♪ >> good evening. judy woodruff a way. tonight, afghanistan and crisis, capturing a critical province. we discuss the uncertain future with the afghan ambassador to the u.s. then,, we examine the structural inequities that lead to a racial divide in homeownership in minnesota. >> it will require decades of tentional work in order to bring that number up so it is on par with ownership in minnesota. >> it is friday, we break down

the follow-up that the u.s. withdrawal from afghanistan, and the impact of the u.n. climate report. all that and more on tonight's "pbs newshour." ♪ announcer: major funding for the pbs newshour has been provided by. major funding for the "pbs newshour" has been provided by. ♪ johnson & johnson. announcer: financial services firm raymond james. >> the john s. and james l. knight foundation. more at kf.org. announcer: and with the ongoing support of these institutions.

♪ and, friends of the newshour. this program was made possible by the corporation for public broadcasting and contributions by viewers like you. thank you. william: the taliban is closing in on the afghan capital, after a week that has seen much of the country fall under their control. the first of 3000 american troops arrived at the airport. their mission, support the near-total evacuation of american personnel and afghans, quickly. in a matter of days, the taliban has blitzed across afghanistan, and are now close to kabul.

today, another province roughly 50 miles from the capital. this map shows where the taliban were threatening in april when president biden announced the full troop withdrawal. this map shows in red areas captured as of monday by the taliban, the provincial capitals they have taken. here is where they are today. the taliban release this video claiming to have seized afghan army helicopters in the country's third largest city, they were taken thursday. another video showed the taliban had captured a veteran warlord, the man on the right, who had been leading a militia resistance to the taliban, but now seemingly force to call for peace and stability. these advances by the taliban have forced the u.s. to scramble to protect personnel who remain in kabul.

the biden administration yesterday announced the immediate deployment of000 u.s. troops to help with the evacuation process. officials say the u.s. embassy will operate with limited staff. pentagon spokesperson john kirby spoke today. john kirby: they have the training we have provided over 20 years. they have the tangible advantages. it is time to use those advantages. >> the blistering gains have taken some u.s. officials by surprise, but many this week, including president biden have kept the focus on the need to defend itself by the afghan government. president biden: they have to fight for themselves, fight for their nation. i think they realize they have to come together politically at the top, but we will keep our commitment. i do not regret my decision. >> this is not abandonment, and an evacuation, the wholesale

withdrawal. what this is a reduction in t size of our civilian footprint. >> the general joint chiefs of staff was warned not to repeat the desperate 1975 evacuation of u.s. personnel from saigon, as north vietnamese forces closed in. >> i hope dod will coordinate with the department of state so we don't have the situation we had when we withdrew from vietnam. >> i don't see that unfolding. i may be wrong. you can't predict the future. >> now, confidence is waning, as some european governments have moved to shut down to reduce embassy staff. >> we will reduce the number of staff to an operational bare minimum within the next couple of days. i am calling on all german citizens to leave afghanistan now. >> nato officials said they will keep a diplomatic presence to help the afghan government as much as possible.

meanwhile, united nations officials in geneva warned that afghanistan being on the brink of humanitarian catastrophe. the secretary-general spoke in new york. >> i remind all parties of their legal and moral obligation to protect all civilians. directing attacks against sabeans ia serious violation of international humanitarian law ana war crime. perpetrators must be held accountable. >> an estimated 250,000 pple have been forced to flee their homes, and the crisis is only getting worse. >> the food insecurity and nutrition situation is dire and is worse with each passing day. one in three afghans are food insecure today. >> afghans living in kabul are trying to go about their daily routines, but many are increasingly fearful for their future, as the taliban inches

closer to the city. >> the taliban ruled here before, and not in the people's interest. they think they will act the same. >> we are worried. there is fighting everywhere. provinces are falling. the government should do something. the people are facing problems. >> we turn to the ambassador, afghanistan's envoy to the u.s. she just started here in washington after several years as a united nations ambassador. thank you for being here during this incredibly trying time for your government. the taliban have seized an enormous amount of territory in your country. what is the government's plan on how to respond? >> thank you for having me today on the show. i think it is definitely a difficult time for afghanistan, our allies and friends. at this stage, the priority is

