hello, everyone, and welcome hello, everyone, and welcome to "amanpour & co." here's what's coming up. as president trump gets debriefed on the latest from saudi arabia, fallout grows over the disappearance of journalist jamal khashoggi. was the west too quick to brand saudi crown prince mohammed bin salman a reformer? "new york times" columnist tom friedman gives us his first tv interview as an early mbs supporter. he also struggled with salman's growing authoritarian streak. and julian castro, former san antonio mayor, has the resume and personal story to help the democrats out of the doldrums. could his party have a latino problem?

plus, an african-american high school student trapped between two conflicting worlds. our alicia menendez talks to amandla stenberg, star of the new movie, "the hate u give." uniworld is a proud sponsor of "amanpour & co." when bea tollman founded a collection of boutique hotels, she had bigger dreams, and those dreams were on the water, a river specifically, multiple rivers that would one day be home to uniworld river cruises and their floating boutique hotels. today that dream sets sail in europe, asia, india, egypt, and more. bookings available through your travel agent. for more information, visit uniworld.com. >> additional support has been provided by rosalind p. walter, bernard and irene schwartz, sue and edgar wachenheim iii, the cheryl and philip milstein

family, and by contributions to your pbs stations from viewers like you. thank you. welcome to the program, everyone. i'm christiane amanpour. it's official, the u.s. treasury secretary, steven mnuchin, is backing out of a high-profile investor conference in saudi arabia, the so-called dabos in the desert. as the trump administration wants to give the kingdom a little more time to come up with its story on jamal khashoggi. the journalist and insider who became a prominent critic of the day, and it's a haunting umn dispatch, a plea for freedom of expression in the arab world, delivered to the paper by khashoggi's translator the very day after he was reported missing in istanbul. khashoggi writes that hopes for a more open and transparent society were raised by the arab spring and then quickly shattered. now he writes from the grave,

arabs living in these countries are either uninformed or misinformed. they are unable to adequately address, much less publicly discuss, matters that affect the region and their day-to-day lives. a state-run narrative dominates the public psyche. while many do not believe it, a large majority of the population falls victim to this false narrative. these are powerful and poignant last words from a brave colleague who we believe lost his life trying to dislodge that false narrative. for decades thomas friedman has been a deeply influential observer of the middle east and he was among the first journalists to publish an interview with mbs welcoming the crown prince in articles like this one. saudi arabia's arab spring at last, that was november 2017. but in his columns this year, including this one titled "trump to dictators, have a nice day" friedman warns of an mbs-induced

climate of fear in saudi arabia. tom friedman joins me now for his first tv interview since khashoggi vanished. welcome to the program, thomas friedman. >> great to be with you, christiane. >> let's just take the news from the top. what do you make, first and foremost, of the growing fallout? we have at the very last minute the secretary of the treasury pulling out of this crown prince-backed investor conference in the kingdom. we have pompeo, the secretary of state, back from his trips there briefing president trump and they saying let's give it a few more days. what can be going on? what do we need a few more days for, do you think? >> my guess, christiane, is that the saudis are in a complete panic because with the turkish press, "the washington post," "the new york times," cnn, basically everyone has made clear that this killing in the istanbul consulate in the saudi embassy was done by people very, very close to the crown prince

and that they apparently were armed with a bone saw. so i think their original desire to say this was just a rogue operation, interrogation that went bad, that's just not going to hold up. so i think they're desperately trying to come up with a concocted cover story that can insulate the crown prince from this event, from this terrible killing, and they can't. that's why i said in my column yesterday, there's no fixing stupid. when you do something as evil as they did in their own consulate, and just as utterly stupid, there's no fixing that. so it is now such a colossal mess, if you ask me how they're going to get out of it, i just have no idea. >> let me just take a little bit from that last column, which was yesterday. for starters, i believe that the promise of mbs, however much you did or did not think he could bring social, economic and religious reform is finished, he's made himself radioactive

absent a credible, independent exoneration for jamal's disappearance and apparent murder. so there are two points there. do you think there will be a credible transparent explanation and investigation? and then by the same token, who's going to get rid of the crown prince? i mean he's presumably actually going to stay, no matter how radioactive you say he is. >> i don't think there will be any independent investigation and this is what they can best concoct to get out of this and i don't think it's going to be much. i don't think you can even remotely past a laugh test of the crown prince's cousin, let alone the world media. here's how i see the dilemma in saudi arabia. i don't think saudi arabia can have a crown prince and future king who cannot come to the united states of america. and i believe as a result of this action, i cannot see how the congress is not going to invoke the global magnitsky act to sanction the crown prince.

