>> rose: welcome to the program. tonight, conversations about race in america. we talk with ta-nehisi coates and bryan stevenson. >> if you were, say, an african-american who was enslaved in this country and died during the period of slavery, that's the end of your arc, as an individual hume been, that's the end of your arc, you lived and died as an enslaved person. black folks who were lynched and killed in this country say during the red summer, that's the end of their arc. >> rose: what happens then. it doesn't -- there is no broader justice. >> it's our ability to apologize to, recognize when we go out of bounds that makes us humanned and also makes us redeemed. that's how we get to mercy, compassion and greatness. if we don't practice that as a nation, we will fail to be the great society we claim to be. so learning to say i'm sorry is

something we're going to have to do. learning to make peace with these difficult things we have done to people of color is something we'll have to do if we want to be great. >> rose: a look at race in america when we >> rose: funding for "charlie rose" has been provided by: american express. >> rose: additional funding provided by: >> and by bloomberg, a provider of multimedia news and information services worldwide. captioning sponsored by rose communications from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. ta-nehisi coates is here. he's a national correspondent, editor and blogger for the atlantic magazine.

i am pleased to have him at this table for the first time, welcome. >> a pleasure. >> rose: tell me about growing up in baltimore, about family, about influences, about shaping identity. >> i was very fortunate. i have six brothers and sisters total. i lived in a household in west baltimore right across the street from where the disturbances in baltimore started earlier this year. you know, the world you grew up in, what you know in terms of what you go out and see, and then there is the world that's on tv. the world that i knew was one in which there was a great deal of violence out in the neighborhood, where violence shaped the social customs of folks, and where a kind of larger violence that was not as obvious, that was not somebody pulling out a gun, that wasn't necessarily five boys jumping you, but a large societal

violence shaped the outlook and aspects of folks in my community. the thing i think of when i write books, i lived in a household write had a mother and father. this was not the typical profile for most my friends. i had a mother and father who worked, who at that point were very educated people. i had the basics covered in terms of my food, clothing, et cetera, and yet, despite all that, when i went out into the world and when i left for school every day, i confronted all the other things all the other boys and girls in my neighborhood confronted. >> rose: which was the risk of violence? >> all the time. all the time. constant. constant, constant, constant. you know, it's the very little things which, as a child, i have to tell you, i took as normal but, you know, now i look back and it's insane. for instance, how many people am i walking with when i go to

school? i think about that one all the time. i remember when alan iverson came into the n.b.a. and there was a hubbub about why does he need a possie. i understood exactly why he need add possie because he had come from a place where it was quite clear that you needed security around you because you never knew what somebody might do to you. >> rose: but growing up, did you think i'm going to do what with my life? >> i had no idea. >> rose: really? i had no idea. i knew what i liked, but i had no idea what i liked might actually be a career because, as i was instructed, what you did with your life or how sucksful l you were at life was based on how well you did in school. when i was taught about keeping yourself out of danger, i wasn't

the best at that. i certainly was nobody's thug, but, at the same time, i can't say i even had the security of being a nerd and being great at school. i didn't have that either. i had no idea what was going to become of me and that added to the fear. for young black boys growing up in west baltimore in that period and i suspect growing up in our cities today, school is not just, you know, will i get into harvard or not. it's not how far up the ladder. it's will i go to jail or not, will i be shot or not. it's a matter of life and death and that's the way parents talked to kids when office child and negligence we took in. >> rose: is it true today in baltimore? >> i don't know. i suspect it is. you know, i have been asked about baltimore quite a bit, but i want to be clear, i haven't been in baltimore in 20 years. but from what i can tell and what i've seen when i visit family -- >> rose: you suspect. i strongly suspect, yes.

i want to high light the video of the woman beating on her son. >> rose: everybody is praising her, she's installing discipline and we need more parents like that? >> yes, but that's fear. people need to be clear -- she said, i don't want him ended up like another freddie gray. that's fear from that woman. >> rose: fear he might be next. >> very much. so she wants him home where he can be safe and protected. that was very familiar to me. >> rose: that's the product of what's commonly called what's the talk parents give their children. >> yes. >> rose: they say you've got to stay away from where violence might happen. >> right, right. >> rose: and more, though. ight. and african-american parents understand the consequences. >> rose: of the talk. yes, very much so, and the idea is that you have to educate your children on how to basically deal with violence and, over the past year, we've seen that violence focus on the police and the things the police do, and that's part of it.

