good evening from los angeles. i'm tavis smiley. tonight as we have a4?pl wave o protesters, outrage of a failure of another grand jury. we'll consider tonight how we can move forward as a country and individuals. first brian stevens and then we'll turn to a conversation with acclaimed poet, claudia rankin. her new book "let's poem, citizen an american lyric" was written in the wake of the trayvon martin killing and looks at the complexity of race and identity in this country. we're glad you've joined us. those conversations coming up right now. ♪

♪ and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. >> protesters across the nation have been taking to the streets and demanding change to our criminal justice system in the aftermath of yet another failure to indict police for the killing of yet another unarmed african-american man. joining me to assess what changes need to be made to our system, brian stevenson, founder and executive director of the

equal justice initiative. earlier this year he published a new book about this subject called "just mercy." he joins me now from montgomery, alabama. brian stevenson, always an honor to have on this program. >> thank you. delighted to be with you. >> let me jump right to that central question. what now? >> well, you know, i think there are really three big issues that both of these instances have revealed. we've got a real disconnect in this country when it comes to assessing what the consequences of the presumption of guilt that follows too many young black and brown men are. i think one of the real problems that both of these cases reveal is that for too many people, if you're a young african-american man, you are presumed guilty. you are presumed dangerous. and even when it's clear that you are the victim of some kind of confrontation, that presumption that you did something wrong, you did something to justify whatever bad thing happens to you is enormous.

and i don't think most prosecutors in this country deal with that very effectively. they are prosecuting these cases, they're bringing these indictments as if they don't have to do anything other than put it out there. and i think one of the problems that we see is that until we have prosecutors involved in these cases who understand the dynamics of race and the ways in which young men of color can be victimized and still be seen as guilty and responsible for their victimization, we're not going to get the outcomes that we need to see. >> brian -- brian, i want to hear all three points before you jump to point number two quickly. what can be done about that presumption of guilt? i mean, we've been black all of our lives. there's not much we can do about that. so what does the nation do about the presumption of guilt that people like you and me have? >> yeah. well, i think the first thing we need to be dealing more directly with these prosecutors and getting to acknowledge it and deal with it differently. there's a whole host of stuff that if i were brought in as a

special prosecutor or the families' attorneys were brought in as a special prosecutor, we would want that grand jury to be aware of, and can you do it in a grand jury process. and it happens. there is precedent for involving people who are experts or special prosecutors to help prosecutors manage these kinds of complicated cases. we deal it, we do it in cases where there's highly technical evidence. we do it in terrorism cases. we don't typically do it in these cases, and that's what i would be doing. there's a whole network of people who are very good at getting people to overcome that, including people who can present the evidence about police misconduct, police abuse, how many police officers have used racial slurs. that's the kind of stuff that i think changes that culture. but obviously ultimately, we need more people sensitive to this function in the prosecutorial role. >> the second overarching issue is what? >> the second overarching issue is the dependency -- this dependent relationship between police and prosecutors. you know, prosecutors rely on

the police. police rely on the prosecutor. it's very difficult for a prosecutor to go after a police officer and not have it compromised or undermine those relations. and so even though prosecutors will say publicly oh, they're going to go after this police officer, i think a lot of times privately they're saying things to police, reassuring them that they're not going to do this or that. i really do think we would do much better, particularly in these highly sensitive cases, to have independent prosecutors who have the authority to bring these kinds of cases. police officers don't investigatory police officers. we have a special unit to do that because it's the same phenomenon. you need some autonomy that most prosecutors don't have. and i think that both of these cases reveal frankly a little too much deference, a little too much generosity toward the police department and the way that the cases were brought. and then the third thing is that we've got to be a lot more creative at overcoming the biases that we see in these communities. i'm really disappointed that

they did not present the kinds of charges that would have allowed the grand jury to find some misconduct in both of these cases, by focusing on intent or an intent to kill. we bypass a lot of crimes that could have resulted in an indictment and at least created some opportunity for the families and the community that you can't shoot and kill these unarmed people with impunity. and that's a really critical mistake in my judgment by the prosecutors in these cases that reveals, again, a greater sensitivity and need to deal with these broader issues. >> what about the notion, brian, that many of us are starting to wonder whether or not this grand jury system is fraudulent, whether it is broken and needs to be fixed? your thoughts about that? >> well, i don't think it's generally broken. you know, because 98%, 99% of the people, if you do something wrong or i do something wrong, we're going to get indicted. it's not functioning or failing to function in that context. i think when you are dealing