i don't see how congress would stand for it. and so they have a dilemma, how can saudi arabia -- and we have a dilemma, our closest ally in that part of the world, if the ruler can't come to america at the same time. i don't see how he can be king and i don't see how he cannot be king because he's leveled all of his rivals. and so there is not a natural person to succeed him there. and his father is ailing. he appears to have some form of dementia. it's not clear how much he's in and out. that's why i think what you're going to see, christiane, the whole system there is going to seize up. it has to be in a complete panic. they're completely paralyzed. >> so put on your middle east observer hat, which you've been doing since 1979. we're going to get to the details in a moment. but right now it appears that if you take the trump administration's point of view, here they are having tried to box iran into a corner using saudi arabia as their biggest ally in that, and within a few

days or couple of weeks want to add a whole new raft of oil sanctions on iran. november 5th is the deadline. you say the saudis are probably in a panic, but isn't the trump administration in a panic how to react? you know, all of a sudden their best-laid plans to squeeze iranian oil might not work given what they need to get out of saudi arabia. if saudi arabia doesn't give oil, what happens? >> i think they're in a real dilemma now. maybe, christiane, it will force them down another track toward iran. you know, trump has thrown out some olive branches toward the iranians saying i'm ready to talk to you like i did with kim jong-un in north korea.

persian iranian sunni arab civil war in the middle east has driven that region into this terrible corner that it's in right now. until and unless that is resolved, the region -- it's going to be doomed, christiane. it's going to be doomed. i think american diplomacy, what it should have been about all along, is not taking sides in this war. it's not like one side is morally greater than the other. it actually should be saying this is the most important peace process in the world, between iran and saudi arabia, between shiite iran and the sunni arab world. if we don't get that right, it's just going to be one more of these after another. but the whole region is just going to spiral downward and downward farther and farther. >> you know, a lot of people faithfully read your columns because they believe that you have a major, you know, decades-long proven track record there. and so a lot of people did sit

up very, very straight when you actually interviewed the crown prince and you had your column, which i mentioned, which said arab spring comes to saudi arabia at last. that was in november of last year. >> right. >> and just one line from it was i found his passion for reform authentic, his support for the youth in his country significant, and his case for making radical change in saudi arabia compelling. and i think you said only a fool would predict his success, but only a fool would not root for it. so now people are saying where was everybody? were you too quick to call him and brand him a reformer? so take us through what was going through your mind and what you saw in him then compared to today. >> right. so let me start for the beginning for me, christiane, one of the reasons i wanted to be on your show so i would have some time to talk. for me the story personally starts with 9/11, which i think was the worst thing to happen to

our country in my lifetime, even worse than the vietnam war, given the spill-out from it. my argument after 9/11 is that 9/11 was produced by two toxic bargains. one was a bargain inside saudi arabia dating back from 1979 where basically the saudi ruling family told the clerics, you bless us and give us legitimacy and we will bless you and give you the money and the resources basically to set the cultural norms in our society and export the most puritanical fundamentalist, anti-modern, anti-women brand of islam around the world. i believe that ended up in al qaeda and later in isis. and it was the inspirational roots of the people from al qaeda who did 9/11. at the same time, there was a terrible bargain we had. america basically said -- we treated the whole arab world and the gulf, but particularly the saudis as a collection of big gas stations. we told them, guys, because it's only guys, here's the deal. keep your pumps open, the prices low, don't bother the israelis too much, and you can do whatever you want out back.

you can treat your women however you want, write what conspiracy theories in your newspapers you want, just keep your pumps open, your prices low and don't bother the israelis. i believe on 9/11, we got hit with the distilled essence of everything that was going on out back. and so immediately after 9/11 i went on a tear against the saudis and on a tear for making america energy independent. we needed to disengage from this thing. i will tell you, i hoped the iraq war would somehow open up the world. i hope the arab spring would do that. unfortunately none of them did that. so for the last 15 years i was focused on this oil energy problem. wrote a book about it, et cetera. then i come to saudi arabia. i actually first interviewed the crown prince when he was deputy crown prince in 2015. he talked about the reform program and i could see why. saudi arabia was going down. they were running out of money basically.