our big cities, including kabul, the largest population, and many have arrived from where their lives were threatened after taken by the taliban. there are a large number of journalists, civil society activists, advocates, and also strategically it is important for the government. >> ambassado why have we not heard anything from the president or any of his ministers in afghanistan? you are the senior most leader of the afghan government we have heard from in recent days? >> the president is speaking in the local media, as well as our senior ministers, as well as our chief army, as well as our brave

commander of the special forces, so senior officials are speaking, but i agree that they have not spoken with international media. the focus was the local media. they have come out and there is a statement by the president's office as well. >> there is a great deal of pressure to resign and leave the country. i'm curious in your conversations with the president and his ministry, is that a consideration now? to ease transition to an interim government, would he step aside now? >> look, you mention pressure to resign. the pressure or the call we have heard from his so far from the taliban, and not the people of afghanistan. we have said from the first day, and the president has always

said that if it is the will of the people, it is time to agree to a political settlement that ends the bloodshed and the people elects the leader of the country the way they should like . i think this was the first way he had always come forward. our negotiating team in doha has been saying this since day one. the objective when we send our negotiating team to the obama was to be able -- two doha was to be able to come together and bring peace to afghanistan. what we have seen is disappointing. the taliban have not genuinely engaged in the talks, and as a consequence of these topics, they got international legitimacy and continue to kill and massacre civilians.

we have seen that recently. they have not committed to the agreement which they have made in doha not to attk the big cities when u.s. troops withdrawal, but we see vice a versa, so answering the question on the president to resign, it is not a pressure by the public. it is not a pressure officially coming from any other element. it is and ask from the taliban from the first day, and the response from the government and negotiating team is they agreed to a political settlement if the people decide who to elect. >> can you help us understand why it seems afghan forces and afghan police have had such a difficult ti repelling the taliban, and so many seem to have given up their posts and melted away? >> yes, sure. look but are many reasons, not only one reason, but it is also

not the reason and would be unfair to say they did not fight. it will be unfair to their comrades, those veterans who have trained them, that they did not do the right type of training. there are multiple reasons. first, the level of confidence and morale, and that is impacted a lot with what uni are hearing even here in washington, d.c. -- what you and i are hearing here in washington, d.c. i have to say afghanistan is not abundant with every element of the action, it is an abandonment the country. that plays a role. there is another element. when the soviet troops withdrawal, there were deals made by the government at the time with the mujahedin to give a province to them without

letting the security forces at the time to know or defend themselves. that conspiracy is there, and there is a strong conspiracy that people assume, regular afghans assume there is probably a hidden deal made between the u.s. and the taliban, that there has to be surrender of certain profit since. -- provinces. the final element, which is a practical element is our security forces, and it was very clear that they were highly dependent on u.s. close air support, so there are multiplying effects, but still we have seen -- look, there is one city that we held for quite some time, and a lot of the stories of the final handover and takeover is either people

run out of ammunition or at a close distance when the taliban arrive. we are told that one city was held for two and a half months, then there was a retreat, and they took with them 1500 people retreated and took the armored cars and left no ammunition to the taliban. i think there are brave stories and bravery stories of afghan security forces, but nothing is helping, and since yesterday's announcement by the state department, if you look at the single ticket in afghanistan commercial airline tickets, there is no ticket left. everybody is trying to leave because they assume it is a window of 48 hours or a few days that they have to secure themselves. at the same time, it was just not two days ago that washington said the city will collapse in 30 days, but it all it brings to

it is strongly impacting the morale. it is a war. there is a battlefield in a frontline we are militarily fighting this war. there is one psychological war. they always say the psychological part we have lost, and i think that is with our allies and friends as well. i think our allies in the u.s. have lost the psychological war, no matter how much we say we have not abandoned afghanistan, but they are abandoned. >> ambassador, thank you for joining us on this fraught day for your country. thank you. >> thank you. >> we debate the u.s. role in what we ought to be doing next with lisa curtis, a senior director for south and central asia during the trump administration and she is focused on that part of the world since she was a cia analyst in the 1990's and served