when i was a child and, again, i suspect it's the same for other folks and my son and my child, it doesn't just concern the violence of the police, it concerns the violence of the neighborhood. african-american neighborhoods are on balance much more violent than other neighborhoods. >> rose: and why is that? i think that goes right back to what i was trying to write about in the case for reparations. african-americans, after, you know, enslavement, after that period did not, you know, walk out of the chains and the labor in the cotton fields and immediately walk into america. in fact, they suffered 100 years of segregation. the thing i focused on in my article in case for reparations was housing segregation and that's very important because housing segregation restricts where you can live, obviously, and restricts what you can do with your money because housing is so central to wealth in this country. it restricts what you're exposed to because your kids can only live in certain neighborhoods and in certain areas and on top

of that all the other discrimination that frearns -- african-americans suffered from and i'm talking about job discrimination, discrimination in federal programs, discrimination? schools, all that piled into one geographic region and the inability to escape that creates a sense of s deprivation and the neighborhoods tend to be more violent than neighborhoods with people with more opportunities. >> rose: why is what you're doing is resonating with people so deeply with people like toni morrison? >> i can't answer that. i think certain aspects of african-american anger is one of those aspects are not allowed to be aired in public the same way with other people. i think it's great fear when black people talk about their

negative emotions, they talk about their hatred of certain things, i think that makes people very, very uncomfortable. >> rose: you also think, though -- and help me understand, i want you to define yourself -- in a sense, there is built into the establishment of america an understanding that building on slavery, that what we have is people who feel empowered to do violence to the body of other people, and i select those terms "violence" and "body" directly from reading you. >> yeah, i do think that, and i think that -- into and it gives them power and control. >> yeah, and i think we have ways of covering that, you know, even for people as they do it. one of the things i've tried to make clear repeatedly is any sort of term that you think is innocuous or a euphemism that relates to race and policy in terms of race and black people ultimately comes back to violence and doing violence to african-american bodies. for instance, you take something

that seems tearcally abstract and disconnected is debate over affirmative action, well how is that related to physical violence? i assure you the african-americans in this country that want their kids to go -- and you can leave aside what you think of the policy, whether you like it or not -- but the african-americans trying to get the advantages for their kids are trying to get them in the hopes that they improve their station and grow up somewhere that's not like where they grew up. behind that is not just i don't want you to grow up poor, working class, or whatever, it's almost always i don't want you to have to walk out the door and look and watch your back the way did. >> rose: that's why you talk to your son. >> yes. >> rose: and writing this letter. >> yes. >> rose: that brings me to an essential point here. also still very much with us, this act of violence against the body, your terms. >> mm-hmm. >> rose: you have a basic difference in terms of how you see that from the president. >> probably. >> rose: well, probably.

you've had debates with him in the white house. >> yes. that's true. >> rose: exactly! yes. i think the president reflects, you know, in his public comments and to the extent that, you know, we've had this debate at this time, a kind of optimism that is very much rooted in the african-american experience. i think the notion of hope, the notion that it will be better tomorrow is, you know, almost -- or maybe not even almost -- religious within the african-american community. a lot of that comes out of the church, you know, and the aspect or the belief that good ultimately does triumph, that justice does ultimately win out in the end, that there is a sense of inevitable progress. the quote martin luther king used to use and that the president now uses the arc of the moral universe runs long but bends toward justice.

>> rose: you don't believe that? >> no, i hope it does. >> rose: but you don't believe it. >> i see no reason to be ashared ashared -- assured that it does, and this comes out of my beliefs of the world and the natural world. if you were an african-american enslaved in this country and died during the period of slavery, that's the end of your arc, as an individual human being, that's the end of your arc. you lived and died as an enslaved person. black folks who were lynched and killed in this country, you know, say during the red summer, that's the end of their arc. >> rose: what about it? there's no broader, bigger sort of justice. >> rose: and what about people killed by acts of police violence today? >> that's the end of their arc. aragon's arc ended right there as a physical human being. when he was choked out in staten island, that's the end of it. that's the end of his body. whatever great thing comes out, he won't see it. >> rose: are you speaking for him? >> no, no.

it's just my belief about the world. i don't believe there is an afterlife in which he's going to look down and see something great. that probably informs a great deal of my view on this and sort of rooting this in the body. i think this is crucial to accept because if you can get that, then you can really get to the pain of what's actually happening. martin luther king was shot and killed, and that's it. that's it. >> rose: and your hero, malcolm x was shot and killed. >> right, same way. >> rose: however, if i were to say to you malcolm was killed by black people, i if i were to say to you the case that so stung or resonated within you, the story of a very, very accomplished young man, your family friend, as i remember, killed, a friend who had an enormous future. >> my friend prince charles was build an african-american police officer.