it was clear if someone like mbs to reform and diversify the country had not come along, they would have to invent him. then in november 2017 i go back here again because of the thing at the ritz carlton. i wrote two columns, one before i went there in which i said anti-corruption campaign for you? where did you get the money for your yacht? maybe from your lemonade stand outside your palace? i was quite skeptical. but here were the five things on that trip that i had never seen before in saudi arabia. i saw someone, a saudi ruler, ready to remove the religious police off the streets. a huge deal for saudis. second, i saw him giving women the right to drive. third, we saw him opening the country to cinema, western concerts, and sporting events. fourth, i saw him actually taking on the hard-line clerics in the war of ideas. saying, no, you don't have the right interpretation of islam, i

have the right interpretation. no sunni -- no saudi leader had done that before. christiane, most importantly, what i saw were young saudis who were coming back to saudi arabia because they thought a real change was happening. in my column i said arab spring from the top down, not the bottom up, and that's what i saw. now some people said, you know what, tom, it's all -- it's all a fake because look what he's doing in yemen. people that he's arresting here. my attitude was maybe. there's clearly a downside, clearly an upside, and i thought it was worth investing a little hope in the upside if we could curb the downside. so i basically spent the next nine months writing columns saying the kid's got a big upside, but a big downside. it would be nice if we had an ambassador here. why don't we appoint someone like secretary of state baker to come here and be your envoy. and what happened over the last six months, and to me it's one

of the mysteries of the story. i don't -- i can't quite explain it. but the place he got captured by conspiratorial ideas, this notion that they could be -- they could have the china approach. china grabbed the islands in the south china sea. the world complained, china told everyone to get lost and the world got used to it. i wrote about how the china model was infecting his thinking. somewhere along the way, his circle got really tight and small. my sources were telling me there's some really bad people there feeding bad ideas, okay. and i think it ended up in crossing a terrible red line, thinking that they could kill really a mild critic. not some guy who was feeding some movement. a mild critic in their own consulate in istanbul. and so i -- i feel that i made a responsible bet. for me i'm very comfortable with it.

i understand why critics say you shouldn't have done it. i thought it was so big based on real proof points. but whatever either of us thought, the party's over. >> it's really interesting that you say that the party's over, because it's very interesting, and we don't know how this is going to end. we, as you say, don't know whether mbs stays where he is, who if anybody comes up and does what next. but there are real issues, like, for instance, iran. do you believe, therefore, that the saudi bebe netanyahu/president trump obsession on iran was worth making this bargain with mbs? was that the leading foreign policy objective in the region or not? >> i'm not sure i connected them that way, christiane. i saw the problem a little bit differently. as you know, six months ago in march before mbs came to america i wrote a column that was a phony, i made it up, memo from

the u.s. ambassador from saudi arabia to president trump, if we had an ambassador, in which i warned the president, the young man's got big upsides, big downsides, you've got to curb the downsides. we had no ambassador. christiane, we still don't have an ambassador in saudi arabia. we thought the trump people thought that jared kushner on his whatsapp could manage saudi policy, and it was absolute madness. and so i see that more as the problem than the iran thing. but i know what you're saying, the obsession with iran, enormously unhealthy. i've always felt that was unhealthy. i always felt that the peace process we need, as i said earlier, was between iran and saudi arabia. if we don't fix that, you know, people pointed out mbs basically abducted the prime minister of lebanon. let's not forget the iranians through hezbollah murdered the prime minister of lebanon.

so the idea that one of these guys is black and the other is white, that's just crazy. america should not be deciding between these two parties. they're both awful. our job should be to be moderating them. that's what obama's iran deal was about. that's what i hoped we could nurture with mbs. that's what we should be doing, not choosing between them. >> so, you know, do you think, therefore, the canadian government has a more robust moral but also robust foreign policy than the u.s. government at the moment? for instance, on august the 2nd, there was this whole thing between the canadian foreign minister and the saudi regime when chrystia freeland tweeted both in english and in arabic, very alarmed to learn that he -- she has been imprisoned in saudi. canada stands behind the family and we call for the release of both. of course they were activists

trying to get some freedom. of course we mentioned all the women who were -- 17 of whom were doing more and more driving activism were put into prison. but the result was that saudi arabia barred canada's envoy from returning and placed a new sort of trade ban. i mean are we only just waking up to these kinds of things, to the terrible war in yemen, which the united states backs and which could not be prosecuted without u.s. and uk help? are we only just waking up to this sleeping giant of problems because of the, we believe, murder of our colleague, jamal khashoggi? >> no question that this was not on the radar screen of the administration. they were on auto pilot with jared and the crown prince, i would argue. so i want to go back to the canadian thing. i think it was very important. when they write the history, i think, of the whole year, i can tell you because when that canadian thing happened, i