in u.s. embassies in pakistan and india. she is a sior fellow at the center for a new american security. joint by army colonel, historian, and president of the quincy institute, writing extensively about america's role in the world. thank you for being here. lisa curtis come to you first. the ambassador feels the u.s. hasn't banded afghanistan -- has abandoned afghanistan. is that your assessment of it? lisa: unfortunately, it does look like we are abandoning the afghans. the narrative was we were continuing financial, humanitarian assistance, that we would stand by the afghans, but now we are seeing this routing of the afghan government and the taliban taking control of the country much more quickly th anybody expected, there is a

sense that the afghans feel completely abandoned. i do't think anybody expected the taliban would be taking over this quickly, but there are immediate things that the u.s. can do. of course we have to evacuate those u.s. citizens who are in danger, and we are doing that, but we also need to evaluate the thousands of afghan supporting the u.s., civil society leaders, people with targets on the back because of their cooperation with us, so the u.s. has a moral responsibility to evacuate those people. we need to galvanize the international community to prevent a humanitarian castor fee. you are seeing internally -- humanitarian catastrophe. there needs to be an effort to

stave off this crisis. i think the u.s. needs to shift its diplomatic posture. the u.s. continues to fruitlessly call on the taliban to engage in a peace process that we know they will not. instead, there should be an international effort to prevent the taliban from carrying out further atrocities against the civilian population, like the assassination of the government public relations chief last friday. this can start with sanctions against these taliban leaders. i think that is the direction the u.s. should move in. >> you have long argued that u.s. should have gotten out of afghanistan years ago, and perhaps our entire mission was misguided from the start, but given this rapid advance by the taliban, how should we be seeing this? what should our role be here? >> it is fair to hold the biden

administration responsib for mismanaging the consequences of failure. i think lisa did a very good job of summarizing the actions the u.s. needs to take now. the american war is over. the war is not over. we have a moral responsibility. but i would hope the conversation about afghanistan would also focus on how this failure came about. the biden administration, what, in office for eight months, does not own it. multiple administrations own it. both parties own it. military's own it. i think before we erase the memory of the afghanistan war and our country does have a tendency to do that, we need to have some time that sober reflection to understand why

this failure occurred. >> i hear what you are saying. lisa, you hear the argument andy is making, that this is the consequence of decades of mismanagement and the misguided foreign policy in afghanistan, but as you were saying, we have a responsibility to do something that therefore the afghan people. more practically, what should we be doing, putting more troops into secure kabul, offering direct military aid, upping aitrikes, what should we be doing that you think we owe them? lisa: we should definitely be increasing air missions in support of the afghans. as the ambassador pointed out, this is one of the major reasons the taliban is having such successor rapidly, because -- success so rapidly, because when

someone knows there is no air support, yes, he will desert his position. so that is something the u.s. should absolutely be doing. i do agree that several administrations are responsible for where we are now. i would say that definitely the previous administration bears responsibility for very weak agreement with the taliban, an agreement that did not provide appropriate counterterrorism guarantees. the agreement did not force the taliban to break ties with al qaeda or eject al qaeda from the country. that should be the very ast the u.s. demand. it also did not bring a peace process. the only thing the doha agreement achieved is allowing the u.s. forces not to be shot at by the taliban as they

departed, but the biden administration had the opportunity to reevaluate t agreement and the afghan policy. i personally supported keeping a minimal force presence in place. our nato partners were also willing to keep forces there that would have allowed us to continue air support for the afghans and allowed the u.s. to protect our counterterrorism interests. the costs of a small u.s. presence was worth preventing the reemergence of a terrorist safe haven in afghanistan, which we will see in e coming months. >> the biden administration has been making the argument for a while that the afghan army and government have the tools they needed to at least hold the taliban back, if not stop this surge. is that a fair criticism of the afghan government, that it is a

failure of leadership and wheel that has gotten us here today? >> yes. it is too late for airstrikes. we have to look at the 20 year experience. we tried to do two things. we tried to create a legitimate government that would command the loyalty of the afghan people, and create efftive military forces that could provide for the defense of the afghan nationstate. all the evidence shows that we failed on both counts. and i think the beginning of wisdom is to understand the reality of that failure, and then yes, to do as lisa suggested, to take seriously our responsibility to contain the fallout, and the fallout in particular relates to the suffering of those who supported us and the suffering of innocents who are now a victim of our failure.