>> rose: but that doesn't matter at all. >> no. >> rose: what's relevant is he was a black man, not who shot the gun. >> yes, and he was living in a system that cast him into a "black race "-- . >> rose: and black on black violence you don't want to hear that? >> i have no problem hearing it. i don't think it has -- i mean, take the example of malcolm x, which we started, mac upx should never have been in that fight, he should have been a senator or governor. >> rose: skill and talent -- yeah, he shouldn't have been there. >> rose: most black people would agree with you. >> i'm sure they would. the very fact that he had to be out there cannot be taken away from the context of white supremacy. the fact my friend prince jones was gunned down cannot be subtracted from the fact he was mistaken for another black person who was a suspected criminal because they were both black and there are certain presumptions made about that. it doesn't matter who the actual agent is.

there is a broad, systemic thing. >> rose: you believe and write eloquently this is simply the forward projection of history from slavery. >> i do very much so. i think that, you know, until there is some sort of serious, direct reckoning with this, we're just going to keep going over and over on the same thing. i don't mean to harp on this, but the question is who the killer is and what race are they, i think it's a distraction that takes us away -- >> rose: and it's also a distraction -- tell me when you watched the eulogy the president gave in charleston, you were being interviewed. >> yes, and the sound was off. then i watched the whole thing later. >> rose: what did you think about that? because it now is enshrined as one of the great presidential speeches. >> i think it was one of the great presidential speeches. >> like the ginsburg address and

things like that. >> i can't go that far. but in my lifetime i thought it was one of the greatest presidential speeches i.d. everr seen. >> rose: but -- i don't have abu. >> rose: yes, you do. it's just as the president of the united states -- >> rose: he had to speak that way? >> yes, but judged against anybody else, anybody else who could have been president, john mccain, hillary clinton, anybody else potentially in that spot, i wanted barack obama and i thought his address was better than what anybody else could do. >> rose: but he did do a bow to the fact that we're all responsible. >> right, right. and i thought -- >> rose: and he''s always said that. >> yes. >> rose: and you quarrel with that, don't you? >> no, no, i don't. i think, as americans, we all are spoon responsible. >> rose: he quarrels with the

fact that we have to be accountable for ourself. >> i do quarrel with that. he didn't do that in that particular speech. yes, i quarrel with the notion that individual virtue is somehow a match for the forces and the resources of a society angled in a particular direction, in this case toward white supremacy. i don't think individual virtue which some people call personal responsibility is enough. >> rose: do you believe there is something that could change the way things are? >> i mean, i think the idea of reparations is a good idea. >> rose: so reparations one thing. >> yes, i think so, yes. >> rose: why would reparations be so important? because it would say you have been wronged? >> yes, to put it simply, what is at the root of the vast majority of problems in this country about white supremacy is the inability to acknowledge the

debt. i think that's at the root of everything. i think if we can acknowledge the debt, what we've done to folks, the moral debt, the economic and financial debt, our policies would look very different. >> rose: so, therefore, what's happened to the confederate flag, you find what? >> i find it progress. it's a very good thing and built on nearly a half century of work by historians and activists. >> rose: nearly a half century of work of historians and activists. >> yeah. >> rose: so there is progress. yes. >> rose: but progress that came as a result of activism and struggle? >> right. if you ask me if there'd been progress over the past 150 years as a result of struggle, i would agree with you. what i disagree with is the idea of inevitable progress. i don't think anything's pre-determined. >> rose: it needed a precipatory agent?

>> yeah, or whether you have the agent present that you will necessarily win. i don't think it's inevitable. i think history is long and we'll see. >> rose: bryan stevenson is a public interest attorney and the founder and executive director of the equal justice initiative, a nonprofit organization that represents indigent defendants and prisoners whose trials are marked by racial bias or prosecutorial misconduct. tell me what it is that you think is the most important question for this country as it considers race and justice. >> race and justice? how are we going to recover from our legacy of racial inequality, this history of racial injustice that has infected all of us, that compromised all our abilities to see one another fairly. i think that's really the question that we've never taken on. we've never really tried to confront the legacy of slavery. i actually think we need to talk about slavery. people can can look at me hard when i say that. i don't think we ever dealt with

that legacy. slavery was really horrific in this country because it wasn't -- the great evil of america wasn't involuntary servitude or forced labor, it was the narrative of racial difference we created to legit mate it, the ideology of white supremacy. >> rose: inferior versus superior. >> right, and that narrative was never addressed by the 13t 13th eavment that's why i argued slavery didn't end in 186 5rbgs i think it evolved. >> rose: and exists today in the mind because of what we think about the questions of race and color. >> yes, i think there is a presumption of dangerousness and guilt that gets assigned to black and brown people, particularly black and brown boys, but black and brown people because we've never freed ourselves from it because it's been sustained and enforced. we lynched people in the first half to have the 20th century because to have the presumption of dangerousness and guilt, we