contacted senior saudi officials and when the women driving thing happened, and i basically said what in the world are you doing? and what i got back, i have to tell you, were some crazy conspiracy theories about a saudi dissident in london who was in touch with the women driving activists. and my answer, as i put in a column, was do you really think your kingdom is threatened by women driving activists? and i think what happened, and i know this from my own saudi sources, something happened inside that sealed room where they just got obsessed, christiane, with conspiracy theories, plots and threats. i can't tell you, i wasn't there, i don't know why, and i think the canadian thing is important for this reason. it was an absurd overreaction, as i wrote. but you know what, when the trump state department spokeswoman was asked about it, do we stand with canada or saudi

arabia on this, she basically said we are not taking a position. and i believe, christiane, of all the sort of green lights and yellow lights that we gave mbs, that ended up i believe in his crossing this red line and the murder of jamal, one of them was watching the trump administration say in a dispute between our brothers and sisters in canada, who lost 175 people fighting with us after 9/11 in afghanistan and saudi arabia, we have no opinion. >> and i wonder also whether they got sort of subliminally encouraged by president trump's war on the press, you know, and jamal khashoggi -- >> absolutely. >> -- was potentially an opportune target. but just in terms of conspiracy theories, let's end with our friend, who has written and had published a column from the grave on "the washington post." he said the arab world is facing its own version of an iron

curtain kbofd not by external actors but by domestic forces vying for power. during the cold war, radio-free europe which grew into a critical institution played an important role for fostering and sustaining freedom and arabs need something similar. i wonder if you can comment that the reports of khashoggi's disappearance have been pushed by qatar. a saudi arabian newspaper says qatar has a 50% ownership of "the post" and influence over its editorial direction. another newspaper has claimed that members of the death squad were in fact tourists. >> you know, christiane, after -- in 2002, the united nations came out with a very important report called the arab human development report. it was written by arab social scientists. they concluded in 2002, and i'm the one that broke the story of that report, that the arab world

suffered from a deficit of knowledge, a deficit of freedom, and a deficit of women's empowerment. and if it did not rapidly move to reverse those deficits, it was going to face terrible problems. and unfortunately, what you just read, christiane, was just proof of how those deficits, all three of them, have only gotten deeper and deeper. and what jamal was saying, he was really saying, folks, if we don't reverse these deficits, we are doomed. and i really fear, now i despair for that part of the world. there's so many people there i like and admire. i fear, christiane, that it is doomed. >> well, you know, you're very, very, very firm on that, so i need to ask you one last question. do you believe that there is any way that there has been a rogue operation or that the crown prince did not know what was going to take place despite all the things that the turkish authorities have leaked,

including a tape? >> as i wrote, christiane, there is zero chance that this was a rogue operation. this government is very tightly controlled. show me one example in saudi history of such a rogue operation. this is, unfortunately, sadly for saudi arabia and for the saudi youth who really were hoping for change, this will be traced back right to the crown prince. i cannot tell you that he ordered it. i don't know what the details are. but the idea that he is innocent of this incredibly evil and incredibly stupid murder is utter fancy. >> thomas freedman, thank you very much for ining us. >> pleasure. so the debate over how to respond to jamal's disappearance is playing out in the shadow of a major political showdown in the united states right now. the midterm elections, which are less than three weeks away. and this will be the first test for democrats who are looking to

regain some power after their bitter loss to donald trump in 2016. julian castro hopes to play a major role in that story as a likely presidential contender in 2020. he has both a golden resume as former mayor of san antonio, texas, and a member of president barack obama's cabinet. he also has a compelling personal story. his identical twin brother, joaquin, is a member of congress and their mother is a prominent activist in the mexican-american community. so his roots do run deep. but there are reports that latino voters are less fired up about the midterms than democrats had hoped. julian castro is the author of "an unlikely journey, waking up from my american dream" and he joins me now from new york. julian castro, welcome to the program. >> great to be with you, christiane. >> first and foremost, are you going to be a contender for 2020? >> well, you know, i've been straightforward with folks. i've said that i'm seriously

considering it and in fact likely to do it, but i'm going to make a decision right after the november 6th election. i'm going to spend between now and november 6th helping candidates that are actually on the ballot, because that's the first priority. then right after that, you know, there are a couple of things that i need to do. one of them is personal. of course my wife and i have talked about the possibility of my running, but we haven't had the kind of long, put everything on the table conversation that you have before you make a decision like this. and i want to see, frankly, what happens on november 6th. i believe that this midterm elections, they set a tone. they send a message from the american people about where we're at as a country. i have my hunch about what that message is going to be, but there's not a rush to make a final decision. and so i want to see what that message is. >> okay. well, you do have a compelling story and you said you need to take care of some personal things.