but simply to prolong the war, the american war, at this point, might salve our csciences, but it won't do any good. >> thank you for joining us tonight. >> thank you. >> thank you. ♪ stephanie: we will return to the show after the latest headlines. the cdc advisory panel is recommending a third dose of the pfizer or moderna vaccine for people with weakened immune systems, organ transplants, or cancer. there is not enough data to recommend additional doses of the johnson & johnson vaccine. the decision came after the fda authorized the boosters. some states like mississippi are struggling to convince residents

to get their first doses. the republican governor made this urgent appeal today. >> i believe that vaccines are safe. i believe they are effective. and i believe they are the best tool we have moving forward to beat the virus. the sooner individuals take the opportunity to get vaccinated, the sooner we can move beyond this peak, and beyond this pandemic. stephanie: 1500 national guard troops will be redeployed around the state to support health care workers, as covid-19 cases surged. today, the second and third largest public school districts increased requirements, the los angeles and chicago districts are mandating teachers and staff be fully vaccinated by october 15. meanwhile, the teachers union of broward county, florida, said

three teachers and a teacher's aide died within 24 hours of covid-19 this week. the u.s. department of homeland security is out with the new terrorism morning that says frustrations over new covid-19 restrictions could motivate violent extremists to carry out attacks. the department also warned of targeted violence around the 20th anniversary of the september 11 attacks and religious holidays. a federal judge in washington has allowed the biden administration's new eviction moratorium to remain in place for now. the white house press secretary welcomed the decision and insisted the policy is "a proper use of it's a ball full authority to protect the public health." landlord groups plan to appeal the ruling to the d.c. circuit court. the florida keys and florida bay are under trical storm warnings tonight, as tropical depression fred moves closer to the state.

the storm is gaining strength as it lashes cuba. last night, parts of miami beach were feeling the effects with rain and flash floods. fred is expected to drop 7 inches of rain on parts of south florida by monay. firefighters in southeastern montana are scrambling to contain wildfires closing in on rural towns in ranchlands. thousands around the northern cheyenne indian reservation have been forced to evacuate. in calornia, the u.s. forest service said it was operating in crisis mode with operators operating in the state. the dixie fire, which destroyed the town of greeneville in 1000 homes and businesses is over 800 square miles, and remains less than a third contained. the california department of justice has closed an investigation into southern california edison without criminal charges for its role in the 2018 fire that killed three

people and scorched almost 100,000 acres in los angeles and ventura county. the department said there was insufficient evidence to bring charges. another day of triple digit temperatures roasted the pacific northwest. in air quality alert was issue for north washington state due to smokerom nearby wildfires. meanwhile, july was reported to be earth's hottest month on record. in turkey, 38 have died in floods and mudslides that have battered the northern coast. dozens of people are msing after torrents of water collapsed buildings and tossed cars and debris over the streets. still to come, how structural inequities led to the racial divide in homeownership in minnesota. jonathan capehart and michael garson break down the political

news. and one writer travels the u.s. to examine what it means to be a latino. announcer: this is the "pbs newshour." ♪ william: the sharp rises in home prices continues to her first-time buyers. it is widening a largeisparity in homeownership between white americans and people of color, particularly african-americans. nowhere is this whiter than minneapolis and stpaul. our special correspondent reports in our series. >> it has been aeavy lift that took years, but last month, he crossed the threshold into a new

home, first step to a happily ever after with his wife and six month old. >> it is gat to be homeowners. >> why would you want to own a home? >> to play outside. have a yard. be in the backyard. have a home for her. >> you want to be on that yard right now? >> yes. >> they nabbed this duplex against all odds. there is a shortage that has driven prices to record highs. this tree has long stacked the deck againstlack homeownership across america, in this market in particular. >> it did the work of jim crow over the north. >> for much of the 20 century, it was common to see provisions that prohibited property sales to people of color. the practice was the subject of the 2019 twin cities pbs

documentary, jim crow of the north that featured a historian who leads the university of minnesota's mapping prejudice project. >> if you're told all the time that the influx, that is the language used, the influx of a person not quite into your neighborhood would bring down your property value. that was a real source of anxiety for individual people who may be did not see themselves as racists. >> explicitly such covenants are now illegal, but have left lasting scars. just 25% of residents of minneapolis and st. paul own their homes, a well below the national average, and notably because this is considered one of the most affordable metropolitan areas in the country, if you are white. 75% of white residents are homeowners. the disparity has d consequences. according to the minneapolis federal reserve, the median net