segregated ourselves because of it, we separated ourselves and still do. now on the streets, when people see young men of color, there is a presumption they're dangerous or guilty and in the criminal courtroom, you see it all the time and we won't make progress until we free ourselves. i think we need truth and reconciliation in america and we don't have it. i think we don't talk about the civil rights movement. i think we're too celebratory. >> rose: how do you think we should talk about it? >> i think we should reflect on the damage done. i hear people talk about it and it sounds like a carnival. day one, rosa parks gave up her seat, day two, martin luther king marched on washington and day 3 everybody gave up and we got our rights. many representatives went back to d.c. and refused to vote for a reinforcement of the voting

rights act because they don't see the connection. the truth is in that era we humiliated and burdennenned and battered and beat and excluded black people on a daily basis. we told them they weren't good and smart enough to go to school and vote. my parents were done that way. >> rose: and to women? we did, and made it difficult for many men to see women as capable and we have been pushing against that narrative and it shifted somewhat by allowing them to present themselves in these new ways. we have to do the same thing with regard to race. >> rose: where does that put you on reparations? >> i think we have to repair all the damage that this legacy has done. i'm not focused on money because that's not the kind of reparation that's going to atly get us to better place, but i think we have a generation of people in this country who are white, who were taught either directly or indirectly that they're better than other people because they're white and i think that's kind of an abuse and i wanted to help that community free itself from that

lie. but you can't just be ignorant or silent about it. i want us to mark the spots. the reparationle work that i would like to see, i would like us to mark the spaces where the slave trade was made evident. we ought to be marking every lynching that took place in this country. >> rose: how? put monuments and memorials and force this country to engage in the sober reflection we need to engage in so that no one can be proud of a confederate heritage that actually defended and sustained slavery, so that no one is confused about the fact that it was not the good old days in the 20th century, so that no one can be indifferent to the victimization of black people because we thought about what the victim sailings represents in. south africa, there was a recognition you couldn't recover from till reconciliation. >> rose: truth is in reconciliation? >> a big part of it. you can't go 100 inerts berlin

without seeing markers and stones being placed in tbront of jewish homes where families were take ton examples. the germans want you to go and reflect on the holocaust. they have made more progress to deal with the holocaust than we have been in the 150 years since slavery and it's because they haven't been afraid to tell the truth about what they did. it's not we're neutral or silent, we're celebrating them and you can't move forward. >> rose: it's equivalent to the holocaust? >> i think its is. it's a human rights oppression that crushed millions of lives and devastated the aspirations of an entire race of people and did something destructive to our moral consciousness. we've actually tried to make peace with our enslavement of other human beings and it's left us not as morally evolved than we need to be, it's made us

vulnerable to tolerating lynching and segregation and tolerating a criminal justice system where we now project that one in three black male babies will go to prison. >> rose: tovpt the united states, barack obama, in 2009 when he assumed office, had gone before the conversation in first state of the union and essentially said what you have said at this table today. a, should he have done that? and would that have begun a national dialogue? or would it have prevented conversations about anything else. >> i think it would have done the latter. i don't think there are short cuts. i don't think we can elect a president and make that president responsible for facilitating this broader conversation. >> rose: why can't we look to the biggest pulpit in the country as a catalyst to the

conversation? >> oh, i think it absolutely can and should be a catalyst, but i don't think we can expect these problems to be solved at the top and just kind of be thrown down. these problems have to begin in communities. >> rose: meaning they have to go from the bottom up? >> i think they do. that doesn't mean i don't have expectations for the president or our elected leaders. there are a lot of things we can and should be doing. i think one of the challenges this president had is there was a perception because he was black and the racial differences so intense we worried he's only going to be a president for the black people, so he had to posture that made it harder for him to talk about race issues than if he were white. if you saw it in the way he reacted to something that had a racial justice component, there was a disproposh nat hysteria about it. i'm not suggesting that doesn't mean you can't do things because you can and you should, but it does mean that we've got to deal

with this problem in a much broader way. >> roseway. there was a hypersensitivity to any act or gesture that seemed to be responsive to the problems of racial violence. we talked about the tragic shooting of treyvon martin outrage, and i think that speaks to the immaturity of our country's capacity to talk honestly about race. you say race in most parts of this country, people get nervous you felt say racial justice and they look for the exit. the question is why? what are we afraid of? >> rose: have you done enough? i don't think any of us have done enough because there is tremendous suffering in this country. there is never been a time in america when there are more innocent people in jails and prisons than there are right now and, as a lawyer -- >> rose: there is never been a time in which there have been more innocent people in jails than 2016? 2015? >> that's correct.