so let's go back to sort of the beginning. you seem to have had your eye on a number of prizes from a very early age. you've had a mission, you followed the lead, your mother has been very influential in your life for both you and your twin brother. but there's a really interesting anecdote around your youth. when you go to visit in fact a republican political strategist to ask about politics and how it works and, you know, in texas of course, and he apparently asked what you are going to do and you said you were going to be mayor of san antonio. is that true? >> yeah. you know, it's interesting that after you go into politics that folks remember different things about what you said you were going to do or weren't going to do, i really don't remember getting interested in politics until i went away to college. and then by the time i was in

law school, i had a sense that i wanted to come back and make sure that other people in my home community of san antonio could have the kind of opportunity that i had and my brother had. we went to the public schools there, having grown up with my mother and my grandmother. and i got a kind of chip on my shoulder about the place that i had come from, and i wanted to see it improve. and so i don't think that when i was a kid that i was going around saying that i was going to become mayor or be anything else, but eventually as i grew up and i could see the community that i had come from through the eyes of an outsider and how much improvement needed to be made that i decided to go into public service. >> you did become mayor and you did become hud secretary and your twin brother is a congressperson. but i want to ask you about the immigration part of your story, because i believe it was your grandmother who came over. and you say that if there had been even the remotest of the kind of policies that are in

effect right now, threats to close down the border, separation of families, all of that that we've seen in glaring technicolor, potentially your grandmother might never have made it across, might never have stayed and your story would be completely different. >> that's true. my grand mother came with her younger sister because her parents had died in mexico. her nearest relatives brought her through eagle pass, texas, and ended up on the west side of san antonio. they had their papers at that time, something that i didn't know until a couple of days before i gave the speech at the dnc in 2012. there was a genealogist that published the papers on the internet. but i think a lot these days about what would have happened if the same attitude that the current president, who is so hostile not only to the folks who are presenting themselves at

the border seeking asylum or folks who are undocumented but also to legal immigrants in the united states, i wonder whether the same story that my grandmother experienced, the same life and the generational impact that that had, whether that's as possible today. and i remember also growing up, even when my grandmother was in her 70s, she would still get very emotional. she would cry about having been taken from her mother before her mother passed away and not really getting to say good-bye. and that's a very different context from these children that are being separated as they get to the border. but i saw the impact that that kind of separation could make for a lifetime. that's why i believe that this policy that donald trump has put in place is not only inhumane but it basically amounts to state-sponsored child abuse of these kids, who are going to suffer from that for a lifetime. >> tell me about something that

sort of leapt out at me. first of all, you know, part of the subtitle of your book is waking up from the american dream, so i want to know what you mean by that. is it a nightmare? is it something that you think is unattainable anymore? what do you mean? but also there are some 60 million hispanics in the united states right now. what is the percentage of those who can be counted on to vote democrat? and why do we have a situation where apparently democrats are concerned that latinos, hispanics, are not as fired up as the democratic party would like? >> well, let me just start with your last question. you know, in 2012, president obama got about 71% of the latino vote. hillary clinton got something similar. so it's about 70/30 in presidential elections, the latino community has been voting

democratic and there's good reason for that. democrats have stood for expanding opportunity for everybody and making the investments that it takes to thrive in the 21st century in public education, in making health care more available, in ensuring that we invest in things like infrastructure and so forth, so it's not surprising that the latino community that is often still aspiring to achieve their american dream would vote democratic. going forward, there needs to be a massive and sustained effort to register and to turn out latino voters. that effort doesn't have to be partisan. it can be nonpartisan and it should be. but until we have that massive and sustained effort, i'm not sure that the rate of participation of voter registration and turnout is going to be what it should be in a very fast-growing latino community. >> and in fact you do point out

that eligible voters versus those who actually vote, there is a disparity. the number of eligible voters has skyrocketed in the hispanic community, but the number of hispanics who actually vote in midterms hasn't nearly kept pace. so you've talked about how one needs to counter that by much more reachout much earlier, not just a few weeks before an election. but does it make sense to consider hispanics in america one great big group? because, of course, conservatives claim them as well. you've seen ted cruz in texas speaking just this month, the hispanic community, our community is conservative. the hispanic community, the values that resonate in our community are faith, family, patriotism. i mean there's a real sort of democrat/republican fight for this group, for this very important demographic group, right? >> well, you know, of course senator cruz and others have made that argument.

the patterns of voting just don't bear that out because hispanics have voted primarily democratic. i'm convinced that they're going to continue to do so. that doesn't mean the democrats can take them for granted. they shouldn't. in fact they should invest more in outreach, in registration and making sure that folks turn out. but i don't worry that somehow a whole bunch of latinos are suddenly going to be attracted to republican policies. donald trump is probably the best thing that the democrats have going for them in terms of making sure that latinos stay, especially young ones, stay in the democratic camp. we see in texas that there's still a lot of work to do. the senate race that we have coming up with beto o'rourke and ted cruz will be a good measure of the ability to help turn out the latino vote. >> so let me just put up that little poll then, that's a recent one.