with accused to have status, who are protected, and that includes people like police officers, i think then there is a resistance to indictment that has to be overcome. i do think we need to diversify a jury in most counties in this country. african-americans are underrepresented in the pools from which these jurors are selected. in most communities in this country, we haven't done some proactive things that we could easily do to create more diversity. the state of minnesota, for example, uses a project where they weight people of color to increase their likelihood of being selected if there is a discrepancy between, say, the percentage of african-americans in the community and the percentage of african-americans in the pool. that's the kind of project that's very simple, very cheap that has really improved the diversity of these grand juries. and that just gives everybody more confidence that the decisions that are made are representative of the community and not one subset of that community, white people or people who live in the suburbs

or people who are not dealing with the threat of police misconduct the way many people of color are. >> president obama and others for that matter, brian, as you know, have called over the past few weeks and months for that matter for body cameras. the president has asked for -- if my memory's correct -- about $75 million in next year's budget to provide body cameras to local police departments as a start to moving in that direction. and yet there are those who see the video of the eric garner killing and wonder what good body cameras would actually do. >> well, i share that skepticism. i mean, i'm not opposed to it, but i don't think having a body camera's going to deal with this big cultural gap. you know, i would like to settle government to incentivize police departments to educate themselves about conscious and unracial -- conscious and unconscious racial bias. you know, there's some wonderful social psychologists out there, jennifer eberhart, phil goff and others who are prepared to educate police departments on

how they can better deal with these presumptions of guilt that are shaping some of their choices, shaping some of their decisions. to me that's a necessary first step. i think the second thing that we could be doing as a federal government is to really push police departments to proactively seek better relationships with communities of color. you know, police officers don't talk. police leaders don't talk with the back community except in times of crisis. and that's not the time to develop the relationships that need to be developed. i wish every police chief in america was reaching out to local clergy, local civil rights communities saying how can we talk with each other more effectively? what do we need to be talking about? and don't wait until somebody's dying in the street. do it today. do it next week. do it now. and that's going to create the better environment that i think we need to avoid these kinds of injustices. >> and if i said to you, brian, that we can do better -- and i take your point and concur with it -- but if i said we could do better than just having police talk to black communities, what about the notion of having

police work by night where they walk the beat by day? >> i absolutely support that idea. and in fact, i wish a police officer would be in these communities not dressed in police uniforms, but an interesting study done where police officers were required to be in the community in plain clothes and experience life in that community for 24 hours, 48 hours, 72 hours, a week, a month, a year, their whole perspective changed on living in these communities. there's a terrific organization called the national association of black police officers who have this perspective, and that's the kind of experience that's going to ultimately make public safety the priority rather than law enforcements which sometimes becomes harassment and accusations against young people of color. >> and finally, there was a poll, i guess, that must have been released today or over the weekend. i just saw it making the news headlines today. i think it's bloomberg news has a new poll out that finds that 53% -- so a slight majority of

americans think that race relations have actually worsened under president barack obama, the first african-american. you recall a few years ago when everybody thought we were ushered -- being ushered into a post-racial america with obama's election, and now lo and behold, as he turns the corner toward the end of his tenure as president, the majority of our fellow citizens believe that race relations have worsened under his tenure. what, brian stevenson, do you make of that, and what impact might that have on whether we make advances on these kinds of difficult issues? >> well, i tend to agree. i think race relations have worsened. i think for a lot of people, the election of president obama made them feel comfortable giving voice to their racial animus, their frustrations, their biases, their bigotry that they had actually managed to suppress when it was less acceptable. and what that has turned into is more overtly bigoted, discriminatory behavior. and so i think we've got an enormous challenge on our hands

