this morning, my question, why did an nfl team drop its best wide receiver? plus, 50 years since the civil rights act. and twitter activism, from cuba to colbert. but first, there is a great debate taking place, and we're bringing it to nerdland. good morning. i'm melissa harris-perry. over the past few weeks, an important public debate has been taking place online about race, culture, and poverty. now, the principles are two very smart people, who write for two

well-regarded magazines. this is jonathan chase, a writer for "new york" magazine, a self-professed liberal who writes about politics and media. this is tan hassy coates, national correspondent for the atlantic. i should disclose, he once described me as america's foremost intellectual, which was not only an overstatement, but a description of the prolific coates as well. those are the interlocketters. and here's what sparked the debate. here's congressman paul ryan on march 12th. >> we have got this tailspin of culture in our inner cities in particular of men not working and just generations of men not even thinking about working or learning the value and the culture of work. and so there's a real culture problem here that has to be dealt with. >> the backlash to ryan's comments was swift. congressman barbara lee described them as a thinly israeli

veiled racial attack, and they pointed to the hypocrisy of ryan's insistence on cultural persistence for policy. and as is frequently the case, coates on march 18th made a contribution to this discussion that was especially insightful. he pointed to the similarities between congressman ryan's culture statement and president obama's repeated inknvocations cousin pooky when talking to a black audience. coates was interested less in lambasting this president, than reminding us about the slippery assumptions that are ubiquitous. white conservatives do this pathologyizing, of course, just look at congressman ryan. white liberals do it, see president clinton's determination to end welfare as we knew it. black conservatives do it. just look at the new black conservative magazine, "american

current see," whose mission is transcending race with a culture free of government dependency. as coates was pointing out, even black liberals tend to conflate pathology. and here is the president announcing the my brother's keeper initiative in february, a program designed to remove the structural obstacles to success for young men of color. >> we need to invest in our schools and make college more affordable and government has a role to play. and yes, we feed to encourage fathers to stick around and remove the barriers to marriage and talk openly about things like responsibility and faith and community. and in the words of dr. king, it is not either/or, it is both/and. >> so are you still with me? conservative congressman invokes culture. progressives cry foul. smart cultural observer points o out that the president is sometimes guilty of the same strategy. on march 19th, enter jonathan

chate who responded by defending the idea that culture is, at least in part, responsible for the perpetuation of african-american poverty. he wrote, it would be bizarre to image that centuries of slavery followed by systemic terrorism, segregation, discrimination, a legacy wealth gap, and so on did not leave a cultural residue that itself became an impediment to success. coates then responded, quote, chate believes it's bizarre to think otherwise. i think it's bizarre that he doesn't bother to see his argument as if it's actually true. oppression might well produce a culture of failure, it might also produce a warrior spirit and a deep commitment to attaining the very things that have been so often withheld from you. there is no need for theorizing, the answers are knowable. and that is when it started to get good. chait, march 28th, barack obama versus the culture of poverty. coates, march 30th, other

people's theologies. coates disagrees with jonathan chait and so do i. the blue period, an origin story. nerd alicious, good, wickedly smart people using enormous words, complex sentence structures, and thinly veiled intellectual shade to discuss consequential issues. and people were paying attention. writers at "the nation," the american prospect, "the new york times" all jumped in to tap out coates or chait and get their own licks in. even gawker covered it. call that a win for the public. but as much as i eagerly anticipated each new entry in this thoroughly engrossing conversation, it was disappointing. many times, african-americans have entered these discussions only to discover that those who were supposed to be political allays are eager to argue there

is something inherently, residually wrong with black people. far less frequently to impoverish black folks find a public ally willing and able to insert without qualification their humanity, dignity and absolute worthiness. coates has done so unwaveringly. and watching it happen in realtime has been stunning. i am pleased to welcome to the table, ta-nesehi coates. and we invited jonathan chait, but he was not available. thanks for being here. >> thanks for having me. >> this has taken on a high level of public interest. to what do you attribute that at this moment, given that you write about these kinds of things regularly, why has this captured public attention? >> i don't know. i never know what's going to catch fire and what's not going to catch fire. but i think there's a deep, deep

presumption across the board in america that there is something culturally wrong with people who are poor and specifically with african-americans. and i think that's accepted wisdom right now for whatever reason. barack obama, whenever he makes that statement, whenever the president does that sort of speech, he always gets applause. >> from african-american audiences. >> and by across the way, i mean, even among african-americans. i think people think it's a little bizarre when you say, no, no, no, it's not culture at all. it's not culture at all. >> so part of how chait begins his conversation with you in his response back, he returns to a piece you wrote in october of 2010, where you talk about basically, i think what we would describe as coat-switching. learning that the sets of tools that you had in one space are not appropriate tools or effective tools for you to use in another. what is it that you think chait misunderstood about what you were trying to say in that piece? >> his argument, and this is the argument across the board, is that this is cultural residue. in other words, there's something that happened in the

past that has nothing to do with what you're going through right now and you're bringing that forward. bit intergenerational, be it in a pass life. when i had that incident, i was living in harlem. i was, i think, about six months removed from unemployment. i had just, you know, lost a job. i didn't have a job at that point, even when i was out there freelance writing. i was living in the environment where that would have been appropriate. it just so happened where i was working, it was clearly not appropriate. and that's a lesson that, you know, folks have to learn. i'm totally in favor with teaching that lesson, by the way. i do think people need to learn that certain behaviors are appropriate one place, and certain behaviors are not appropriate other places. but white supremacy is a real lived thing. >> i want to talk about that discourse of white supremacy. it is one of the important pushbacks you give to the cultural pathology argument. what is at stake for you intellectually and politically to say what we face in terms of questions of continuing racial

inequality needs to be ascribed to continuing white supremacy, and help us to understand what you mean when you say that, versus a cultural residue among african-americans. >> part of the problem is that liberals are progressives when we talk about this. we have this idea, we were racist in the past, and we are suffering after-effects. but what academics know. you can go out and look at the studies, and you can see young african-americans who are looking for low-wage jobs, have about the same chance of getting a job as a white person with a felony on their record. i mean, when we see things, this is a thing that's happening right now. a really, really small number of people on the planet earth are african-american males. and yet, 8% of the incarcerated population on the planet earth is african-american and male. you can't separate those two things out. this is happening right now. >> so, okay, let's go to that. so i love the piece of social science research you just told us. that's diva pages research in march, if employers are looking at a resume of an

african-american without a felony and a white applicant with a felony -- >> you're so sharp! you stated the study. that's why you're america's foremost intellectual. >> i'm just a nerd, right? so the idea that we see like decisions being made in employment right now, but when you say the piece about incarceration, that's the kind of data point that is simply a data point, right? so you have mass incarceration. but then, what happens is precisely this ability to have a conversation about, well, why, then? is it because of criminality? heightened criminality among african-american men, or is it because of heightened policing among african-american men. you say the answers are knowable. how would we begin to know those answers? >> one of the regrettable things, there's a great disconnect. i would say, specifically, with historians, but i think this goes across the board, in terms of the academy and people over here who write about it in the press. and i would like to see more of a convergence, more of a conversation back and forth. because, oftentimes, when i talk to social sciences, when i talk

to historians, they know the answers. it's not really blurry for them at all. so if i make the statement that white supremacy is at the core of american history and will likely be a problem with us, until the end of our days, if i tell a group of historians that water is wet, it's not a remarkable statement. and yet, out here for some reason, sit's like stunning to say that. >> do you think it's a great debate or a dumb debate? >> i frame this as the great debate of our moment, but should we even be debating this? >> yes, yes, yes. as much as i disagree with jonathan, i really appreciate him engaging me on it. i think jonathan is a fantastic writer. and i'm happy to do this. you know, i really, really am. i appreciate him jumping in. >> the two of you certainly do perform a certain level respectful discourse. and even to the extent you throw a shade on each other, it's always intellectual. when we come back, i'm going to ask you a little bit about -- you do this french performance thing that i think is fascinating, when we come back. stay with us for just a minute.

we'll bring more voices in. but first, i want to give everyone an update on the latest on the search for the missing malaysia airlines jet. a second ship, an australian vessel, has detected an acoustic signal in the search area in the indian ocean saturday. a chinese ship reported two sets of signals. it is still unclear if the acoustic signals are coming from the missing plane's black boxes. but officials are investigating. we will continue to follow the latest developments in this story. but when we come back, we're going to expand our conversation about race and culture to talk about the role of rage and the public's response. but as we go to break, i want you to listen to an argument about black cultural pathology from a source that you may find surprising. here's malcolm x. in 1963. >> the only way that we can solve our problem is to unite together among ourselves, among our own kind, clean ourselves up, rid ourselves of the evils that we've become addicted to here in this society and try and solve our problem ourselves.