61% of hispanics do actually favor beto o'rourke while 37% of hispanics favor ted cruz. you just mentioned donald trump and the galvanizing effect he does have on a number of different segments of society. so again, you'd think that because of all these immigration issues and all the rest of it and certainly democrats think that your community should be more galvanized but aren't necessarily. >> well, we'll see on november 6. again, i believe that there needs to be much, much more reach out. there was a survey analysis that the national association of latino elected officials or naleo did that surveyed latinos across the country and found that something like 65% of them have said they hadn't been reached out to at all by any candidate about the midterm elections. so there's obviously a deficit there.

what's happening is that unless you're a consistent voter, you know, unless you go and vote two out of the last three times, oftentimes these campaigns don't even knock on your door or give you a call. that's problematic because once you fall off of those lists, you're kind of in a black hole. we need to be much more broad than that and reach out to folks who don't have a history of voting and to register people who are not registered. it's not like that work doesn't happen at all. i sit on the board of an organization called voto latino whose mission is to register and help turn out latinos in a nonpartisan way. but we need more scale. it needs to be scaled up significantly. >> just going back to your personal story and the incredible amount of activism that you sort of grew up on, your mother herself was an activist in what was called then the chicano -- they called

themselves chicano, the mexican-american activists lobbying for their rights. tell me, first of all, about the history of that name, for those of us overseas and around the world who are not necessarily familiar with that, and how did she influence you? what was it like, the two identical twins assimilating in america and their mum was out there every day battling? >> yeah, my grandmother, her mom had been pulled out of elementary school, so she never got a formal education and she worked as a maid, a cook, and a baby-sitter. my mother was the first one to graduate from high school and to get to go on to college. she was a real child of the '60s. she rebelled against what she saw was a system that was unfair. you still had a dropout rate there in san antonio amongst latinos or mexican americans of 75%.

you had neighborhoods with no drainage, terrible infrastructure and real inequality. the way she tried to respond to that was to get active in our democracy. in 1971 she ran for city council with a slate called the committee for barrio betterment. they all lost but it was part of trying to improve that community. although she never held public office, she remained active on different women's empowerment issues and mexican-american civil rights issues so joaquin and i grew up with that, getting dragged to rallies and speeches and different organizational meetings. because of that initially i thought that politics was very boring and i had no intention of going into it. but what it gave me was this foundation of tremendous respect for participating and a belief that ultimately we can make change if we participate in our democratic process.

that's a message that i deliver in the book and that i hope will resonate, especially with young people today, who can become very cynical in the face of a lot of nastiness that is being engineered, especially by this president, in unprecedented ways. you know, we have a choice. you can either throw up your hands and back away from it or go full bore into it. i hope folks will go full bore by organizing and voting. >> so back to your book and the title, "my unlikely journey, waking up from my american dream." tell me about waking up. what do you mean by that? >> what i mean is that for each generation of my family, and i bet for a lot of other families, you realize that it's not enough to just work hard for you, for your family to work hard to reach the american dream. often it takes working hard to try and improve the community or the society around you.

you know, my grandmother got to texas in 1922 when you still had signs in the store front windows that read "no negroes, no mexicans or dogs allowed." and then my mother had rebelled against that and became a chicana activist. that was a way of trying to create more opportunity for people that looked like her and everybody else. and for my brother, joaquin, and me, our going into public service was a way to make sure that we could expand opportunity in our community of san antonio and more broadly when i served in the cabinet. so my hope is that especially young people will take from that subtitle waking up from my american dream the idea that you have to work for it, that we still have work to do to ensure that we expand opportunity for everybody. that we don't fall onto the path that donald trump wants to lead us on of picking and choosing who gets opportunity in this country and who doesn't based on

what your religion is or the color of your skin or how much money you have. >> julian castro, thank you for joining us. >> thanks a lot, christiane. now to another political message but in a very different medium with our next guest. the actor amandla stenberg didn't follow a flesch usual path to success, her break-through performance in "the hunger games" opposite jennifer lawrence saw her targeted by a torrent of racist abuse online when she was only 14 years old. it's the kind of experience that could destroy someone, but since then stenberg has been picking projects with a message. she stars in the new film "the hate u give" which deals with the police killings of black youth as well as all the dos and don'ts forced onto african-americans. she sat down with our alicia menendez to discuss that.