worth is $211,000. for black households, that is zero. >> the way we accumulate wealth in america is largely through our homes. >> minnesota's housing commissioner. >> if you are not allowed to buy in affluent neighborhoods and given preferential pricing on your mortgage, if you bought a home and had it taken away through eminent domain to build a freeway, you have been disadvantaged over and over and over, so it will require decades of intentional work in order to bring that number up so it is on par wi white homeownership here. >> that is the aim at ppl, where she helps clients build credit and develop job and financial skills, which she says many middle-class people take for granted.

>> investments, owning land, real estate, all these wealth creation tools on the knowledge around wealth creation, they have had access to that since the beginning of time. what happens with african-americans and money is we have been operating so long from a place of scarcity that when we get access to it, it is like now i want to look affluent , and we d not necessarily have the foundational knowledge of what it takes to sustain that affluence or create that affluence, so we go with the next test thing, the look of it. >> i would get paid on friday and be broke on saturday. >> ppl has helped her on her journey to financial stability. >> i was on food stamps. i was homeless. i was on drugs. i was in an abusive relationship. me being hopeless made me

realize, who would take care of my son? >> she works as a counselor and earns income selling custom-made clothing online. she has learned to practice extreme thrift. >> no impulsive purchases, going to the food shelves at times when means were low, cutting my sons hair, doing my own hair. >> is that a shift for you? >> yes, it was. >> for years, they've lived in a cramped apartment, but the stability has helped her son thrive in school. together, they set their sights on owning their own home. >> i love hosting and cooking for my family, so having a nice backyard. >> my own area to play in. two bathrooms instead of one. i do want a dog. >> last year, barbara was approved for a mortgage, an achievement that has hit the

brick wall of market reality. how many properties? >> over 200. >> she said it has led nowhere. >> i get excited. i show my son. he gets excited. my bed is here. my dog. that is his spot. we put the offer in and we do not get it because someone has come in and offered a cash offer. >> among the reasons that the shortage, investors have flipped many into rentals in recent years, and single-family zoning laws have prevented the construction of multifamily dwellings like duplexes and apartment complexes. last year, minneapolis became the first u.s. city to ban such laws. as for them, they have one eye onhe future. >> i wanted to keep growing as

my family grows, instead of getting this big house and paying all this money that is not even worth just to say we have a big house, like no. >> they are renting the other side to build equity towards that dream home, but the dream of equity across the housing landscape seems nowhere near striking distance. william: the reporting is in partnership with the under told stories project. ♪ with afghanistan falling into the hands of the taliban, the planet warming to dangerous levels, and the delta variant rampant, this week may have felt chaotic to many, and certainly to me.

to help us make sense of it all, we have e analysis of jonathan capehart and michael garrison, columnist for the washington post. david brooks is on vacation. good to see you. thank you for being here. jonathan, i want to start with afghanistan. you heard the ambassador saying the sense is that they feel abandoned by the biden administration, by e american government more broadly. the taliban has near complete control of the country. what you make of all of this? jonathan: it is horrifying, what we are seeing. to wake up to the news that taliban has basically retaken southern afghanistan and most of the country in a matter of days is shocking. what is happening to the afghan people is shocking. what is happening to the afghan people who helped the u.s. and afghan forces is horrific.

i entered one person this morning andsked if she was surprised about how messy and chaotic this. she said, listen, whether the united states would have gotten out two years ago, 10 years ago, 15 years ago, 18 years ago, it wabound to be messy and chaotic, but i don't know if anybody realized or anticipated it would look like this. william: michael, we are simply talking about the tiframe here? could this departure been managed differently in your mind? michael: you have to take a step back. offensive combat operations for the u.s. ended in 2014. this was a residual force left to support the afghan military and to fight al qaeda. they were doing that quite well.