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we told you this debate grew far and wide. andrew sullivan over at the dish inserted himself into the discussion. he wrote about his concern for mr. coates that, quote, his depression about the state of america was weakening his usual strengths. sullivan also shared some of his readers' comments, that coates' blog has sadly turned into a place of utter depression and despair. that his anger is clouding his vision. that i pray my friend circles back to hope soon. there is important historicical context here. words like depression and despair remind me that for more than a century, african-americans expressing frustration with the united states have been suspected not of righteous anger, but of

mental illness. in 1951, a doctor coined the phrase, drake demania, a condition that caused slaves to try to escape. the cause in most of the cases that induces the negro to run away from service is much more of a disease of the mind and much more curable as a general rule. in the 1960s, there were scientists who suggested that participants in race riots had some kind of brain dysfunction, and they conducted experiments by burning out small areas of cells in their patients' brains. and in 1967, there was martin luther king jr., addressing the american psychology association about the term, maladjustment. he said, quote, there are some things concerning, which we must always be maladjusted if we are to be people of goodwill. we must never adjust ourselves to racial discrimination and variable segregation. still with me is ta-nehisi coates, national correspondent for the atlantic. joining the table is cristina

beltran, associate professor at new york university. brittany cooper, assistant professor of women and gender's studies y ies at rutger univers and tanner kolbe. mr. coates, are you just depressed? >> it goes back to that water is wet thing. i feel like i talk to academics about this, and they're like, yeah, this is the world. but there's this american need to believe everything is going to get better. that we're going to triumph in the end. which is bizarre and i don't think is necessarily healthy. we might triumph in the end, but we won't triumph in the end by assuring ourselves that we will triumph in the end. we need to be really, really aware of the dangers we face. >> i want to give chait his language here about this notion of progress. let's look at what chait had to say and i want to ask you a bit about it, tanner. he writes, it's hard to describe how the united states has progressed from chattel slavery to emancipation to the end of

lynching to the end of legal segregation to the election of an african-american president if america has often been an ally of african-americans and often its nemesis. it is one thing to notice the persistence of racism, quite another to interpret the history of black america, as mainly one of continuity, rather than mainly one of progress. this is the kind of racial optimism we see here from chait and does often inflect the conversations between white liberals and african-american, not all african-americans, some african-americans, around the question of sort of where america is going and where we've been. >> right. i think, as a white person who tackles this subject a lot, it's very easy for someone like me or someone like jonathan chait. i can write about race all day long and at 8:00 turn it off and turn on "parks & rec" and there's no moral fatigue. it's engaging, but doesn't bring any sense of an emotional cost. whereas, you know, you see, and so the attitude of someone like chait is like, hey, guys, why

are we slowing down? things are great. it's very easy to have that perspective. you saw that at the end of the civil rights movement, all these white liberals were like, hey, guys, why are we slowing down? what's going on? >> it's interesting, this language of moral and emotional fatigue. on the one hand, i was so irritated by those comments of mr. sullivan's readers that could read the kind of analysis of coates, and see it as just an expression of depression. on the other hand, i don't want to lose that there is an emotional cost to the work of race, particularly for those who are on the margins of that inequality. >> absolutely. one of the things is we live in a country that is deeply and profoundly uncomfortable with black rage, right? and at the same time, we have always attributed to people of color and to women, this sort of hyperemotionalism. and it's a way to pare down the kind of radicalism and rigor of the critique, right, and to not listen. so what we have to be doing is thinking about how we can hold intention, the legitimacy of

these emotions and recognize that that doesn't mean that folks are not interested in progress at the same time. >> so, i like this language about, that if you're just mad, and not mad about something, then i don't have to somehow address that thing that you might be mad about. the kind of content of what that anger is, the righteousness of it. so, help me to understand, chris t christina, what is standing in there about this notion of, i pray my friend comes back around to hope. this particular discourse -- >> these people. >> right, my friend. you're their intellectual friend, your buddy that they read. >> you're imaginary friend. >> i'm just saying. >> i think there's something really interesting about the affective labor that african-americans and other people of color are asked to do this kind of emotional labor of performing hope and performing on the mitch. and i think one of the interesting things i've been interested in this whole debate is how people talk past each other, is in many ways, what you're asking people to do and what a lot of african-american

intellectuals and race scholars in general ask people to do is to sit with the tragedy of white racism, or to sit with the tragedy of racial violence, and really sit with it and think about it and engage it, and not always shift to the happy ending, to the language of innocence, and so to really do that is difficult. and i think that's one of the reasons why there's always this demand to perform joy and pleasure and, you know, and things are getting better. was i think the other part that's a little confusing for white liberals in particular is the language of hope also sufficie suffuses african-american discourse. but there's a kind of gothic hope, a hope that's deep, a blues hope, a hope that's stied to a more complicated -- >> it's a rigorous hope. >> yeah. >> a mature hope. >> a grown-up, tragic hope. that logic is a lot harder to try to get people to sit with.

>> i like the performance of hope. and i want to ask you two questions here, even though we have no time. one is whether or not you think that performance of hope is part of what was so seductive about president obama as candidate obama, that he performs hope quite consciously. >> right. >> talk to me about that first. >> yeah, no, and there are -- and people should be hopeful. you know, i never thought we would have an african-american, but that does mean something. and yes, there has been progress. saying that there has been progress is one statement. saying that it's been progress because we've had some alliance, because the country has been on our side, for most of american history, is a totally, totally different statement. behind that progress is the bodies of a lot of black people. the broken bodies, the lynched bodies, the raped bodies, the plundered bodies of a great deal of black people. and you have to sit with that, you don't tend to come out with this jaunty, happy view of american history. >> there is one thing you do in where are writing around the culture of pathology that i want to end on here. that is, you committed to the study of french and french

culture and a french language. even in the piece from 2010, it begins with you and your son, going to a french film festival. >> yes, sir, yes, sir. >> and you do that, right. you do it in where are writings. and sometimes it feels to me like that kind of harlem renaissance moment, where you demonstrate the capacity to do high european culture, even as you engage. and i wonder if you're doing that consciously. if it's just -- because i see that as a certain kind of performance of an anti-cultural pathology narrative. >> i'm not doing it on purpose. it's just fun. >> to perform. it's fun. >> all right. i have been long wanting to ask you. ta-nehisi coates, thank you for being here this morning. and for elevating the debate. >> thank you. up next, the point of rage. >> the first man in this country to die for the war of independence was a black man named christmas adams. a black man!