we went from 300,000 people in jails and prisons in 1972 to 2.3 million people in jails and prisons today. >> rose: i want to go to your personal experience in a moment as a lawyer, but there are those who will argue that it's not about race, it's about economics. >> it is -- >> rose: poverty. lack of opportunity. it's those things. >> those are very powerful forces. you cannot deny that poverty is the element that aggravates all of these issues. we have a criminal justice system. i make this point all the time that treats you better if you're rich and guilty than if you're poor and innocent. wealth, not culpability, shapes outcomes. no question poverty is a big part of it, but we are kidding ourselves if we think race sf not also an issue. if we think our consciousness about race is simply irrelevant in dealing with these social problems. it's not honest to say it's all about poverty and not about

race. of coursist about poverty, but it's also about race. i want to deal with poverty, i really do. i want to create reforms that deal with structural poverty, this generational poverty, but it doesn't mean i'm going to be silent about race, and i think that's more, in my view, a more honest way of engaging with our history. >> rose: why are glow law rather than politics? >> i believe in rights. i believe that sometimes you have to protect the people who will never have political power, who will never be the political majority. i grew up in a region where if it was left to the political process, there would still be segregation. there is a time when you would never have gotten the majority in alabama to end segregation or give the vote to black people. i took the court, the rule of law, the rights of framework to create these abilities, the ability to go to school, to practice law and, because of that, i think we need to have people in that space to protect the rights of the disfavored, the minorities, excluded, the

marginalized, the people who will never have enough votes to achieve their basic protections through the political process. >> rose: so you've never been tempt bid political process? >> no. >> rose: is there a place, and i know you have suggested south africa because of truth and reconciliation, some of that in the balkans because the hague played a role in some of that -- >> yeah. >> rose: -- where you think that a country has faced up to its responsibilities in a way that it's cleansed itself of the implications and the consequences? >> i think the nation -- >> rose: is it germany? germany. because if you think about horrific the holocaust was, how horrifying the nazi era was, it's kind of shocking to imagine that we now have this regard for germany, this respect for germany that we would not have

expected to have this soon after world war ii. >> rose: yet, at the same time, in the news and past week has been japan, and the prime minister, in part -- in part -- apologizing for all the atrocities of the japanese government not just against american soldiers but against the chinese population. >> yes, yes. you know, i think, if i'm going to be a decent -- >> rose: so here is a prime minister who could not say "i'm sorry see because of the politics. >> yes, that's because nationalism and our national identities are too much shaped around never saying "i'm sorry." we have a song book in america that is big and beautiful when it comes to success and pride and accomplishment but we don't have a very good song for when it comes to how we apologize. >> rose: apologies to some sugges weakness or lack of

respect for country and all those things. >> but you and i know, if we're going to have a healthy relationship with someone we care about -- i don't know any loving couples that never say "i'm sorry" to each other. you can't have good friendships unless you're prepared to say, you know what? that was my mistake. it's our ability to apologize when we go out of bounds that makes us human but also redeemed. that's how we get to mercy and compassion and greatness, and if we don't practice that as a nation, we will fail to be the great society we claim to be. so learning to say i'm sorry is something we're going to have to do. throarng make peace with these difficult things we have done to people with color is something we'll have to do if we want to be great. >> rose: who pushes back against what you say? >> i think it's not direct. it's kind of indirect. it's this habit of just never

doing uncomfortable things that we've all inherited. you know, trying to own up to our history of slavery, that's uncomfortable. so nobody is going to take that on. nobody's going to exercise a lot of leerpd leadership with that. dealing with the fact we've marginalized people and treated people unfairly is hard. i just got a man off death row who spent 30 years on death row for a crime he didn't commit, solitaire confinement, locked down 23 hours a day, witnessed 53 executions, complained of smelling flesh burning when people were electrocuted, we got him released in april 2015 and not a single person in the prosecutor's office who were responsible said i'm sorry, they're just silent. >> rose: how many supported his release? >> when we were working on the case, very few. >> rose: they didn't want to acknowledge their own mistakes, the prosecutorial mistakes?

>> that's correct. one of the problems we face now is you have prosecutors and judges who feel more comfortable executing an innocent person than acknowledging -- >> rose: that system failed. -- that the system failed, and that speaks to the larger problem of not having the habits of people who fail sometimes and dealing with that honestly. >> rose: so how do we explain you? (laughter) i mean, here is this guy i did a profile for "60 minutes" who ed bradley did a profile of. >> yes. >> rose: who "vanity fair" did a profile of. it speaks to your eloquence, conviction and values, everything else. what made you the way you are? >> you know, i feel likely fortunate. my grandmother was a daughter of people who were enslaved, and my grandmother had this wisdom that was profound and deeply impactful when i would see my grandmother as a little boy, she would squeeze me to tightly i could barely breathe. then she would see me an hour