to begin shaping a different conversation in this country about race. and tavis, as you know, my view is that we've got to talk about the whole history of african-americans in this country and our failure to talk about what the legacy of slavery has done, our failure to talk about what the legacy of terror between reconstruction of world war ii has done, our failure to even talk honestly about the civil rights and movement and what decades of humiliation and segregation and racial sub order nation have done to both black and white people and certainly our failure to confront the legacy of mass incarceration the way we've criminalized and demonized even little, tinily black children being suspended and expelled in first grade. we've got to talk about those issues through this lens of race. we tried to hide behind the election of the president. and as we know, you can run but you cannot hide. you cannot avoid this difficult issue without confronting it directly. and we have never done that in this country. and i think it's time. >> brian stevenson is a hero to

many of us for his many years of social justice work. his new text is out called "just mercy: a story of justice and redemption." i just saw "the new york times" has it on its list of 100 best books of the year and it's on a bunch of other lists as well. it might be good holiday gift giving for those who want to be sensitized to the topics that we've discussed tonight. brian stevenson, good to have you on this program. >> thank you so much, tavis. coming up, we'll continue our conversation with acclaimed poet claudia rankin. stay with us. acclaimed poet claudia rankin's latest book is a book -- poem, in fact, and grapples with race and identity written in the aftermath of trayvon martin's death. it's titled "citizen: an american lyric." and it's being compared to the works of walt whitman and langston hughes. it's complex and detailed depiction of what it means to be

an american. claudia rankin, i'm honored to have you on this program. >> thank you for having me. >> i want to go right back to the cover. it is an arresting, provocative, unsettling cover. tell me about this image and why you chose it as the cover image. >> the image is a piece by david hammo hammonds, renowned visual artist, conceptual artist. he did that piece in '93, two years after rodney king was beaten. it seemed to me to embody the problems of representation around the injustice and the black body, to have just a single image that said okay, injustice, black body meet. it was this image. that's why we wanted to use the hammond piece.

>> even prior to then but certainly since then, hoodies are worn by everybody, not even just black boys, black men, and yet it still has such a strong symbolic message. >> well, i think that's the problem. blackness holds on to its history that stems from racism in this country. and no matter how much time passes, it can pull away. so even the hoodie, which is worn bydjy everyone, is still located in the black body as a criminal garment. >> before i go inside, claudia, this is the second text that you've written that has as a subtitle, "an american lyric." so this one is "citizen: an american lyric." tell me why you were so drawn and why you want to reconnect us to this phrase, "an american lyric."

>> the lyrics normally is thought of as a kind of internal song. and i want to marry the position of blackness to the american song. you know, it's not about american life and then black life. it's black life as american life. and american lyric for me keeps that marriage singular. >> given that so much of what we are experiencing today, brian stevenson just made this point moments ago, and here you come now echoing his comment, that so much of what we are experiencing today with regard to the contestation of the humanity of black people, black boys, in

particular, has its linkages all the way back to segregation and prior to jim crow and jane crow and prior to that slavery and what you've just basically laid out. and yet that is a story that so many americans who don't look like you and me are tired of hearing. so if you're telling me -- you see where i'm going with this -- if you're telling me what we're dealing with is not disconnect from what happened today but americans today don't want to hear about what happened yesterday, then how do you -- >> how do you continue? you show that racism is as much a part of whiteness as it is a black life. >> race is all of our problem. >> it's all of our problem. so that when you have somebody like the officer in st. louis, darren wilson, saying i saw this kid, and what i saw was a demon, what i saw was hulk hogan, how that made me feel was like a 5-year-old.

that's the supremacist thinking controlling him. his own imagination is being controlled by racism. so, you know, i'm sure the man thinks that i'm -- i'm -- i'm not a racist. i'm just trying to do my job. but here it is. whiteness as determined by racism. so i think that we need to start looking atcz white subjectivit liberal subjectivity, this position of this is not me. this is not my problem. and because who's on those juries? people. white people. nine of them. who think that this kind of behavior killing unarmed black men is okay. where does that come from? with the whole country standing behind saying no, it's not okay. >> now you're raising another question that i again, wrestle with all the time. i think you and i both will