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how much money do you think you'll need when you retire? then we gave each person a ribbon to show how many years that amount might last. i was trying to, like, pull it a little further. [ woman ] got me to 70 years old. i'm going to have to rethink this thing. it's hard to imagine how much we'll need for a retirement that could last 30 years or more.

so maybe we need to approach things differently, if we want to be ready for a longer retirement. ♪ the debate on race, culture, and piotr did not stay in the web pages of "the atlantic," and "new york" magazine, instead it expanded with pieces popping up in t in "the new york times," the daily beast, "the nation," including this piece on the function of black rage, where he wrote, quote, what some call depression or pessimism, i would call impatience and rage. our impatience and rage is what has produced progress. that we are still impatient and angry reflects not black people's failing, but how far america still has to go. joining the table is mychal denzel smith, fellow at "the nation" institute and blogger for thenation.com. nice to have you. >> thanks for having me. >> here's my question to you, particularly as a young person

sitting at the table. often my students will say to me, ah, professor harris, nothing's changed. this is just like that. and i always want to say, we can maintain culture critique, political critique while saying, there has, in fact, been progress. that what i experience now might be the business, and yet also not slavery. also not jim crow. so how do we do that? how do we express a rage about the lack of progress while also acknowledging that our circumstances are not that of our forebearers? >> we do just that. we can say, we are not slaves anymore. like, we are not in slavery. >> and that is good. >> and that is -- that is great! i'm glad that i do not have to live in chattel slavery. like, that's a good thing for me, that i can sit at this table. but, we have so much more to do. we have so far to go. we're still dealing -- i mean, we're dealing with food insecurity, mass incarceration, you know, the destruction of the social safety net. all of these things that are under attack, that are race based, that are racism, that are the products of white supremacy,

we can still talk about those things. i think the problem is that we want to place racism and white supremacy in the past. we want to place it, and then we want -- if not in the past, we want to place it on bad actors and place it on people of bad faith, people that are ignorant. and not see that this is a structural issue. like, this is institutionalized. >> brittany, you said that -- so michael's trying to give us a way to think about what to be angry about, but you said that america is uncomfortable with black rage. what do you mean by that? >> there's this moment in one of jonathan chait's responses where he says, you know, i don't agree with this portrait of jonathan chait -- >> yeah, yeah, right, right. i also don't agree with jonathan -- >> it's performance, that sort of defense, right? so this is the thing about, that sometimes what happens with white liberal discourse is it becomes about, if you're saying that some of the things i do or believe are racist, you're calling me personally a racist. and so i think that there's a sort of dishonesty to that, in the sense that we should be able

to talk about the fact that we're all implicated in structures and we're all trying to navigate them. but instead, it becomes a way to say, i know i'm a good person, so i don't have to listen to this critique. so, again, this theme of, not listening and hearing and engaging at the level of change, with what african-american folks are actually saying about the system, seems to be an enduring threat in this problem. >> okay, so part of what i hear yo you saying, you're not quite saying it, nor did mr. coates, but there is, tanner, a little bit of, if you are white and writing about blackness, you can, which no one is saying you can't, it's not like the n-word, which you're just not allowed to do. but that many african-americans are going to read with a suspicion about your writing, they're going to begin with a suspicion about your goals, and that you perhaps as a white writer, even if you see yourself as part of the multi-racial coalition of progressivism, will be held to a standard -- because

part of what coates asked is, well, why are people mad if paul ryan when, after all, president obama says it? the fact is, we know why they're mad when paul ryan says it and not president obama. because there's an assumption about president obama's connection to, belief in, and love for the black community or black communities in a way that there's not for ryan. so how do you navigate that in a way that's careful and intellectually honest as a white writer? >> i put my own hypocrisy on the front page of my book. i said, i don't know any black people, so i'm going to find out why. i didn't write a book about race or black people, i wrote about myself. i wrote about school bussing in my high school. i wanted to understand where i came from. i wasn't writing about black people. i was writing about how race shaped my world. because that's what i was curious about. was, you know, i wasn't doing the sort of white man's burden. i'm going to go out and learn about this, and, you know, tell the moral of the story. and so, i think, you know, white people don't see themselves as

actors in this. they see themselves as the norm and then race is a black thing, whereas, you know, when i stepped out and saw, the only reason why high school existed was to get away from busing. the church that i grew up with in louisiana was an all-white church, on the other side of the tracks, from the all-black church for specific reasons. so race shaped the world i came from. that's what i wrote about. and i think if white people took that point of view. this cultural residue that jonathan chait talks about, it's on everyone. >> that's right. everybody, go wash the residue off. we'll take a short break, we'll come back, we're adding another dimension to the discussion -- gender. >> fannie lou, do you know what the past says i say? and i said, yes sir. and he said, i mean if you don't go down and withdraw your recession, you will have to leave. and i addressed him and told him that i didn't try to register for you, i tried to register for myself. these days, everything your business does

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okay, one thing about the chait versus coates debate is that they are two dudes, you know, guys, men. and although they talk about the tangle of pathologies from the 1965 moynihan report, they don't mention that a specific focus about that report is the black family structure, specifically, black motherhood. as tressy mcmillan cotham wrote in t in "the american prospect," the gendered tone of the entire debate has too many javelin flying for me to expect a sister in a wonder woman outfit to be as welcome as, well, wonder woman rarely is when the real superheroes are about real super hero business. joining me, mickey mcliar at ly

the university of america. >> i think what would be really interesting about doing that is it forces us to really think about the fact that we are all going to fail at this. so i think one thing that intersectionalty lets us do is, these are hard conversations to have. and one thing i liked about the chait and ta-nehisi, them having their argument, it really felt like two citizens arguing about something that mattered. and they were having a good fight about it. and that fight isn't always pretty, but they took each other seriously, and they also misunderstood each other, and there were crossing lines of understanding, but that's what happens. but when you bring an intersectionalty, straight women might not not always get sexuality. affluent women might not always get class. you talked about black communities. one reason we have a hard time thinking about progress at this particular moment is because we have a hard time understanding that black politics and politics in this country in general, but black politics in particular, a sol dare of politics.

it's a politics of people saying, i might be doing well, but you're not, or my cousin or my family or there's a story here of standing in solidarity with each other. and i think a lot of feminist politics is a politics of solidarity. so how do you get a politics that can acknowledge that we're going to fail with each other, but that we have to have an argument that says, let's talk about gender, but even when you try, you fail. and they failed on that. they weren't able to put that together. but to say they failed isn't to say, now you're done, you'll never get it. >> and it's not to say that the debate is worthless. mickey, i thought of you in part because in one of the responses, coates uses the 1996 cover from "the new republic," that demanded, sign the welfare bill now, from the editors, and it has that image. the image of, presumably, a single poor black mother, smoking while holding the baby, who's got the bottle. and it is meant to represent all that is the tangle of black pathology, and coates uses it as

a visual reminder of what these kind of magazine as have always said, white progressive, liberal magazines about black life. but that's not just a black body, that's a black woman's body. and i kept thinking about your work around mammy and representations of black women. what do you see in that moment? >> in response to a persistent focus in this debate on race in america as being black and white. so as we think about who's at risk, it's also being framed in that way. and then, added to that, by focusing so much on african-american men and boys, as the primary, both the primary agents at risk, and the primary danger. so in the discourse from left to right, this overwhelming focus on men and boys, leaves women out, in ways that that first don't recognize the specificities of black women's lives and the conditions of their lives in terms of structural racism, in terms of