later and she'd say, bryan, you still feel me hugging you? if i said no, she would be on me again. she talked about her father who learned to read as a slave and how brave and risky and dangerous that was but how necessary it was for him to be free, and she didn't have formal schooling, but she wanted to read. she just told me you have to fight, fight, fight, but you have to fight with integrity burks you have to fight with your heart and your mind and that made a huge impact on me. i have been shaped by a lot of people. >> rose: you knew lawyers. i didn't know any till i got to harvard and decided i didn't want to be one. but that changed. i went to law school because i wanted to deal with racial inequality and poverty or justice and didn't seem like anybody was backing about that, but then i found a community of lawyers doing precisely that and it energized me and affirmed me. but being around people like my grandmother in the community i grew up in, a poor, segregated

black community where people were hard working, they just wanted things to get better, but they understood the power of taking care of the people you love and, you know, i have to say i've really been moved by this community of people who are encars raid, the people of community i serve and the poor community, the community of people we were trying to educate in the deep south, and it's hard for me to see people struggling with these burdens that i think we can relieve if we just engage in a different way. that's what motivates me to kind of see this as an opportunity. >> rose: was there a moment? you know, if your grandmother's hug was a moment, was there a moment in which you somehow said, i can't take the easy way? >> yeah, there was. when i was in law school, i was really disillusioned, i was trying to persuade myself i could accept a career as a lawyer that i knew was not going to be fully affirming. i had an opportunity to work with a human rights group in atlanta, georgia, and offer

services to people on death row, and they sent me to meet a man on the row who had not been met yet and said tell him he has a year before he has to worry about being executed. i was so nervous and persuaded my ignorance and law school status would be of disappointment to him, but when i met him, he hugged me and told me that he's the first person he met that was not a death row prisoner or guard and excited he would be able to see his wife and children. and we fell into a powerful conversation. the guards were angry i had spent so much time and were rough with him and pushing him out of the room. before he left, he looked a at e and said, bryan, don't worry, just come back. then he did something i never forgot, he closed his eyes, threw his head back and started to sing this hymn, i'm pressing on the upward way, new height i'm gaining every day, still praying as i'm onward bound and

then he said, lord, plant my feet on higher ground. and hearing him being pushed down the hall and you could still hear him singing about higher ground, all of a sudden i wanted to help people get to higher ground but more i knew hi jowrn where was tied to his. if he doesn't get there, i'm not going to get there, and that consciousness for me wasn't overwhelming, wasn't burdensome or scary or sacrificial, it was liberating, it was energizing and affirming. >> rose: you knew what you had to do? >> i did. >> rose: that's such a wonderful moment in a human being's life, to know what you have to do. >> yes. >> rose: everything else clears away. >> right. >> rose: i have know where i have to go. >> absolutely. >> rose: i know what i have to do. i think that's right. >> rose: if i don't do that -- yeah. >> rose: -- i will never believe my life mattered as much as it might. >> i think that's right. and the way you maximize that opportunity is by positioning yourselves in places where there is some difficulty. when you get proximate to the

things you care about and when you choose to do uncomfortable things, when you don't do what's convenient and comfortable all the time, you have those moments. i don't think they happen as readily when we're surrounded by comfort and convenience. i think they happen when we force ourselves to do inconvenient and uncomfortable things. >> rose: what does solitaire confinement and death row do to humanity? >> solitaire confinement is horrific because it is an assault on all your senses, on your basic humanity. it's hard to hold on to your dignity when you're locked down like that. mr. hinton, the man i represented who got released from death row. >> rose: what does he say? what does he show? >> he's an amazing human being. he has a remarkable sense of humor. smart, convicted, charismatic burks he's traumatized and hurt by what we did to him for 30 years and he'll never fully

recover, no one ever does. i have a client in florida, 13 years old when he was sentenced to life without parole for a non-homicide offense. he was so small, the warden had to have either put him in general population to be sexually assaulted or solitaire confinement, so they put him in solitaire confinement, but they didn't alter the rules for the 13-year-old bow and the rule is you have to go six months without ever speaking too loudly, without ever talking back, without ever doing anything wrong or we will not let you out. for a 13-year-old boy, isolated from all humans, no touch, no opportunities to get outside your cell, that was torture, so he could never go six months without doing something wrong, without cutting himself or getting mad, he spend 18 years in solitaire. >> rose: what did it do to him? >> it broke him, undermined his ability to be a good decision-maker, and we are

working with him, and he is making slow progress, but that's something that should have never happened. we didn't have to do that. i mean, you can't be in that experience without suffering all of the trauma, all the of the disability that comes with something like a traumatic experience. and it's tragic. you know, the combat veterans that are coming back, you can make the argument that we had to fight the war. i believe that, but you can make that argument. we don't have to isolate people in this way where we make them less human, where we torture them, where we traumatize them, where we, jr. them. that's gratuitous. >> rose: but there are questions in terms of asking if you knew a bit of information could somehow save a larger group of people -- >> mm-hmm, but in the american prison system, there is no debate, we're not gaining anything. this is a completely misguided policy we told rate because we haven't really -- we talk so