>> thanks for joining us. >> thank you for having me. >> tell me about this film, "the hate u give." >> it is based on a book by angie thomas. it's about this girl named star carter who is code switching between her two environments, so her neighborhood where she grew up, which is predominantly african-american, and her school which is across town and is predominantly white and privileged. and so she's kind of had to learn how to compartmentalize herself in order to fit into those different environments. this really traumatic event happens when she's in her ildhood friends.h one of her they get pulled over by a white police officer and he gets shot and killed in front of her. she has to grapple with being the witness and making the decision to speak up and out for him but at the same time she has to kind of compromise her safety and confront her idea. -- identity. >> a lot of complex questions about race. let's watch a clip. >> a lot goes through a cop's mind when they pull someone over, especially if they have to

get into a pissing contest with the driver about why they stopped them. it sets off an alarm. are they hiding something? is the car stolen? >> but you still don't know if they did anything wrong. >> that's why we search them. but if they open the door or reach through an open window, they're probably going for a weapon. so if i think i see a gun, i don't hesitate, i shoot. >> because you think you see a gun? you don't say something first like put your hands up? >> it depends. is it night? can i see? am i on duty alone? >> what if you were in a white neighborhood and it was a white man wearing a suit driving a mercedes? he could be a drug dealer, right? >> he could. >> so if you saw him reach into the window and you thought that you saw a gun, would you shoot him? or would you say put your hands up? >> so there you have star talking with her uncle, played

by common, he's a police officer, and she's trying to make sense of the role that race has played in this shooting. what did you take away from that scene? >> something that i thought was really compelling about angie's writing is that she wasn't afraid to explore internalized racism also, and how these are internalized notions about ourselves, that we often act upon and don't even realize it. and so i thought it was cool that she was willing to explore this topic in a nuanced way, in a way that was inclusive of even the perspective of a police officer. >> how did being a part of this film shape the way that you think about race? >> i think what star taught me in the process of filming was that there's nothing inherently wrong with code switching, that it makes sense, the natural human reaction to being placed in those different environments, but that you should never compromise who you are. >> i think for those of us who grew up in minority communities

and then work or later live in predominantly white environments, we're accustomed to doing that code switching all the time. when did it first manifest for you? >> i think the first time it manifested is when i would witness family members of mine doing it and was kind of confused by it as a kid. like why is her voice that way then but then when she gets on the phone and it's someone from work, why is it a completely different voice coming out of her body? i'm talking about my mom. my mom, you know. so i witnessed that first. my mom also had a really similar experience growing up in a minority community, but attending a school that was primarily white. so probably when i first started going to the school that i went to, i noticed that it was a completely different culture from what i was used to and that i was alienated and being different because i was one of the only black students, because i was one of the only students that didn't have that level of privilege that those kids had.

so i felt like i had to adapt a new sort of language to fit in. i don't think i was really self-aware about it until later in high school when i realized the ways in which i had been making myself smaller or more accessible in order to appease the people around me. and that's something that's really beautiful about star's journey is she kind of reconciles that. she doesn't need to appease these people, she can just be herself. >> who did you start becoming when you were able to play yourself out of that? >> hopefully i started becoming more of myself. i was less afraid to challenge the institutions. i guess the first step is recognizing the institutions that have made you do what you do growing up, and once i started recognizing, you know, the systems and structures that i was placed within, i was able to then challenge them. later in high school when there

is sort of this first primary wave of online activism, that i was able to find a community outside of my immediate surroundings and recognize that we existed, i was validated by people on the internet who were having similar experiences all around the country and the world, and they inspired me to continue challenging. >> it occurs to me that tumbler plays a large role in the film. >> it does. >> and a large role in your personal story. even though people know you as ru in "the hunger games" it was a video that you did for school and posted online, on tumbler that sort of blew up your star. can you tell us about it? >> yeah, sure. i never could have anticipated that that would be, i don't know, what would actually lead me later to casting opportunities in hollywood. i always thought of activism as kind of the antithesis to hollywood. i never anticipated that we'd be

living in a social climate where being vocal, being yourself would actually help. but yeah, i made this video. it was called don't cash crop my corn rows for my modern u.s. history class with this close friend of mine named quinn masterson. >> i've been seeing this question a lot on social media. and i think it's really relevant. what would america be like if we loved black people as much as we loved black culture? >> and it was just about our tendency in america to commodify black culture while we don't actually humanize people of color. so it was about playing, style, fashion, sensibility, humor, how we were witnessing it a few years ago really become the driving force behind mainstream culture and a way people who don't necessarily understand blackness or the experience were snatching it up without respecting the place that it came from.