sexism, in terms of sexual stereotyping. so it leaves them out as people potentially in need of resources. leaves them out as people with complex lives. and then adds them through this kind of hypervisibility as a threat, as a threat to black men and boys as well. >> and brittany, no clearer contemporary example of that, then, on the one hand, an initiative who could hate, right, my brother's keeper, but then you also have to, it begs the question, what about our daughters? >> exactly right. the sort of logic of my brother's keeper says that patriot a patriarchy is going to solve the problem of race inequality. so what i didn't see ta-nehisi or jonathan chait mention, is paul ryan talked about men standing on the corner, right? so there was a very gendered frame to that analysis as well. part of the thing is to think about, what are the structural policies the that ryan has supported that put those men on the corner, right? but also, women are not on the corner, because they are out

doing wage labor, being paid far less in order to do it. and then trying to support those men when they come home and need a place to say. and so women are doing all of this extra labor to hold these communities the together. what's interesting is, we're always talking about women in these policy debates, but never, ever saying it, and so there's a deep level of con temtempt ther. >> if you think there's not an empirical basis for professor cooper, we'll send out a tweet with this fantastic new report about how african-american women seem to be doing great, but actually, in fact, are not doing so well. i also just want to let nerdland know, they am proud to have a new monthly column in "essence" magazine. and you can read my first column, which reflects on african-american motherhood and the experience of parenting black children in this country in the may issue of "essence" on newsstands now. when we come back, we are, of course, going to continue our discussion about race, culture, and how it impacts one of the biggest moves in football right now.

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desean jackson is only 5'10" and 170 pounds. the 27-year-old jackson makes his living as a wide receiver in the national football league, a really good wide receiver. three-time pro-bowler with more than 6,000 yards and 32 touchdowns through six years in the nfl. so seeing this picture of a very accomplished receiver signing a big new contract wasn't the most curious part of this picture i saw on twitter last week, nor was it the array of native american mascot logos. it's the fact that jackson, for the first time as a pro, wasn't wearing, or making, philly green. even more curious is why. the team's march 20th statement says, after careful conversation, during this off-season, the philadelphia eagles have decided to part ways with desean jackson.

but mere minutes before the first fan comment was posted under that statement reading, why? this report was published. this eagles, according to the report, had serious concerns when this was discovered. quote, jackson's continued association with reputed los angeles street gang members, which have been connected to two homicides since 2010. both men were reportedly members of the crips along with photos like these of him allegedly flashing that gang's sign led to suspicions that he had gang ties. along with clearing his facebook page of any and all ties of those kind, he tried to clear his name, in which he stated, quote, do i know people who are involved? yes, i'm definitely aware of and know certain gang members. but as far as being affiliated, never have been one. i've always felt i've been a product of my environment, but i've always felt i've wanted to do things the right way.

nj.com strongly asserted saturday that its findings came as a result of its own reporting and that, quote, the conspiracy theories surrounding the story are comic icicacomical. still, the nfl union's head told espn on friday that the union would be investigating the circumstances of jackson's release. coming up next, we'll look at the defense of jackson written by another of his childhood friends, super bowl champion, richard sherman. it means unlimited 1.5% cash back on everything you purchase, every day. it doesn't mean, "everything... as long as you buy it at the gas station." it doesn't mean, "everything... until you hit your cash back limit." it means earn 1.5% cash back on every purchase, every place, every occasion, all over creation. that's what everything should mean. so consider... what's in your wallet?

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we learned two things almost simultaneously on march 28th, that desean jackson was essentially fired from his job as a star wide receiver for the nfl's philadelphia eagles, and according to nj.com, that jackson's quote, gang connections back in los angeles gave his now former employer, the eagles, serious concerns. someone else had connections in los angeles during his youth is another accomplished athlete, who has been in the news recently. star cornerback, richard

sherman, of the super bowl champion seattle seahawks. sherman, whose bravado sparked a firestorm of race talk back in january, posted this little league photo on twitter the day after jackson's release. his accompanying message, quote, that desean jackson and me have been boys since we were kids. no one should be judged by the action of others. #fam. sherman followed up with a column four days ago defending jackson and players like himself, who still have friends back in the hood, writing, consider that for every sever guys i try to help, who end up dead or in jail, there's another person i was able to rescue from a similar end. should i give up on everybody out of fear of being dirtied by the media? sorry, but i was born in this dirt. back at the table is mychal denzel smith of "the nation." all right, i want to ask you about this, because you connected sherman's claim there, about being born in this dirt to a kind of larger process, in a recent column. and you write, in short, if you

took two children, one white, one black, and gave them parents with similar jobs, similar educations, and similar values, the black child would be much more likely to grow up in a neighborhood with higher poverty, worse schools, and more violence. why does that empirical reality matter for understanding what's going on with sherman and jackson here? >> it's -- there's, i mean, sherman said it best. he was born in this dirt. and neighborhoods for african-americans are very sticky. and i'm really indebted to patrick sharkie on this point. but the simple fact is that if you are an african-american of any income level, odds are very good, because of past discrimination, because of not just like the legacy of stuff, but active, ongoing housing discrimination and other factors, you're much more likely to be born or live in a low-income neighborhood. >> and also some of it is press conferences. i will also say, you know, my husband and i made a choice about where we lived in new orleans, in part because we wanted to live in community, with other african-americans. >> absolutely. >> so if you are middle or upper middle class african-american,

you want to live around other white people, your choices are pretty limited in terms of income of the neighborhood. what this means for kids is that their social networks won't just include doctors, lawyers, other professionals, they will include people who are gang members. they will include people who are either unemployed or work very low-wage jobs. and this will be the case for the rest of their lives. and so, what sherman is writing about, with desean jackson's experiencing, what they're both experiencing is something that's very exon to many african-americans. and not -- even those who live in predominantly white neighborhoods. i grew up in a mostly white neighborhood. and even so, my church, my parent's friends, we had connections to people who were not middle class. and that's just a fact about black life, that, i think, is almost unknown to white people. >> so part of what i have found fascinating about the chait/coates debate and about where you responded, and about where you responded, and ultimately, then, even in this moment, where these young men are responding and writing, is that it's mostly not in the

black press. it's mostly not the chicago defender and ebony, and "essence," where these debates would have previously happened, but in a left/right press, and the voices that are speaking are the voices of people with the lived experience, in addition to the education and the analytic capacity. how important is that aspect, mychal? people being -- like, not just give me the damn ball, but give me the damn pen. let me write about my own experience. >> i just signed a new contract with the nation, so let me say to them, i do have several family members in prison -- >> "the nation" doesn't care -- >> just letting you know if that's a problem. but i was jealous of richard sherman's analytic ability and his writing skills, because he laid it out there so perfectly. and he brought up a lot of key factors that i think set up the double standard for what it is to be young and black and in the nfl. and i think, you know, desean jackson's supposed gang affiliations are not really a problem. it's the fact that the nfl can't capitalize off of them. they can't make any money off of

them. if he was a rapper, like, they would sign him and be like, yes, he has gang affiliations! >> and i wonder if there's a kind of violence that's problematic. take ray rice, the raven's running back, who has allegedly committed acts of domestic violence, who did not lose his job. in fact, have been largely embraced and backed. and there are other examples that violence against women is often rampant in the nfl, and yet that doesn't get talked about as something that we should therefore distance ourselves from. >> like the case of jovan belter, who killed his girlfriend, the mother of a young baby. so part of this is about a respectability politic, right? there's this belief that sport is this kind of neutral category that elevates people >> level playing people. >> that's right. so we want to -- once we give you the mantle, that you're part of this group, you ought to be

able to perform these kind of tropes in your life. and part of the problem with that is these coaches need some kind of cultural kcompetencies. >> and this notion with sherman and jackson, they're embracing that cultural conflict. they're not trying to distance themselves. although, man, watching him sign with that washington team logo, that was hard. mychal denzel smith, thank you for being here. and we've got more nerdland at the top of the hour.  gunderman group.

