college campuses foster racist environments with telecommunications entrepreneur kmele foster and lawrence ross, the author of "blackballed: the black and white politics of race on america's campuses." the sojo forum in new york city hosted this event. gene: welcome to the soho forum that features topics of special interests to libertarians and aims to enhance social and professional ties within new york's libertarian community. we're partnered with reason magazine presenting these debates and you can catch audio of all of our events on the podcast which you'll find in the itunes store. i'd like to thank the smith family foundation for making this series possible. i'm gene epstein, economics and books editor at barron's magazine and moderator. for more information and to buy tickets to our future debates, to our website at

thesohoforum.org. this is an oxford style debate whether they vote for, against of the resolution and then again after the debate is over. today's resolution is as follows -- america's colleges, that makes them a hostile space for african-american students. defending the resolution to my right we have lawrence ross, author of "blackballed: the black and white politics of race on america's campuses." lawrence will be doing book igning and sales of his book "blackballed" after the debate. you'll find lawrence over at that tible signing books and response to any questions you put to him after the debate. arguing for the negative we have kmele foster, a telecommunications entrepreneur and a host and co-host of the

libertarian podcast, the fifth column. [applause] fifth column fans. commoip oh. gene: dominating. dominating. so now we'll close the initial voting and the debate can begin. lawrence ross, you have 15 minutes to defend the proposition "america's colleges have fostered a racist environment that makes them a hostile space for african-american students." take it away, lawrence. awrence: there will never be a nigger s.a.e. how many have you heard that song before? how many have you thought lost my minds? that song was sung by the chapter of the university of

oklahoma and was taught by members in the midwest. everyone was shobblingd when they saw this video and it went on and went viral. even fox news -- fox news thought to them self, yeah, this might be a little racist. because we americans thinks racism is an extraordinarily long series of unfortunate events that are isolated, what we did not know this was not the first time a white fraternity has sung about murdering african-americans. no one had really connected the dots and that's kind of like why i'm here. n 1963, one in long beach sang a song similar. it said bye, bye, black boy. you ought to be cool or we will bomb your school. they were talking about the bombing in birmingham, alabama, where four little black girls died. is this a coincidence? no, this is not a coincidence. this is the type of racism you

see on a regular basis you see on average campuses. the research was between 350 to 500 racist incidents on college campuses that were reported. this is just the reported. now, what type of campus racism incidents are we talking about? what are the ones we normally see? well, do you want a white students and white fraternities and sororities dressing up in black faces on martin luther king day? all the time. every particular year you want to have people dressed up in bloods and crips trying to mimic quote-unquote african-americans? happens all the time. you want to see white students dress -- eating watermelon and fried chicken and declaring they're celebrating black heritage? happens every single year. and do you want to see the word nigger sprayed every year? eastern michigan. it happened to suny brockport a couple months ago. bananas to black students?

american university, it happened twice one year. happened a couple months ago. a white guy put a gorilla mask n his face and gave bananas to members of black lives matter. i forgot about the confederate flags and nooses. associated with fraternities like kappa sigma, kappa alpha, almost always happen on a regular basis. sometimes it's part of organized chapter events and we see this in social media but it goes back to the 1940's, 1950's, 1960's. get it out of your head that campus racism is a new event. i saw in terms of my research, i saw campus racism issues in newspapers, in archives and yearbooks, every particular place you can pretty much find it but one of the problems is that when we talk about campus racism and what we tend to do we want to say racism on

college campuses wherever the other is. if we want to talk about, well, campus racism is only in the south because university of alabama in particular, which does have its own racism issues, that is an easy place to stick it. it happens in yale, berkeley, whether it's a small college or private college or state college, it happens in every particular place. here's the problem. i am not going to get into listing every single racist event that occurs during this 15 minutes. the one problem that black people have in terms of trying to talk about racism is that quantifying racism by just simply doing numbers will never work because i'm pretty sure some of you if i said 100 different incidents, somebody in the audience will say it's not 150 and i need 105 to be sure racism occurred on these campuses. that's a game whack a mole that i don't want to play. what i do want to talk about specifically is what are

students specifically trying to do when they come on those campuses and what happens to them? these college students are coming -- these black students are coming on these campuses specifically to get an education and what is happening is the university itself and the -- we talk about in terms of college universities is creating a hostile environment which gets us to the resolution. now, i want to reread the resolution because i want to do a little breakdown. america has fostered a racist environment. i do have a quibble with the resolution, gene. you helped me abroff it. we use racist as an adjective for the noun environment. as though the environment is neutral, as though it's racist free, does not contain racism. these are people on the outside creating a racist environment. i will argue for the affirmative but i don't believe that. the environment is as part of america as any other place so therefore we should not make the assumption that the environment itself is nonracist.

we just shouldn't. america does not have any sense of a history that tells us we have nonracist or racialized environments. but, you know, this kind of goes back to one of the earliest studies done by african-american sociologist w.b. dubois who recognized an issue with colleges being part of america and he did a 1909 study asked a racial climate study. what is the racial climate on your college campus? some, they were restricted, because african-americans are not allowed on their campuses, there was no survey there. there were ones who said we treat the african-american students exactly like the white students and others were like never bring them on our campus because we can't actually deal with their safety. but it's easy for us when we talk about, you know, college campuses. college campuses is what i call educational disney land. we think of them being utopia places.

free speech land over there, critical thinking land over there, drunk land over there but nobody remembers it. we even talk about being ivory towers. it's a state of privilege seclusion, separation from the facts and practicalities of the world. college campuses are not separate from the real world and not separate from the american society. and how do we define colleges and universities? a lot of times when i have these discussions we talk about colleges being some kind of awful over here, institutional or the administration. college universities are composed of a number of elements. the students, faculty, administration, yes. fraternities, sororities, buildings. all of those work together. the problem is if you have a racist virme requirement you by nature have a hostile space. i have yet to go on a college campus where people say the environment is racist but it's also warm and inviting. it doesn't happen like that. it's not like that. also you have to also remember the hostility is not really just a quantifyable fact.

