lot of people here, a lot of resource ex tractors, like yo! i can get mine and keep it? that sounds good. let's talk about equality a little bit. the promise has never been matched by the reality. we've tried to get closer. i think the hyperreaction to the president, i underestimate it. i'll admit that right here. i got all caught up. i was knocking on doors in texas, in virginia, in pennsylvania. i was like, yes! open-source democracy! we're writing this campaign. we're going to right the rules! and just got slammed in the face with the reality, that the sport doesn't get played down here.

the donors were always there. the lobbyists were always there. the fear of people who have had power and the very concerted and collaborative decision to make sure that whatever this president said was never going to happen, like it was just never gonna happen. so much so that we heard them say that out loud right? we're gonna stymie everything we're for. we're not for, if you put the word obama in front of it. that's what the whole political party did, about a heritage foundation or health care. mitt romney said, start nuclear proliferation treaties. everything. they're like, no, we don't believe in that shit anymore. then the way the electoral system the dissituation of voting, the impatience, lack of persistence that a lot of us have for the midterms. the follow through is not there. we showed up for the big game but not the scrimmages in

between, which determines how your team really does. >> and i don't know that we really came together to elect obama. the beauty of obama's campaign, as far as getting himself elected, it was all hope and change, and yes, we can. so obama ran and -- >> and also, not bush. >> and also not bush. not bush. >> please not again. >> didn't vote for the iraq war. yeah. and not palin. but barack obama presented himself as hope and change. every single person could fill that vessel with whatever they aspired to. that was part of my inspiration writing the book. i was like, there are a lot of white people supporting obama, a lot of plaque people, a lot of -- black people, a lot of hispanic people. but we're all doing it in different zip codes. he's a galvanizing figure and we all saw what we wanted to through him. and i think that was very deliberate. his campaign was marketing branding brilliance, from day one. that's not to say he's not a man of substance because i think he is, but that campaign was

genius, from start to finish, as a phenomenon. and so he's almost an anomaly in the system. there's a study that came out that america is no longer a functional democracy. we are an olgarki. the interests of the top 5% are followed all of the time. when your interests coincide with the top 5%, you're like democracy is being responsive, when actually it's not. you just happen to free with agree with the top 5% on that issue. but we are no longer in that sense a functioning democracy until you get the money out of politics and everything else. >> hurray! >> and i was cautiously optimistic about it from the beginning. he was making a lot of lofty promises about immigration that i just knew he was not going to follow through on. the loftier they got, i was not

kind of believing. even though i voted him i could not live in a country where palin and mccain were running it. so i voted for him. but i think i kind of -- i don't know. i wish -- i think hillary clinton could have been a great president as well. one thing that she had, that she has, that she's shown us he has that he hasn't to my lament, is balls. or as palin would say conejos. bush everybody else, they want against what -- bush went against what the democrats wanted. he was like, whatever. i'll just take the hit. i don't care what happens. i'm going to stand for mine. whatever. obama hasn't done that. he's been kind of like so, what? >> has he done as much as he can? >> well, you shouldn't be making like lofty freakin' promises, then be like i can't do

anything without congress. you knew you were going to be fighting an uphill battle the whole time. >> i think he was shocked. >> i think because, look, this is purple merck, america right? this is 2004. no red america, no blue america. we're all purple, like the guy on pbs. and he believed it. he came into this office. the first thing he did was say, how can i work with you? they were like go fuck yourself. he leuz was like, whoa, whoa, whoa! i'm the president! they yelled at him, calling him a liar. there was a level of anger disrespect totally unprecedented. even bill clinton, accused of murdering his friend, didn't deal with some of the things that president obama has. i think he just got the extra dirt, because he's the first. and they're like gonna test him and remind him that there's only so far you can go without us. >> right.

>> where is the mic? oh good. >> so thank you for this panel. so as a millennial, i feel like, for me what's really important about the conversation about race is justice because race is one of the biggest markers for how justice is delivered, whether it's in the criminal justice system or education or health, across the board. i like that you touched upon the 1% and how 96.1% of the 1% is white. and among the 5%, 88% of that is white. and, you know, the inadvisable like a fifth of us are not even advisablevisible in this conversation. but you include huge numbers of different types of asian-americans that are running many companies that decide futures of black and brown people and native people. and the role of white supremacy on their comeunts as well as -- communities as well as now

how do we complexity by this conversation to really shift? thinking about solutions and moving forward because that is what my generation really cares about. we are tired of being beaten down and being told we can't do anything at bout it -- about it. there is something wrong with us. >> the interesting thing -- >> thank you. [applause] there are two that things going on here. there is an incredibly complex racial diversity reality. when social programs were put in place to address the ills of slavery and jim crow for a long time, that was seen as programs or