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gotta get greater growth. growth? growth. i just talked to ups. they've got a lot of great ideas. like smart pick ups. they'll only show up when you print a label and it's automatic. we save time and money. time? money? time and money. awesome. awesome! awesome! awesome! awesome! awesome! awesome! awesome! (all) awesome! i love logistics. welcome back. i'm melissa harris-perry. on tuesday, the lyndon b. johnson presidential library is hosting a civil rights summit, marking the 50th anniversary of the civil rights act of 1964. johnston signed tact on july 2nd, marking the legal end to the system of institutionalized segregation. the heart of the act is title ii, which states in part, all persons shall be entitled to the full and equal enjoyment of the goods, services, facilities, privileges, advantages, and

accommodations of any place of public accommodation, as defined in this section, without discrimination on the ground of race, color, religion, or national origin. the law marked a pivotal moment in our country's history, one that was intended to put an end to situations like the one you see here. this is two weeks before the act was signed, june 18th, 1964. and in this photo, you can see black and white americans swimming together in a hotel pool in florida. but look more closely. that man in the background is the hotel management, and he is pouring acid into the pool to try to force the swimmers out. that's because these swimmers were protesting the pool's whites only policy. that man is diving into the pool there to physically remove all of the protesters, all of whom were arrested. swimming pools are one example of a public good, paid for by public dollars, and there was a boom of pool construction in the 1930s, during the new deal, providing jobs for unemployed workers and recreation, for citizens and communities. but black americans who were paying taxes just like white

americans, and outing money in a collective pot, intended to be used for a collective good, were legally barred in most states from accessing those public goods. goods like public swimming pools. despite the fact that they were helping to fund them. swimming pools were the site of a series of protests. here is a young man being arrested in 1949 after 70 black youth came to the anacostia park swimming pool in washington, d.c., and the white pool patrons refused to let them swim. and at this time, illinois pool in 1962, black youth marched for an hour, protesting the pool's whites-only policy. the 1964 civil rights act was intended to change all of that by granting equal access to public goods to the black americans who were already paying equal contributions. but what happened to public accommodations in the years after 1964 is more complicated. here are black youth swimming in a state park pool in a small georgia town in 1965. what we don't see are the white swimmers who left the pool just before the picture was taken. the civil rights act gave

african-americans access to public goods, like public pools. and in the years that followed, the public goods themselves garnered less investment. economist robert reich writes, since the 1970s, almost all the growth from the gains have gone to the top, but as the rich begin shifting to private institutions, they withdrew political support for public ones. in consequence, their marginal tax rates dropped, setting off a vicious cycle of diminishing revenues and deteriorating quality, spurring more flight from public institutions. jeff wolettes, who is the author of the book "contested waters: a social history of swimming pools in america" explains, when black americans gained equal access to municipal pools, white swimmers generally abandoned them for private pools, and cities downgraded the importance of public pools. 50 right after the civil rights act, the struggle is not just about getting access to the pool for some, it's about keeping the pool open for all. with me at the table, jahmell bowie, staff writer at state, cristina beltran, associate

professor at new york university, khalil mohammad, and tanner colby, author of, "some of my best friends are black." let me start you here, khalil. when you look at the disinvestment in public goods that has occurred since 1964, do you read where we are right now, 50 years later, as the civil rights act having been successful or having failed? >> oh, well, from that vantage point, it's failed miserably, partly because the civil rights act, although it was about access, ultimately, underneath it, it was about equity. and at the end of the day, we department just gain access to the lunch counter, we needed money to eat there. that quip speaks volume about the idea that under nixon's new federalism, the next president after lbj, created the possibility for the federal government to put more control at the state level and at the state level, to ultimately be able to use political favors, as

had always been the case, for the purposes of realigning political parties. so we know that through the language of l"law & order," we know a retrenchment to civil rights, through the tropes of black militancy, we began to see the federal government divesting in the very infrastructure that is possible as a result of the civil rights act, but needs money. and so that new federalism is picked up by reagan. then you have a retreat against affirmative action, which becomes the duel end of the spectrum. the black mass is profiting at the end of whites and the black poor is becoming depend on government services. all of which you continue to see social spending under the reagan administration in the 1980s go from 12% of the budget to 3% of the budget. so everything that potentially made possible the growth of something that we might call racial equality in america, the entire infrastructure, the bottom literally falls out by the 1980s. >> and so when we look, jamal, where we find ourselves in this moment, then, 50 years later,

the urban league recently released a report, the state of black america, when we look at income, you talk about having the money to eat at the lunch counter, african-american households make 60% the income of why is houite households and only 60% the wealth of white households. the unemployment, african-americans are half as likely to be employed and 2 1/2 times more likely to live in poverty, and african-americans are 5.6 times more likely to be incarcerated. these are the facts of life around questions of life in the racial divide now. would you assess, then, that our civil rights legacy 50 years later is a failure? >> i'm not sure i would say it's a failure. i would say it's trending towards failure, right? that, like, i don't want to discount the actual gains, the gains that have happened, right, the fact that we're sitting at this table here is a gain. the fact that, you know, a whole host of institutions in american

life are more integrated than they were 50 years ago. but like khalil said, there's been this massive disinvestment in our public infrastructure. and that is a loss and that is something that is holding back racial equality. i mean, if you just look at schools, like, schools are in an ongoing period of resegregation, right? like large percentage of african-american students go to schools that are 90%, 95% black. large majorities of african-american latino students that are majority african-american and latino. white families have all but, if they haven't pulled their kids out of public schools, they've been able to use zoning laws and local institutions to create enclaves of white schools that get all the resources, while schools maybe a mile down the road, two miles down the road are starving for them. >> i want to push on this a little bit. chr christina, this feels to me, a white flight to resources, as i was coming through grad school, that's what we learned. we studied, you got black

mayors, integration through the civil rights movement, and then you started seeing white flight. and the presumption was there was some place you could flee, and therefore be safe from these kind of social statistics that i just suggested. but when we started talking about a massive public disinvestment in sfr you ainfra, you know, the white people ride on the roads too, we all go over the bridges together. it would be nice to go to a free pool if you are a working class white person, and as, in fact, as we have seen in this downturn, an increasing number of white americans experiencing poverty, then the lack of that safety net, so, should we now be revising this idea, that there isn't a place to flee? that, in fact, african-americans are the miner's canary. these social statistics also have consequences for why is households. >> i think what's really great about having this conversation, we don't tend to talk about it in terms of the public atmosphere and the decline of the public sphere, and that we've never truly had an integrated, vibrant public sphere that has been supported and allowed to thrive, right?

so the very history you're describing is talking about a public sphere that is immediately losing resources at a time when it's finally integrated. so i think -- >> i always ask people, there's all this focus on those public bus systems in the south, when was the last time you rode a bus in the south? that those public transportation systems have just lost. >> that's right, there's this interesting, ironic, we talk about the '60s as the era of big government in a way, because what we're really talking about is almost immediate massive retrenchment into the private realm. so i think we need to be talking to people, what has the trade-off been to retreat. why don't we talk about we need public amenities for all citizens. but it's been a lot easier, historically, to make deals that allow the public realm to thrive when some people weren't apart of it. they could make deals around social security, when certain people weren't at the table, so there's a whole debate about like the racialization of what constitutes publicness. and what constitutes

privateness. and we don't talk about the racial and class dynamics of that nearly as much as we ought to. >> stay with us. when we come back, i've been asking everyone else, do they think the civil rights act was a failure. you're the author of a series of articles that do make some claim ab s about the failures of the policies in the post-1964 era. we'll talk about that and more about lbj's vision in his own words. in honor of the 50th anniversary of the civil rights act, the lbj presidential library in austin, texas, is hosting a civil rights summit starting tuesday. president obama and three former presidents will be among those participating. all this week, msnbc will have special coverage of the civil rights summit. we will be right back.