the quantifiable fact is we have these racist incidents. it's without dispute. it's also a qual football, a qualifyable fact in terms of how black students feel when they get on campus. do they feel welcomed when they get on a campus? and that's not something that other people say they must feel welcome or they need to overcome some racist hurdle to say i feel welcomed on this campus. it's the responsibility of the campus to provide them with an atmosphere that allows them to get an education without the hurdle of racism. but one of the things we also want to talk about is we can't talk about racism without getting specifically to the root of it which, of course, is white supremacy. i saw some faces scruverages up and that's my bad -- scrunches up and that's my bad. i was going to give you a igger warning and before i say white supremie. forget the david dukes of the world. i am not talking about the cliche. i am talking about whiteness

being the -- whiteness being the default normal and blackness being the other. whiteness being the fully human and blackness being not human. that's where you get the denegation of black students as looking at black students not being fully human. let's take some of the low-hanging fruits even if you don't believe that look at what african-american students have to deal with when they walk on campuses. georgetown just had to apologized after sold 222 enslaved african-americans. harvard law had the royal family, a slave holding family who burned alive 100 africans in order to put down a slave rebellion. clemson, which i do love these people. it's located on the j.c. calhoun plantation that is -- which was one of the leading slave riyadh vow indicates which also hosts the tillman hall who advocated for the lynching of thousands of

african-americans. which is about 500 yards from the strom thurman building which is the anti-civil rights senator who was one of the longest senators in the senate -- senate history. i joke to them the only thing they did not have was the k.k.k. quad. two weeks ago they actually did have the k.k.k. to come distribute fliers. that's the atmospheres you have on multiple campuses around the country. that's some of the history you have in terms of how african-americans see themselves on these campuses. a lot of times these aren't historical relics for african-american students. these are realities and we always talk about the fact that no one would ask african-american students to go over this if they looked at themselves -- looked at them as being fully human. but why specifically college campuses? it doesn't really happened. i studied it. it doesn't happen on high school or elementary campuses. the reason why african-american students are particularly attacked is colleges are transformational and it's a

battlefield of whether or not you are going to uphold white supremie or whether you'll transform it in society. therefore the presence of african-american students on college campuses are a direct threat and that's when people decide to attack that threat. one of the other reasons is they come on college campuses completely segregated. african-american students and white students do not go to the same schools and do not live in the same neighborhoods. 74% of african-americans go to a segregated school but 32% go to a segregated k-12 school before they go to college and 80% or so for white students coming to college. in spite of all that, 2016 baylor study said in terms of how white students looked at african-american students, they said they did not try hard enough on college campuses despite the -- despite how hard it was to get to campus. one of the problems if you do not see an african-american student as a fully human person you find that person easy to

denigrate or you will not see that person as a college student. at l.s.u. they had an epidemic of so many bhithe white students calling the l.s.u. police department and saying they had an african-american male that they needed to investigate, that the police have to call -- excuse me -- had to do an open letter and tell the student body to stop sending the police talking to african-american men who were just simply coming from the library. at col gait a woman was talking about the fact she walked around with a white woman just -- white student walked around with a metal sword and talked about the fact a year before no one stopped her and a young african-american black student walked around with a glue gun for his art -- for his art project and the police shut down the whole campus. because of how people thought one being a student and one not being a student. am i saying all the white students and the white faculty and white administrators are all raging white supremacists? of course not.

my friend commem may say different. i will say that faculty are coming to campuses with various aspects. what they're doing you have some who are anti-racist, who are looking at racism saying i will help deconstruct this racist society, i will deconstruct it on this college campus. you have some who are genuinely racist saying i can't wait for me to get here because this will be a space for me to be racist. most people are not. most white students and administrators and faculty typically are not racist. nonracist looks different. it's the idea, well, you know something, i believe in a colorblind society. i voted for obama so how can i be racist? they put a moral justification of racism versus i can do something. as long as it's over there i don't have to do something. it's somebody else's issue. inside higher education did a study with 700 white college presidents and said, what is

the racial climate on your campus? they said the racial climate on our college campus is absolutely fine, good or excellent. there were 250 different campus protests. they did it again in 2016 which would you think it would go down because obviously things are not really good. it went up. they were 90% but the number of college presidents who said excellent went up. so what happens there is a cognitive disdense. there is a young woman named paige schumaker who painted her face black and threw up a gang sign and said, finally good to be a nigger. they said, why would you do this? she said, i am the least racist person i know. gene: you have 30 seconds. lawrence: i know my friend will say, look, racism, he doesn't like racism like anybody else. who likes racism. i love cancer, no one likes that.

but what he will is what institutions will do is three i's equals a miss. he will individualize, trivialize and dismiss it. he will also look in terms of minimizing. maybe black students are being hypersensitive to all these things and he'll trivialize it by picking out incidents that didn't turn out the way we thought they were. but a lot of times that's what makes african-american students mad because they're dismissed. i always want to go back to what this one student said. she said i didn't come to the university of oklahoma for campus racism and protests. i came to be an engineer. when the paradoxes of education was precisely at this point, when you begin to develop a conscious you must be a war within your society. you must change society if you think yourself as an educated person. gene: thank you, lawrence. [applause]

15 minutes to speak against the resolution. take it away, kmele. kmele: i will only need three of those since lawrence explained the tactic that i will use except he's wrong. first, thanks so much to you, gene, naomi and the soho forum and thank you for being here. lawrence, thank you for coming and taking on what's a very difficult and challenging task, rying to prove this really assertive claim about college universities being hostile environments. most of the people in this room who take an interest in this are probably university educated. i imagine that wasn't their experience. i am not imagining that because i'm just going to -- why not contrive something. i will study like you did except it's not one that is well over 100 years old. it's one from about a year ago. i will consult two of them and both of those studies we saw the students overwhelmingly say

that they thought the racial -- race relations on their campus were good or excellent. not only -- i'm sorry about that. you know, this is -- gene: i am at a severe disadvantage here in i do not like monologues. kmele: the notion of talking for 15 minutes is not exciting. but i will try to keep it going for all of you guys. lawrence has been studying this stuff a heck of a lot longer than i have but i am going to try to make an impurecal case. it's not a matter of citing numbers. it's a matter of making some claims. if there are claims then what do we expect to see and i certainly don't think we would expect to see 75% of students on campus saying they're pleased to be there, that they're happy, that they think the race relations on their campus are fine and good. in fact, even black students say that. but it is certainly true that black students say that to a

lesser degree. what's even more interesting from my standpoint is that these hostile racist environments when i decided to take a look at this a little bit more closely i went and took a look at the top 10 and top 25 universities. top 10 private universities. top 25 public universities. on every single one of those campuses, every single one of them they have a chancellor of diversity of some sort. in fact, oftentimes there are multiple people who hold that title. they rule over the entire campus adjudicating various wrongs and making students feel one hopes safer. not only that, every single one of these campuses have an african-american studies program and an accredited one where you can get a degree, you can spend your entire time studying that. many have diversity credits you earn for taking classes on

campus. that didn't exist when i was in school. but suffice it to say, there are significant investments being made in pursuit of this goal, and it's no surprise then this goal of creating diversity on campus. it's no surprise then since i believe the late 1970's, up until about 2015, the rate of - not the rate -- sorry -- the share of 18 to 25-year-old african-americans in postsecondary education has increased by almost 100%. twice the rate of white students. why are they -- why are they rushing to go to these hostile, racist environments and why when there's supposed to be a wash in these an dotal cases in this racial outrage that's being directed toward them, the f.b.i. is reporting they are