much about victim's right and i'm sensitive to the victimization of people who are the victims of violent crime. we have an horrific number of crimes in this country. my grandfather was murdered when i was 16. we have too many people who have been assaulted, robbed and burgled. that consciousness of victimization is something that's important but we've limited it. we're not even mature in how we think about helping people recover from being victimized and because of that we end up victimizing other people. >> rose: how do we recover from being victimized? >> i think we commit ourselves -- >> rose: thinking of yourself as a victim is not healthy either. >> that's right, but we commit ourselves to helping people get healthy, to recover, and we don't say, well, if you victimize me, i get to victimize you. that's not a healthy strategy for getting to a healthier place. you don't say -- >> rose: it's actually one of the things about torture. they say we torture, they will

torture. >> absolutely. but the other thing they don't say is because you victimize that person, we get to victimize you. we don't care about you, we only care about their victimization, and that creates another kind of victimization. what's interesting to me about the death penalty and race, the death penalty is racially by yasd, but the bias is most evident not in the race of the offender but the victim. you're 22 more times likely to get the death penalty if the victim is white than black. we value those murders more than -- 22 -- >> yeah. you're 11 times more likely -- this is the georgia data that went before the u.s. supreme court in this case -- you're 11 times more likely to get death penalty if the victim is white than black. you're 22 times more likely to get the death penalty if the defendant is black and the victim is white. that was subjected to all kind of multi-varied analysis and

race was the biggest predictor of who got the death penalty. white cases typically did, black cases typically did not. in alabama 65% of all murder victims are black, but 80% of people on death row are there for people involved in victims who were white, and that consciousness of whose lives matter shaped our ability to do justice and we don't think that the lives of people who were arrested were matter. we don't think that the lives of poor people matter, we don't think that the lives of young black and brown boys and men matter. men who used drugs matter and our consciousness about how to protect and help them and serve them is gone. >> rose: you're saying no matter what you've done your life matters? >> absolutely. and in a just society, that has to be true for everyone. you know, the germans didn't think that the jewish lives matter. in south africa, the white minority didn't think black lives matter. in rwanda, you had this notion some tribes don't matter. and that consciousness is what

leads to horror, to genocide, to oppression, to inequality. >> rose: the balkans, too. absolutely. >> rose: it's not about differences in color, genocide. >> that's right. but we have a way of saying their suffering doesn't matter and whenever that exists in society, you will see all the problems we're seeing. >> rose: it's interesting in that bill gates said this a number of times and especially in conjunction with his life melinda gates, the initial beginning that sort of caused them to make the commitment of resources they made was the notion all lives matter equally. >> yeah. >> rose: all matter. yeah. >> rose: and they'd do that not in the context of race or economic circumstances even though they contributed, they would do that in the context of global health. >> yes. >> rose: we have to wake up that all life has equal value.

>> that's the thing that i'm trying to make some of these arguments in difficult situations because, actually, when you get to that place, it's a better place to be than when you're constantly trying to defend and justify why that life doesn't matter, why those people deserve that, why these people can't be with -- >> rose: and of all the victims' families, people who suffered enormous pain and loss, you can make the easy examples, you know, someone who, in their home, were invaded, brutally raped and tortured and killed, and you say all those people who do that, their lives have value. that's what you're saying? and until we get there, we can't deal with the big issues. >> that's right. all lives matter. when my grandfather was murdered, the question we were asking is why?

what is it in our society that would make it possible for these young kids to do this act of violence? >> rose: what did they do? they broke into my grandfather's home. he was living in the projects in south philadelphia. they tried to steal a tv. he tried to stop them, and they stabbed him to death. we wanted to understand what could we do to stop that from happening. it wasn't just those kids. we understand there were all kinds of things shaping behaviors. i work with kids 12 and 13 who don't expect to be free by the time they're 2 is. i want to disrupt that. i don't want them to victimize other human beings but i also care about their futures and that's why, yes, all lives matter. i think our capacity to take care of people who have been injured, who have been assaulted, who have been victimized is going to be enhanced when we have a deeper appreciation. >> rose: but is there a difference in all lives matter than all lives have equal value?

is there a difference in that? >> well, i don't think so. when it comes to whether we treat you with respect, whether we care about your opportunities, whether we give you equal access to the things that are basic, then all lives have equal value. obviously, somebody who can generate a lot of attention or generate a lot of money, there are people who have enormous musical talent -- >> rose: we're not talking about gifts. >> exactly. so there are going to be these characteristics. but when it comes to your basic obligation to treat people with respect and dignity and to recognize their humanity, no, all lives have equal value. >> rose: is that in the end, when you analyze every possible reason for taking another's life, and you reject all of them, is it primarily because the system makes mistakes?