. we must not approach the observance and enforcement of this law in a vengeful spirit. its purpose is not to punish. its purpose is not to divide, but to end divisions. divisions which have lasted all too long. its purpose is national, not regional. >> that was lyndon johnson, preparing to sign the civil rights act of 1964. in this part of the speech, we hear the president anticipating criticism of the law from white americans as opposed to integration, stating that its purpose is not to divide, but as we've been discussing, the end of legalized segregation did not necessarily result in the decline of racial divisions. one of our panelists, tanner colby, wrote a series of articles called the massive liberal failure on race, in which he says, so while the great liberal crusade of the 1960s produced victories in the area of vcivil rights, it did little in the way of producing

actual jobs for black americans. tanner, when i started reading this series, i thought, i don't know what to make about this. i felt a lot of angst about the sort of description of this period, which i think of as my lifetime, as a great failure of policy, because although we are not where we want to be, we are also not where we were. >> right. >> so tell me why you assess it as an era of failure. >> i think it comes down to, you go back to the argument of culture, we did a lot of, you know, legal changes and policy changes, without addressing the cultural problems that lie underneath it. and that's not to say a culture problem in black america, but an alienation between black and white america. unless you were going to deal with the social fabric angle of it, the policy issue was necessary but insufficient. >> but wasn't the presumption that addressing the structural would, in fact, generate the opportunities for the social fabric? so that if you put kids in school together, that they would

grow up together, learn together, and would -- i mean, i think part of the problem, actually, let me back up. the question is then, what would constitute success? would it have to be fully equal integration, or would it be kind of equitable resources that are distributed, whether or not an integrated space exists? >> i think, and this is where it really comes down to housing. an integrated space almost has to be done voluntarily. i think you have to acknowledge the fact certain black communities wanted to stay homogenous and certain wealthy white communities were just going to escape. but it was black and white patterns who chose to live in an integrated neighborhood together, and therefore their children grew up wanting to be there. whereas when you put people in a situation when their parents didn't necessarily want them to be there and weren't supporting them. this is what james coleman said, if you want put students in an all-white environment and their parents aren't standing behind

them, the whiplash can be worse. >> and you also write, and i want to ask you about this one, khalil, you write, in one of history's great ironies, the grand scale integration of scheme s embraced by liberals took place after it was underway, convulsed by spasms of white guilt, terrified by the prospect of more riots, so steps taken to dismantle the color line were accompanied by efforts to shore up the foundations of a separate black america and preserve its cultural norms. so, you know, as a -- you know, here you are at head of the shomberg, which is a separate institution, but also an institution as part of the new york public library system. and part of what i wondered, part of what gave me discomfort about that, tanner, was the idea that success could only constitute the sort of full integration. i want both. i want separate cultural spaces and equal access. >> well, here, i think there's one thing i want to take issue with. >> sure. >> and that is that housing was still a product of a real estate

market that was committed to catering to the preferences of white americans. and i live in a community right now though, and these communities are constrained by desperate efforts to stave off what they see as the high cost of integration. in a state like new jersey, governor christie does not support these old line suburbs, because they have heavy infrastructure cost, their school systems are older, their salaried public servants are well paid and have extensive benefits. meaning that the cost of integration means that everyone's got to share in that. the state's got to share in that and the individual taxpayers. what's easy to do, if you're white, to flee to yet the next suburb, where the schools were just built, the teachers are brand-new, and there's no guaranteed benefit plan. meaning that those costs are fundamentally different. >> khalil, i do not want to move

away from that just yet. because what you said there was so interesting, because it's not governor christie doesn't want integration. who knows what's in governor christie's heart, it is that there is a position about small government and small government budgets which as a result of that position of wanting to spend less on public resources, means that you cannot support the thing that makes integration possible, right? which is in part, high-quality public schools, because that's when everybody just kind of goes to their neighborhood school. >> but it also means at some point, you have to pay the price of taking the poorest in the community and giving them the same kind of educational and housing resources that we know sustain middle class and productive communities. that cost cannot be pushed off forever. someone's got to pay that cost. either the federal government's going to pay it or the state government's going to pay it. but local communities are not going to pay it. local communities are going to constantly reconstitute themselves, constitute the boundaries of enforcement, and say, if you're not willing to pay, then just move.

>> jahmell, i want to let you in on this. only because i know this is part of what you were writing so much about. >> i'm not sure how much i have to add to that. there's confrontation we had about the complex makes the small government conservatism and what means given our racial reality. i think khalil's absolutely right, that someone has to spend the resources. one of the things that gets glossed over in our myth about ourselves is the fact that the american middle class and the american white middle class is the product of the government subsidies. is a product of subsidies of housing, of subsidies of transportation infrastructure, subsidies of school infrastructure. and part of what's happened over the last 40 or 50 years, is there's been a conscious decision to not do that for integrated communities, to not do that for african-americans and to not do that for latinos. >> and i want to make sure that i note this. i think that's right and i think the impact on communities of color is most urgent and clear, but that it also then has an impact on the white middle class, which we have seen the bottom drop out of in part also because of this unwillingness.

so i just want to -- like, everybody, your new thought, your homework though experiment is every time you hear someone say government, substitute the word public, and see if you feel different about the policy when instead of hearing the word government, you hear the word public. you tend to think of yourself as the public, but not the government. thank you all so much. khalil is going to hang out in the next hour. but up next, when we come back -- no, there's not a next hour, just a next half hour. when we come back, we'll talk about twitter and its take on everything from communism to comedy.

it's no secret that the united states has tried all sorts of strongs to destabilize the communist government in cuba, and eliminate its one-time leader, fidel castro. who first took power in the small island nation in 1959. so in 1960, the cia gave six poisoneded pills to two gangsters who tried for several months to have people put the pills in castro's food.

that didn't work. then, there was the bay of pigs invasion. in april 1961, the u.s. tried to topple fidel and his communist government with a group of cia financed and trained cuban refugees. well, that failed too. the group was overwhelmed by counterattacks from castro's military. of the 1,200 plus cuban exiles, 100 were killed and 1,100 were captured. despite the failures of the united states to either assassinate or oust fidel castro, poison, and an armed invasion are widely recognized methods for eliminating one's enemies. and even though castro handed power over to his brother, raul, in 2008, the thought of a fidel/communism-free cuba remains a long-standing u.s. interest. and it turns out that the u.s. has experimented with less commonly accepted tools for creating unrest. twitter. or at least something like it. according to a new report by the associated press, in 2009, the

u.s. agency for international development or usaid hatched a plan to develop a bare bones cuban twitter. the plan was supposed to use cell phone text messaging to bypass cuba's control of information and internet restrictions. once the base of cuban twitter grew, operators would introduce content to inspire cubans to organize smart mobs. but the base never grew that big and the technology was never that great. and by 2012, cuban twitter vanished. so it was a, you know, #fail. but it is interesting to note that no less an agency, no less than the united states government, finds such power in social media, that it now goes down in history in the same category as poisoned pills and armed insurrection, at least when it comes to cuba. when we come back, the positive and negative aspects of the power of those 140 characters, right here at home.