actually seeing far less of reports of hate crimes on their campuses. i'm not exactly sure but it may have something to do with the fact that many of these students who in the same survey had said they believed their college environment is a lot safer -- is producing the sort of race relations that one would expect -- excellent, good, probably consistent with your own experience at school. many of them were deeply concerned about the state of black america. they were concerned about black people in general. and they were also concerned about the state of race relations on other campuses. what is that? interestingly, i think that there is a very strong possibility that some of the programs that have been put yor place to try and emeal ate, imagine wrong, to try and create a campus environment that is more equitable and more

equal and more fair and that celebrates the traditions of all of the students that are on campus. rather than bringing those students together, may in fact be creating some divisions. it may in fact be highlighting the things about one another that make them different rather than highlighting the things about one another that make them the same. what sort of stuff would that be? perhaps really charged language like white supremacy, like privilege. what on earth are those things? we were just told that white supremacy is something that is not necessarily what's practiced by the klan but effectively some sort of force that is behind almost everything that you do and everything that is around you and everything that surrounds you, that there is an unbroken continuum from the founding of this country, from chattel slavery on through jim crow on up into your campus where there

is a young white girl at the university of maryland, my alma mater, who was photographed in front of a cake and the cake ays the words "suck -- i don't - "suck a nigga dick." that is a strange phrase. where does that come from? lil wayne. they are the lyrics to a rap song. this is a myriad of the antidotes that was brought to bear in support of the case that these campuses are awash in racism. i don't think it would make it a hell of a lot of sense for me to cherry-pick the various incidents of supposed racism -- and i say supposed not because i'm denigrating it but what is racism? what is a trigger? these are subjective assessments in many cases. certainly once you get from a

situation where the state is making determinations about who can attend school at this particular place, if i say to you you are a credit to your race, have i in fact insulted you? if someone sends me a message on my ipad and says, good luck at your debate, kill them. do i take offense? do i assume this is a reference to the fact that black people are overrepresented in crime statistics? is he suggesting that i am in fact a violent person as a consequence of it? i don't know. i can't know that. but one can presume. and unfortunately -- and i read lawrence's book. there are portions of it i agree with but not many. lawrence: oh, man. kmele: i'm sorry. but not many. the one thing i do concede, however, is that there are a

number of black people that sort of share the sentiment that's being expressed. the sentiment that if you walk into a store and someone speaks to you that this person may in fact be trying to affirmatively get in your way and make certain that you're not stealing anything. but simultaneously the same person might also feel if they walk in and no one speaks to them that suddenly it's because, well, they must think i ain't got no money to spend. what sort of cognitive load are you carrying if you are imagining that in every single circumstance, both the istence of programs to and nonexistence is the contempt that the world must have towards you, that we could set up and erect a very myopic, narrow view called white

supremacy that imagines there is this one force that has shaped our world and created a world in which whiteness is enriched with all privilege and blackness is less than human? when i looked at those top 25 universities, the other thing i was startled to find was that white people are not the majority on any of those campuses. and at the university of maryland they are actually 13%. in medical schools, interestingly, if you are to apply to a medical school, do you think your chances of getting in as a black student with exactly the same g.p.a. as a white student, latino student and an asian student are higher or lower? what would you guess based on what you heard about implicit bias and all of these other studies that are supposed to very clearly and obviously demonstrate that black students

are discriminated against at every turn? it's somewhere close to 80%. 80% higher in certain areas for students with average grades who are applying to exactly the same medical school. universities are doing everything that they can to try and create environments that are identical in terms of the demographic representation of students on their campuses to the world that they live in. there may be in fact unintended consequences to a program like that. is a student who goes to a university that they may in fact not be prepared for because the university has a different set of standards for them going to be better off if they take two years of school, accumulate debt and don't finish? i'm not sure about that. is a student going to be better off if they, as mr. ross has

suggested, if they were to go to a historically black college or university? it might not be as another school they could have gotten into, are they better off? are they better off going to a school on the basis of their racial identity so they can be in a money lithic environment that looks -- monolithic environment that looks nothing like the world they will inhabit? i suppose you might be better off if you are someone who decides that you are an ffirmatively black person. for whatever reason, we are in an era when there are people like richard spencer who are hosting events and unfortunately getting far more attention than they deserve or warrant, but there is something good that richard spencer does. every now and again he'll go on and talk about white pride and whiteness and his heritage and how much he loves and

appreciates his whiteness. you even had a student who tried to get a white student union on their campus. when we encounter tribalism, like just base gross tribalism on college campuses in the form of white pride, we recognize it for the guttural instinct that it is. something we should all be trying to strive -- striving to rise above. but we make odd exceptions in our society. when barack obama shows up at howard university to give his -- to give a commencement speech, he encourages this entire sea of young people to be confident in their blackness. he of course goes on to say there is no one right way to be black. but what that suggests to me is that if there is a universe of blackness, an infinite sea of it and you can be anything, then perhaps it doesn't mean

anything at all. perhaps it's sufficiently arbitrary that you can set it aside and not revel in it. perhaps it's arbitrary that we can find ways to build bridges between communities on campus, to learn to identify with one another in any number of important ways that are distinct but not just our appearances. and perhaps the trends and the patterns that we see when students join any number of different organizations that are primarily interested in their race, that are primarily interested in highlighting the things that make them different than one another, perhaps those things aren't necessarily going to produce the sort of outcomes that we want. and much the same way the diversity programs that have been created as studies have shown over and over again, haven't really done a great deal to improve the conditions of the various organizations that they're supposed to improve.

instead, what they usually do is make the folks that are involved in those diversity programs feel terrible about themselves. hiring managers and even folks on campus. so at any rate, i think i've exhausted my time. gene: wrap up. kmele: i yield the floor. gene: all right. took a little less than 15 minutes but thank you. [applause] gene: five minutes of rebuttal from the affirmative. take it away, lawrence. lawrence: i think there is a misnoemer that you have as an african-american you have to make a choice between going to historically black college or university which were established as a response to white supremacy because african-americans weren't allowed to many, not all predominantly white institutions. no. you know, african-american students should be able to go to the berkeleys of the world,

ucla. we should be able to go to a state school that's in our state. we should be able to go to a private university. we should be able to go to a historically black college university. my son is going to an art school because he's an artist. there is at no point in time should we think to ourselves that racism on a college campus is something that should be acceptable or hurdle that black students that should have to deal with on their own. and i reject this idea that simply because college and universities kind of make the mitigating effort to create diversity and inclusion and for many years they had diversity offices and not inclusion offices which meant a lot of african-american students had transtory experience on college campuses. they would come. they would feel like, yeah, this is an educational disneyland. by the time they got to their senior years they think the last thing i'll do is give money back to the university because i don't feel part of it. we don't have nike that choice. african-american students shouldn't have to make that choice. a lot of times is universities in terms of -- in terms of how we say, in terms of how they