acknowledge, and i think maybe the viewer will acknowledge if they're being honest, that we just as human beings, period, have a hard time dealing with being intro spektive. we have a hard time dealing with the internal. so we always want to deal with the external. we would change the color of our hair, our clothes, our makeup, our shoes. change all this -- put another way, we deal with the hardware but not the software. so the external is easy. the internal is hard. the unexamined life is not worth living. but that's a painful process. now, i only raise that because, claudia, as human beings we have a hard time being introspective, how, then, do you do that at least in my mind talk about the most intractable issue in this country which is racism. what you said is a powerful thing about what has to happen if we're going to come to terms with how our democracy has been threatened by this nonsense. and yet you're asking people not

just to be introspective but be introspective about the most difficult issue we face as americans. does that make sense? >> yeah, it makes total sense. the book deals with daily encounters, little moments, places where language reveals how racism determines how we int interact. and that's why i felt we need to start in the most daily way. as you say, it's difficult for people to change what's inside. and so maybe start with language. start with being accountable to language. you know, james baldwin said that not everything that's faced can be changed, but nothing can change until it's faced. so let's just start being accountable to ourselves and understanding what's driving us and what's causing the impasse

when one person is faced with another person. of different color. different race. >> so now i want to have you help me juxtapose these two things. that is this notion that there seems to be on the part of many fellow citizens an awakening, given what's happened to trayvon martin and michael brown and eric garner. and let's be honest about these. these are not just black folk protesting. a whole lot of white folk have been awakened, had their consciences pricked by what they see happening to african-americ african-americans. and so there is, to my mind at least, an awakening on the part of some fellow citizens who don't look like us. i'm trying to juxtapose that with the hopelessness that many fellow citizens feel, borne out in this report, this new poll that i, again, referenced a moment ago with brian stevenson, bloomberg, a new poll out suggesting that 53%, a slight majority of americans, now believe that race relations have worsened under barack obama.

so this was a moment that we were celebrating a few years ago. a bunch of white folk elected barack obama. and now the majority of our citizenry thinks that we have lost ground on race relations in this era. so how do you square those two things that there's an awakening on the one hand but a hopelessness on the other hand? >> i think the hopelessness comes from exhaustion. you know, that feeling of -- you know, in terms of the indictments, you wait and wait and you hope it will go another way. but part of you, an equal part of you, knows it's not going to happen. so then you get into the cycle of hopelessness. but i think that the fact that people are out on the streets, that's not hopelessness. >> i agree. >> that's the belief that it's time to stand up. it's time to say no. it's time to be angry. i think in a way, what the past few years has done is quiet us

down. and i think whites, blacks, asian, everybody now is thinking oh, no, no, no, no. we can't just let this go. we have to -- we have to actually stand up. we have to go out. >> i'm struck by your use of the term "anger" because obviously it takes me inside your text. i thought only black men could be angry, but i hear you suggesting that what we're seeing in the streets is anger. >> i think it is anger. i think it's be angry. be angry. and that's okay. i think i'm giving -- i think black women should be angry even though that's a stereotype. we all should be angry. mothers losing their sons. it's time to be angry. it's time to say enough is enough. >> let me close on this note. what is it that you hope the primary takeaway for those reading this book who don't look like us about what they ought to

consider with respect to the journey that black folk have to navigate every day regarding race on this stage? >> i think people who don't like us should think about the way in which they're implicated in our difficulty. in the small ways, in the daily ways, in the doors that close when they were held open for the blonde lady who passed through, but then the black lady comes and the door is moving back. you know, just the small gestures. once you begin to correct on the small level, i think the other things will take care of themselves. because that means you begin to see the person, the african-american person, the asian person, the brown person, the latino person as a person. and that's all we're asking. >> it's all we're asking and i think we can all start small. the book is called "citizen: an

american lyric" by claudia rankin. i highly recommend it as i did with brian's book a few moments ago. two good pieces to add to your collection. and now would be a good time to do that. claudia, good to have you on this program. congratulations on the text. >> thank you so much. >> that's our show for tonight. thanks for watching. and as always, keep the faith. ♪ for more information on today's show, visit tavis smiley at pbs.org. hi, i'm tavis smiley. join me next time with the incomparable angela lansbury now on tour. that's next time. we'll see you then. ♪ ♪

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