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nothing captures the promises and challenges of democracy like twitter. on one hand, it's profoundly agaltarian, everybody gets 140 characters. individuals can initiate action, even if they lack the traditional sources of political power, like wealth. on twitter, the playing field is level, the barriers to entry are low, and it is easy to genera collective action. but maybe you'll remember our founders had some concerns about democracy. james madison wrote, measures are too often decided not according to the rules of justice and the rights of the minor party, but by the superior force of an interested and overbearing majority. comedy central's stephen colbert felt that superior force in the form of a twitter hashtag last week. on last thursday's show, colbert sat ireized washington, d.c.'s football owner dan snyder's attempts to pacify critics of the team's logo. the colbert show twitter account then tweeted just the punch line

from that segment, and by itself, without context, the tweet was clearly anti-asian, the outcry was immediate. #cancelcolbert become a trending topic for more than 24 hours. on monday, colbert addressed the controversy in a way that only stephen colbert could. >> who would have thought a means of communication limited to 140 characters would ever create misunderstanding. the cancel colbert people think that even in context, i am a racist. i just want to say that i am not a racist. i don't even see race. not even my own. people tell me i'm white and i believe them because i just devoted six minutes to explaining how i'm not a racist. >> why colbert received the bulk of the attention, the movement that was lost in the mix were the native americans who have organized against snyder's team mascot. and that is a problem, according to jeff yang, who wrote in the "wall street journal," in short, we have arrived at the era of

the weaponized hashtag, where loosely organized and barely controlled social mobs swarm institutions and individuals at a scale large enough so that the trending of the hashtag itself becomes news, often overwhelming discussion of the topic that originally spawned it. at the table, jeff yang, columnist of the "wall street journal" online who wrote that article on the weaponized hashtag. selina maxwell, a political analyst at grio.com, contributor. brittney cooper, assistant professor of women and gender studies at rutgers university, and msnbc anchor, richard lui. so nice to have you all here. jim, i want to start with you. is twitter a revolution or a mob? >> it's a little of both. a lot of revolutions have begun with quote/unquote mobs, and a lot of that's a matter of perspective. but one clear thing that comes from this is the egall leegallem

of twitter is ain't little bit of an illusion. the people with the greater number of followers and the ability to retweet and amplify end up being the primary message. which that means they get more attention in other places beyond the digital space. >> but you don't need to be hired by a news organization, right? you don't need a university to give you tenure in order to build that following, right? yes, there's still a high aerar but it's not traditional spaces. >> it disrupts traditional hierarchies and creates new ones. and those hierarchies in many ways can place people who are historically not not center of the communication, if the center of the ability to generate and manage dialogue, at the top. and i think we've seen that here. which is really interesting and really valuable. but it's also a little frightening. and i think that what we have seen is, when things are seen on twitter as an ability, as a means to communication or even

more importantly, perhaps, just draw attention to a message, it's a tremendously powerful tool. when that power is then levied against a single individual who steps out of line, it becomes a lot more like, i don't know, cyberbullying? yes, that term's been used. >> so richard, as you look at that particular moment, the cancel colbert moment, because i think, for all of us on twitter, there are moments where it's like, yeah, go twitter, get 'em, twitter. and other times, oh, god, is this happening, oh, no. how did you experience the cancel colbert moment? >> when that came out, you had to read into what was the process, the timeline that progressed over that period of with what, 24 to 48 hours. when i look at what suey park told the new yorker and her intent behind this. she's basically saying, hey, i know the way this system works. i know how this pool is. i know how warm the water is, why can't i get in and swim too? i don't want colbert to be

canceled, but i know this is an opening for me to get my message out, like many other people do, so why not, why not me using this very same process, i have that ability and i should. whether you see it as a revolution or not. >> so, it's interesting in part, because, so just so folks know, if you haven't been following this, suey park is the twitter activist who really started the cancel colbert hatch tagg. but part of it, it feels to me, one of the thing that's rewarded in the warm water of twitter, and the warm water of cable news, is outrage, right? nothing makes a better segment or a better tweet than, i can't even believe, right! and so, then, let's go get o outrage. but outrage is not always leading us to the most complex analysis. >> no, and i think it's a both/and conversation. you can start a conversation on twitter, because you're outraged about something that happens in the real world. but then what are you doing in the real world to couple your twitter activism to help, you know, change the conversation around that issue? so, for example, one of the

things i talk about a lot is rape culture. i read an op-ed in "time," which i found really offensive and i was outraged. so i chose to react to that by starting a hashtag and also writing a response in "time." so it was both/and. it was twitter and also offline activism -- well, really not offline, it was a "time" op-ed online, so it was still online. i can't leave the internet. >> all very blurry. >> i haven't been out of my house in months! richard, i felt you responding to her there when she was talking about the both/and of activism. >> yeah, the both/ands of activism, when you look at it, and when i go back to suey park and what the asian pacific islander community is trying to say, is hey, you know, this is a voice where we don't often have an open or an opening to get out our message, so let's do it. and it may not be well accepted. i may not have really calculated this cancel colbert after-effect, and that's what she was saying. i just kind of had time that evening, why not? i'm going to do this.

and it also says, hey, look, i get to define, what she's saying, i get to define my space for me and for us and my argument. it is not being told to me as to what is worse, racism in her words. >> right, and it does feel to me like critically important, the assertion of that voice, right? to just kind of stand in this space and say, you know what, us, too, right? but on the other hand, as you pointed out, jeff, the question is then who also gets silenced. so we've got more to say on this. and brittiney, we'll be talking about something that's been happening during the show, which is black twitter. a little bit on the funny side of black twitter, and it's an actual thing. i didn't just make that up. it's a thing. when folks in the lower 48 think about what they get from alaska, they think salmon and energy. but the energy bp produces up here creates something else as well: jobs all over america.

thousands of people here in alaska are working to safely produce more energy. but that's just the start. to produce more from existing wells, we need advanced technology. that means hi-tech jobs in california and colorado. the oil moves through one of the world's largest pipelines. maintaining it means manufacturing jobs in the midwest. then we transport it with 4 state-of-the-art, double-hull tankers. some of the safest, most advanced ships in the world: built in san diego with a $1 billion investment. across the united states, bp supports more than a quarter million jobs. and no energy company invests more in the u.s. than bp. when we set up operation in one part of the country, people in other parts go to work. that's not a coincidence. it's one more part of our commitment to america.

we're in a war. nobody cares about the struggle

anymore. >> struggle! >> we are too complacent. >> somebody should do something! >> uh-huh! >> hashtag. >> nothing will change. we need to mobilize this country. >> racist! >> that was a hilarious take on black twitter. black twitter is an actual thing, with some real influence. fashion magazine marie claire found that out this week, after they tweeted out a photo of kendall with corn rows. black twitter took the magazine to task, with tweets like, thanks to@marieclair for invents hash tag bold braids. i have never seen these before in my entire life. hashtag groundbreaking. marie claire quickly apologized, we didn't mean to offend or say that corn rows were new. we recognize that ewomen have been styling their hair like this for ages. it is always fun when people are

introduced to black twitter, who did not know it existed. >> in different ways. >> previously in a variety of ways. but i have seen it both act in forms of kind of making sure that cultural appropriation is not occurring, that i am kind of cheering on, and i've seen it act as a mob. >> yeah, i think the thing we have to figure out is how to both harness the cultural power we have to direct conversations, while not seeming reactionary, right? and this is the thing that i worry about, is that our movements are easily and can be easily coopted, because if we're not careful about the long game and what is our end goal, then certainly, we look like we're not being thoughtful, we're not being careful, and then we get sort of charges of rage and you're out of control and language about mobs, right? and i always think that that's very charged language, particularly when you're talking about how people of color engage in social media. that it's always inherently violent, that it's not particularly thoughtful. and i find black twitter to be swlult hilarious and sort of, you know, the humor is biting,