look to african-american students, that's just a canary in a coal mine. we look deeper, sure, we have this diversity -- this is for students of color but really it's for pretty much anybody on campus but when we talk about faculty on college campuses, even though there is a number of african-americans getting ph.d.'s in the last 20 years or so, the rate of african-american faculty on college campuses have remained at the high, around 6.8% at emery to a 2.7% at my alma mater at berkeley so you don't have african-american faculty on these college campuses. when you look at all of those and tally, you can't simply just say, well, maybe they shouldn't be going to these schools. i reject this idea that every or even most african-american students who are coming on predominantly white institutions are either

unqualified or not qualified and shouldn't be there or suddenly should be at some other school. some should. hey. that's pretty much any person who comes on a college campus. sometimes kids come on college campuses and they find the rigor of the school is too much for them. by pointing out african-american students, no. but the -- going back to the resolution, when we talk about the resolution itself, we're talking about whether or not the university is a hostile space and you don't have to do the leap to say, well, is it as hostile as it was in the 1950's or 1960's? of course not. white supremacy is not some static thing, well, it remains the same so we have the 1940's, 1950's, 1960's, and 2017 the same. no. that's notter what talking about. what happened in society before our kids actually get on the college campus, we haven't attacked those aspects of white supremacy so why would we expect when we talk about institutional and systemic and

individual racism why would we uspect they would not face that institutional racism if they exist in american society anyway? it makes no sense. therefore, what you have, again, are university presidents playing a game of of whack a mole. a study, they studied the reactions from university of presidents when it came to reacting to campus racist incidents and what they found was that campus presidents were basically doing p.r. for the university. they would condemn the individual incident and say this is -- university of oklahoma, david boren, would say this does not reflect the sooner family. this does not reflect the sooner family of what we believe in. what david didn't talk about, two months prior to the incident happening, the black students had met with him and talked about me didn't feel part of the sooner family, that they did not feel part of it

and they had formed an organization called o.u. unheard to talk about as we as black students do not feel heard. so it's important for when we talk about these things is to say, look, we have to get out the idea these spaces are somehow because they are starting to address the needs of african-american students or students of color in general that they've done a good job doing that or just the remedy itself or one of the remedies themselves is somehow dividing of students, no. . gene: thank you, lawrence. rebuttal from the negative, take it away, kmele. kmele: i would quibble with a few of the characterizations there. i am not defending a proposition here, you are. quite frankly i think that the most damning evidence really is the survey data. the survey data where in black students 68% of which responded to a question about -- about the

nature of race relations on their campus and said they thought they were good or excellent. and another survey, this is the knight foundation survey from the new see yum foundation, 74% of all students said they thought that race relations on campus were good or excellent. it seems to me that there is a very significant problem trying to make this argument that these campuses are hostile spaces. there is certainly an expectation among some of these students as i mentioned, which is a point in your favor, perhaps, that on other campuses things are bad. but on their own campuses they simply don't see that problem. which suggests to me perhaps they believe they'll encounter these things. perhaps there is a predisposition to believe this. it also suggests they might not be seeing these events happen. i did not dismiss all the things that happened. i certainly didn't suggest that

racism on campus isn't being addressed. quits the contrary, there are -- quite the contrary, there are response units that have been spun up and placed on various campuses to try and address these issues. the question is whether or not those response units are having the impact that one would hope they would have. i don't know that it's enough to say that it's just p.r. when you espond to a situation on wherein one of the people on your campus has done something that is disrespectful, that is racist, that embarrasses the rest of the folks on your campus. but one thing you haven't spoken to are the numerous cases, and i say numerous because there's certainly more than one, we have had one in the last week, where there is either no one found, it's suspicious as to whether or not anything actually transpired here in terms of a hate crime, or where it actually a

fraudulent hate crime. and the fact that we're actually seeing, as i mentioned, a reduction in the total number of hate crimes, and there are, in fact, these fake hate crimes taking place, that one of the events that you mentioned is a sit-in. three-day sit-in at colgate university because of text messages sent on an anonymous messaging service. anonymous messaging service. i don't even know if these are students let alone white people who actually hate black students. it seems to me that it is powerfully -- it is incredibly easy to make the argument that of racism is everywhere. it's also incredibly easy to substaniate that claim if all you have to do is find something that doesn't quite seem right to you and say, there it is, right

there. you also mentioned university of maryland. i want to bring it up, my alma mater. byrd stadium. which the time i was there was byrd stadium. i visited, went to games there. history aware of the of the man for whom the stadium is named. but in not being aware, it caused me no great injury. and one wonders, one wonders if several years after i matriculated a student decides, i'm going to campaign against this. i'm going to crusade against this, i'm going to send letters to incoming athletes to let them know that they are playing on a racist field. this isn't a racist field. perhaps a building has the name of someone unsavory on it. and we certainly have seen situations like that. i think some of your better evidence, you may want to address that, i'll preempt it by

saying that when a university makes a determination to keep the name of a building the same, and decides that as opposed to taking off the name of this person who has done disreputable things, in some cases participated in lynchings, multiple lynchings, and talked about doing so with pride, and they decide they are going to put a plaque on that building, not to commemorate this person but to underscore the wrong that was done, if you don't like that outcome, that's not racist. if you don't like that outcome you are dissatisfied. and given the number of people in this room i suspect we all have differences of opinions on whether or not that is a good and virtue -- virtuous way to address the problem. gene: before we put it open to questions from the audience, we have five minutes in which each side gets to ask the other one question. kmele, is there a question you would like to put to lawrence?

kmele: i'd love to hear you address both the survey data -- primarily just the survey data. lawrence: i haven't studied it, so i have no idea. i can give awe survey -- i have no idea. but i would also say that i would treat the survey kind of like how americans treat their congresspeople. they are overall basically dissatisfied with congressmen, they love their own particular congressperson. so i don't know in terms of the amount of people or who did the actual survey, when you talk to survey.ut the i think you survey. i think you actually said something in your statement about the university of maryland that is true. as an individual it is quite possible to walk around campus and not study the buildings on which you are on the campus. you can be blithely walking through. there is not a problem with that. and you will not be harmed. but at the same time the fact that there are buildings there that supposedly named after

people that represent the values of a college university, you would think if you had a college that did actually understand what those buildings were named after, that they would say, this may have meant something in the 1920's, 1930's, 1940's, 1950, for example can mel talking about byrd stadium, named after a man of harry curly byrd who went from being a college football coach to the president of the university. but he at one point in time denied a african-american athlete from syracuse to be offered to play. it's a little thing. again you can go to the university of maryland and have a wonderful time as a african-american. once you understand that knowledge, you might want to actually then say, perhaps this is not the honor that this person deserves. one last point, we typically look at those things and say to ourselves, what does it matter about the names on the buildings? talk about for example, university of munich. the university of munich has a statue or buildings name after