>> that too manifests itself. i know that you were deeply involved, so if you watch the film, where can i see your fingerprints on it? >> hopefully all over it. i got involved in this project really early on. >> before there was even a script? >> before there was even a script, yeah. it was an unpublished manuscript of the book. >> which is wild, that doesn't happen. >> that does not happen. it's also a testament to what angie thomas did. i was just immediately captivated by it because i felt like i had never seen something that so accurately reflected my experience or a lot of black girls' experience, which is if you're living a contemporary black life, you probably code switch. there were all these little parallels and things that i could relate to. the producers were really amazed by how parallel my experience was to star's and how much i could potentially bring just even from my perspective.

so i was there for even the process of script writing. i met with audrey wells and we worked on the script together. i would tell her things that i felt like were authentic or inauthentic. so from the jump it was a really collaborative experience, and so i think -- i think my touch is all over it, especially because star has been in my heart for so long. >> if people took one thing away from this film, what do you want it to be? >> i think you can take away from the film what you need, depending on who you are, what your experience is, what you might need to learn or what you might need to feel validated. i think we specifically made this film for the black community. angie made the book for her community too because she knew that the kids in her neighborhood couldn't read anything where they could see themselves reflected. within the black community we don't necessarily give ourselves

the room to emotionally vent or to grieve because of what we're up against, so hopefully the movie can be a space for us to do that. and then beyond that, i feel like we wanted it to be a tool of empathy, a tool to instill empathy in those who have seen these events on tv, on the news, understand that they're happening but maybe can't quite understand what it feels like from a really human perspective. hopefully through watching the film they can glean a little bit more about the way in which the media misconstrues us and dehumanizes us. hopefully they can feel us and our experiences in their hearts. >> as young as you are, you have been in the industry now a long time and so i wonder from that vantage point what difference you think me too and time's up

has made? >> i think it's made a huge difference. i'm seeing a shift in both representations that women are afforded and also representations that people of color are afforded. and i think that that's in large part due to the me too movement. there's definitely this really powerful community forming in a way that i haven't witnessed before. maybe i've been too young to witness it, but for the first time you have the most powerful women of hollywood getting in the same rooms and saying i'm here to support you, not just in the public-facing way, but if you need to talk through trauma, if you're feeling unsafe in your work environment, if you feel like you're being manipulated, you have 30, but also like infinity women ready to get behind you and support you in a way that isn't just topical.

so that's been really beautiful to witness, and it makes me feel safer definitely in pursuing my career. >> you in every way defy labels and expectations. you are young and black and gender nonbinary and openly gay and you act in this movie but then you also just on the side write a song that can appear on the soundtrack. i wonder if your fame has come because you refuse to be defined by those labels or if it has come despite the fact that you refuse to be defined by those labels? >> i don't know. >> you're just doing you? >> i'm just doing me at the end of the day. i will say that i am from a generation that is pretty intolerant of misogyny, of

racism, of transphobia, and my fans are excited that i am transparent about who i am. >> that sounds like a lot of freedom but also sounds like a lot of pressure. >> yeah. it's definitely a catch-22 sometimes. it's a balance. i'm still figuring out exactly how i want to share myself, what parts i want to keep really private and don't feel like sharing with people, but i also know that i'm not the type of person that would be happy living a dual life. >> you, especially for a young person, you wield tremendous influence. you were on the cover of "time" magazine. you have a mega platform at this point. do you know what you want to do with it? >> i want to continue doing what i have been doing, which is just being myself, creating narratives that hopefully can be

humanizing and helpful to all kinds of different people in different ways. i want to be a creator myself. i want to be a director. i want to tell stories. i want to continue to empower my peers. >> amandla, thank you so much. >> yeah, thank you. >> so it is encouraging to see amandla stenberg using her fame in a constructive way. that's it it for our program. tomorrow as we take a closer look at mohammed bin salman, saudi arabia's war in yemen is back in the spotlight. it's already the world's worst humanitarian crisis and it could become even worse, but for now, thank you for watching "amanpour & co." and join us again tomorrow night. uniworld is a proud sponsor of "amanpour & co." when bea tollman founded a

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