but it's completely brilliant. and it's the kind of cultural critique that african-americans are known for, culturally, from the dozens, from toast, on down. >> but i also want to be clear that there is some eating of the self that occurs. you are part of what was one of the most painful things to watch over the course of the past year, something that michelle goldberg described in her "nation" piece as the toxic feminist twitter wars. and i'll just read a piece from goldberg, who says, even as online feminism has proved itself a real force for change, many of the most avid digital feminists will tell you that it's become toxic. indeed, there's a nascent generes of essays by people who feel emotionally savaged by their involvement in it, not because of their sexist trolls, but because of the slashing righteousness of other feminists. i am as self-righteous as i can be, when i am standing just in judgment. >> and i will say, i have been a victim of some of this kind of

reactionary judgment, because of certain kind of things i've chosen to support in feminist movement build. and one of the reasons i wanted to participate in the nation piece, to say to women of color feminists, i don't want black and women of color feminists to look reactionary. that goes away when we do the emotional labor that cristina beltran talked about of being angry. people are perfectly comfortable with people of color being angry in social movements, right? but it becomes a way to discredit us. so how do we both harness that power and not look reactionary, but at the same time, not succumb to the kind of policing that says, you've done me injury, but i demand that you deal with me respectfully, before i'll listen to you. because that's another problem. >> so, part of what i really love about this language, and that, i guess, gave me some angst around the cancel colbert, i love the idea of insertion of the voice, using this relatively democratic with a little "d" version to do it, but i also wonder, what do i now know about an asian american political

platform, other than, don't use these kind of clearly offensive terms. so what is the proactive version that emerges from this? >> well, that's a big problem with twitter. twitter doesn't generally, at least, used in this form, in this sort of hashtag lack of context, more about signal application form, does not allow a lot of room for either context or dissent. and part of the problem with twitter's notion of democracy is that so much of twitter is about resharing and retweeting and favoriting, right? and that is predominantly the kind of behavior that leads to momentum around a single cause, a single message, a single opinion. so when there are disagreements to that opinion, they either get overridden, or in many cases, actually attacked. so that is anti-democratic. when you have a situation in which the diversity of twitter, including diversity of people of color in the twitter movements, is not recognized or celebrated, instead, people who step out of line, refuse to support, who won't stand with various people, are cast out, and attacked.

that doesn't look like democracy to me. or at least not the kind that we want. >> richard, you have spent much of your career in international politics, looking at the rest of the world, and some of that is about democracization movements. and if we think about the iran green movement and the way in which twitter's avatar has turned green or the arab spring in cairo, do you think we're being a little too u.s. in our focus, and that in fact, twitter does have the capacity to do this big movement building? >> that is the point, isn't it? we look at twitter on any other media platform, we can't look at it holistically and say one thing about it. it's different for every context. when you talk about the reactionary movement based on what is happening in black twitter, maybe it isn't, what's the reaction, it's what is being said originally. it's not a problem with the reaction, it's what's being said. the person saying that is not used to the reaction. because they have not been in the public sphere before. so in this case, it could be, i'm just not -- we're used to getting certain types of tweets, we're conditioned.

it's easy for us. others who are just jumping out into this space, whether it be about corn rows or other, they're just learning to do that. in the international space, what's great about this, is it brings back this sort of harkening, and i hate to say that this is old school, but e-mail. when e-mail was prevalent in the 1980s, we all started to use it, that's the first time we realized, we have the ability to make effective ties to people that are across the world, but we still have the dangers of flaming, which we're seeing today, of spamming, which we're seeing today. the positive side, i think when you look at the arab spring and all these collections, there's this exponential capability of all these media platforms to bring together these groups, no matter where you're at and no matter who you are on which side. >> brittney cooper, richard lui, and you must come back, we'll talk more, particularly about the rape culture piece, which is part of this question of, not being used to it, or in fact,

being used to certain kind of attacks and the ways it can be triggered. so much more to talk about. but time was not on my side today. but there is more tv going on after this thing happens. up next, there is a plan in the works for a new prequel to "gone with the wind," the story is going to focus on the character of mammy. you all knew i just had to have something to say about this. [announcer] if your dog can dream it, purina pro plan can help him achieve it. ♪ driving rock/metal music stops ♪music resumes

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"gone with the wind" is the renowned tribute to the antebellum slave holding south. it was translated to film in 1939. the movie became a huge hit, earning $20 million at the box office in its first year, which was a lot in 1939. 50 years later the film was reissued and brought in more than $200 million. in october the margaret mitchell estate will add another novel to the franchise.

this went focus on a melodramatic love story, instead it will focus on mammy. >> if you don't care what folks says about this family, i does. i has told ya and told ya, the way you eat in front of folks like a bird and i ain't aiming for you to go and dive in like a hawk. >> it was controversial because of some of the troublesome stereotypes of her character and the fact that 51 years passed before another black female actor, whoopi goldberg won an oscar for her portrayal. with me is the author of "clinging to mammy."

mickey, it is certainly not the beginning or the end of mammy. tell us about the arc, the stereotype of that character. >> in many ways the figure that sets off this both visual and narrative framework comes from uncle tom's cabin, it comes from harriet beatrice stowe and chloe is represented as an idealized nurturing mammy figure and that really highlights the way in which this figure is appealing to white people across political speck trums, that it has the staying to y staying power, that we're witnessing where the trust is releasing yet another illiteration of the story. >> hatie mcdaniel has a story

but not hatie but mammy, the fictional character, is going to get the story. >> she's always someone who is both in proximity to the master and also in proximity to the enslaved and can't entirely be trusted. there's also something to be said about the agency of black women who were able to transcend the boundaries of their position in order to put money into the community, to fund and be the back bone of social judgment movement, even in the late 19th and early 20th century and that's a black woman out of place in this story. if you peel back the layers of hattie mcdaniel's own life, someone who was incredibly talented and talked a lot about how hard it was to make a living

in america, then you're commenting on a larger tragedy in american culture, which is we want to pretend everything is okay when everything is far from it. >> one of the things that is most horrifying for me, there was a push for funding of a mammy monument. that is an image of a restaurant where can you still eat in mississippi. even as the imagination. >> and even in public culture in 1923 and to have it pass successfully in the senate and only fail because of black protest and finally it was allowed to die in the house, thankfully we don't have this monument. but also the way that hattie

mcdaniel's life highlights the complex histories, her own st struggles with that character highlights the complex history, what she brought to that character. the family ended up in a contraband camp when they fled to enemy lines in tennessee. then she's required to perform because that's the role that's available to her as she's trying to shift it. >> and of course hattie mcdaniel said i'd rather play a maid and make $700 a week than be a maid and make $7 a week. thank you, both. whoo, i'm exhausted.

>> let's get a preview on what's coming up from alex witt. lessons from the past. how the civil rights act signed into law 50 years ago could be used as a guide for immigration reform today. plus a front row seat to the tea party in kentucky and its all-or-nothing effort to take down a republican giant. don't go anywhere, i'll be right back. kills bugs inside and prevents new ones for up to a year. ortho home defense max. get order. get ortho®. how much money do you think you'll need when you retire? then we gave each person a ribbon to show how many years that amount might last. i was trying to, like, pull it a little further. [ woman ] got me to 70 years old. i'm going to have to rethink this thing. it's hard to imagine how much we'll need for a retirement that could last 30 years or more. so maybe we need to approach things differently, if we want to be ready for a longer retirement. ♪

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cut! [bell rings] this...is jane. her long day on set starts with shoulder pain... ...and a choice take 6 tylenol in a day which is 2 aleve for... ...all day relief. hmm. [bell ring] "roll sound!" "action!" are they closing in? for a second straight day crews searching for flight 370 detect electronic pulses underwater. a small army of ships and aircraft are narrowing their search zone. house of the holy? an atlanta archbishop on and his $2 million mansion. and academy award winning directors joins me to discuss his new documentary, a candid profile of