members of the nazi party. ask jewish students to walk on that campus and ignore it, yes, some may ignore it but others offended. that's the point. we ask african-american students to ignore it. some will not have any type of issue with it if they do not know. once you do know, you then typically want to do something to change it because you think the university of maryland is your campus. gene: is there a question you can put -- you would like to put to kmele? lawrence: let's see. the one thing i talked about you say hate crimes. this is kind of where i talk about in terms of making racism like elevated to where it's -- it's hard to hit that metric. you talk about yickyack. i'm trying to do this -- i'm trying to find out what level of racism do you find to not be

insignificant? kmele: i don't know that i would attach a percentage to that. i will say that we don't live in a new jerusalem. we live here on earth. and here on earth with utopia not being an option there is going to be some level of crime and violence and inhumanity to man. it's worth noting that some of those hate crimes are perpetrated by black people as well. some of those hate crimes are almost certainly aimed at white people and various other racial groups. my expectation is not that i can eviscerate all racism. since i don't set that as a goal, i won't pretend that i'm not pleased when there are fewer hate crimes taking place. i think that is a good outcome. i also think it's appropriate to note that when you have black students matriculating on campuses, when you have the model minority in this country

in terms of attending school based on the size of their population being african immigrants and west indian immigrants to this country, it is very difficult for me to accept the argument that we live in a country that is so steeped in racism and an mossity -- animosity, secret, inadvertent and uncontinue and exle, black people simply cannot be successful in this country, or that they are in a position where it makes sense to carry this sort of chip on your shoulder that suggests that , when in fact, you see events happen someplace in the world, that seem to fit a particular narrative, i.e. we could talk about police shootings, for example, ferguson is actually an interesting example of this. you hear a story about a police officer shooting a young man. and you immediately jump to the

conclusion that a crime was committed. do we have to wait for the facts to come out? and when the facts do come out, do we embrace the truth or do we stick with the narrative that's established. when i say truth in this particular case i'm talking about several independent investigations that lead to a particular outcome. i'm not making that argument because i don't think that there are -- that there aren't a significant number of issues with respect to police violence aimed at civilians. i'm making it for the opposite reason. my big concern has been that -- did i go over? my big concern has been that the black lives matter movement has, in fact, created an environment wherein it is harder to achieve reforms by focusing primarily on the motivations of police who find themselves in violent encounters with citizens rather than the facts, the why, the things that we might actually be able to mitigate through law in order to achieve change.

i think that if we know that, for example, ending the drug war is likely to create a situation in which there are less encounters with police, that is perhaps the principal thing we should be talking about rather than imagining a set of circumstances and creating a narrative and establishing it as fact regardless of what the actual facts are gene: ferguson, all interesting -- [applause] gene: a little bit beyond. thank you nor that -- for that kmele. before we open to questions, i want to take moderator's prerogative to hone in on an issue that has been raised. kmele, what would you say to defend the idea that the survey data you cited, you said 65% of black students say good to ok to excellent, 70% good to excellent, when were these studies taken? what can you say about the

legitimacy of the information that you are citing? kmele: these are two separate surveys, both of which taken in the last 24 months. to mid 201. 20816 the other was 2015 to 2016 if i'm not mistaken. both of these are supposed to be representative samples. the knight foundation survey was well over 6,000 students. and i don't know -- don't remember the number for the other survey, but what leads me to believe that these are likely trustworthy surveys is that the numbers were pretty close to one another. both in terms of the magnitude and the trends. i don't think anyone would quibble with the survey's indication that students on college campuses are concerned about these issues. that students on college campuses simultaneously believe that their campus is safe and good because they are there and they see it and they also

believe that somewhere out there all of the terrible things that they are hearing about are, in fact, taking place. they are not ignoring racial injustice. they are not ignoring the situation that is supposed to exist wherein black people are being taken advantage of or ack people are subjugated by forces that are always at work in our society, whether or not people are willfully racist. they are deeply concerned about it. perhaps more concerned than they ought to be. gene: before we go to questions, you want to comment on that? lawrence: a couple things. just because -- couple things. when we talk about -- you made a statement talking about why would african-americans being going to these schools if the schools themselves are racist. african-americans have never been stopped by the idea of racism on college campuses. african-americans have been going to college campuses since

oberlin college in 1820. even through the days of slavery, barea college in kentucky was 1850, african-americans were on those campuses through slavery. the idea of college being a transformational place educationally, economically, socially has always been important for african-americans. the idea of having to trudge through the racism at the same time in order to get that education, it's been something that's not a deterrent. but it does not mean that they have to have that extra burden on top of it. it's the exact same reason why we have a campus that's a misogynist campus. you shouldn't have that extra burden for women in terms of gender. what we're talking about is whether or not in terms of the resolution is whether or not universities are hostile spaces for african-americans. and i'm still trying -- black lives matter, but when we talk about in terms of the space on college campus, again i don't

know anything about the survey so i can't speak to that. but what i can say is that it's not african-american students -- you can't have just 200 different college campuses of only white institutions, you cannot have 200 campuses erupt in campus protest and suddenly think that these black students are thinking this is happening somewhere else. even at berkeley, i love my school where we protest tuesday for not being thursday, you still cannot look around and say, also what happens is when something happens at a ucla, people become introspective what is going on at their own particular campus. it kind of goes back to what can mel said about university of maryland. he had gone through and got a degree and everything, that's fine. university of maryland. guess what? when you actually turn around and someone at another campus is talking about ben tillman hall, you begin to look at yourself,

wait a second, i heard about this, maybe we should not have this on our campus. gene: thank you, guys. questions? please phrase your question as a question. if you want to talk to the speakers later, you'll have ample opportunity. please ask your question. kmele: -- >> let's say there is an inherent bias that when kids go to college that they have when they come into college. don't you think one of the things, or a leading factor that might be contributing to this sort of quote-unquote, hostile space, is this focus and racial studies classes and gender studies classes on trigger warnings, safe spaces, something i say you may disagree with turns into a hey speech. turns into that's violent and racist against me. won't you say this environment -- what do you think about this environment that's constantly -- everybody focused on race, even at the most unintentional levels of me asking where are you from?