there was risk of casualties quite low. there was a cost to that, but the costs we are incurring now are far greater than the cost of maintaining 3000 troops in a circumstance like this. we have troops all over the world. so this was a completely unnecessary choice on the part of the president. nato wanted us to be there. the afghans wanted us to be there. nobody was demanding we leave. i think it was a mistake at that level. brooks and capehart i don't --jonathan: i don't know if it is fair that no one wanted us to leave, when they had said for years they wanted u.s. personnel out of afghanistan. >> president biden said he wanted to have this anniversary, september 11 number when we got

into afghanistan, to be out, and the argument is may we have bungled that. we have imperiled so many afghan citizens. think about the taliban taking over the country. >> that gets to what i said in my initial answer, what is happening in the country now is rrific. i interviewed hugh hewitt at the washington post and other colonists who said it is not messy and chaotic, it is catastrophic. i disagree with hugh hewitt on just about everything, but on that one, i cannot disagree that what is happening in that country is not catastrophic. for the american people who want our people home and to stop spending what we are spending there, for them, it is a catastrophic choice, but a choice that they have been asking for. >> i want to shift gears and

talk about this u.n. climate report. this was a synopsis of the existing science, nothing new, but such a red alarm bell for many. it basically said we had this closing window of time to act to avert some of the more catastrophic impacts of climate change. this comes out while the senate is negotiating the major infrastructure bill of the biden administration, which would give the administration tools to fight climate change. michael, is it a sense this report stiffens the spines of the democrats or brings any republicans to an agreement that yes, we have to address this issue? jonathan: i've michael: -- i think that is unfortunately unlikely. it is a heart issue under any circumstances, because you're making current sacrifices for future benefits, and you are

not, a politician cannot say we will solve the problem. all he can say is we will mitigate it slightly less or more. >> not even winning politically? michael: right. it is inherently difficult. it is the first warning bell issue we saw develop, this anti-science, anti-truth attitudes within a significant portion of the republican coalition, it started on this issue and has metastasized to other issues, and that is a huge challenge to our country. we have a significant portion of people that don't accept expertise, the possibility of accessible truth. william: you are saying this report does not move anyone substantially? jonathan: no, it doesn't, but the context highlights why the dire warnings need to be he

eded. greece is on fire. the pacific northwest is on fire. hottest july on record. super severe storms racing across the country. i think that democratic spines have already been stiffened when it comes to climate change. i agree with michael that it will not change anything really when it comes to republicans, although there is a story in the new york times this afternoon about what is happening in terms of climate change is saving some republicans's minds, but not on the basis of let's protect the planet, but what can we do to protect the fossil fuel industry? i guess you say any port in the storm to get something done climate change in the united states, but you know, that is not a huge swath of republicans coming on board. william: does this seeming inability to address this in a

meaningful way make you despair for our ability as a democracy to tackle these big generation-lung problems? michael: i wish i could be more positive. this ia case where we can't get a significant portion of the american public to take a miracle drug that will save their lives because of the problems they have with the truth. it is hard under that circumstance to imagine people thinking decades into the future about the possibility of harm. i think human beings in general are very good at thinking about weeks and months of future consequences. i think it is harder when you look at the research for people to think about decades and centuries of consequences, so it would take real leadership, probably from the republican

side somehow, in order to get the change that would be necessary. there are 70 members of the conservative climate caucus in the house of representatives. it's not as if no people exist, but it would take a achange. william: michael is touching on this issue of the vaccine and the incredible politicization of this. i asked anthony fauci about this yesterday, that many of us thought we were getting our hands around the pandemic and we could start to emerge, then the delta variant surges forward and reveals how vulnerable those unvaccinated communities are. we have politicized this miraculous piece of medicine we can all benefit from. do you think we will get out of this morass? will we convince enough americans to get vaccinated?