or is it because no society has the right to take somebody's life because they are, at their best, better than the worst thing they did and, so, therefore, no matter how atrocious, no matter whether it was hitler, you wouldn't take his life, even though the state took a lot of nazi lives after the war, after trial? >> that's right. for me, it's both of them. i start with the first point. because i don't need to persuade everybody of that second point. it is what i believe. i don't think we actually advance our society, advance our commitment to the rule of law by killing people to show that killing is wrong. in the same way i don't think it makes sense to rape people to show rape is wrong. i don't think we should torture people to show torture is wrong. i think we compromise our own dignity and integrity too much. we can kill people in a way that doesn't implicate us in a way that raping people would, so we

allow that to happen, but i don't think that's a healthy way to advance a society. >> rose: you've known a lot of people on death row. >> yeah. >> rose: none of them, you're saying, i assume -- i'm asking -- all the people you've known on death row, whether they're there because they committed a crime or not -- and maybe there is a difference between committing a crime or doing an act -- if any of them had known they were likely to be executed, would they have committed the rhyme still? >> sure. >> rose: there is no -- no deterrence. >> rose: no deterrence. no. listen, i think we have too many people in our society, poor kids, poor people in the margins, people suffering from mental illness, people in horrific states who expect to die. they don't expect to live a long life. they are preoccupied with when their end is going to come. it's not a fear of death that's going to change these behaviors. what's going to change these behaviors is some hope, some

possibility that things can get better. >> rose: some life experience that gives value. >> some life experience that gives value. but on the death penalty question, i don't have to make the moral argument. i think the threshhold argument is not whether people deserve to die for the crimes they committed but do we deserve to kill. and if you have the kinds of mistakes that we have, if you have a system undermined by all of this bias and bigotry that treats you better because of your poverty or wealth, that makes as many mistakes as we make. >> rose: so should this country apologize to those nazi leaders we killed? >> i don't think you ever have to apologize for people who committed the crimes that you have punished unfairly. what you have to do is apologize to all the other people in your society whom you have failed by not creating a really just system, by not creating a system that actually responds to the injuries that are still alive. i think it would be misguided to think about apology in that space when we have so many

living victims of inequality that we have now. >> rose: do you have people that love you who say you have a bigger soul, a bigger heart, a bigger comprehension than i do? >> no, and -- >> rose: you're a special person and i can't go that far with you? >> no. >> rose: there are exceptions to my compassion, there are exceptions to my -- >> no. what amazes me sigh -- what amazes me is i have people to don't know me that well, who don't love me, but feel exactly as i do that we need to recover compassion and mercy and justice. >> rose: other than doing exactly what you're doing at this moment and when you're in a courtroom and other than doing what you do when you are lobbying congress and legislators to say change, make sure that we adhere to these

values that i am trying to, other than that, what else is necessary to accelerate change? >> i really do think that we need to change the landscape. we've got a new project where we are very interested in the visual landscape, the visual history. so we're putting up these markers, we're trying to do these monuments. i think there is something important in that because i think that's how you cope with collective trauma and manage the space -- >> rose: i actually believe in part the idea that you have to have -- you have to clearly show this is where our values are. >> yes. >> rose: you can see it here and here. >> yes. >> rose: and this is what we do and, at the same time, we have to reward moral courage. >> yes, absolutely. absolutely. but i think that there is something important for a society. you know, i go to the vietnam war memorial in d.c. and it's

powerful. you go to the lincoln memorial, you put your hand on it, and you read that and it makes you understand something about yourself that you will not understand until you're in that space, and i think we need to do more of that and to create pathways and portals for people to get out of this miry muck of racial difference and ugliness and animosity and to something a little more healthy and hopeful and a little more responsive to our history. >> rose: so what promises have you made to yourself and what promises have you made to your grandmother and what promises have you made to a larger community that bryan stevenson is going to do? >> yeah. well, you know, i'm going to keep fighting, that's the promise i make to the community. you know, i think justice is a constant struggle. if i'm at justice, i have to keep struggling, but it's not a burden for me. it's a privilege. i'm going to feel really privileged to do what i do. >> rose: thank you for coming.

you're welcome. >> rose: justice, a stirring testament to the salvation that fighting for the vulnerable sometimes yields. bryan stevenson's life is about that. thank you for joining us. see you next time. >> rose: for captioning sponsored by rose communications captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org

man: it's like holy mother of comfort food.ion. woman: throw it down. it's noodle crack. patel: you have to be ready for the heart attack on a platter. crowell: okay, i'm the bacon guy. man: oh, i just did a jig every time i dipped into it. man #2: it just completely blew my mind. woman: it felt like i had a mouthful of raw vegetables and dry dough. sbrocco: oh, please. i want the dessert first! [ laughs ] i told him he had to wait.