and saying you have now agreesed me. you have now offended me, you are now racist for asking me this. that that could be a contributing factor? maybe even a leading contributing factor? lawrence: i think what happens is americans tend to create experiments in terms of trying to figure out how to mitigate -- we recognize that the space itself is hostile. what we have to do is we have to try to figure out what are going to be the things we're going to do in terms of creating different policies in order to try to milt gate -- mitigate this hostility. are they perfect? of course not. i'm from the free speech movement campus. i believe in free speech. what happens is people try to test things out and they don't work and they test something else out. but they are thinking about it. it's like winston churchill once said americans always do the right thing after they tried everything else. on a college campus, that's what they are doing. it's also important to recognize

we're not just all of a sudden talking all the time about race. this is suddenly instead of being a monologue, this is starting to be a dialogue. suddenly students of color are starting to speak up and people are going to have to listen to what regard their particular perspectives. in going to what i was talking about -- by the time students get to college, they come from segregated communities. they are coming from little beyond the scope, but latinos are coming from 80% segregation from k through 12. meaning less than 10% of the student body in k through 12 are white students. and african-americans around 74% and 38%. this is the first they are actually starting to talk to each other and bringing different experiences. yes, you have the hyperbolic issues where some student learns something in african-american studies class and they are hirpebolic about it. they are college students. they are going to be hyperbolic about things. the issue is how do you -- do

your dialogue in order to learn from each other. what happens is when you learn, it's a dialogue and don't retreat, yeah, it may be a tough conversation, when you do that what happens is you make that space a little less hostile for the next generation. when i'm in the affirmative for this, it doesn't mean permanent state of hostility. it is what it is right now. deconstructed it will be less for the next generation. gene: you want to comment? kmele: only briefly. one thing that i have noticed about just the historical trend -- i'm going back now because we seem to be having a conversation in which we establish that the united states has done that awful and terrible things have happened here. we continue on and get to campuses and part of the reason why the campus environment is bad is because other bad things have happened here. it's just there is a sea of racism.

in fact, i believe in the opening of your book, you describe the existence of black students on college campuses as swimming through a sea of feces. strong language. that is gross. that's terrible. fortunately, to the extent that's the case, however, and i'm sort of reminded of james baldwin here -- when you were quoting him earlier, i love to hear him because he's so lyrical . when he talks about the fact that for black people, whites have always been a problem. that there's always been this danger, he says to them, that they should be careful that the gates of paranoia do not close on them. so that they find themselves in a situation where they are both responding to things that they imagine are happening to them and things that are happening to

them. and that they lose the ability to tell the difference between the two. i think that was a bit of a jeremiah and not only a warning for white people to stop doing things, but also to black people to be aware of the consequences of living in situation like this. quite frankly, i can't say that when i look at the difference between sort of rosa parks and live in, erms eras we i think that's -- i think that it's important to note we're in in the era of the duke lacrosse case. that's what happens. ene: next question. >> this question is for kmele.

when i first read the prompt my immediate response was to think, that's absurd. every college in the u.s. obsesses over avoiding the slightest hint of racism. then i looked at the question from a different angle. black students show up at a college, and they live in a country that's racist, and their fellow students will be undeserving because of the color of skin. when they are promoted they'll make less than the white piers -- peers. is this imaginary conception of the world created by the left that consumes black students. it affects the decisions. why study law when the dak is stacked against you. it's this anti-racist environment that becomes toxic. in a sense racist and halts the progress and advancements of many blacks in this country. kmele: it's possible. when i comment on stuff publicly, i do my best to try and qualify them.

if i feel a pretty high degree of confidence, i'll say so. my suspicion is that may be part of the issue. epeat the entire question? the gist of the question i believe, you can tell me if i'm wrong, is for black students, when they arrive on college campuses they are effectively indoctrinated into a set of beliefs about the world that they are getting ready to inherit and going to university and becoming a leader. that they are going to face discrimination in many places. they are not going to earn as much as their white peers, etc., etc. that in fact white supremacy is the rule of the land. it rules over all of our lives and it prevents us from accomplishing various things, or

at least being as successful as we could possibly be unless we're twice as good. i don't think it's possible to actually believe that about the world. to actually believe that most people you meet are having some sort of automatic response to you and your blackness and that's the first thing they are thinking about. and to not be incredibly self-conscious and no -- to not have it create a sense of dread exitential ion -- crisis. it doesn't surprise me once things happen be they small or large it's exactly what i expected. we're pattern seeking animals. once we have a narrative in mind, we will find it. we will find it and we will find it again. and as soon as we find it, we will scream loudly we have done so. and insist you people should have been paying attention all along.

gene: would you like to comment? lawrence: of course. i didn't travel from los angeles to not comment. ok. i always like those empty vessel black people who are waited to be manipulated by the left. i'm not worried about left or right, college campus. i don't care. but i do care about one thing in terms of like that imaginary black student who is going to be indoctrinated about white supremacy. remember i had been telling you about the 74% of african-americans from k-12 go to a segregated school. what does that mean over a long period of time? there is nothing inferior about going to a segregated school unless for every 10% rise in the amount of studentings of color school there is a $75 increase in the amount of funding. these students are walking into these college campuses not understanding, by the way, four times as likely to go to a school where their teachers are not as qualified.

80% of the their tichers not qualified. they are not getting on college campuses sitting up here thinking, oh, my god, racism is going to kill me. they are thinking about i must be a super human person for having overcome a segregated my inner city neighborhood to get on that college campus. how can i make as much money possible to not have as much student debt. they are as rational as anyone else. the fact they are having that young woman from the university of oklahoma talk about is she said i came on here to be an engineer not to be majors in campus protest. most african-american students when they arrive on campus want to be like can mel. and me, too. i want to go to school and get a degree. go to school, get a degree, have no debt. and walk off into the sunset. but what happens oftentimes is when we're getting on these college campuses, i hear these students over and over talk about it, they are prevented,

not being prevented from doing it. not being prevented from getting a degree, but from having the holistic experience of going to a college university and saying, you know something, this university really wants me here. and again my definition of the university is not just simply the administration or diversity inclusion, but the students who are here. the faculty who are here. the administrators, the -- everything the elements of college university. i honestly, don't put you on the spot because you ask the question, i'm happy about you doing that, the imaginary african-american who is just whirlwind because they got on campus and being indoctrinated by these bad ideas about fighting people who want to demean them as human beings makes no sense. it's the most rational thing in the world when people, if you feel, you are coming from a segregated society, if you get on a college campus and you feel, you know something, i'm coming to college not just for a check or a job, i'm coming to help transform society, then you educate yourself and you do it

as soon as possible. gene: next question. >> really quick statement. i feel like all the points that you have laid out with regard to the -- our country's segregated school systems, they are all perfect arguments for school choice reform. that being said -- any important discussion it is paramount that you define your terms, correct? now, also i guess that's due to he subjectivity of the here.tion now, there are two definitions in my estimation that are making the rounds of common parlance of racism. there is the here. now, one that seems more ue wick at this with us to -- ubiquitous to me, one that seems more popular and being