jonathan: i pray that we do, but this is probably one of the biggest shames of a shameful presidency. you had then-president donald trump who made it almost a symbol of manhood by not wearing a mask, and thereby convincing a lot of people that it was a hoax, that this was a hoax, even when he got it himself, even getting the vaccine himself not taking the extra step to say, t the vaccine. save your life. protect your family. protect your communi. he did not do that. and now we have gotten to the point where this pandemic is a pandemic of the unvaccinated, and you have states in our country that are republican governors who are actively putting people's health at risk, putting the public health at

risk. william: by blocking mask mandates? jonathan: yes. putting children in danger in schools for political gain. michael: it is hard to deal with american politics, i agree with you. if we need people to go to a certain percentage, and governors two in that the large estate in the country preventing community institutions from pursuing lifesaving methods, that is killing people. we are not used to that, dealing with that kind of thing in politics, but it has to be called out. it is a lethal political development. william: we usually try to end with optimism. neither of you have delivered optimism today. i forgive you. we will have you back next time. thank you. ♪

the numbers are in. latino account for more than half of population growth in the u.s., according to the latest census, and this will transform the american landscape, but what does it mean to be latino? that question is explored in the current issue of harper's magazine. jeffrey brown talked with the author for our arts and culture series, canvas. >> it is this a term that hangs on to us during our entire lives. it is forced in this country. >> as a child in los angeles, he was considered problem:-american. on a census form -- guatemalan -american. now he is latino. >> what do they mean, these races, ethnic groups, as if they mean something to us?

it is used to judge our actions, to make comments on how we approach politics. it has been a couple of years now trying toake apart the origins of the term and its meaning, and what it means for us and help others see us. >> as described in the article, he took a 9000 mile road trip amid the pandemic to see the diversity of history and experience people of latin american heritage. los angeles, oregon, idaho, new mexico, texas, georgia, florida, new york, and points west on the way home. it is accompanied by photographs capturing the spirit of specific places. >> you have these different stories of how people arrive at latino identity. in new mexico for example, people think of themselves as

spanish, because that was the place at was most colonized by the spanish during the spanish empire, so that identity is different from south florida, where you had this cuban migration, and so to be latino, it means so many things from new york, los angeles, dallas, texas, el paso. >> we are brown, black, white, indigenous, some speak spanish, some don't. how much is that diversity understood? >> not at all. there is a failure to understand the intimacies at the heart of the latino experience, the ambivalence people feel. you know, your average first generation immigrant is really conflicted about his or her or their identity. where do i really belong? ? mexican -- mexican, honduran? the intertwined moral -- enter

turmoil defines us as people. -- enter turmoil defines us as people. >> the labels, tell me what you see haening? >> the people of north america have always struggled with words to describe the people who come from the south, who come from mexico, the caribbean. in the 1930 census, mexican was a race category, because american people sought to explain or describe these darker skinned people from mexico and saw them as different. for that one census, mexican was a raise. now most recently, in the last 20 years to 30 years, with all of this fear over undocumented people and illegal immigration, latino people have become this brown race of people who are threatening to the united states, in the eyes of many

people, so there has been this racial as a latino people. >> he notes differences in voting patternof people he visited, strong reaction against the trump rhetoric, but moving towards president trump some areas. >> the 2020 election was in many ways a traumatic event for the latino people across the u.s., because our people were at the center of the election, and that remains true in u.s. politics, but especially the 2020 election, where you have this politician whose arise in the gop is linked to his xenophobic statements against mexican immigrants. at the same time, when we go to the voting booth, that is not that anything that would determine how we vote, of the failure to understand these different complications and subtleties in the latino thinking process is what has been most frustrating to me. >> today, some people, young

people especially, and you write about your own children using the term latinx. you can't but help think the evolution of terms continues. >> absolutely. latinx is used by people who are uncomfortable with the binaries and the language itself, the masculine and feminine genders assigned to nouns and subjects in the spanish language, of this new termx latin -- term latinx has evolved. latino is a term that is very eurocentric, saying we are tied to this european past, the spanish past. a lot of us are uncomfortable with that because we have indigenous descent. i am part mayan. latino cancels out my mayan identity, so latinx is a

response to that. >> very few people are using the term so far, but the use of different terms remains fluid. his road trip and article are part of a larger project in an upcoming book on latino identity today. for the pbs newshour, i'm jeffrey brown. william: on line now, some items you may have missed, like an argentinian lagoon that turned pink, and an alternative for new moms in prison. you can watch on our youtube channel or website, pbs.org/newshour. stay with pbs tonight from the resignation of andrew cuomo to the white house response to the taliban takeover in afghanistan, we break it all down tonight on "washington week." that is the newshour tonight. i am william brangham. join us again online and monday evening.

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