promulgated on college campuses which seeks to make racism more that is ss something more geared towards power. pewer plus prejudice i guess is -- power plus prejudice is the more succinct way to put it. this question is to the two of you. which of this -- these definitions seems more suitable to the two of you? one to me seems to rob african-americans of their agency. worldless hem as actors without autonomy. they are subject to the will of the whites around them. he other seems more universal. kmele: had you two different aspects you were saying in terms of looking at racism as race --

racist plus power. lawrence: what was the first one? >> more -- lawrence: individual racism, i guess. >> the more ubiquitous use to me is that any sort of racial animus, an idea one is genetically better than another race. lawrence: ok. thank you very much fory question -- for your question. i think you have like anything in terms of some absurdisms like racism, you have aspects in all of that. you have, for example, your overt, david duke cliche versions of racism. the nazis who put the swastikas on the forehead and declare themselves better than everyone. you have those elements. but i think those racist -- those are easily dealt with. i think what we're talking about in terms of the second one is not necessarily this idea -- this is not cal vannist type of idea that's predetermined because we live in a society

that is -- has racism plus power that you can't fight against it. one beautiful thing about the redemocrative phase of america. i say this about the kryptonite of -- against white supremacy is the idea we actually do believe in our principles and ideas. we do. that's kind of our vinny. we -- vignette. we always had at the same time we had racism plus power, we still believe in the ideal that a young man named barack obama could be the president of the united states. he was. you can't get that, i would argue this, i don't have anything to say about this, buttle-u i'll put this out there, you can't get that -- barack obama could not have been a president of the united states without having gone to one of the so-called hostile spaces getting higher education. trump could have. i think you can have those two

dual things happening at the same time. you can fight the overt cliche of the racist in terms of white supremacist groups. some of them who are now starting to come on campus with overt calls for white supremecy. and at the same time recognize you live in a society that is unequal based upon race. you can do that. you can fight those two fights. i honestly don't think kmele and i will disagree, maybe i will, i don't think you can -- that's not a problem. gene: kmele? kmele: sure. i think at the beginning of the conversation i tried to at least demarcation.ort of when i am using the word racism, we're talking about it in this context, i am thinking about yes, explicit acts aimed at degrading someone or actual prohibitions against

black people or various other racial groups doing things that are codified in the law. i think that is pretty easy to call and to describe as racist. there is a subjectivity to the racism in virtually every other context. and the popular definition about racism requiring power, i have always found extremely dissatisfactory, and quite frankly today in an environment where you could potentially lose your job for use the word niggeredly because it sounds like nigger, the real question is who has power in that dynamic? there is no doubt that there are certain people who feel empowered to speak freely about issues of race. i feel fine saying just about anything about race. most of you wouldn't take this microphone and do that. you would actually take a few

seconds to ponder whether or not this is the right thing to say. in fact, impliesity by association test the ones that -- implicit by association tests, the ones that -- earlier this year massive medi study that surveyed a bunch of these results, calls into question whether or not those things are trustworthy. part of the reason is if i show you a picture of a black family like eating cake at a picnic your score will rise. if you see that buff take the test. the oiler thing is from my standpoint when i look at the results and what these studies are generally taking a look at is whether or not it takes you longer to respond when you see a picture of a black family or a picture of a white family, if it takes you longer to respond to the prompts. if i see a black family flash up on the screen and i'm a white guy and i have been conditioned

as a consequence of living in a society in which our speech is so policed that there are various ways in which i can and cannot talk about race without potentially losing my friends or potentially losing my job or maybe just someone will presume i'm kind of a racist, i'm going to take longer to answer that uestion. gene: next question. the young lady come up, please. ask your question. >> sure. thanks for coming,. my question is also about definitions. clarification. you both brought up -- you both questioned the definition within the resolution and you both didn't answer each other's point. each point you could write a dissertation on but i'm going to ask you to address it as succinctly as you can. kmele, lawrence brought up -- he uestioned environment.

about distinction between colleges and the rest of the united states. and lawrence brought up definition of race, might have just been specifically blackness about the subjectivity of identifying within a race. within a racial construct. if possible within the time frame we have i'd love for you guys to address each other's points. gene: this is going to have to be the last question. those still online, soarry. please, of course, do come up and buttonhole these guys afterwards. i think you understood the question, kmele. repeat the question. >> i'm reiterating lawrence's point here. he questioned the definition of environment within the resolution. so he was saying that there is less of a distinction -- you got it. between campus and the rest of the united states. kmele: yeah. i don't know that there is a significant difference between

campus and the united states. i would say that we -- campuses are in the united states, campuses are shaped by myriad forces. i think the challenge that i would -- or the objection that i would level is not specifically about the argument about campuses being the uniquely racist places, it's the force that is supposedly making them uniquely racist, which is race has played this incredibly important role in helping to shape our society. in helping to produce the outcomes that we have today. influencing the perspectives that we have about various issues. there is a sense in which that's true. it's necessarily true. things happen. and as a consequence there are repercussions, there are ripple effects. but lots of things have happened in this country. a great many things. in fact, some of those things

have been quite food. -- good. and it's difficult for me to accept an argument that squeezes the aperture when we look back at the past and only sees this thing as the force that is the current that is shaping society going forward. it certainly has consequences. but there are other factors that matter as well. we have had any number of programs created that were supposed to ameliorate generations of poverty and make things better. whether or not those programs made things better or worse is an important question that we ought to be asking. even the drug war, second time i'm mentioning it, maybe a reason, but even the drug war is something that in black communities in the 1970's, during the first heroin epidemic , they were upset there weren't more cops in their

neighborhoods. they were upset there weren't stiffer penalties for people who were dealing drugs. the crack and powder cocaine laws that came into place, those disparities, the ones that people generally regard today as racist, we actually call it that, were created out of a motivation to try to do something about this bad situation that we saw before. lots of forces have shaped the world that we live in. lots of forces have shaped the campuses. i don't think it makes a hell of a lot of sense to separate the two from one another. lawrence: just want to make sure i -- sorry. you talk about a racial construct subjectivity. and is there any more? did you have anything? [inaudible] lawrence: ok. i just want to make sure. yes. look, when we talk about race, a

lot of times when we say race is a bilogical nothing. there is nothing in this room separating us, nothing. but as a social -- the reason why when we talk about white supremacy and the racial caste system that comes from it, i'm not from black land. i'm from a african-american. but the -- in terms of the racial construct which we create it means something. there are a lot of social constructs in this world that mean something. money is a social construct. if you guys want to give me all your nonessential, nonimportant money because you don't believe in it, feel free to buy a book. it's important for us to not get confused. if we can at the same time say fight for this ideal that we want to make rate, -- race and racism something that is in the past, we do, every generation wants to do that. we also have the realities of saying we do know what is here right now. no one -- are you absolutely --

kmele is absolutely right. how we look at race and how we deal with policies change over time. we have learned, we make mistakes, we have priorities at one particular point in time that change in the future. that's the same thing that happens on college campuses. the priorities of the 1960's are different than the priorities of 2017. does not mean for the 2017 student african-american student who walks on a college campus they don't see a hostile space. they may not have the same experience i had in the mid 1980's. they might not have the same experience my grandparents in the mid 1960 eafments in terms of the construct, how they see race on a college campus, they see it through their own eyes and own sense of reality. and that racial construct, yes, it may be a social construct that we created as americans, but we created it. and if we created it then we're going to have to figure out ways to get rid of it. gene: thank you. that concludes the questions. thanks very much. again, you'll have the

opportunity to buttonhole them. think about how you're going to vote for the resolution as you listen to the summations. lawrence, you have five minutes to summarize your point of view. please take it away, lawrence. lawrence: when i began here talking about one incident at the university of oklahoma about two white students singing about a very crude song. and i talked about going back to 1963 and talking about some other students talking -- singing another cruel song. the point of it wasn't to be provocative. that wasn't the point. the point wasn't to say that all white students or all faculty or all administrators hate black students across college campuses. but what i did want to you understand when african-american students go on college campuses they go there for the same reason as any other student. they do not want to go on a college campus and they have --

and have to deal with the same issues that are going on in society. really. they really do. african-american students really do believe in educational disneyland. they believe when a fifth grade teacher told them because they won the spelling bee they were going to college. and that college was a place where they could transform their lives and also their family's lives. but when we look at the plurality of the racism that occurs on college campuses, you can't look at them and say they are all isolated incidents. you can't look in the face of african-american students who are being demeaned and say, well, you should just basically get over it. you can't think to yourself that we live in a country where a certain segment of our universities are actively trying to tell african-american students that you don't belong there. and if look at it from the standpoint of race and racism, then we would think to ourselves, what about what happens at the 105 historically

black colleges and universities. if racism in terms of how we look at it is something we say, is evidentable place and thing on college campus, which i do say on predominantly white institutions, the 21% of the white students who go to historically black college universities would face the same thing. they don't. i have looked for 60 years and not a sidge incidents of african-american students treating white students on historically black colleges and universities the way african-american students are being treated on predominantly white institutions. that's a problem. it's a bigger problem if we look around ourselves and we think of our kids we send to these schools and think of them as being good moral people who are nonracist, but we don't ask them to be anti-racist. if you're going to be a person who is going to change society versus a person who is just getting a degree to be a job, you have to go and be anti-. you have to be active. the point i came here for coming

to this debate was simply for that message. it is important for our white students and white faculty and white administrators to create that utopian universe we all talk about the college being as soon as possible. thank you very much for bringing me here. gene: can mee. kmele: -- kmele. five minutes for kmele to sum prize his point of view. take it away -- summarize his point of view. take it away. kmele: i want to zoom in on one of the claims that was just made that there are universities that are actively telling black students that they don't care about them. that they aren't fully people. that isn't a thing. there is no university in america that is doing that. not a single one. i feel very good about saying that unequivocally. it's quite the contrary.

universities are spending tens of millions of dollars in some cases on programs explicitly designed to bring black students to their campuses. they are investing in and creating units on their campus to take care of the special needs of the students on those campuses. this year, harvard, graduate students decided to host their own african-american only black graduation. in addition to their regular graduation. 2017, what on earth are you doing? that seems like a step backwards. that doesn't seem like progress. and they didn't create this in response to some specific event, they created it in order to deal with, as i remember it, in order to try to give themselves and their unique black experience an

opportunity to walk the stage together. because only they could understand one another. it's possible. it's possible that there is just a uniformity of thought and a uniformity of, speerns that they are being subjected to -- experience that they are being subjected to all manner of explicit racism that means the only thing one can do is come together to overcome it. but i'm looking for the data to support that and i haven't seen it. what i have seen instead is the u.s. medical school acceptance rates from 2013 to 2016 for someone age 27 to 29, if you got a 3.4 g.p.a. to a 3.59 g.p.a. and you are asian, 20.6%. and you are white, 29%. if you are hispanic, 59.5%. if you are black, 81.2%.

they want you desperately. where is the campus where they are saying get out of here? if the response to a racist event on campus occurring, an occurrence of supposed racism, be it real or imagined, and very recently we had an imagined one, was actually contrived, if the chancellor of the school shows up on television and he asserts that this is not who we're, the notion that that can both be evidence of an effort to undermine black people on campus , and somehow an effort to try and paper over these bad occurrences on campus just to save face, i just don't understand that. i think that the two things are at complete odds with one another. the case simply has not been

made here today with anything more than assertion and anecdote that america's campuses are hostile towards black students in general, in particular, or even as a matter of happenchance. gene: ok. thank you for coming out. [applause] gene: guys. please vote. again, america's colleges have foster a racist environment that makes them a hostile space for african-american students. yes. no. or undecided. while you are deliberating, let me again announce that next month i'll be debating adam . ith with max in july we will be having debate on school choice. we're going to take off the month of august.

in september, wife a debate scheduled on medicare. at the moment, october is to be announced. in november, we have a debate scheduled on free trade. anybody who has ideas for debates, love to hear about them. let's talk about it later. anybody who wants to talk to our debaters afterwords, they'll be available. lawrence is going to be selling books over there at the table. and i'm sure will be happy to talk to you and answer any further questions you have. again your continuing to deliberate on how you're going to vote on the resolution. knowing me i guess you'll tell me once we close the voting. something else, we have some wonderful volunteers who help placeo come at 4:30 at my at 55 great jones street.

anybody else wants to volunteer to help out, to lug food over, to do anything else, please come up to me afterwards. i'd love to talk to you. our volunteers are getting a little ragged and maybe we need a couple of re-enforcements. if you like to volunteer starting at 4:30 in the afternoon, starting next month, or in july, please come up and chat with me. and how is voting going? looks like we're going to close the voting. going once. going twice. going three times. bringing up the results to me. hand them to me. all right. those -- you understand that the way to win this debate is not how many voted initially because that's just a baseline. that establishes the position of the audience. so first of all i want to say to both speakers that you did both

pick up votes. and interestingly enough, lawrence climbed out of an 8.2% vote in his favor and he got up to 11.8%. he picked up 3 1/2 percentage points. but kmele started from 48% and went up to 75%. so he picked up 27%. technically the tootsie roll goes to kmele. both guys did manage to sway a few votes. congratulations. [applause] gene: lawrence will be over at that table. bring your $20 bill if you want a book. thank you very much. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2017] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] >> story about education secretary betsy devos today a hearing we covered on the c-span